Friday Ephemera
Vintage colour photographs of American cities. Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans. (h/t, Grow-a-brain.) // Radical cosmetics. Stem cells, skull lifts, harvested buttocks. // Micrograph beauty contest. Behold the nanotoilet. // 80 million tiny images. // A gallery of psychics. But you knew that already. // Virtual TR-909 drum machine. // Sandstorm, Khartoum. // Plantage. // The politics of Doctor Who. // 2007: a year of BBC impartiality. // Alan Johnson upsets Guardian readers. “The left takes its cue from what it is against rather than what it is for.” // Ophelia Benson on the difference between civility and respect. // Philip Carl Salzman on Muhammad’s tribalism. “Most accounts of Islamic history… glide over these conquests, as if they were friendly takeovers.” // Andrew Bostom on Steven Coughlin. // Jonathan Fine on terrorism and beliefs. “Downplaying religious inspiration for terrorism… is both inaccurate and dangerous.” // Deogolwulf on dreams of a world government. // On Hollywood bad guys. // Masked hoodie. Fight crime, scare the elderly. // A fan obsesses over the Spider-Man theme tune. Lousy cartoon, groovy music. (h/t, Coudal.) // Heroes action figures. Man bags, brains and a Japanese Elvis. // Still life foodscapes. (h/t, the EQ-aliser.) // The world of Spam. It’s a versatile product. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // A small house made of meat. // Jackie Gleason meets LSD. // And, via The Thin Man, the agonies of youth. Lovely.
Re: the vintage colour photographs, I love this kind of stuff — Thanks David!
Lost about 45 minutes on these already, and I’m only as far as Atlanta (Quo Vadis at the Loew’s Grand!) Notice how well everyone dressed in public; even the labourers kept their hats on and their shirts tucked in.
Kodachrome has certainly stood the test of time (at least, in combination with a dedicated amateur like Charles Cushman), but I worry whether the same will be said fifty years from now about our digital ephemera. We have more photographs now of this sort, but will Flickr maintain them forever?
Re: The politics of Doctor who.
Pah – everyone knows that the Doctor is more of a pragmatic anarchist than libertarian (he doesn’t even know how money works). And the idea that the series is engaging in some sort of class war is undercut by a) Pete Tyler, self-made millionaire, being a hero of season 2 and b) Martha’s family being pretty middle-class.
Max and that other bloke in ‘Voyage of the Damned’ weren’t demonised because they were rich, but because (unlike Pete) they had no respect for the lives of others (lack of compassion is the ultimate sin in the DW universe), nor were the working-class couple particularly noble – the husband died because of his weight and his wife committed suicide because she was so grief stricken (and because her weight made her a hindrance to the others). Ballakaffalatta (who, in order to afford his ticket, also had to be pretty rich) was not only the first character of sacrifice himself but was also shown to be a victim of repressive government legislation.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, my soapbox and I are needed elsewhere.
And there I was thinking I’d found a reason for why Doctor Who isn’t very good, much as I’d like it to be.
Even setting aside the novelty casting and pantomime acting, not to mention the cheesy, paper-thin writing, there’s still something conformist and slightly cloying about it, especially in the post-Eccleston incarnation. The Doctor should, as you say, be an outsider and above social ideology, yet RTD has made him pretty much an *advocate* of the prevailing social outlook, or at least of the prevailing social outlook among much of the BBC.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a great fan of the concept, and of some of its particulars, but where the show was once crippled by dodgy writing, pantomime acting and execrable production values, now it’s hamstrung by dodgy writing, pantomime acting and its own ideological tenor.
It’s all gone a bit Roddenberry.
I don’t think the outlook is that much different from the original series – It’s promoted multiculturalism and diversity (even if the writing reflected the outlook of the time when it came to women) from the beginning. Most futuristic organisations were multinational, including UNIT. It’s also no coincidence that the two greatest “monsters” (the Daleks and Cybermen) both want to eradicate anything that’s different.
Torchwood, on the other hand, with its completely bisexual team, goes a little too far.
As for the acting and writing… it’s melodrama, no argument there, but there are times when it manages to transcend its limitations and achieve something quite amazing, in my humble opinion.
I very much agree that even the cheesiest of pop culture can, at times, be excellent, and I can think of several RTD Doctor Who moments that made an impact – the Dalek “blasphemer” scene with Eccleston was rather good. But the Tennant incarnation is just too cheesy and thinly-written. And the political leanings, whether scripted or visual, are more frequent and too clumsy and intrusive for my taste. There’s now a sense that the audience is being steered, ham-fistedly, towards the “correct” kind of worldview. And there’s just not enough decent material to compensate for RTD’s political self-indulgence.
And despite my appreciation of interspecies homoeroticism – it’s a noble genre tradition – Torchwood is still a pile of arse.
I quite like Tennant’s portrayal, but I know he’s not to everyone’s taste.
As for the political leanings… maybe it’s just because my outlook has been suitably warped by watching too much TV, but I can’t think of too many overtly political moments.
Speaking of Roddenberry… the nerdfest begins:
http://trekmovie.com/2008/01/18/review-star-trek-teaser-trailer/
I’ve seen the pic of the new Enterprise cropping up in a few places. I’m going to reserve judgement on the whole thing for the moment. Trek burnt itself out long ago.
Yes, given the corpse of Trek is still warm and stinking up the joint, it’s a tad unseemly to be exhuming its bones so soon and gluing on sparkles.
It’s a bit like public toilet seats. You should never use one that’s only recently been vacated.
There is more subtlety of performance from Futurama’s Calculon than in Tennant’s Dr Who. And less shouty overacting.
As for Torchwood – yuck.
If you really want Buffy versus Queer as Folk then Dantes Cove http://dantescove.com/ is a much better bet.
It has the same stupid, badly written, underplotted, overproduced teen fodder feel – but a much prettier cast, unintentionally howlingly funny scripts, the fabulous Tracy Scoggins and at least is unashamed to do the soft core gay porn scenes that Torchwood WISHES it had the guts to do.
Oh my. This show has everything. Sorcery, lesbianism, action figure acting, gratuitous shirtlessness, characters called Ambrosius and, as you say, the magnificent Ms Scoggins. Now *that’s* value for money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85jGLaG_LCQ
Function IsTrekMovieGood(MovieNumber) As Boolean
Select Case OddOrEven(MovieNumber)
Case Odd: return(False);
Case Even: return(True);
End Function
Trek Trailer, now in HD.
http://www.paramount.com/startrek/hd/index.html
AC1,
Wasn’t the odd-even thing thrown into confusion with Star Trek: Nemesis, which no-one seemed to like very much? (Though I did think the ship-to-ship dogfight was fun.) My hopes aren’t terribly high and the reboot does seem a tad premature. Like I said, the toilet seat is still warm.