A Little Something You Can Touch HBOs Wire and the Politics of Visual Media

The Kugelmass Episodes What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence About GreatestHits Forgotten Satiric Genius ChristianSch tze A Little Something You Can Touch HBO s Wire and the Politics of VisualMedia March pm Posted in Art Aesthetics Ethics Morality Film Foucault Literature Movies Philosophy Politics Pop Culture Psychoanalysis Religion Self Sex and sexuality The Valve x posted to The Valve Spend some on a little something you can touch. A new car a new coat.it s why we get up in the morning. The Greek You want it to be one way but it s the other way. Marlo Talking about The Wire which most of the people I know do twice per day is like repeating a mantra Season is the police station. Season is the docks. Season is the streets or more inaccurately politics . Season is public schools. Season is the press I haven t even seen Season but I must ve heard that six times already. People talk about each season as though they were separate reports from the President s C! ouncil Have you started Season yet Wait you didn t see Season The show s schematic design encourages people to talk about it in ways usually reserved for non fiction with an emphasis on its structural critiques of one poorer than average city Baltimore and maybe a comment in passing about the show s brilliant detective fuck up in residence McNulty. Yes McNulty s no angel but the terms of the discussion are themselves interesting and relevant to the perspective of the show s writers. The Wire unlike for example The Sopranos and Six Feet Under is a show written almost entirely from outside the consciousness of its characters. Whereas in the case of Tony Soprano or Claire Fisher we felt their highs and lows inhabited their dreams and saw how their psychic lives bled into reality The Wire keeps its distance from the cast and does a good job of representing the systems that contain them. This not the pseudo philosophy of Ayn Rand ought properly to be called the new objectivism a! nd it is a sign of the increasing dominance of visual representation e..g. the television serial as well as of a certain form of functionalist liberalism. I d expect nothing less of a show whose very title substitutes media for persons and I m not critical of The Wire per se rather I think of the show as one of the best versions of a paradigm that should not be allowed to foreclose other ways of seeing. First of all The Wire did not exactly invent the drama of the insubordinate detective who bucks the front office to catch crooks. I m reminded of the brilliant Dirty Harry parody in The Simpsons Chief You busted up that crack house pretty bad McGonigle. Did you really have to break so much furniture McGonigle You tell me Chief. You had a pretty good view from behind your desk. Homer Ah McGonigle eases the pain. Chief You re off the case McGonigle McGonigle You re off your case Chief Chief What does that mean exactly Homer yelling It means he gets results you stupid chief Lisa Dad sit down. Homer Oh I m sorry. The dynamic goes all the way back to! the formative years of noir which has two particularly interesting features as a genre. First of all from pretty early on it had a very cozy relationship with film and television. Works by James M. Cain Dashiell Hammett Raymond Carver and Mickey Spillane among others were adapted brilliantly for the screen. Film noir directors like Alfred Hitchcock worked with both film and television and characters like Mike Hammer were used for both. Noir writing was heavily influenced by Ernest Hemingway s journalistic prose and emphasized action and things in precise staccato sentences. It came of age during Hollywood s Golden Age and in fact in noir novels one can watch two things begin to fuse the vicarious gaze of visual media and a journalistic insistence on unvarnished facts. Noir was also a genre filled with sins and dark lusts crime drugs deviant sexuality and whole ensembles of morally gray Machiavellis. It indulged our appetites but retained an antiseptic distance suggesting m! ore than it showed. The noir hero makes sense of this purgatorial darkness by accepting man s sinful nature for what it is and also by martyring himself through a pantomime of corruption. He drinks without getting drunk kisses almost without changing his expression. He sinks to the depths and yet the depths do not claim him he is not aloof but he does not succumb. He is in fact the personification of the camera and a familiarly American notion of original sin grounds all the facts the narrating eye fearlessly reveals. The best example of how the noir genre then transforms into a politics comes during the third season when The Wire broaches the subject of legalizing drugs. A renegade major establishes free zones in three places in Western Baltimore enabling drug addicts to purchase and use drugs without interference. The show s perspective on this is pretty much in line with all the sound arguments for legalizing drugs violent crime goes down and some public health outreach becomes possible that would have been impossible before. While the mayo! r is debating whether he can sell the free zones to the public and the Feds an aspiring candidate for mayor gets hold of the news and blows the whistle. So far so good. Somewhere in the back of it all you can hear David Simon saying If you d seen what I ve seen you d favor legalization too and I agree with him. That said after watching the show for three seasons it begins to dawn on you that you have no idea what s drawing people to the free zones. You ve seen the character Bubbles getting high maybe a dozen times then nodding off cut . You see McNulty and Bunk drinking Jameson until they fall down on the train tracks and cut . You see the newly hired soldier in Barksdale s army walking into the room with a prostitute and cut . It is critical to see how up to the minute this strange marriage of invasiveness and incuriosity really is. On the one hand we know everything the characters are doing my point is certainly not that the show ought to be more vicarious. The show is ca! lled The Wire after all and despite being filmed during the heyday of the Patriot Act the show never has the slightest twinge of guilt about any form of surveillance including wiretaps obtained specifically by manipulating anti terrorist statutes to aid an ongoing drug investigation. On the other hand we only rarely understand why a character indulges in the vices that drive the show just as it is presently fashionable to be frustrated and impatient with other causal theories of human behavior such as psychoanalysis. The synchronicity of journalistic objectivity visual representation and the privileging of plot representation