TV: Boardwalk Empire and Power

I’ve just started watching Boardwalk Empire, and though I’ve got plenty left to watch – I’m six episodes in – I have a few thoughts on what I’ve watched… (Spoilers for the first six episodes of Boardwalk Empire. In turn, I would request you don’t spoil me for anything after ep 1.6 in the comments. This is [...]

TV: Womens’ Shows (On Game of Thrones and Its Many Awesome Ladies)

Once upon a time, ‘womens’ shows’ was a category of television considered with derision. Daytime soap operas, cooking shows, domestic dramas. Not high drama, full of swordfights, politics and intrigue. Not thoughtful, subtle dramas critiquing the past exploring the 1960′s advertising game. Yet now, we have Mad Men and we have Game of Thrones. (Spoilers for Game [...]

WRITING: Gender-Specific Adjectives

In a recent essay at Tiger Beatdown on why Doctor Who‘s Amy Pond is frustrating, Lindsay Miller offered this succint point: “Can we all take a moment here to agree, unequivocally, that “feisty” is the single most condescending adjective in the English language [...]?” At that same site, s.e. smith asked what we mean when [...]

Derivative Works IV: Taking Back the Culture

In previous Derivative Works pieces, I’ve written about how the stigmas regarding fanfiction are inaccurate, and how derivative works can use a majority-centric work to create a space for a minority. In that last essay, I wrote about how cover songs can ‘queer’ a mainstream song, giving queer voices a way to access a song [...]

PERSONAL: The Daily Post Challenges

There’s been a recurring notice on my WordPress about The Daily Post, a blog that gives you a topic every day to post about. While I hardly have the dedication to doa so, I enjoy taking random topics and seeing what comes out, so I’m tackling some here. How many, I don’t yet know. Let’s [...]

Cultural Changes in TV: Contrasting Just Shoot Me and Ugly Betty (Nov. 2008)

In my first year at Ryerson (Nov. 2008), the term paper we were assigned to write was a compare-and-contrast research paper comparing two television shows, and what the differences between them showed about TV at the time. The paper was well-received, and I was recommended to keep a copy of it as a portfolio piece [...]