Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

A World Without Gatekeepers?

April 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: BROCREATIVE/SHUTTERSTOCK)

http://youtu.be/5MSmoWKFz5A Last year, comedian Patton Oswalt delivered the keynote address at the Montreal Just for Laughs comedy festival. The speech (like much of Oswalt's work) is both funny and profound, particularly the section he addresses to the people he refers to as comedy's "gatekeepers"—the entertainment industry executives, focus groups, talent agents, and others who determine who gets bookings, shows, and albums, and who doesn't. As Oswalt explains it, the gatekeepers are increasingly irrelevant. Any actor with an iPhone, he notes, now has as much film-making power as ... Read More

More like this: Politics, Seth Masket
Tags: , ,

Sadness Breeds Gratitude: The Value of Tragedy

March 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Care to catch a production of King Lear tonight? It’s about a vain, arrogant old man who loses everything of value to him. In the last scene, he cradles the body of the devoted daughter he foolishly disowned. You’ll love it! OK, fine — you’d rather stay home and pop in a DVD of, say, Titanic. Either way, you’ll be watching a tragedy, a genre that has captivated audiences since the era of the ancient Greeks. In inflation-adjusted dollars, three of the top 10 movies of all time — Gone With the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, and Titanic — are tragedies. Why do we willingly subject ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings
Tags: , ,

Television Violence Enticing, But Not Satisfying

March 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Why is there so much graphic violence in contemporary entertainment? Producers will tell you the answer is simple: because people enjoy it. According to newly published research, the real reason may be: Because it’s easy to market. When it comes to graphic gore, there’s a gap between what whets our appetite and what we actually find satisfying. That’s the conclusion of a study by Indiana University scholars Andrew Weaver and Matthew Kobach, which found students were enticed by descriptions of violent scenes, but actually enjoyed the programs more when those elements were edited ... Read More

More like this: Findings, Media
Tags: , , ,

Musicals Have the Power to Change Minds

March 1, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Broadway musicals are often thought of as lightweight entertainment. In fact, from South Pacific to The Book of Mormon, many of the greatest shows incorporate serious themes and challenge audience members’ assumptions. But can minds really be opened through story and song? Newly published research provides evidence that will warm the hearts of cockeyed optimists. “Musical theater may be a promising method for promoting attitudinal change,” write Frederick Heide, Natalie Porter and Paul Saito of Alliant International University in San Francisco. Their study, published in the journal ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings
Tags: , , ,

Scholars and The Big Lebowski: Deconstructing The Dude

July 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A bowling alley. A severed toe sporting a neatly polished nail. An aging hippie and his best friend, a Vietnam War veteran with a hair-trigger temper. If those images don't add up to anything for you, feel free to flip the page. If they do, it means you're familiar — perhaps intimately so — with one of the most analyzed, deconstructed and eclectically interpreted films of recent decades: The Big Lebowski. Joel and Ethan Coen's subversive comedy, in which a slovenly slacker (Jeff Bridges) in modern-day L.A. gets caught up in a convoluted kidnapping case, was neither a critical nor a ... Read More

More like this: July-August 2011, Media, Research in Summary
Tags: , , ,

Putting Sustainability to Music

November 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

The tradition of celebrities flitting from cause to cause is a well-engrained meme in the Western pop psyche. But a body of environmentally minded musicians and music industry types, while not abandoning the public face of action, are working to create institutional change behind the scenes. Speaking Friday during the second annual New Noise Santa Barbara conference in California, a collection of businesspeople, artists and a conservation scientist outlined some of the structural improvements, current and speculative, washing over the music biz. The conference is a sort of “South by ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Environment, Mediator
Tags: , ,

It Turns Out There Is Accounting for Taste

September 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

If I told you my taste in movies, would you be able to tell me what kind of music I listen to? How about my favorite reading material, or taste in television? Peter Jason Rentfrow can — and it’s no parlor trick. The Cambridge University psychologist is lead author of a new study that finds a person’s entertainment choices tend to share certain basic characteristics, which may or may not be immediately obvious. “Individuals prefer genres that share similar content, irrespective of the medium through which it is conveyed,” he and his colleagues write in the Journal of ... Read More

More like this: Media, Mediator
Tags: , ,

‘House,’ ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Violate Codes of Conduct?

June 25, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Next time the brilliant Dr. House resuscitates a patient using a pair of tweezers, household twine and the foil from a chewing gum wrapper, you're right to be skeptical. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics analyzed a full season of two hugely popular medical shows — ABC's Grey's Anatomy and Fox's House — and discovered that the dramas were "rife" with incidents that violated professional codes of conduct. Analyzing the second seasons of the shows, researcher Matthew Czarny pinpointed 179 depictions of bioethical dilemmas, ranging from issues surrounding ... Read More

More like this: July-August 2010, Media, The Cocktail Napkin
Tags: , , , ,

Studies That Stretch to Infinity, and Beyond

June 17, 2010 • By • 1 Comment

Pixar Animation Studios has produced 10 consecutive smash hits, representing "a standard of consistent excellence with few historical precedents," in the words of Slate film critic Christopher Orr. This spectacular success can be traced to its succinct set of operating principles. The first two — "everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone" and "it must be safe for everyone to offer ideas" — foster a relaxed corporate culture and encourage creative thinking. But we at Miller-McCune are particularly drawn to the company's third and final principle: "We must stay close to ... Read More

More like this: July-August 2010, Media, Research in Summary
Tags: , , , ,

Chinese Audiences Give Two Thumbs Up

June 3, 2010 • By • 1 Comment

What can be gained from sifting through the opinions of a million moviegoers? For Noi Sian Koh and fellow researchers, it was a revealing portrait of the cultural differences between Americans and Chinese, albeit one that confirms certain stereotypes of both societies' norms. In a paper in the journal Electronic Commerce research and Applications, they surmised that because of these differences, web-users in China and the United States would choose markedly different ways to publicly voice their opinions even about a benign topic like movies they'd seen. The study culled data from ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings, NEWS
Tags: , , ,