American Idol, CSI & the Passing of the Monoculture
It doesn’t seem that long ago, really, that two influential, iconic network juggernauts dominated the ratings, week after week, year after year: Fox’s American Idol and CBS’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Both shows spawned imitators and shaped America’s TV culture. Both exhibited a Goliath-like ability to intimidate any would-be rivals. And both, like Goliath, were […]
The Strict Science of Apocalyptic Blockbusters
If you’ve been to a big-budget blockbuster at the multiplex recently—and by recently, I mean, oh, say, the last decade or two—you might have noticed some significant similarities between films when the heavy cinematic artillery swings into action. Namely, whether we’re dealing with science fiction, super heroes or fantasy, the scope of destruction is simply […]
Star Wars: The Memories Awaken
In late May of 1977, my mom and I clambered into the cavernous back seat of our neighbors’ Chevrolet Caprice Classic wagon and headed downtown to see Star Wars at the palatial River Hills theater in Des Moines, Iowa. The opening scene is forever seared into my memory, and to this day I don’t think […]
Dirty Deeds’ (Almost) Done for Real
An ongoing controversy in the 1980s revolved around whether certain rock bands’ music inspired isolated, unstable listeners to commit heinous crimes. Perhaps the highest-profile of these cases was that of convicted serial killer Richard Ramirez. Ramirez, who came to be known as the “Night Stalker,” was convicted in 1989 for the murder of 13 people […]
Technology & Behavior: Benefit, Bane or Both?
There’s no question that technology is changing our behavior. The question is this: Is that a good thing or bad thing? A benefit or a bane? Perhaps the best answer is yes. Let me illustrate. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I recently leased a new Subaru that comes with all sorts whiz-bang […]
Exposing the Birthday Party Industrial Complex
Two of my children went to friends’ birthday parties last weekend. My 6-year-old daughter joined a friend at a trampoline park, while my 8-year-old son headed off to Dart Warz (an establishment catering to the irrepressible urge for tweens and teens, mostly boys, to plunk one another with Terminator-ready Nerf blasters almost as big as […]
All the Hits, All the Time?
Our beloved Subaru Outback gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago. And after much discussion about replacing it, my wife and I decided to lease a new car (something I’ve never done before). In addition to that addictive new-car smell, a digital odometer reading in the single digits and a whole bunch of […]
Music Videos Shape Teens’ Values
MTV doesn’t focus much on music these days. But the medium that the cable channel helped pioneer back in the 1980s, the music video, continues to exert significant cultural influence. Specifically, a new study conducted by researchers at Catholic University of Leuven in Flanders, Belgium, finds that some teens who watch music videos today are […]
A Conversation With Beyond the Mask Screenwriter Paul McCusker
In Beyond the Mask, a new Christian action-adventure movie set before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a former assassin for the East India Company tries to make a clean break with his sordid past. But he finds the past isn’t as easy to escape as he’d hoped … even when he travels from […]
Unpacking Madonna’s Spiritual Beliefs
Madonna’s 13th album, Rebel Heart, includes quite a lot of spiritual imagery—sometimes couching temptation in terms of a struggle requiring divine assistance, other times merging erotic sexual innuendo and religious iconography in deliberately provocative ways. In a lengthy new interview with Rolling Stone, the Material Girl talked about some of her spiritual experiences growing up, […]