Better together: coupling up to watch TV and talk synchronizes brain waves
Brain-imaging technique reveals chatting between TV episodes increases mind match up, even when the topic isn’t TV-related.
Here’s Johnny––and Bette!
New York-based talk shows in the 1970s offered plentiful opportunities for quirky young talents like Bette Midler to sing a song or two and maybe kibitz with the host, regardless of whether they had a Broadway show or film or new record to promote. Midler had none of these when her manager Budd Friedman got her booked on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson not long after she began her legendary run at the Continental Baths.
Society was to blame for the letters, not twisted psychologies
In complex ways, social inequalities create the conditions for people to feel that writing anonymously might be useful for them. On top of this, social crises create anxious contexts, when the receipt of a threatening, obscene, or libellous anonymous letter might seem especially hazardous.
Napoleon’s cinematic empire: a fascination with film
Given his decided penchant for spectacle—he crowned himself emperor, after all—there is no reason to be surprised that Napoleon’s empire soon included the cinema, a medium his visual ubiquity made ripe for conquest. To prepare for our newest Napoleon, it is worth looking back on some of his prior celluloid incarnations, some great and others less so.
Exploring language and masculinities in the media landscape
Robert Lawson explores both toxic masculinity and positive masculinity in the media landscape, from Andrew Tate to the television show Brooklyn 99.
On specters and spectacle: tales of two Eurovisions, Liverpool-Ukraine 2023
Phantoms from the past, ghosts of the present, specters of the future, all gathered on 13 May to haunt the Eurovision Song Contest, cohosted in 2023 by the United Kingdom in Liverpool and by Ukraine in the spectral spaces of a Europe divided by war, but singing in concert under the banner, “United by Music.”
Music for Prime Time: 15 of the greatest TV themes
Music composed for television had, until recently, never been taken seriously by scholars or critics. Catchy TV themes, often for popular weekly series, were fondly remembered but not considered much more culturally significant than commercial jingles.
A Black Irish-American rejoinder to Gone With The Wind: Frank Yerby’s The Foxes of Harrow
“The Foxes of Harrow” (1946), a Southern historical romance by Black Irish-American author Frank Yerby (1916–1991), writes back to Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel, “Gone with the Wind” (1936). Although Yerby and Mitchell were both raised in Georgia during segregation by mothers of Irish descent, their socially assigned racial identities created divergent approaches to representing the pre- and post-Civil War South in their respective novels.
Marilyn Monroe goes to the Oscars
Marilyn Monroe attended the Oscars only once in 1951, before the Academy Awards were even televised. Ana de Armas is nominated for playing Monroe in Blonde this year, but Marilyn’s work as an actress is rarely given the recognition it deserves.
Five classics to read if you enjoy shows like Bridgerton or Sanditon [reading list]
“It is a truth universally acknowledged…” that there is no such thing as too many period dramas—at least, this remains true for those of us who are drawn to them, time and time again. Watching period dramas bring with them a sense of comfort as they transport the viewer to a world that is so […]
The Piano meets The Power of the Dog
In Jane Campion’s 1993 film “The Piano”, and her new film, “The Power of the Dog”, the grand piano serves as more than the emblematic instrument of feminine domestic music-making and of European bourgeois culture transported to the hinterlands of the nation or empire; it also functions as a gender technology because it regulates the metaphorical sound-body of the woman who plays it.
The VSI podcast season three: ageing, Pakistan, slang, psychopathy, and more
Listen to season three of The VSI Podcast for concise and original introductions to a selection of our VSI titles from the authors themselves.
François Truffaut: why we crave great fiction
François Truffaut is among the few French directors whose work can be labeled as “pure fiction.” He always professed that films should not become vehicles for social, political, religious, or philosophical messages.
Charlie Chaplin and the art of metamorphosis
Charlie Chaplin was certainly the greatest mime, probably the greatest actor, and arguably the greatest artist in any medium in the twentieth century. As self-transformations go, his personal rags-to riches story is hard to match. But the theme of metamorphosis also permeates his movies.
Beyond “Copaganda”: Hollywood’s offscreen relationship with the police
Do Hollywood’s portrayals of policing matter as much as the industry’s material entwinement with law enforcement—as much as the working relationships pursued beyond the screen? Instead of conceding that the consumers of popular media are eminently capable of thinking for themselves (and thus of resisting flattering depictions of power), more and more commentators are calling for the complete elimination of cop shows, cinematic police chases, and other, ostensibly entertaining images of law enforcement.
A Charlie Brown Christmas: the unlikely triumph of a holiday classic
A Charlie Brown Christmas was never supposed to be a success. It hit on all the wrong beats. The pacing was slow, the voice actors were amateurs, and the music was mostly laid back piano jazz (the opening theme, “Christmas Time is Here,” carried a strange, wintery melody built on unconventional modal chord progressions). It was almost like the program was constructed as a sort of anti-pop statement. In many ways, that’s exactly what it was. And that’s exactly why it so worried the media executives who had commissioned it.