Wednesday, March 2 2011
Marxism: The Music Theory That Never Goes Out of Style
How fitting that a post-punk band from the late '70s, fascinated by the Marxist metaphysics of modernity, would re-emerge to remind us that nothing new has happened in rock in decades. Of course Thom Yorke might disagree...
Monday, January 10 2011
Birthered in the U.S.A.
Every time Anderson Cooper cornered Leo Berman on his refusal to accept the abundant evidence about Obama’s Hawaiian birth, Berman changed the subject—right back to his original, hopeless claim.
Wednesday, November 3 2010
Pulp Non-Fiction: Where Tarantino Meets Aristotle
Truth is as strange as fiction. Compare God in America with Angels in America and you can hardly tell the difference -- which is what Pulp Fiction has been saying all along.
Wednesday, September 8 2010
Philosophical Tactics in International Soccer
What exactly are Marx, Hegel, Aristotle and Socrates doing after Confucius blows the ref’s whistle? They’re not just thinking about soccer. They’re playing... sort of.
Wednesday, July 14 2010
Fooled by Skepticism
Skepticism has been fueling pop culture for decades. Just ask John Lennon or Pete Townshend. Lately it’s just been fooling pop culture about science.
Monday, May 3 2010
The Pope of Satire
Judging from the worried silence that met Stephen Colbert’s satirical comments about the current president, it seems he stepped over the line from his trademark truthiness that entertains to plain-old truth (or perhaps taboo) that his audience did not want to hear. As comedy routines go, this one died fast.
Wednesday, February 24 2010
Übermensch and Übermonk
Adrian Monk is slave to his obsessions, but he’s the master of his self. He's possibly even the master of the future of humanity.
Thursday, January 21 2010
Pop Culture’s IQ: The Downward Spiral
How can you explain the difference between Julia Child and Rachael Ray without acknowledging the elephant in pop culture's living room? We're getting dumber.
Tuesday, November 10 2009
Nobel Prizes and Nobel Promises
President Obama probably rattled and hummed in disbelief when he got his Nobel Prize. Ask Bono.
Tuesday, September 15 2009
Captain Obama and the Final Frontier
Obama's four-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new kinds of political confusion; to boldly go where no rational health-care reformer has gone before.
Wednesday, July 22 2009
Hail to the Thief, Again?
Thom Yorke’s thoughts about political power are in good company. Great theorists of power and justice agree: “you do it to yourself”.
Wednesday, May 13 2009
Obama is The Boss
What Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen share is an understanding that real life happens on the ground, regardless of the hot ideological winds blowing through Crawford or Washington D.C. or talk radio.
Tuesday, March 10 2009
Don’t Touch that Dial
If Congress had its way, Dorothy would have clicked her ruby slippers together and chanted, “There’s no place like home theater. There’s no place like home theater.”
Tuesday, January 27 2009
Where the Frak is All My Money?
Battlestar Galactica is like Wall Street—it’s hard to tell Cylons from humans, especially when it comes to galaxy-size Ponzi schemes.
Monday, October 27 2008
Our Zombies, Our Selves
Zombies, politicians, and consumers alike seek immediate gratification. But can they be happy?
Tuesday, September 9 2008
I’m Not There, and Neither Are You
The Bob Dylan film, I’m Not There, shows that the main puzzle behind pop music’s most enigmatic personality resides right here, within us all.
Wednesday, July 16 2008
George W. and J. Peterman, Philosophically Speaking
It takes guts to look squarely at the paradox of subjectivity, as former White House press secretary Scott McClellan can attest.
Wednesday, May 7 2008
Cultural Meanings in America Make Benefit Glorious Bank Accounts of Creationists
Is Ben Stein taking a page from Michael Moore? No, from Borat is more like it.
Monday, March 3 2008
Rock Hits Wall
Does a conservative obsession with its past threaten the originality and imagination of today's rock music? Pink Floyd's The Wall casts a long shadow on the genre.
Tuesday, January 15 2008
Lead Us Not Into Speculation, Nor Excessive Computation
A prominent philosopher argues that you, me, and everyone you know may be an artificial computer-simulation of a person.
Wednesday, November 14 2007
Don’t Keep Your Philosophy Under Your (Mr.) Hat
The point of philosophy going pop is not to exalt the ivory tower and herd people inside; it’s to give philosophers a chance to leave.
Wednesday, September 5 2007
My Philosophy, My Vertigo
Are the workings of the human mind and heart forever beyond the reach of science to understand? Two philosophers find the question - and opposed answers - in Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
Tuesday, July 10 2007
Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Choose
Stoics say freedom is an illusion. That's why they have no choice but to think deeply about the Grateful Dead.
Tuesday, May 8 2007
High-Minded Bullshit
Philosophy itself is often regarded as part and parcel with the bullshit of popular culture. But it is philosophers who been trying to determine exactly what bullshit is and how it works its magic.
Monday, April 9 2007
The Meaning (wink, wink) of Life
Welcome to Pop Goes Philosophy by various authors with Open Court Publishing; where philosophers find deep meaning in the depths, and at least a tiny ray of reflection in the shallows, of all that is pop culture.
