As a film genre, drama is used as a category to describe something you may consider viewing as not funny. I find the word amusingly ironic, since it refers to a mode of fiction as related to an acting performance. When contrasted against real life (the physical one we think we are part of) it is anything but fiction, as much as we wish it were. If you take a look at genre history of the Academy Awards since inception in 1928, Best Picture comedy category totals rank in the single digits, with Annie Hall as the last one in 1977. That’s a thirty-four year span of motion picture drama, a complete lifetime for a post-generation X’er. Back then (lights a corncob pipe on the front porch) you could go to the movies to escape real-life drama and swap it for fictional drama for a reasonable price, in an air-conditioned movie theater. It provided a reason to leave your home and forget your own personal drama for a couple of hours. One that is always lurking, starting with the moment you open your eyes in the morning. Read More
Reality TV: Anger Is Big Business
The Drunken Sailor And Ron Paul: The Mainstream Media On The Teflon Slope
Since when did it become fashionable for politicians to even jokingly refer to the troops they send to the world’s toilet bowls as drunk? To use sailors as the definition of foolishly wasting money? “Spending like a drunken sailor” goes the hackneyed cliché. At what point in history did this happen? What is the definition of a sailor on the teflon slope? Read More