Post your votes and/or suggestions here for what to do/watch/listen to/discuss in class. (We can also read something, but oddly enough, that doesn't tend to be a vote-getter.) Particular movies? TV shows? Radio programs? Music? etc...

In "The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life," Carl Matheson writes, "[T]oday's comedies tend to be highly quotational; many of today's comedies essentially depend on the device of referring to or quoting other works of popular culture. Second, they are hyper-ironic; the flavor of humor offered by today's comedies is colder, based less on a shared sense of humanity than on a sense of world-weary cleverer-than-thou-ness" (109). Do you see South Park as being similar to The Simpsons in this way, or different? How? Think of examples, and explain!

Please post your research paper topics and/or ideas here, and offer suggestions on your classmates' topics. You can ask questions and offer critique as well as assistance - ask for clarification, suggest ways to strengthen or refine the topic, offer ways they might find sources, etc.

For your first response paper, you watched one of three shows. Your reading for this weekend includes essays analyzing television and TV genres more generally (especially the reality show and the one-hour drama). After doing the reading, does your response to the show you watched change at all? Based on your analysis of the show, do you agree or disagree with the points made in the readings? Using the essays as a model of analysis, what is your overall interpretation of the show you watched?

Post questions about the LRO here.