I has the opposite experience. I watched the movie in Oman, where I live and almost all of the audience was Omanis. I thought for sure most people weren’t going to “get it,” but except for a few jokes here and there people seemed pretty in tune to the movie. Obviously, the Middle East has it’s own issues in regards to…

This is so emblematic of right-wingers; totally ignore legitimate concerns of a POC and then make racist comments. And then somehow still think they are intelligent and funny.

Yes, that’s really what we need to be focusing on here; what some Jezebel commenters said one time.

You're right. I thought that the autobiography was written by someone else and only published for the pulp novels of the mid 20th century. I guess my original point was that there are still a lot of liberties taken when books/movies are "loosely based" on real people or events. The Danish Girl is still classified as a…

It's important to remember that The Danish Girl is a fictionalized novel. It's "loosely" based on the life of Lili Elbe. I think not only the actor, but also the writer and director will be making a lot of assumptions about Elbe and what is was like to be a transwoman in the 1920's in Europe. Given that Elbe lived in…

I used to work in African-American art museum and still very much follow what's happening in the African-American art/museum word, so the reactions to "A Subtlety" have been fascinating; both the visitors to the exhibition's reactions, as well as the reactions to the reactions of those visitors (i.e. the blogosphere).…

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

The last time I went home to visit my mother I noticed that the last 15 minutes or so of the noon local news was a glorified commercial under the guise of a local talk show. One of the newscasters would "interview" a local business owner/representative about all the wonderful things the business is doing.

Yes, product placement works very well. There are studies that show how effective that subtle subliminal advertising can be.

I made a comment the other week on the article about the new Janelle Monae video saying how unfortunate it was that the video featured prominent product placement and someone jumped down my throat about it. The issue isn't advertising itself, the issue is that that advertising is now PART of the content itself instead…

It's interesting because ethnicity is just as much a construct as race is (i.e. Hutu vs. Tutsi, Gurage vs. Silt'e, etc.), if anything ethnicity is probably more socially constructed than race is. I also think its very telling that the political adviser mentioned Muslims as an example of racism considering in that idea…

There was also Cooper's Donut in 1959 in LA and Compton's Cafeteria in SF in 1966.

I don't think you understand how music videos work. The music video is usually considered independent from the video. It showcases the song, but it has its own aesthetics, message, artistry etc. And yes, the music videos themselves are often considered works of art, just as a song is; and many legit artists have…

I'm not talking about the economics behind it. I don't care how little or how much record companies make off it.

I'm not sure what you're talking about anymore. Product placement is a serious risk to artistic freedom and independence. Janelle looks like a fool in that video taking a picture with her damn watch. Advertisements themselves aren't the issue, its the steady creeping of advertisements into space where they used not to…

Quite the contrary about the music videos. There has been a huge resurgence in music video popularity in the last couple years thanks to YouTube. There's music videos out there with 10's and 100's of millions of views, that's huge. Almost all the most viewed videos on YouTube are music videos. People definitely care…

I know how the world works and I know how advertising works, that's why I think its sad that product placement is coming so common and acceptable. Music videos are pieces of art work, so you're seriously compromising a piece of art work when you put a commercial INSIDE of the piece of artwork. Advertisements belong…

I hate to say it, but the product placement kills the whole video for me and really lowers my opinion of her and her music. Its just gross to me.

Some women have penises and some men have vaginas. Get over it.

Oh God yes. My sister just got back from visiting relatives in Ethiopia and she was telling me that a neighbor's daughter got tricked into going to Germany under the idea she had won a scholarship to study at a university but was instead forced to work in a legal brothel there. It was a terrible story.