"Some modern travellers still pretend to find Acephalous people in America."
Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia; or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences, 1753
Films:
Television Shows:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender - "The Ember Island Players"
- Breaking Bad - "Buyout" I (Naturalism)
- Breaking Bad - "Buyout" II (Realism)
- Breaking Bad - "Say My Name"
- Breaking Bad - "Gliding Over All," Said the Fly to the Money Pile
- Breaking Bad - "Gliding Over All" the Invisible Lines and Immaterial Connections
- Breaking Bad - "Gliding Over All" Until You're Not
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer - "Hush"
- Doctor Who - "Time of Angels"
- Doctor Who - "Time of Angels" - Buckling the Frame
- Doctor Who - "The Eleventh Hour"
- Doctor Who - "Amy's Choice"
- Doctor Who - "Vincent and the Doctor"
- Doctor Who - "The Pandorica Opens"
- Doctor Who - "The Big Bang"
- Doctor Who - "The Impossible Astronaut"
- Game of Thrones - Embiggening Men in "Blackwater"
- Game of Thrones - "Winter Is Coming" for Poor Will
- Game of Thrones - "Winter Is Coming" for Bran
- Game of Thrones - "Winter Is Coming" for Catelyn Stark and Jon Snow
- Game of Thrones - "Winter Is Coming" for Will and Bran
- Game of Thrones - "Lord Snow," you're no bigger than a half-man
- Game of Thrones - Everyone is alone, everyone is surrounded in "The Wolf and the Lion"
- Game of Thrones - How circular is "A Golden Crown"?
- Game of Thrones - Table-setting and brain-burning in "You Win or You Die"
- Game of Thrones - Learning to use "The Pointy End"
- Game of Thrones - Swords! Swords! Swords! in "Baelor"
- Game of Thrones - "Valar Dohaeris," Indeed. But who? Where? To what end?
- Game of Thrones - Eyelines of miscommunication in "Second Sons," Part I
- Game of Thrones - Eyelines of miscommunication in "Second Sons," Part II
- Game of Thrones - It's always been "Rain[ing in] Castamere," because yes, I am trying to break your heart
- Game of Thrones - Awful Greek words that apply to "The Rains of Castamere"
- Hannibal - The frail horror of shallow focus
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit - "What will become of the children?" Why, they'll be raped and murdered, of course."
- Leverage - "The Van Gogh Job"
- Louie - "Daddy's Girlfriend II"
- Mad Men - "Don and Sally in 'A Little Kiss'"
- Mad Men - "The Ballad of Peggy and Pete, Redux, in 'A Little Kiss'"
- Mad Men - "The Grown-Ups"
- Mad Men - "Shut the Door. Have a seat."
- Mad Men (I) - "The Rejected"
- Mad Men (II) - "The Rejected"
- Mad Men (I) - "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"
- Mad Men (II) - "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"
- Mad Men (I) - "The Suitcase"
- Mad Men (II) - "The Suitcase"
- Mad Men - Who owns "The Other Woman"?
- Mad Men - Hands and hands and hands in "Commissions and Fees"
- Mad Men - Nostalgia, forestalled, and "The Wheel"
- Mad Men - "It's not the tooth that's rotten," it's "The Phantom"
- Mad Men - One foot in "The Doorway"
- Mad Men - "Collaborators" in the Secret, Sacred Curb Dances of Suburban Love
- Mad Men - Is the Awesomeness of White Men really "For Immediate Release"?
- Mad Men - Fencing with shadows over "The Quality of Mercy"
- Mad Men (I) - "In Care Of" what? OH REALLY?
- Mad Men (II) - Disappointment "In Care Of" Convention
- Mad Men (III) - Who's "In Care Of" What Now?
- The Walking Dead - "Days Gone Bye"
Comics:
Themes:
Feb 22, 2012 3:18:24 PM
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Academia,
Alan Moore,
Alison Bechdel,
Batman,
Batman Begins,
Breaking Bad,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Christopher Nolan,
Comics,
Daniel Clowes,
Doctor Who,
Film,
Film Theory,
Game of Thrones,
Grant Morrison,
Heroism,
Literary Theory,
Literature,
Mad Men,
Science Fiction,
Scott McCloud,
Teaching,
The Dark Knight,
Visual Rhetoric
NEXT POST
Time can be rewritten. And will be. Try to keep up. (This will be the second-to-last Who-related visual rhetoric posts for a bit. It concerns the complicated conclusion of the fifth season, which is why it's the second-to-last. It's also a sequel of sorts to this post, though I reserve the right to introduce new material and present spoilers so inscrutable to the casual fans that unless you've watched the series three times through they won't even register as such.) At the conclusion of "The Pandorica Opens" we learned that all of the Doctor's old enemies had formed a committee and decided the Doctor was responsible for the universe unwriting itself. They weren't wrong. As I noted in the post on "Vampires of Venice," the Doctor tells Rosanna: He may have even wanted to believe this at the time, but he changed his mind in the next episode, "Amy's Choice," after vicariously experiencing the death of Rory Williams through Amy Pond, who asked him quite the cutting question. If you can't go back and change time, At the time, the only answer he could provide was that he someone becoming accustomed to either causing mass extinctions or standing idly by while entire species are wiped from existence. The former may be a more morally reprehensible action, but the passivity of the latter brings him no glory. In order to redeem himself—and I'm going to insist that this season is, among other things, a redemption narrative—he needs to rethink his relation to universe he tends. Which is precisely what happens in the episode "The Big Bang." He discovers that the point of him is that he can change time, so writer and showrunner Steven Moffatt and director Toby Haynes proceed to do exactly that. "The Big Bang" opens with a repetition of the slow tracking shot from the first episode of the season, "The Eleventh Hour": Just as in the beginning of "The Eleventh Hour," the camera slowly glides through Amelia Pond's garden before jump-cutting to a shot of her praying to Santa for help. Her