Much like the concept of time travel, the subject of dreams is a creative playground for filmmakers, both in terms of narrative as well as visuals — when you’re not bound by the laws of reality, you can go anywhere… and more importantly, be anyone. Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries broke new ground in presenting the world of dreams to mid-20th-century filmgoers, with the former enlisting the services of artist Salvador Dali for that very purpose. More recently, dreams have served as the stage for everything from the Nightmare on Elm Street horror franchise to Richard Linklater’s thought-provoking Waking Life, a series of vignettes discussing the nature of existence. Returning as my guest is mental-health professional and dedicated cinephile Molly McAshan (who shared my befuddlement at Christopher Nolan’s dream-within-a-dream [and then some] 2010 blockbuster Inception).

It’s been over four years since the infamous “Cut to Black” finale of The Sopranos polarized America — while many vociferously protested the lack of closure, some argued that the ambiguous (or perhaps not?) closing was simply the last in a long line of masterful strokes from the paintbrush of creator David Chase. What can’t be debated is the show’s status as a landmark television achievement, one that has undoubtedly had a monumental impact on narrative TV storytelling in the 21st century. Returning as my guest to talk about the show as well as the “Century of Crime” that preceded it is Leonard Pierce, cultural critic and also author of the brand-new (and pretty spectacular!) book, If You Like The Sopranos: Here Are Over 150 Movies, TV Shows, and Other Oddities That You Will Love. Leonard’s writing can be found at ludiclive.com .

How much of our political information is gathered through the filter of comedic shows? What does it mean when the writers for Saturday Night Live seemingly have a concrete impact on the way that our elected officials are being perceived?

No format in recent years seems to have had as important an impact on how we view the political and governmental scene as late-night comedy shows, from Jay Leno’s Tonight Show to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and SNL. Presidential hopefuls, who once rarely strayed from Sunday morning talk shows, are now frequently seen on these sorts of shows — even occasionally poking fun at themselves. Not exactly the sort of thing we’d imagine our Founding Fathers would do, eh?

My guest is Russell Peterson, who is an adjunct assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Iowa, as well as author of the recent book Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy Into a Joke.

It’s long been said that perception becomes reality, and for much of our nation’s history, mass media has not been kind to minorities — in particular, the African-American community. From Birth of a Nation (where the Ku Klux Klan were portrayed as crusading heroes) to the bumbling, shiftless TV characters of Mantan Moreland and Stepin Fetchit, early film and television did much to portray black America as an underclass deserving of pity and ridicule. But images were also used as weapons to advance the cause of civil rights, as evidenced by the power of photos of the horrifically-beaten Emmit Till to news coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in D.C.

We’ll be talking about landmark TV shows and films that have inspired discussions on race — from All in the Family to The Cosby Show to Spike Lee’s Bamboozled — as well as look at how race has been used in the political arena.

My guest is Maurice Berger, senior research scholar at the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and senior fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics of The New School. He’s also the author and curator of the new book and exhibit titled For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. You can access the online portion of the exhibit here, while the actual project is currently stationed at the International Center of Photography in New York City. (UPDATE — the exhibit is now in Chicago at the DuSable Museum! Catch it while it’s in town!)

How has Generation X been defined in film over the past few decades, from the landmark John Hughes films of the ’80s through the “slacker” movies of the ’90s and beyond? What distinct qualities do Gen X films possess which differentiate them from those of previous (and later) generations? We’ll be discussing everything from Pretty in Pink to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. My guest is Christina Lee, lecturer at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia, and the author of the recent book Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema.

Sorry for the long absence — but things are ready to kick into high gear with Split Reel!

A) I’ll soon be posting an interview I recorded in June with Australia’s Christina Lee, author of Screening Generation X;

B) I’ve also lined up a show with Maurice Berger — professor, author, and curator of the exhibit “For All the World To See,” on visual culture within the civil rights struggle. The exhibit is currently stationed at the International Center of Photography in New York City. (More on this after the jump.)

C) I was recently interviewed by Aharona Ament of CHIRP — you can read my e-mail responses to her insightful questions here.

So, about that exhibit…

Most of you know that I’m fascinated by culture, media, and politics… but I’m also intrigued by the subject of race. As a Colombian/Irish kid growing up in a majority African-American school system, I never thought much about race during my formative years. (With a couple of notable exceptions… such as winning a Black History Month essay competition one year, and getting selected for a “Minorities in Engineering” program during another — an experience which should’ve been a Red Flag that perhaps a career in science was not to be my destiny.) I had friends of all different nationalities, and thought it rather odd when kids from outside my town would look at me funny when I told them where I lived.

