Subscribe to more of my writing at https://www.wesalwan.com Follow me on Twitter Let’s pause for a moment to do proper homage to the remarkable fact that during the 1980s, there was a blockbuster family film in which large parts of the plot revolved around the subject of incest. That film was Back to the Future, which I recently discussed with Dan Calvisi and William Continue Reading …
David Bordwell Shows How Critics “Make Meaning” Out of Films
When we interpret a text, are we uncovering a hidden meaning? Or are we imposing a meaning from the outside? Film scholar David Bordwell’s book Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema confronts this question head on in a rigorous and analytical way. His chief question is: how are interpretations made? Although on the granular level the book deals Continue Reading …
The Philosophy of Sarah Palin
Is it anything Like the Tao of Pooh? Andrew Sullivan quotes Slavoj Zizek's latest: Earlier generations of women politicians (Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, up to a point even Hillary Clinton) were what is usually referred to as "phallic" women: they acted as "iron ladies" who imitated and tried to outdo male authority, to be "more men than men Continue Reading …