Putting the Ass in Assets: The Objectification of Gene Kelly (and Other Men) on Social Media
This entry is part 30 of 31 in the series Essays / Analyses.I’ve written before, mostly in jest, about the public’s interest in Gene Kelly’s backside. That’s right; devoted to his bum are individual tumblelogs and Facebook pages, recurring hashtags, animated gifs, and dozens upon dozens of tweets. Regarding the latter, a few recent cases in point: Gene Kelly had a most spectacular ass. Watching it is akin to a religious experience. (via @phoenix_emrys) Gene Kelly’s ass. Like for real, tho. #favoritethingsinclassicfilm (via @avardvark) Gene Kelly should pretty...
Read MoreChill Out, Shakespeare Scholars: Fabrication and Narrative Framing in Anonymous
Over the weekend I saw Anonymous (Roland Emmerich, 2011), the movie currently pissing off (some) scholars because it asserts that William Shakespeare, arguably the greatest English author of all time, did not write his own plays, sonnets, or poems. Specifically, the film advocates the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship, which attributes Shakespeare’s works to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, a well-educated poet, playwright, patron of the arts, and all-around dapper-looking dude (left). Anonymous also promotes the related Prince Tudor theory, which contends that Queen...
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Rick Perry and the GOP Love Them Some Executions
It would be a lie to say I watched last night’s Republican debate. More accurately, the television was on MSNBC, Brian Williams posed questions, candidates yapped, and I sat on the couch redirecting links from my old blog Unmuzzled Thoughts to this new one, Pop-Cultured Prof. (NOTE to readers: never, ever move your blog — so much trouble. With that said, please do update your blogrolls and RSS feeds! And you may subscribe via email here. Thanks!) So while I did not intently watch the debate, I did listen to it. One of the moments that propelled me to remove my gaze from my...
Read MoreThank You, Gene Kelly, for Not Directing Cabaret
This entry is part 28 of 31 in the series Essays / Analyses.Last week I stumbled across several 1976 newspaper articles in which Gene Kelly discusses his return to movies. After the death of his (second) wife, Jeanne Coyne, Kelly turned down virtually any film project that would take him away from the couple’s two young children, Tim and Bridget. At this point, single fatherhood was his life. But with the blessing of his kids, he returned to the silver screen in the dramatic (not musical) role of Evil Knievel’s “grease-monkey sidekick” in Viva Knievel (1977). (Further...
Read MoreLocating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century (CFP)
Call for Papers Editors: Gabrielle Malcolm and Kelli Marshall / Cambridge Scholars Publishing William Shakespeare has long been a global cultural commodity, but in the twenty-first century “Shakespeare” is oft positioned as a social concept with the man almost forgotten amidst the terminology that surrounds the criticism, tourism, adaptation, and utilization of the plays. For instance, the plays themselves are as often re-worked and adapted as performed wholly in their own right on stage. Moreover, there are currently well-established alternative strands, identities, and...
Read More“I Hate Twitter, That Piece of Crap” and Other Comments from My Course Evaluations
Original Title: “I Hate Twitter, That Piece of Crap” and Other Comments from My Course Evaluations; or, A Warning to Teachers Who Want to Tweet Last semester, for the first time, one of my colleagues required his Film History students to use Twitter. He recently received his course evaluations from said students and reacted thusly, on Twitter of course (at right). My response: “Good for you, man! Only a couple of negative comments? The first time I required Twitter, 75% of students who filled out written evaluations (not that bubbly scantron part) let me know just how much...
Read MoreFavorite Student Tweets: Rashomon
This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Favorite Student Tweets.The spring 2011 semester is over, and so is my tenure at the University of Toledo. As a result, I’ve had time to revisit the student tweets I marked as favorites, many of which, because of the usual end-of-the-semester frenzy, never made it onto the blog. Let’s remedy that, shall we? Here are some of my favorite student tweets from Cinema History‘s in-class screening of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950). The Bandit The Medium (and her “Eyebrows”) (This student closed his account after the...
Read MoreObi Wan Obama, Bin Laden’s Death, and Tumblr
In Monday’s post, I explained how I learned about Osama Bin Laden’s death via Twitter. Today, I want to look at the way President Obama and Bin Laden are currently being portrayed on another social networking site, Tumblr. For those who don’t maintain one, a Tumblelog is a microblog (like Twitter) that “lets you effortlessly share anything: text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, and/or email.” According to Tumblr, the average user creates about a dozen original posts each month and reblogs roughly three posts from those...
Read MoreOsama Bin Laden’s Death, Twitter Style
Let’s face it: I’m old. On weeknights and weekends, I’m usually in bed by 10:00 PM (EST), which means I must record and watch later The Killing, The Good Wife, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Late Night with David Letterman, and Parenthood. This also means I don’t check in with my social networks — from which I receive 90% of my national, world, and Hollywood news — until roughly 6:30 the next morning. (If I were on Twitter, I’d likely include the hashtag #firstworldproblems here.) For the most part, my early-to-bed ritual doesn’t affect things...
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Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,