Then I got to college, and there I saw segregation — self-segregation — for the first time. Black students sat together in the lunchroom. As did Asian students. And white students. People of various backgrounds didn’t seem to mingle much at all, and the interaction that did take place appeared rather stilted. (It was also something of a culture shock for yours truly, since, to be honest, I’d never been around large numbers of white folks before.)

Most of my classmates had hailed from populations that were quite homogenous, and while it seems obvious now, it hadn’t really dawned on me that folks of different ethnicities would often have vastly different cultural tastes. Ever take a look at historical Nielsen TV ratings by race? Seinfeld was nowhere on black America’s radar in the ’90s, and neither was The Simpsons. Musicially, the differences among college students were even more pronounced, and outside of your occassional white rap fan (like my friend Chris, who mainly kept this sort of thing to himself, having not wanted to be identified with the other Caucasian hip-hop listeners he’d encountered in high school), you might as well have been looking at the Balkans.

Where am I going with this? Well, for large chunks of white America, how they’ve felt and what they’ve thought about African-Americans have stemmed primarily from the mass media they’ve ingested over the years. If you don’t encounter a particular group of people on an everyday basis, you’re going to take your cues from what you witness on television and in film. Chuck Klosterman has a great essay in his latest book, Killing the Dinosaur, where he asks readers to imagine various scenarios, such as “Eskimos in an Alaskan village.” I don’t know any Eskimos, and chances are you don’t either, but you’re still able to conjure up an image, right? How are you able to do this? Because of mass media. You’re drawing upon what you’ve seen on a screen.

So on top of the fact that African-Americans in this country had to deal with the legacy of slavery and segregation, but they also had to combat a Hollywood that, for decades, depicted the black community as a population of servants, loafers… or worse. Sometimes much worse. (see: Birth of a Nation) If your knowledge of the black community began and ended with the weekly Amos n’ Andy programs that were aired on your radio or television, you probably weren’t going to have an incredibly enlightened attitude regarding minorities or civil rights issues.

Images matter. And that’s the crux of Maurice Berger’s current exhibit, “For All the World To See,” which examines visual imagery within the civil rights struggle. You can access the online portion here, and Berger has also published an accompanying book as well. I’ll be speaking with him next week, so look for the podcast soon afterwards.

[By the way, it's ironic -- and painful to many -- that while white America has grown at least a bit more sensitive about its depictions of minorities in recent years, various negative stereotypes are now being perpetuated by members of the African-American community... through everything from gangster rap to the comic stylings of one Tyler Perry. Here's an interview with Spike Lee where he equates Perry's caricatures to the bumbling, shuffling personas of Mantan Moreland and Sleep n' Eat. And here's a dated but insightful look at the depictions of blacks on television throughout the years: part 1 and part 2.]

My new show on cinema, Split Reel, has debuted — for now, you can listen at CHIRP (Chicago Independent Radio Project), but you’ll also be able to access archives here as well as subscribe to the podcast.

What were the “flash points” which signified the “War on Terror” was having a concrete impact on popular culture? If the Hollywood norm over the past decade has been to showcase films that highlight the failures of American policy rather than champion it… then how does this fit within the framework of rah-rah patriotism that erupted in the wake of 9/11? And what sort of impact will the new strain of anti-government movements have in the wake of the Obama White House administration? My inaugural guests? Andrew Schopp and Matthew B. Hill, co-editors of the recent book The War on Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond.

How has the cinematic genre of romantic comedy been reflective of the evolution of the courtship process over the years? What do these sorts of movies say about the institution of marriage? And how have they depicted changing gender roles within relationships? We’ll examine a host of iconic romantic comedy films over the past few decades, from Annie Hall to When Harry Met Sally, to more recent films that feature male protagonists, such as Swingers and High Fidelity. My guest is Stacey Abbott, senior lecturer in film and television studies at Roehampton University in London, and the co-editor of the recent book Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. [Originally broadcast on WLUW's Under Surveillance in September 2009.]

The AMC drama Mad Men will begin its third season within the coming week, and so it’s a pertinent time to turn our sights on this critically-acclaimed series. Mad Men focuses on the Sterling Cooper advertising agency, set against the backdrop of 1960s America, and creator Matt Weiner uses the show as a vehicle for social commentary on evolving social mores, gender roles, and the illusions of both personal identity and domestic relationships. Returning as my guest is freelance writer and pop-culture critic Leonard Pierce, who has written about film and television for numerous national publications, and also is a regular contributor to The Onion’s A/V club. (Information on Leonard’s projects can be found here.) WARNING: Numerous spoilers within! So if you haven’t yet seen the first two seasons of this show, be sure to watch before listening… [Originally broadcast on WLUW's Under Surveillance in August 2009.]