steve martin: you had to be there

Comedian Steve Martin has a piece in the Smithsonian (via BB) in which he discusses the mechanics of humor in terms of the affective tension and (non)release of this tension. He describes what is literally the management (affective modulation) of what Deleuze and Guattari (following Bateson) call a plateau of intensity. In a college psychology […]

expectations of juno

Jesse Miksic at Pop Politics has a post up on Juno. Towards the end of the post: It may be worth noting that the pregnancy, and all its attendant issues of birth control, hardship, and stigmatization, was peripheral to the real substance of the film. The feminist question isn’t addressed in terms of womanhood and […]

Fodder Out of the Opportunities

This is another older post draft that I don’t think I’ll have time to finish, so up it goes… “Obviously, we’ve got to deal with defensiveness about people’s heritage. Many white Australians, of conservative and traditional bearing, are defensive. Many ordinary Australians are defensive about their own heritage, and if we continue to cast a […]