June | 2015 | Jmunney's Blog

JEFFREY MALONE RE-LAUNCHES WEBSITE

June 8, 2015

New Hub Spotlights Writing, Video, and More

YARDLEY, PA/NEW YORK, NY – June 8, 2015 – Writer/blogger/media creator Jeffrey Malone has re-designed and re-launched his personal website. It can be found at www.jeffreymalone.com. It features samples of and links to his articles, videos, photography, and design work.

“Since receiving my Media Studies Master’s degree a few weeks ago, I have been excited to update my site, and I am happy to announce I have completed this project (for now),” said Jeffrey. “I’m still hungry,” he added. “I’m always hungry.”

JeffreyMalone.com is now the central space to consume Jeff’s professional and personal creative efforts and to contact Jeff for his sevices.

What Won TV? – May 31-June 6, 2015

June 7, 2015

jmunney Television, What Won TV? Leave a comment

In this feature, I look back at each day of the past week and determine what shows “won TV” for the night. That is, I consider every episode of television I watched that aired on a particular day and declare which was the best.

Sunday – Silicon Valley
Monday – American Dad!
Tuesday – I almost couldn’t believe than an episode of Community could still be this good.
Wednesday – Jeopardy!
Thursday – I’m still #blindsided by the loss of The Reg Man on Comedy Bang! Bang!
Friday – Whose Line is it Anyway?
Saturday – Orphan Black

VH1’s The 20 – 6/6/15

June 7, 2015

jmunney Music, Television, VH1 Top 20 Countdown, VH1's The 20 1 Comment

Each week, I check out VH1′s The 20 (formerly Top 20 countdown), and then I rearrange the songs based on my estimation of their quality.

Original Version
1. Wiz Khalifa ft. Charlie Puth – “See You Again”
2. Jason Derulo – “Want to Want Me”
3. Walk the Moon – “Shut Up and Dance”
4. Tove Lo – “Talking Body”
5. Fifth Harmony ft. Kid Ink – “Worth It”
6. Nick Jonas – “Chains”
7. Andy Grammer – “Honey, I’m Good.”
8. Echosmith – “Bright”
9. Meghan Trainor – “Dear Future Husband”
10. Sia – “Elastic Heart”
11. Taylor Swift ft. Kendrick Lamar – “Bad Blood”
12. Ellie Goulding – “Love Me Like You Do”
13. George Ezra – “Budapest”
14. Carly Rae Jepsen – “I Really Like You”
15. Ryn Weaver – “Octahate”
16. Adam Lambert – “Ghost Town”
17. Shaggy ft. Mohombi, Faydee, Costi – “I Need Your Love”
18. Maroon 5 – “Sugar”
19. Britney Spears & Iggy Azalea – “Pretty Girls”
20. Rachel Platten – “Fight Song”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. Elastic Heart
2. I Really Like You
3. Talking Body
4. See You Again
5. Octahate
6. Bad Blood
7. Chains
8. Want to Want Me
9. Pretty Girls
10. Love Me Like You Do
11. Shut Up and Dance
12. Budapest
13. Ghost Town
14. Fight Song
15. Sugar
16. Worth It
17. I Need Your Love
18. Bright
19. Dear Future Husband
20. Honey, I’m Good.

Community 6.13: “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television”

June 4, 2015

jmunney Community, Community Episode Reviews, Television Community, Community 613, Community Season 6, Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television, Jeff x Annie Leave a comment

Community, “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television” (CREDIT: Yahoo! Screen)

Even if there ends up being a movie or a season 7, I’ll still consider this one of the best series finales of all time.

This review was originally posted on Starpulse in June 2015.

“You saved my life, and changed it forever.”

Just as Jeff Winger was irrevocably changed by his friends forcing their way into his life, so too have “Community” fans been profoundly affected by this deeply personal show. This program and its lead character have always been marked by a push-pull between cynicism and sincerity. The guy who made a fake study group just to sleep with someone now cares so much that he cannot let go of the people he met through it. The sitcom that was so distrustful of institutions and deconstructive of all conventions ended the season (and possibly series) with the most heartfelt message from its creator about how much his audience has meant to him.

