Activity

We have been arguing (a) the violent act or episode in a Western cannot signify in isolation, outside the structured field of meanings which is the film or program; (b) it signifies only in relation to the other elements, and in terms of the rules and conventions which govern their combination. We …

The violent element in the narrative structure of the basic Western—shoot-out, brawl, ambush, bank raid, fistfight, wounding, duel, or massacre—like any other semantic unit in a structured discourse cannot signify anything on its own. It can only signify in terms of the structured meanings of the m…

[...] If you go back to the early formulations of historical materialism, what Marx always talks about is the way in which social and cultural structures overdetermine the natural ones. Marx is aware that we remain natural beings, that we remain in nature. What he’s talking about is the elaboration…

That is what Benjamin meant by saying that it isn’t only the new means of mechanical reproduction but the historical presence of the masses which interrupts history. He didn’t mean this as a guarantee that the masses are instantly going to take over the world and remake modern culture in their own …

[...] Springsteen is a phenomenon that can be read, with equal conviction, in at least two diametrically opposed ways. His audiences seem to be made up of people from five to fifty, busily reading him in different ways. The symbols are deeply American—populist in their ambiguity; he’s both in the W…