Some of the things that made ABC’s new show V terrible can doubtless be attributed to the constraints of making a pilot: the rushed pace, the thin characterization, the complete lack of any visual design sense, perhaps even the terrible dialogue. But the main problem is the show’s politics, which are so stupid as to become offensive. The problem derives in part from the original miniseries, a well-meaning anti-fascist allegory (which opens with a scene of heroic Sandinistas), in which the fascists are reptilian aliens from outer space; the difficulty, of course, being that the idea of an insidious alien threat is itself an uncomfortably fascist one. Still, the original miniseries skirts over this problem, and focuses on collaborators with and resistors to this rising fascism.

The remake, on the other hand, takes this potentially fascist starting point and really fucking runs with it. The new aliens aren’t just lizards, they’re secret lizards who have infiltrated the government and the media, and now they are offering universal healthcare as an attempt to poison humanity’s precious bodily fluids. They are, in other words, an anti-semitic stereotype. Now, I’m not saying that ABC and the makers of V are actually anti-semites. Rather, by making vague and deeply stupid gestures towards contemporary politics (ooh, universal healthcare, how topical), the show accidentally exposes underlying anti-semitism in contemporary political discourse: it’s the teabaggers and birthers as sci-fi (and it’s surely no accident that the one significant black character in the pilot has a secret radical past, and the same beard as ex-Maoist Van Jones).

I didn’t watch Mad Men when it first started, which in hindsight is surprising, as I’m a big fan of both the advertising industry and the style of high Fordism. However, all the buzz I heard at the time amounted to a shocked “OMG THEY SMOKE AND ARE SEXIST,” and there are few things less interesting than minor differences between contemporary and past mores, the ruffs and fardingales of the past.

On the strength of Adam’s recommendation, I’ve been making my way through the show over the past month. Although from the beginning it was clear that the show looked beautiful and was marvelously acted, some of my initial concern remained: was the show’s 1960s setting anything other than window-dressing? Read more↴

Some time ago Adam wrote a fine piece about ethics in House, arguing that House’s apparently unethical behavior—his devotion to solving the intellectual puzzle of illness at the expense of obeying hospital rules or caring about the wellbeing of patients—is in fact the ethical attitude par excellence. Adam explains:  “Only by practicing medicine for its own sake and not for the people, and directly enjoying its inherent satisfactions, can he ever hope to solve the hopelessly complicated cases that he is faced with.” You could derive a couple of ethical theories from this. Read more↴

Steven Shaviro writes about post-celebrity celebrity while NBC is running trailers for the new American version of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here (regrettably, due to the intervention of the courts, not starring Rod Blagojevich). The arrival of this show from the UK disappoints me a little; American TV, with the respectful celebrity reporting of Entertainment Tonight and the always-suited late-night talk show hosts, seemed like the last redoubt of the aura of celebrity, which the celebrity reality genre decisively does away with.

It’s not a surprise that the celebrity reality genre arrived in the UK so much earlier than in the US; as with so much else (Thatcher, financialization), the UK exhibits the tendencies of late capitalism in a purer form, with celebrity having been abolished over there a long time ago. Read more↴

A while back, I was flipping through the channels and came across a cop show with the now de rigeur shaky camerawork, which I assumed to be Law and Order or CSI (though I realized it wasn’t CSI from the lack of unwatchably saturated colors). But it turned out to be a repeat of Homicide: Life on the Streets. It was an interesting illustration of the way in which the signifiers of “realism” can so easily be appropriated by content that is anything but realistic.

Which is why, “realistic” though it may be, The Wire‘s brilliance doesn’t lie in a realism of form. Read more↴

I saw Eagle Eye on the plane back from England; it’s not as good as Singh is Kinng, which I also watched, but it’s not bad (except for Shia LaBoeuf’s acting; he’s like an ugly Keanu Reeves). I thought there was something kind of interesting about the central premise, which involves the Boeuf receiving orders from some mysterious agency that appears to have complete control of all electronic systems; sending text messages, looking through security cameras, derailing trains. The falsehood of this premise is pretty obvious; there is no homogenous system of “electronic equipment,” but a vast range of unconnected and incompatible electronic systems. The vague category of technology provides a materialization of the paranoid fantasy that is the traditional support of the conspiracy thriller, but it’s not less (and, I would imagine, no less obviously) a fantasy for all that. Read more↴