Essays « BRAINTRUSTdv

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Essay:
Alejandro Adams
“Cinema, Jr.”

December 18, 2008

The delinquent viewer wonders if haphazard
violations and recontextualizations of a
given film might not yield a better, fuller
experience than the author intended.
In a capitalist society, technology is not a tool. It’s bling.

A.O. Scott recently amused himself in the pages of the New York Times by itemizing the “movie” screens (potential or active) which surrounded him as he struck a presumably lazy pose on his couch. Though the subversive undertones may have erupted unchecked in an earlier draft of that article, the antiseptic back-me-up-here graphic representation of “our” viewing habits seemed to upstage his laconic prose. Whatever he was saying, it was unconvincing.
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Essay:
Nick Rombes
“Self-Theorizing Media”

February 19, 2004

Does the cycle of incorporation and commodification come so quickly on the heels of
the avant-garde today that we are left with the stultifying aura of “history” surrounding such movements as Dogme 95?
Is there any question today that all cultural productions contain theories—trace or overt—of their own production? Not just on a material level, but on an ideological one, as well. Postmodernism was an essentially democratic movement because its metanarratives—its self-consciousness, its parody, its pastiche, its irony—always worked to make visible the codes that underlie cultural productions. Perhaps this is disputed by many of the well-meaning professorial theorists, whose dying influence still depends upon the supposed ability to demystify popular culture.
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