of action over representations of consciousness ultimately produces functionalism people are what they do and they do what they do. If that sounds like circular reasoning well it is just like Avon s No Marlo no game. If people are going to do drugs they might as well be able to do it safely without spreading disease or swamping the criminal justice system. That s true but it s possibly not as trenchant as Trainspotting wh! ich begins and ends with a snarling and famous indictment of the alternative Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television Choose washing machines cars compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind numbing sprit crushing game shows stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all pishing you last in a miserable home nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish fucked up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that I chose not to choose life I chose somet! hing else. At many points The Wire can t improve on a paternalistic version of laissez faire why can t the drug trade exist in harmony with the world like other trades The pushers sell the users indulge and McNulty s there listening in case things get out of hand. Whereas in The Sopranos it was understood that the Jersey gangsters were a microcosm for capitalism and the toll the proverbial cut taken out of every life was very heavy. Arguably The Wire is better as a narrative than The Sopranos and it is much better than Six Feet Under . The plotting in Six Feet Under was horrible a subplot about a missing woman that dragged on forever pointlessly complicated medical drama multiple drug induced revelations and petty and ultimately boring villainy. Furthermore the show indulged a kind of histrionic American WASP self concern in which nothing beyond the personal appeared to have any existence at all. That said Claire Fisher s gradual development into an artist was a credible version of a wayward and often invisible process of individuation. In her! case at least something came of all that chaotic and destructive desire in a process that involved both her and us in wrestling with interiority . When visual media have to do this it tends to jam the narrative machine. Transpotting resorts to the voice over. Both The Sopranos and Six Feet Under employed talky dream sequences and quoted extensively from Yeats Wordsworth and the Bhagavad Gita . It was often insufferable though other directors like David Lynch can make the awkwardness charming. I m ready to admit that The Wire may be more perfect for its medium simply because it doesn t play around nervously and ironically with sermons taken from religious and literary texts. I ll end with two characters from The Wire s second season Frank Sobotka and Ziggy. If McNulty symbolically martyrs himself on his debauches Frank literally martyrs himself. He works himself to the bone up to and including getting involved with every sort of illegal trading in order to keep the docks he! represents alive. He processes a huge amount of dirty cash but sees none of it passing everything along to his men. He is a creature of such integrity that he actually worries his associate a criminal boss known as The Greek. Meanwhile every thing Frank tries to do is undone by Ziggy his son who goes even further into crime and then spends the money on fancy jackets and a duck with a diamond studded collar . When Frank confronts Ziggy about his risky behavior Ziggy gives a rather pathetic response about the decline of Baltimore s industries. He s sad that things aren t how they used to be and that s why he goes into the union bar and sets fire to a hundred dollars. It s a joke of a causal explanation and yet Ziggy sees the hopelessness of the situation feelingly in a way Frank cannot. Instead Frank just keeps going trying to make it all cohere until he winds up dead. We have had a great deal of mysterious badness lately within and without Sheriff Ed Tom Bell describes Anton Chigurh as a ghost in No Country for Old Men . In the same film anoth! er character says Whatcha got ain t nothin new. This country s hard on people you can t stop what s coming. Whether it s the dry Texas plains or the Baltimore projects the people who move across these places are ghosts to us we see them but we don t know who they are. What makes Avon Barksdale turn out so differently from Stringer Bell Why is Greggs driven down the same path as McNulty What makes an Omar a Landsman a Royce I won t ever know the answer. I ll have to talk about bureaucracies and I ll have to ask people which seasons they ve seen. But Ziggy Alas poor Ziggy I knew him readers. Forgotten Satiric Genius ChristianSch tze Post a Comment Name Email Website Comment WRITE ME. josephkugelmass at gmail dot com Blogroll Academic Cog Acephalous Adam Roberts The Valve Ads Without Products American Stranger Antigram apophenia Citizen of Somewhere Else CrimethInc Online Library Fetch Me My Axe FourFour Grundlegung Hal and Heather Having Read The Fine Print I Blame The Patria! rchy I Cite In The Middle Irrelevant Narcissism Is There No Sin In It Je Est Un Autre Larval Subjects Law and Letters Long Sunday massthink Metamanda Nice Belt Old Is The New New Oubli Sur La Carte Pons Asinorum Professor Zero Pseudopodium Rien D Extraordinaire Rough Theory SF Diplomat Sharp Sand Sour Duck Speak You Moron Spurious Terrible Beauty The Existence Machine The Girl Detective The Long Eighteenth The Oh Zone The Rabbit Eater The Valve This Space Tomemos Truly Outrageous Unabgeschlossenheit Uncomplicatedly Whetted Wildly Parenthetical Some Rights Reserved Other Selves Posts at The Valve Kugelmass MySpace Recent Comments Joseph Kugelmass on I wish that there were more than the twenty four hours in theday Joseph Kugelmass on Why Americans Did Not Watch TheOscars Joseph Kugelmass on The Scientistic Fallacy Peter Kramer Judith Warner and the Debate Over PsychiatricMedication Nabil on The Scientistic Fallacy Peter Kramer Judith Warner and the Debate Over PsychiatricMedication Nabil on Why Americans Did Not Watch TheOscars Recent Posts A Li! ttle Something You Can Touch HBO s Wire and the Politics of VisualMedia Forgotten Satiric Genius ChristianSch tze The Scientistic Fallacy Peter Kramer Judith Warner and the Debate Over PsychiatricMedication Why Americans Did Not Watch TheOscars LarvalSubjects onPedagogy Obama vs. Clinton Long Term Thoughts About Change inAmerica The Talented Mr. Student Books Class and Passing My Post Teaching Literature ReassignedTime Archives March February January December November October September August July June May April March February January December November October September August July June May April March February December Blog at WordPress.com . Theme ChaosTheory

