Viewer Discretion Advised: Moral and Emotional Codes in NYPD Blue

NYPD Blue\u27s opening shot is a white-on-black warning label: This police drama contains adult language and partial nudity. Viewer discretion is advised. A self-imposed rating on the part of ABC, the show\u27s broadcaster, it originated in response to the police drama\u27s controversial use of (limited) profanity and partial nudity, a singular departure for conservative, family-oriented U.S. television networks and their advertisers. The addition of a viewer advisory, initiated by network and advertising caution, played on the show\u27s controversial status, turning it to promotional advantage. From its debut, the series began to be watched by many viewers curious about the fuss, and the warning label continues weekly, displayed like a badge of honor by a cutting-edge program, breaking the rules and challenging the status quo

Feeling Bad: Emotions and Narrativity in Breaking Bad

In an interview that took place in January 1984, five months before his death, Michel Foucault relates an anecdote to illustrate what he means by \u27relations of power\u27: For example, the fact that I may be older than you, and that you may initially have been intimidated, may be turned around during the course of our conversation, and I may end up being intimidated before someone precisely because he is younger than I am. (292) His is a simple, almost offhand anecdote but one that has lingered in my mind precisely because of the inadequate means we possess to explain what occurs during this modest encounter and exchange

Straight Outta Money: Institutional Power and Independent Film Funding

In the last few years, and despite the increased prominence of American independent films, there have been surprisingly few feature films by women that have made it on the independent circuit. The success of an independet film can be considered by the following criteria: securing theatrical release, receiving critical and media attention, and obtaining visibility among audiences. The few films that come to mind as having met these criteria are Lizzie Borden\u27s Working Girls (1986), distributed by Miramax; Julie Dash\u27s Daughter\u27s of the Dust (1991), a Kino release: and most recently, Allision Anders\u27s gas, food, lodging (1992), released by I.R.S. Theatrically distributed independent films continue to be heavily dominated by the work of heterosexual white males. Further, no gesture has been made toward identifying women directors as a new or emerging film movement as has occurred, however superficially, with black and gay cinema. This situation of non-recognition exists despite increasing numbers of women making films and a cultural climate of heightened attention to diversity

A Cultural Approach to Emotional Disorders: Introduction

In her latest contribution to the growing field of emotion studies, Deidre Pribram makes a compelling argument for why culturalist approaches to the study of emotional disorders continue to be eschewed, even as the sociocultural and historical study of mental illness flourishes. The author ties this phenomenon to a tension between two fundamentally different approaches to emotion: an individualist approach, which regards emotions as the property of the individual, whether biologically or psychologically, and a culturalist approach, which regards emotions as collective, social processes with distinctive histories and meanings that work to produce particularized subjects. While she links a strong preference for the individualist construct in Western culture to the rise of the psychological and psychiatric disciplines in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Pribram also engages with a diverse set of case studies tied to psychological and aesthetic discourses on emotions

Psychic Cleavage: Reading the Art Against the Politics in Independent Film

The voice Stewart (Sam Neill) hears in his head is Ada\u27s (Holly Hunter) mind\u27s voice which the audience hears twice: in voice-over narration at the opening and closing of The Piano. The otherwise mute Ada describes her mind\u27s voice to nine-year-old Flora (Anna Paquin) while attempting to explain the disappearance of the child\u27s father. The scene is subtitled for the audience as mother communicates with daughter in sign language. Ada tells Flora that she did not need to speak with him (he remained unnamed) as she could, instead, lay her thoughts in his mind, like they were a sheet. They were never married, however, because he got frightened and stopped listening