Post by HumanSanity on Nov 5, 2019 10:01:58 GMT -5
So, I'm not as much of a prolific reader as Ananke II, but I wanted in celebration of this year's Flower Girl of Ananke II Day to bring back a thread of her's Book Talk.
I haven't been reading very much for fun lately, and to the extent I have it's still been very non-fiction, and the component of my brain that's related to relaxation media is instant-reward focused to TV, so there'll be a little exploration of that below
One of my favorite books I've read for class recently was Fun Home by Allison Bechdel. Fun Home was a graphic memoir focused on the author's relationship with her father through both of their experiences with being in the closet and subsequently coming out (or, in her father's case, being forced out) and her father's death (possibly suicide). While Fun Home was certainly interesting I'm not sure that it got me very much new that I hadn't already read or known. While each experience is unique to the individual, it felt as if Bechdel's piece was a re-assemblage of a variety of different aspects of shared experiences that I had learned about before in shared histories into one individual. Thus, while deeply impactful for Bechdel herself, the graphic novel didn't really enhance or alter my perspective as a reader.
In the non-fiction department, in the spring of this year I read Inside Reality TV: Producing Race, Gender, and Sexuality on "Big Brother" by Ragan Fox. For context, I'm a avid fan of the show Big Brother and I was a fan of Ragan's when I watched him on Big Brother's twelfth season. As much as the recognized within-game strategy of Big Brother fascinates me, I'm still more intrigued in television by the process of performance and re-production, audience attention, narrative and the way it is constructed by the show's production, the way that the performance of individual contestants is constructed and negotiated between themselves and the show's production, and how performance relates to the construction of power. Fox's account provides autoethnographic information about how performance is negotiated between the cast member, production, and the public at large in Big Brother and also analyzes how that varies based on gender, race, and sexuality. Fox's account also caused me to take a larger personal detour into autoethnography as a method of study, which I found interesting -
In the realm of TV, like I said above I'm a huge reality TV fan since I started my little Big Brother fling. I gave Survivor a try without much success. I gave The Amazing Race a try with more success. The greatest success was the Bachelor franchise. Yes, this makes me a trash bag and No, I don't care. In my defense, it's not that I'm invested in the value of any of these relationships, it's that I'm invested in their chaotic destruction. The franchise really overdramatizes and therefore exemplifies my existing intellectual and personal skepticism of commonly represented socially constructed hetero-romance and sexuality.
I do want to strongly recommend the recent CBS drama Why Women Kill. Why Women Kill wasn't released on air, but if you have CBS All Access was released for viewing on the app. It's 10 1-hour long episodes, and the entire story is self-contained within a single season. It follows three American women in three parallel storylines in different time periods - one in the early 1960s, the other in the early 1980s, and one in 2019. I don't want to spoil any of the details, because each episode takes a few twists and turns with at least one story line, but I think it's an example of a show that took a spectacular concept, executed it well, and ended at the right moment to avoid wasting a good product. I will say my feelings about different characters and storylines varied drastically throughout the show, so things I was originally excited about ended up disappointing me, and ultimately my favorite character was barely noticable originally. By far and away this is one of my favorite shows I've watched fresh in a long time.
Anyways, that's what I've got - what about everyone else Also, if you think based on my descriptions we have some overlapping interest, feel free to give me a recommendation
HS
I haven't been reading very much for fun lately, and to the extent I have it's still been very non-fiction, and the component of my brain that's related to relaxation media is instant-reward focused to TV, so there'll be a little exploration of that below
One of my favorite books I've read for class recently was Fun Home by Allison Bechdel. Fun Home was a graphic memoir focused on the author's relationship with her father through both of their experiences with being in the closet and subsequently coming out (or, in her father's case, being forced out) and her father's death (possibly suicide). While Fun Home was certainly interesting I'm not sure that it got me very much new that I hadn't already read or known. While each experience is unique to the individual, it felt as if Bechdel's piece was a re-assemblage of a variety of different aspects of shared experiences that I had learned about before in shared histories into one individual. Thus, while deeply impactful for Bechdel herself, the graphic novel didn't really enhance or alter my perspective as a reader.
In the non-fiction department, in the spring of this year I read Inside Reality TV: Producing Race, Gender, and Sexuality on "Big Brother" by Ragan Fox. For context, I'm a avid fan of the show Big Brother and I was a fan of Ragan's when I watched him on Big Brother's twelfth season. As much as the recognized within-game strategy of Big Brother fascinates me, I'm still more intrigued in television by the process of performance and re-production, audience attention, narrative and the way it is constructed by the show's production, the way that the performance of individual contestants is constructed and negotiated between themselves and the show's production, and how performance relates to the construction of power. Fox's account provides autoethnographic information about how performance is negotiated between the cast member, production, and the public at large in Big Brother and also analyzes how that varies based on gender, race, and sexuality. Fox's account also caused me to take a larger personal detour into autoethnography as a method of study, which I found interesting -
In the realm of TV, like I said above I'm a huge reality TV fan since I started my little Big Brother fling. I gave Survivor a try without much success. I gave The Amazing Race a try with more success. The greatest success was the Bachelor franchise. Yes, this makes me a trash bag and No, I don't care. In my defense, it's not that I'm invested in the value of any of these relationships, it's that I'm invested in their chaotic destruction. The franchise really overdramatizes and therefore exemplifies my existing intellectual and personal skepticism of commonly represented socially constructed hetero-romance and sexuality.
I do want to strongly recommend the recent CBS drama Why Women Kill. Why Women Kill wasn't released on air, but if you have CBS All Access was released for viewing on the app. It's 10 1-hour long episodes, and the entire story is self-contained within a single season. It follows three American women in three parallel storylines in different time periods - one in the early 1960s, the other in the early 1980s, and one in 2019. I don't want to spoil any of the details, because each episode takes a few twists and turns with at least one story line, but I think it's an example of a show that took a spectacular concept, executed it well, and ended at the right moment to avoid wasting a good product. I will say my feelings about different characters and storylines varied drastically throughout the show, so things I was originally excited about ended up disappointing me, and ultimately my favorite character was barely noticable originally. By far and away this is one of my favorite shows I've watched fresh in a long time.
Anyways, that's what I've got - what about everyone else
Also, if you think based on my descriptions we have some overlapping interest, feel free to give me a recommendationHS