confession in "The Big Bang" is identical up to a point. Cut back to "The Eleventh Hour": In "The Eleventh Hour," she turns to her window and spies this: Which elicits this response: Only in "The Big Bang," there's no TARDIS crashed in the yard and her fervent wish ended up in the same dustbin Santa's missives always do. In other words, from the opening scene of "The Big Bang," the audience isn't merely aware of the fact that the Doctor's changed his mind about the possibility of rewriting time, he's embraced the endeavor. Not by his own choice, mind you, but given what happens later in this episode, the indication is that even if this decision weren't a consequence of his imprisonment, he'd choose revision nonetheless. Speaking of his imprisonment, I should note for casual fans why the Doctor's currently manipulating time behind the scenes. Remember that great speech he gave to the "WHIRRING AND THRUMMING" alien armada intent on capturing him? He did an...PREVIOUS POST
“I believe the essay you asked me to write is beneath what I have been trained to expect to believe you would have expected from me, and I feel ashamed for you.” (This doesn’t quite rise to the level of the most epic student email ever, and in truth more likely belongs to my series on how to write an academic essay, but as it hovers somewhere between one awful mode and another, I thought I’d leave it up to you to decide. Have—shall we call it fun?) If I begin my essay with a rhetorical question, I contradict the Great French Thinker Montaigne, who believed I should not, because as he wrote, a “mind could not find a firm footing, [therefore he] should not be making essays, but coming to conclusions.” Those conclusions, which were important, are sadly lost to history, but the fact that Montaigne’s name remains reminds those who remember it that his failure was reason enough to memorialize it. My professor said that we should not write in the style of Montaigne, presumably because the stench of his insufficient success might sour my prose, but I believe the best essays are the ones that I write, and if my Professor thinks differently, he can take it up with Montaigne. First, my professor told me to write a paragraph like a hamburger. Can you believe that? That is not a rhetorical question: my college professor told me that the best paragraphs are structured like a hamburger. But I must follow my muse, Montaigne, and insist that I am not interesting in stabilizing my subject, however slight, in a structure of such déclassé fare, or that if I were, mine would tower above that base alternative in direct proportion to the extent of my genius. My paragraphs will, instead, inform my audience about the manner of their composition, paying special attention not to structure or transitions but to the brilliance that I mustered to tame into interest material others might find trite. By “others,” I refer explicitly to my Professor, whose ability to mix a metaphor is nearly as impressive as his encyclopedic knowledge of all things which will never make him money. He claims that an essay is like the relationship he’s clearly never had: it begin with a witty conversation, an introduction, if you will, in which impress upon your reader the timeliness and worthiness of your subject. For those who fail to recognize the universal validity of Foucault, this could be an issue, but Montaigne and I know that so long as we only speak engagingly about ourselves and Foucault, the right kind of people will recognize our brilliance and gravitate to the empty table we have saved for them. My professor then proceeds to argue that the remaining paragraphs in an essay constitute an evolving relationship between the writer and reader not unlike the one initiated in the introduction. “Just as a relationship explodes with initial insight in those first heady weeks,” he says, “so too should a first paragraph make good on the promise of its introduction.” Which is simply wrong — the purpose of an introduction is convince your future reader or paramour that...
Thanks so much for this! I've been recommending various ones to other faculty, it's nice to have them all here...
Posted by: JPRS | Thursday, 22 March 2012 at 08:35 AM
(blushes)
Posted by: SEK | Thursday, 22 March 2012 at 12:41 PM
No Torchwood?
Posted by: Rodolfo Piskorski | Monday, 21 January 2013 at 02:04 PM
Not for want of trying. I meant to teach an episode or two in my Doctor Who class, but they requested moving on to season six of Who instead, and I couldn't begrudge them their enthusiasm.
Posted by: SEK | Monday, 21 January 2013 at 02:59 PM
Good stuff. SEK, it might be helpful to add category tags to the posts as well. I don't think LGM is set up for it (although it would also help Erik Loomis' labor history series), but you could do it here. You're on WordPress, yes? (On the other hand, the sidebar picture linking to this post ain't bad.)
Posted by: Batocchio | Tuesday, 02 April 2013 at 12:48 AM
LGM isn't set up for it -- Wordpress uses a terrible tagging system -- but I think I have the categories set up decently enough here in TypePad. If you click on any show/film/comic in the word cloud on the left, it should bring up all the posts on it. I'm anal retentive about doing that here, annoyed beyond my capacity to continue trying at LGM. Or do you mean something different?
Posted by: SEK | Tuesday, 02 April 2013 at 02:09 AM
I was thinking about a category link on a post's permalink page, unless I'm just not seeing it. (Blogger and WordPress allow that at the bottom of a post, and it can help for navigation.) Sorry, I missed the category cloud (and duh, I should have noticed this was a Typepad blog). But the sidebar picture link is pretty sweet, so I wouldn't sweat it. (Categories at LGM would be nice, but at least the search function is decent.)
Posted by: Batocchio | Wednesday, 03 April 2013 at 11:45 PM