Pam Brown's Blog l emission - control. net

The Doctor is In... Reviews of In Treatment & Head Case

"Considering the fact that almost everything about therapy -- going to therapy, talking about what you learned in therapy, therapy offices, therapists -- is unsavory and deeply irritating, it's all the more impressive that HBO's "In Treatment" (premieres 9 p.m. Sunday, April 5) intrepidly conquers such perilous ground. The show's riveting second season, which begins with two back-to-back episodes on Sunday night and continues with three back-to-back episodes on Monday night, proves that the intelligence and intensity of the first season weren't a fluke. Even though each episode of this drama series depicts a therapy session at the office of Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne), a format that should be unbearably monotonous, each half-hour segment has the emotional weight and authenticity to knock the feet out from under even the most skeptical viewers, leaving them laughing and sighing and sniffling their way through a big box of tissues."

I Like to Watch by Heather Havrilesky on Salon.com

The Daily Show Parodies/Framing the Candidates

In a recent series on Henry Jenkins' blog called "Framing the Candidates," Jenkins explores the various ways that the candidates campaign biography videos create frameworks for understanding the candidates.

Framing the Candidates (Part Three): The Daily Show Parodies

Part Three of the series recently sparked some interesting conversation amongst students in the Media Studies program.  Here are some thoughts:

Covering The Daily Show spoofs alone may have been a bit narrow.  The McCain spoof really had a lot of political substance and depicted him in a bad light (lying about his original position on the war), whereas the Obama spoof didn't show hypocrisy or attack any wavering positions.  The Obama video more just made fun of the idea of the meaning of his mixed race background and the "American" story.  It also highlighted him as an outstanding orator.  Now, it's also worthy of consideration that they could have picked Kansas instead of Africa and done more of a Wizard of Oz take instead of The Lion King.  And if they wanted something more accurate they could have done something fun with Hawaii.  Jenkins' main argument is that "parody videos also use a language drawn from popular culture to help us make sense of a political process."