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Having already published two extensive articles on The Prisoner (see here and here), I didn’t expect to ever write about the series again. But times have changed, and so has The Prisoner. Works of art are living things, and their meaning changes over time. This ultimately has little to do with the artist’s intentions. That The Prisoner had changed was brought home to me one evening when, on a whim, I chose to revisit an episode I had always disliked. (more…)
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HBO Max has begun airing a new series, Velma. This is a prequel spinoff of Scooby Doo, the much-beloved animated series from the 1970s, and told from the perspective of the eponymous character.
According to an old study, American kids grow up watching about a thousand hours of television a year. I confess that I was one of the young addicts who wasted an epic amount of time in front of the idiot box. After school meant cartoons, and so did Saturday mornings. But all told, Scooby Doo was one of the ones that was worth a look. Is it just me, or did it have some influence on The X-Files? (more…)
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The Vice President of the United States: It’s a lousy job, but someone’s got to do it. So why not cut to the chase and get a lousy person?
This was the premise of the comedy series Veep, which ran from 2012-2019 on HBO, chronicling the rise and fall and semi-rise of Selena Meyer, who schemes, rules, dominates, cowers, and obfuscates her way to power. Selena, aided (and generally hindered) by her staff, carries the water for President Hughes, and is almost totally ignored except when he orders her out to show the flag, take the heat, or be his pit bull, although Selena winds up as a Chihuahua more often than not, especially when a last-minute bit of political expediency by the unseen President leaves Selene as the fall guy . . . or gal, less a pit bull than sacrificial lamb. (more…)
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I just binge-watched the new series Peacemaker, a continuation of the character from 2021’s The Suicide Squad. I had heard it described as good, with a few woke moments. What I saw was one of the most anti-white Leftist shows that I had seen in a while. In contradistinction, the show I had seen prior to this was Arcane. The two programs share similar elements: a lesbian relationship between main characters, a white enemy, “badass” females, prominent diversity, interracialism, discussions of clueless privilege, and so on. (more…)
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Roots, the mother of the television miniseries, recently reached its 45th anniversary. It was based on Alex Haley’s book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The story begins with Kunta Kinte, a young Mandinka tribesman from the Gambia who was captured and put on a slave ship bound for colonial America. It further covers his descendants and their tribulations, ending during the Radical Reconstruction.
All told, the acting is pretty decent for a TV program, featuring several existing and up-and-coming stars. LeVar Burton, who played the younger Kunta Kinte, does the haunted look just about as well as Nicolas Cage. (more…)
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Louis Theroux has made a career as a documentarian by going out into the “bush”—basically, anywhere outside the urban and online bubbles where his kind dwell. There he meets weird and marginal people. He is nice to them in order to get them on film. Then he displays them—like so many Hottentot Venuses—for the amusement of condescending liberal urbanites like himself. (more…)
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English original here
V posledních letech roste mezi některými příznivci tvorby H. P. Lovecrafta úzkost, jak skloubit svou lásku k mýtu Cthulhu s Lovecraftovými názory na rasu. Seriálové televizní zpracování románu Matta Ruffa Lovecraft Country (2016, česky Lovecraftova země, Baronet, 2018) přináší jedno z možných řešení tohoto dilematu: aplikovat Lovecraftovu mimozemskou hrůzu na bělochy. Seriál, na jehož vzniku se podíleli mimo jiné nechvalně známý J. J. Abrams a režisér Get Out (Uteč!) Jordan Peele, měl premiéru 16. srpna. (more…)
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I seldom have occasion to say nice things about television shows. I’ll make an exception for My 600-lb Life, which has a great deal of cautionary and educational value about a growing problem in society. As the name implies, it’s a reality TV program in which the guest stars usually begin around approximately 600 pounds (273 kilos). Some are less and some are more. (more…)
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Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
Burn the land, boil the sea
You cannot take the sky from me
So went the opening theme of Firefly, a boot camp/cowboy song with fiddles and guitars instead of electronic music. In 2002, Firefly was a sci-fi show that led a brief but exciting life, not even completing a full season. (more…)
You can buy James O’Meara’s End of an Era here.
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“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” ― H. L. Mencken [1]
“We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.” ― The Animals.[2]
Living in the post-lockdown world of streaming, I find myself more than ever revisiting the good old days, including the early, superior seasons of Mad Men, the world of which looks even more alien — in a good, Golden Age way — than before. (more…)
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Today, we will be looking at some anti-communist propaganda from deep in the heart of the McCarthy era when the second Red Scare was at its zenith. This is some hardcore time capsule stuff, folks. (more…)
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a television series that ran from 1993 to 1999. In contrast with its predecessor The Next Generation, which was inspired by an optimistic vision of a largely peaceful future, Deep Space Nine depicts a less cooperative and more familiar universe. (more…)