Mad Men is a perfect example of a serialized historical melodrama that permits viewers to re-evaluate the past. The show was created by Matthew Weiner, a co-writer and producer of The Sopranos, in 1999. Mad Men arguably tells us less about the 1960s than it does about the current desire for collective nostalgia for the […]
Effective celebrity activists use their fame and fortune to bring attention to important issues and to give credibility to legitimate representatives of social movements. Internationally-known celebrities can help expose and highlight problems which would normally get little or no news coverage without their involvement. But does celebrity involvement really make any difference in what people […]
My first encounter with social media was probably listening to the car radio as a child while my parents drove around Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. These are some of my earliest memories. A few of the songs I can recall hearing during this time include A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles, Stop In the […]
The second event which influenced my sense of identity was more technology-driven, and it came much later in my life. The transition from vinyl albums to compact discs was a difficult one for me, and it was at this time when I first realized that for better or worse, change was inevitable; there was no […]
The final innovation which profoundly affected my personal sense of identity was the advent of the Internet. By the time my wife and I broke down and bought our first PC in the early 90s, the World Wide Web was already a full-blown global phenomenon. The Internet opened up entirely new vistas of research and […]
In this blog I will demonstrate how the term ‘conspiracy theory’ has been misused by the media. In particular, I will focus on the so-called ‘alternative media’ and the many ways they marginalize and isolate reasonable suspicions about the political economy which have the potential to de-legitimize the prevailing social order. The archetypical example of […]
Elite propaganda Scholars such as Lance DeHaven-Smith and Mark Fenster have advanced this field of study by revealing the ways in which valid questions about activities of the power elites in the US have been abrogated by simply applying the term ‘conspiracy theory.’ The pejorative use of the term dates back to a CIA memorandum […]
A recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] confirms that the U.S. public education system is making Americans so dumb it has now become a national security risk. Our very survival as a nation is at stake, according to the task force. Forget the threat of terrorism, the war on drugs, gay marriage […]
Iron Sky is a totally over the top science fiction parody ostensibly about Nazis on the moon who invade Earth. It was produced by Tero Kalkoman and created by a team of independent Finnish film-makers, led by Timo Vuorensola as director. The film is Vuorensola’s first major film project. He is well-known in his homeland, […]
2014 marked the 67th anniversary of what has become known as the ‘Roswell Incident.’ In the years since the release of Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore’s seminal The Roswell Incident in 1980, the Roswell UFO case has become an iconic and enduring global pop culture phenomenon. Even though new developments are still being reported […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 