What’s next for you?
I’m about three-quarters of the way through writing Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-apocalyptic Film, 1968-2020, which investigates the ways abstract hopes of a better world take concrete form in infrastructure: power generation and distribution networks, roads and rail lines, water and waste disposal systems, and the food system. I argue that attention to infrastructure as part of a film’s set design and art direction is a key entry point to the politics of dystopian and post-apocalypti...
What’s next for you?
I’m about three-quarters of the way through writing Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-apocalyptic Film, 1968-2020, which investigates the ways abstract hopes of a better world take concrete form in infrastructure: power generation and distribution networks, roads and rail lines, water and waste disposal systems, and the food system. I argue that attention to infrastructure as part of a film’s set design and art direction is a key entry point to the politics of dystopian and post-apocalypti...
I thought I was a real Albert Brooks
I thought I was a real Albert Brooks head when I started this project, but the contributors made it clear to me how much I had to learn. In every chapter there are moments that I wish I would have written because they’re so good at placing Albert Brooks in film history, comedy history, and American culture in really interesting ways. Let me quickly name three: JD Connor’s placing Brooks in conversation with contemporary art, Thomas Britt linking Brooks and Todd Solondz, and Rebecca Bell-Meter...
I thought I was a real Albert Brooks
I thought I was a real Albert Brooks head when I started this project, but the contributors made it clear to me how much I had to learn. In every chapter there are moments that I wish I would have written because they’re so good at placing Albert Brooks in film history, comedy history, and American culture in really interesting ways. Let me quickly name three: JD Connor’s placing Brooks in conversation with contemporary art, Thomas Britt linking Brooks and Todd Solondz, and Rebecca Bell-Meter...
A simple case of a DJ using Albert Brooks to rib commuters testifies to Albert Brooks
A simple case of a DJ using Albert Brooks to rib commuters testifies to Albert Brooks’ skill as a comedy writer and a voice actor: even without his facial expressions, physical performance, and Julie Haggerty’s reactions, the speech captures someone who has just discovered that he has thrown away his life. It’s an incredible comic performance that is also very unsettling and painful, which is the hallmark of Brooks’ comedy. That memory made the articles about voice acting I was reading come t...
A simple case of a DJ using Albert Brooks to rib commuters testifies to Albert Brooks
A simple case of a DJ using Albert Brooks to rib commuters testifies to Albert Brooks’ skill as a comedy writer and a voice actor: even without his facial expressions, physical performance, and Julie Haggerty’s reactions, the speech captures someone who has just discovered that he has thrown away his life. It’s an incredible comic performance that is also very unsettling and painful, which is the hallmark of Brooks’ comedy. That memory made the articles about voice acting I was reading come t...
This discovery isn’t so much a research discovery
This discovery isn’t so much a research discovery, but a personal history one that colours my research. I was re-watching Lost in America for the however-manyth time, and suddenly was transported back to the ’90s, when I worked at Northwest Structural Steel with my father. I had completely forgotten that every day the DJ on the radio station we listened to driving to work played a speech from Lost in America: “I was on the road to nowhere. Do you know the road? It’s a nowhere road. It goes no...
This discovery isn’t so much a research discovery
This discovery isn’t so much a research discovery, but a personal history one that colours my research. I was re-watching Lost in America for the however-manyth time, and suddenly was transported back to the ’90s, when I worked at Northwest Structural Steel with my father. I had completely forgotten that every day the DJ on the radio station we listened to driving to work played a speech from Lost in America: “I was on the road to nowhere. Do you know the road? It’s a nowhere road. It goes no...
Meillassoux argues that correlationism
Meillassoux argues that correlationism has been the central notion of philosophy ever since Immanuel Kant, whose core epistemological hypothesis is twofold. On the one hand, Kant argues that objects conform to mind, rather than mind to objects. Kant claimed that in traditional forms of epistemology the mind was conceived as a mirror that reflects being as it is in-itself, independent of us. He argues that mind does not merely reflect reality, but rather actively structures reality. Consequent...
Meillassoux argues that correlationism
Meillassoux argues that correlationism has been the central notion of philosophy ever since Immanuel Kant, whose core epistemological hypothesis is twofold. On the one hand, Kant argues that objects conform to mind, rather than mind to objects. Kant claimed that in traditional forms of epistemology the mind was conceived as a mirror that reflects being as it is in-itself, independent of us. He argues that mind does not merely reflect reality, but rather actively structures reality. Consequent...