McLuhan’s Commonsensical Maxim Applied to Nonsensical Media

June 2, 2015

jmunney Academic Papers, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Television, The Chris Gethard Show, The Eric André Show Anti-Talk Shows, Between Two Ferns, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Marshall McLuhan, The Chris Gethard Show, The Eric Andre Show, The medium is the message Leave a comment

This essay was originally written as my final paper for my Media Theory class, taught by Barry Salmon, in Fall 2013 at The New School.

If the “medium is the message,” then what happens if the medium is the medium itself, or the anti-medium? The past few years have seen the rise of the “anti-talk show” in the alternative comedy scene, as typified by the podcast-turned-IFC series Comedy Bang! Bang!, local New York public-access cult sensation The Chris Gethard Show, the Funny or Die webseries Between Two Ferns, and Adult Swim’s The Eric André Show. These shows all consider the artifice and tropes of comedy talk shows and then ignore, analyze, trash, invert, and/or subvert them. Marshall McLuhan’s classic text is presented as a common sense formulation of how to consider any medium: “the personal and social consequences” are a result of the new “extension of ourselves” (129). So how then do we apply this commonsensical approach to a genre that is purposely nonsensical? McLuhan would surely be pleased by this trend of a genre that is strongly conscious of how the medium is the message, but an analysis of how these shows deconstruct their particular medium and genre is sure to melt your brain.

Remediating Remediation (A.K.A. Mediating Mediation)

June 2, 2015

jmunney Academic Papers Media, Remediation, Screens Leave a comment

This essay was originally written as my final paper for my Sociology of Media class, taught by Paolo Carpignano, in Spring 2014 at The New School.

Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin published Remediation: Understanding New Media in 2000. While their contention that all mediation is remediation was well-supported by the evidence available at the turn of the century, 14 years is a long time when it comes to the advancement of new media. One of their main examples of remediation is the CD-ROM (42-44), now an essentially obsolete medium. If Bolter and Grusin’s ideas are to hold up, then the forms of mediation that have taken the place of the CD-ROM must also be clear examples of remediation. Indeed, they anticipated that this would be the future, claiming that digital media would “function in a constant dialectic with earlier media, precisely as each earlier medium functioned when it was introduced” (50). They also postulated, “all mediation is remediation” (55). With this essay, I am picking up where they left off to show how developments since they published their take on the matter has proven them even more correct. Not only has media become even more remediated; it has made the world so hypermediated that it is clear that life itself is remediation.

Arrested Development Pilot Script Analysis

June 2, 2015

jmunney Academic Papers, Arrested Development, Television Arrested Development, Script Analysis Leave a comment

This essay was originally written as my final paper for my Script Analysis and Audience Response class, taught by Helena Medina, in Spring 2014 at The New School.

The patriarch of a dysfunctional family is arrested, and his only sane son is forced to save the family business.

The Bluth family consists of George, Sr. and his wife Lucille; their children George Oscar II, a.k.a. “Gob” (pronounced like the Biblical Job), twins Michael and Lindsay, and Byron “Buster”; Lindsay’s husband Tobias Fünke; Michael’s son George Michael, and Lindsay and Tobias’s daughter Mae, a.k.a. “Maeby”. George is the CEO of the family Bluth Company, located in Orange County, California. Michael, his second oldest son, has worked for the company for ten years and expects to be made partner on the occasion of his father’s retirement. But George appoints Lucille as the acting CEO, and it soon becomes clear why when he is arrested and the Securities and Exchange Commission freezes the company’s expense account, thus making it difficult for the Bluths to maintain their lavish lifestyles.

The Super-Female Postmodern Thing

June 2, 2015

jmunney Academic Papers, Cinema Feminism, John Carpenter, Keith David, Kurt Russell, Orpheus, Slavoj Zizek, The Thing, The Thing (1982) 2 Comments

This essay was originally written as my final paper for my Film Theory & Analysis class, taught by Royal Brown, in Spring 2014 at The New School.

