Posts filed under 'Music'
August 11th, 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.]
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January 14th, 2009
“Duck and Cover” has been replaced by “Shock and Awe” in the public lexicon where military matters are concerned, but the prospect of nuclear war has loomed for decades, even as the tensions of the Cold War have faded*. How have the worlds of literature, cinema, and television portrayed the experience of nuclear armageddon and its aftermath? My guest is Ian Abrams, former screenwriter and current associate professor at the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University, and we’ll be examining everything from survivalist literary classics like Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon to Peter Watkins’ faux-documentary The War Game and the Stanley Kubrick dark-comedy classic Dr. Strangelove. [Originally broadcast on WLUW’s Under Surveillance in January 2009.]
* Check out this recent NY Times article concerning the worries over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
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May 28th, 2008
Why do certain genres of music appeal to us? How much of our appreciation of various styles of music is based on our cultural identity? Do we subconsciously lean towards artists that either resemble us or exhibit the kind of lifestyle to which we aspire? And how has music culture evolved through the advent of MTV to the present? My guest is John Shepherd, a professor of music and sociology at Carleton University. [Originally broadcast on Under Surveillance in 2006.]
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