Source: http://kugelmass.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/a-little-something-you-can-touch-hbos-wire-and-the-politics-of-visual-media/


Read another interesting blog news.

N-CHANGE.net - AUTOMATIC EXCHANGE PayPal, EasyPay, WebMoney, Fethard, RUPay, Yandex Money, UrkMoney, Liberty Reserve, Wire Transfer, (WMZ, WMB, WMR, WME, WMU, WMY)

N-CHANGE.net - AUTOMATIC EXCHANGE PayPal, EasyPay, WebMoney, , Fethard, RUPay, Yandex Money, UrkMoney, Liberty Reserve, Wire Transfer, (WMZ, WMB, WMR, WME, WMU, WMY) --------------- Our service provides electronic exchange rates.Exchange rates for the service are forming automatically and can be changed during the day, increasing or decreasing the profitability of the exchange percents. We approached individually to each client and partner, and we have a flexible system of discounts and the partnership rewards. Online change Mirror: http://N-CHANGE.biz MANUAL EXCHANGE PayPal, MoneyBookers, exchange payment for goods and services IP-TELEPHONY Increase balance of Skype Account. On-line Support Exchange ICQ: 43-1234 ICQ Robot: 409892367(robot gives WMZ bonus) ______________________

Killingly Board of Education to vote on 35 million budget tonight

Norwich Bulletin Posted Mar PM Killingly Conn. The Killingly Board of Education is scheduled to meet at p.m. today at Town Hall to vote on the proposed million education budget. The budget represents a . percent increase or nearly . million from the current year. The budget includes funding for a freshman laptop program and would expand a reading program to the Killingly Intermediate School. Comments Thank you for the abuse report. We will review the report and take appropriate action. Loading comments please wait. Leave a Comment Participation in online discussion is subject to our Terms of Use . By commenting you agree to be bound by these terms. Special Reports Campaign Search our contribution database Culture Clash Professional Bowlers Association in Norwich Newcomers in Eastern Connecticut Yellow Pages Find whatever you re looking for with Totally Local Yellow Pages Search provided by Premier Guide Featured Business DMC Dynamic Rotating Banner Requires JavaScript and Fl! ash Recent Stories Griswold first selectman s business ties to schools questioned Killingly Board of Education to vote on million budget tonight Get tickets for Billy Joel s th show at Mohegan Former DMV worker pleads guilty in illegal license scam Griswold woman rolls car in Plainfield Colchester library groups to meet Gala to raise funds for grandparents group At least in teen girls has STD study finds Colchester wants to create shared recreation center for seniors youths Hurdle cleared for Griswold Middle School project Site Map Home News Casinos Life Events Sports Nation World Multimedia Lifestyles Opinions Entertainment Original content available for non commercial use under a Creative Commons license except where noted . Norwich Bulletin Franklin St. Norwich CT Contact Us Subscriber Services Yellow Pages Copyright GateHouse Media Inc. Some Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy Terms of Use IYP and SEO vendors SEO by eLocalListing Advertiser profiles Yellow Pages by Premier ! Guide Zope Corp