“Trust’s a tough thing to come by these days.”
“Nobody trusts anybody now.”

A common maxim of what makes the best horror movies effective is that they show relatively little, leaving the most terrifying parts to the imagination. What is unique about the John Carpenter-directed The Thing (1982) is how well it works despite, or because of (or despite AND because of) showing so much of its monster. A novice viewer would be forgiven for not realizing how much it actually does not show. Partly, the lack of showing is obvious: the famously ambiguous ending in which it is heavily implied that either Keith David’s Childs or Kurt Russell’s MacReady is now a Thing (or both are). But most of the rest of the film does not highlight how much is being hidden. It is, as Slavoj Žižek would put it, a product “with a distinctive mass appeal” (1). Its primary attractions are its tense action, creative makeup and special effects, and well-rounded performances. It is therefore qualified to be a postmodern work, and it fulfills that possibility with a premise and a villain that essentially guarantees open-endedness and speculative interpretation that goes beyond the narrative.

Über-Film Studies Case #1: Zardoz

June 2, 2015

jmunney Academic Papers, Cinema Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nihilism, Philosophy, Ubermensch, Zarathustra, Zardoz 2 Comments

This essay was originally written as my final paper for my Advanced Topics Media Theory class, taught by Eugene Thacker, in Spring 2015 at The New School.

“The world now laughs, rent are the drapes of fright,
The wedding is at hand of dark and light—”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, “From High Mountains: Aftersong”

“We’ve all been used!” “And re-used!” “And abused!” “And amused!”
-Friend (John Alderton)/Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy), Zardoz

If I discover an interpretation of a complicated work and then realize that this interpretation is a perfect explanation of this work, is this just a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps the interpretation is well-founded, but my new reading will inevitably be colored by my knowledge of this theory. But maybe its rightness or wrongness is beside the point, at least in absolute terms. I do not have to agree exactly for my eyes to see anew. It could be the ramblings of a madman, but it may still be a message that is worthwhile. Discovering that Zardoz, a film I have cherished many years for its singular qualities, had been declared the epitome of a Nietzschean movie, I was irrevocably changed. “The Lord is risen!” “God is dead!” Zed is the Übermensch! So speak to me, Muse of Surprisingly Useful Amazon User Reviews, and keep me on a steady path in this endeavor.

My first contact with Mr. Nietzsche was diffuse. He is one of those towering figures of philosophy that permeates academia and bleeds into the culture at large. He never came up in any comparative philosophy class I took, and without a philosophy background, any influence he had on me came secondhand. I was vaguely aware of his influence on any entertainment that established itself as nihilist, and the Übermensch concept was familiar enough to stand as a Big Idea of modern thought. From what I could gather, the Übermensch was some sort of German version of Superman. I sensed that this was not quite right, but I chalked whatever I was missing up to the nuances of translation and the subtlety of the actual literature.

Miley Cyrus: A Flashpoint of the Social Discourse

June 1, 2015

jmunney Academic Papers, Awards Shows, Music, Television Discourse Analysis, Miley Cyrus, VMAs, We Can't Stop Leave a comment

This essay was originally written as my final paper for my Discourse Analysis class, taught by Theresa Cowan, in Fall 2014 at The New School.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJX3CpkQiNs

Despite the dichotomy typical of the Western worldview, there is more than one stereotypical positive feminine role allowed within a patriarchal system. Alas, there is not necessarily a whole lot of variation among these roles. I have already discussed the Cool Girl and the constrictions enforced by that stereotype, and how damaging it can be even when those limitations are followed. Now I will be considering a relative of the Cool Girl – the Good Girl – and what tenor the discourse takes on when that role is transgressed. Specifically, I will consider this topic in light of pop star Miley Cyrus’ performance of “We Can’t Stop” and “Blurred Lines” at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.

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