But "dumb" vs. "simple" is such an arbitrary distinction. Or maybe it is for me because I'm too much of a formalist to really care about song lyrics on the level of content. A few years back, people were constantly talking about how "dumb" the lyrics to Fergie's London Bridge were. Meanwhile, I thought of them as…

I subscribe to the "Who cares about the lyrics?" school. Music is not literature. And even literature is not always about the content, eg. postmodernist literature like Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, which experiments with form. Plus, content in literature is often dictated by genre — the same goes for music.…

Here's an excellent article on the road (which is almost always gendered male) and femininity. It encapsulates most of my thoughts on the subject.

Re: Moonlighting, yeah, "Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" (the black and white noir-themed episode) would be the classic example. But also: the dance sequence in "Big Man on Mulberry Street", the Body Heat-inspired dream sequence in "Tracks of My Tears", and Maddie's Scrooge-like hallucinations in "It's a Wonderful…

This song is fascinating mix (leftover/relic?) of '70s second-wave feminism and 19th century Realist fiction. As I was reading the article, images of three fictional female characters popped into my head: 1) Joanna Kramer from the 1979 movie "Kramer vs. Kramer", in which Meryl Streep plays a woman who leaves her…

What other songs did you play? Could you list some titles? I'd love to hear more songs like this one.

As I see it, there are 4 types of country "feminism": 1) the Dixie Chicks kind, 2) the Loretta Lynn, "Fist City" kind, 3) the Tammy Wynette, "Stand by Your Man" "feminism", and 4) The Phyllis Schlafly, wolf-in-sheep's-clothing "feminism."

I recently started re-watching Dynasty. I watched the occasional episode as a kid. I skipped the Alexis-less first season, though. Season 2 sucks you in as soon as Alexis appears! Alexis' forceful on-screen presence pretty much carries the show. Even if she's on the screen for a short amount of time, her presence…

It's a show about inexplicable phenomena, though. Explaining things (completely and unquestionably) would kind of defeat the purpose.

I envy you. I wish I were a first-time viewer like you so I could watch the entire 9 seasons from scratch again. I re-watched the series a few years ago and I still remember most episodes. I'll do another re-watch once I forget the details of most episodes, which sadly could take a couple more years.

How is "If You Can See Me" a disco song? It's Eno's "Third Uncle" (the guitar/synthesizer, the dubstep-like drum pattern, and the chaotic pace/rhythm) meets early U2 (Bowie's soaring/monumental vocals throughout the song, but especially the part at the very beginning before the first verse).

The problem with this album is: she wants to be Courtney Love, Exile in Guyville-era Liz Phair (the guitar on "You're So Cool, I'm So Freaky" kind of sounds like Phair's "Soap Star Joe"), Bikini Kill, Juliana Hatfield (as someone already pointed out), Nina Hagen (on "Unbeschreiblich Weiblich"), Lene Lovich, and a…

Are you kidding? The article is f-king hilarious.

Yeah, I forgot one of the most basic conservative vs. liberal dichotomies on the show: the working class (blue collar) people of Stars Hollow vs. the "privileged" (white collar) wealth of Hartford. I love that they figured out a way to knock Emily's "privileged" attitude down a peg (grandma Gilmore).

I don't think anyone's going to accuse this show of not being a mirror of how people talk "in real life". I think they established their '30s screwball comedy references early on, or at least Lauren Graham talked about modeling her way of speaking on Katharine Hepburn and other screwball comedy heroines. She talked…

I recently started re-watching this show. I read somewhere that the show's creator said Stars Hollow was supposed to be a town where Al Gore would've been president (instead of G.W. Bush). And yet the show's POV seems very conservative (maybe because it's a "family show"). Stars Hollow seems like a conservative small…

I like how people seem to like the very things I hate about 30 Rock. Season 5's "Queen of Jordan" was such an exaggerated bit of buffoonery — it was way too overdrawn and buffoonerish even for 30 Rock, which is not exactly known for its fine grasp on reality. But the wine/liquid-in-the-face throwing. The table…

I didn't realize this was about "winning" or "losing." Would've brought a sword or something. You don't seriously think I'm going to read every single post in this thread (or most of them, for that matter), do you? I replied to your comment because my eyes happened to land on it as I was scrolling down. And your…

I wish people stopped repeating what is supposed to be "common knowledge" about season 5 of 30 Rock. I thought season 5 was terrible. So many forgettable episodes, forced jokes, and storylines that went nowhere: "Operation Righteous Cowboy Lightning" (completely useless), the Tracy in Africa storyline (useless), the…

No, season 5 was terrible.