Source: http://www.norwichbulletin.com/homepage/x39089009

ClipBlast Unveils PlayboxTM Redefining Online Video Distribution Forbes

ClipBlast Unveils Playbox TM Redefining Online Video Distribution Gives Users Video They Want Where They Want It Forbes.com Home Business Tech Markets Entrepreneurs Leadership Personal Finance ForbesLife Lists Opinions Video Blogs E mail Newsletters People Tracker Portfolio Tracker Special Reports Commerce Energy Health Care Logistics Manufacturing Media Services Technology Wall Street Washington CIO Network Enterprise Tech Infoimaging Digital Infrastructure Internet Personal Tech Sciences Security Wireless Bonds Commodities Currencies Economy Emerging Markets Equities Options Finance Human Resources Law E mail Request Reprints E Mail Newsletters My Yahoo RSS Business Wire Press Release ClipBlast Unveils Playbox TM Redefining Online Video Distribution Gives Users Video They Want Where They Want It . . AM ET ClipBlast www.clipblast.com the premier Web wide video search and distribution platform today unveiled ClipBlast Playbox TM a detached cross platform viewer frame that ca! n play video from sources across the Video Web. ClipBlast s patent pending Playbox technology gives viewers a universal way to search discover watch and interact with video while offering video content providers new audiences and new revenue opportunities. Playbox ClipBlast Playbox can be launched from a web page by clicking on text and image links. When launched Playbox floats on top of the page and can be dragged and positioned as the viewer chooses. As Playbox is launched users can watch save and send videos expand to full screen see other video recommendations and continue to scroll through web page content while the video plays without ever leaving the site. For web site publishers Playbox is frictionless providing the freedom and flexibility to deliver video on site without being constrained by video players or formats. Publishers of social networks blogs and message boards can provide a video experience that increases visitor engagement and improves monetization. For! content providers Playbox in combination with ClipBlast s Intelligent Index TM provides a seamless platform from which to distribute and syndicate video throughout the Web. Major television producers like CBS ESPN BBC HBO Comedy Central AMC PBS Turner Classic Movies IFC and National Geographic stand to benefit from Playbox by gaining broader distribution of their programming as do video hosting platforms such as YouTube Blip.tv Metacafe Veoh Daily Motion and ClipSyndicate. These and thousands of other video content providers are automatically Playbox compliant. Playbox streamlines and optimizes the fragmented Video Web and with it ClipBlast is redefining video distribution online said Gary Baker ClipBlast founder and CEO. We re taking video viewing one step further by unifying the user experience. Third parties can brand Playbox embed it in their web properties and seamlessly serve video from thousands of sources. And it s all self contained. Anyone with video content who wants to be found online can become part of the Playbox experience by s! imply getting indexed by ClipBlast and publishing embed codes. ClipBlast Playbox is effectively pioneering a search discovery and syndication model. An Open Source solution Playbox is media file and media player agnostic and will play video formats including Flash QuickTime MP H. and many more. Playbox design enables it to serve multiple display advertising formats inside its frame as well as pre post and overlay units adjacent to and atop the video. The ClipBlast Playbox backend can serve advertising against specific content with tools to track measure and share revenue between publishers and content providers. Playbox itself can be branded and incorporated with widgets and applications for targeted and viral marketing campaigns. Playbox is available now on the ClipBlast website tapping the industry s deepest video web index along with the critical intelligence necessary for mass video distribution. The ClipBlast API enables web publishers social networks and application d! evelopers to include the ClipBlast Index featuring Playbox in their properties and benefit from its stickiness on their own websites and applications. Playbox is built on ClipBlast s popular video search platform. The ClipBlast search platform continuously crawls the entire Web for available content providing viewers with up to date personalized video content no matter what the source. With its Intelligent Index of some million video clips growing by up to one million videos daily ClipBlast indexes more content providers than anyone on the Web. The company s Intelligent Index provides an enormous video inventory that can be viewed through Playbox. About ClipBlast Founded in ClipBlast provides pioneering Web wide video search and discovery that uses patent pending technology to continuously update the largest index of video content across the Internet. ClipBlast s fast easy products gives users instant access to millions of quality highly relevant targeted video from the world s major media brands independent producers and individuals video tha! t informs enlightens inspires and entertains. The company is based in Agoura Hills Calif. To learn more visit http www.clipblast.com. of Article Controls E mail Request Reprints E Mail Newsletters My Yahoo RSS Related Sections Home News Analysis News Headlines More From Forbes.com Special Reports Subscriptions Subscribe To Newsletters Subscriber Customer Service Trading Center Brought to you by the sponsors below Small Business more The Entrepreneur Library Ten books that no entrepreneur should be without. Sponsored By CEO Book Club CEO Book Club more New Notable Asian Rivals David A. Andelman A distinguished British editor offers some compelling prescriptions for the continent that promises to shape mankind s future. READ REVIEW New Notable The Sound Of Silence Paul Maidment Having trouble managing your business Maybe you talk too much. READ REVIEW Sitemap Help Contact Us Investment Newsletters Forbes Conferences Forbes Magazines Forbes Autos Ad Information Forbes

