23: Packaging Events

Introduction: Unpacking Events

We live in a world where experiences are only considered meaningful if they can be constructed in relation to a media event.

Holy Homosexuality Batman!: Camp and Corporate Capitalism In Batman Forever

Freya Johnson
Queer signification so saturates Batman Forever that it would be inaccurate to call it a subtext.

The Jung and the Religious

Joel Schalit
Abraham only needed to prove his faith to God by demonstrating that he was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham never had to take his son's life, or his own.

Myth of the Million Man March

Annalee Newitz
If you're looking for a symbol of male victimization, look no farther than the black man in the US.

Radio Shock

Patrick Burkart
Hegemonic talk radio programming carries with it the mechanism of its own self-destruction: its potential for deprogramming an otherwise fully programmed aspect of popular entertainment.

My Trip To Jail

Jeremiah Luna
This essay is not so much concerned with him per se, but rather with my experience of being processed in our community's new expensive prison and how it, along with other technologies of control, produces a normalized and slavish self through an erasure of personal identity.

'Risk of Change': Anarchy and Growing Older with the Oregon Country Fair

Cynthia Hoffman
I to this day refuse to believe that growing older necessarily means selling out, followed by increasingly conservative values.