A recent discussion on Twitter about television shows with “mythologies” raised the question of the origin and meaning of this term. I thought I’d take a shot. The term “mythology” seems to have sprung up in the mid Nineties and is only used in reference to television shows. We generally don’t speak of movies or [...]
“Don’t it always seem to go…”
From a young age, I have been a consumer of old pop culture. As a kid, I loved reading Walter R. Brooks’ Freddy the Pig series (This blog post covers other old works of fiction I enjoyed). Thanks to Dr. Demento’s radio show, I knew about Spike Jones and Noel Coward. As a voracious fan [...]
The Authentic Self and Its Unimportance
I have just become aware of Lana Del Rey and the Lana Del Rey backlash. I have the advantage of knowing nothing about her and only listening to two of her songs. And I can understand how the persona of a performer, or the marketing of their “story,” can be annoying as hell. But we [...]
More on pacing in storytelling…
I wanted to cite two blog posts here, since they connect to my continuing obsession with “sequential narrative,” the telling of long stories. From Kathryn VanArendonk, here are some thoughts on realism in TV narratives. She argues that the Uncanny Valley effect – a phenomenon in which computer rendering of humans hits a gap the [...]