S! ource: http://www.forbes.com/businesswire/feeds/businesswire/2008/04/30/businesswire20080430005442r1.html
Another site recommended to visit: finance

MUSIC Detroit Free Press

Other editions Mobile News Feeds E Newsletters Subscribe to the Free Press Find it Jobs Cars Real Estate Apartments Shopping Classifieds Sponsored by Your browser s security settings are preventing some features from appearing. See instructions for fixing the problem. MUSIC May Print this page E mail this article Share this article Del.icio.us Facebook Digg Reddit Newsvine What s this AUGUSTANA The emotive piano pop band tours on the heels of its new album Can t Love Can t Hurt the California group s first record since breaking big with the single Boston in . Wild Sweet Orange opens. St. Andrew s Hall E. Congress Detroit. . . The band will perform and sign autographs at p.m. at Borders Books Osgood We don t want to give them any life With staff under fire Jim Leyland stands by his coaches Insiders Move puts Granholm on the spot Council acts to force Mayor Kilpatrick out UAW may go on strike at GM Ohio site Police Tot put on car floor beer behind seat belt With world falling ! apart ex Detroit TV anchor Suzanne Wangler takes own life INSIDE FREEP.COM ENTER OUR CONTEST Win a Sex and the City trip Win a glamorous trip to New York City to see Sex and The City The Movie the hottest premiere of the summer THE BUYER S MARKET Get more house for your money As home prices decline to pre levels buyers will get more for their money in every price range. SEND A CHILD TO CAMP Summer Dreams Your donation can help give kids experiences to change a life and memories to last a lifetime. ECONOMIC STIMULUS When will you get your rebate Check out our complete guide to your tax rebate including when to expect to see it in your bank account. HUNGRY FEAST ON THIS Metro Detroit s best sandwiches Check out our mouth watering photo guide to see what s good in the Detroit area between two slices. SITE INDEX Home Photos Videos Add your photos Lottery Print edition Contact us Frequently Asked Questions Help Local Detroit Wayne Oakland Macomb Metro Michigan Election Driving t! raffic School closings Columnists Nation World Top stories Lotteries Election Nation World Business Sports Lions Pistons Red Wings Tigers U M Wolverines MSU Spartans High School Sports Scores Columnists Shock Outdoors Olympics sports Golf Auto racing Detroit Marathon Entertainment Search for events Things to do Celebrities Movies Music TV Radio Casinos Theater Arts Dining Video games Metromix.com Photos Autos Business Auto news Business news Markets Auto reviews Technology Detroit Auto Show Life Travel USA Today Travel Shopping Relationships Food Pets Health Columnists Technology Twist Motor City Moms Opinion Editorials Blogs Cartoons Letters to the Editor Columnists Forums Obituaries Death notices Extras Photos Videos Databases Digital Free Press Specials Forums Lottery Comics Scores Sign up for alerts Contests Partners Jobs CareerBuilder.com Cars Cars.com Apartments Apartments.com Shopping ShopLocal.com Home Local Nation World Sports Entertainment Autos Business Life Travel Opinion Obituaries Extras Site Map Contact Us Subscribe Copyright . ! Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy updated March . Starting first parse .Parsing macro pluck InitializeArticles .Build ms Article .Build ms Article .Build ms Content .Completed macro pluck InitializeArticles .Build ms Article .Parsing macro seo .Build ms Misc .Completed macro seo .Parsing macro pd search .Completed macro pd search .Parsing macro loginbox branding .Build ms Content .Completed macro loginbox branding .Parsing macro footer .Parsing macro sitecatalyst .Build ms Misc .Completed macro sitecatalyst .Build ms Content Starting first parse .Build ms Misc

Source: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080514/ENT07/805140306

Casino review is found at best casino reviews