In utilizing cinema for social change it is crucial to recognize the hyperreality of today’s global audiovisual culture. The realm of the hyperreal (i.e., reality-based TV shows, Hollywood movies, Disneyland, TV commercials, and other excursions into ideal worlds) is more real than real, whereby the models, images, and codes of the hyperreal come to control […]
Author: Tony Kashani
JOURNALISTIC vs. ACADEMIC
It is always intellectually challenging to a “thinker” to describe a complex idea or concept in terms simple enough so that the average thinking audience/reader can comprehend. When one simplifies complexity, one runs the risk of oversimplification. It is indeed a tough dance, one that requires artistry and much introspection before delivery of […]
SENTIMENTAL LOVE
A student of mine recently asked me a challenging question. He looked me in the eyes and asked, “what is the so-called Romantic Comedy, as a genre, predicated on?” After a long pause I responded as follows: Hollywood’s romantic comedy, presuming he meant Hollywood, which he did, is predicated on sentimental love. As Erich […]
DIALOGUE & TRANSFORMATION
I had been thinking about the 1960s. History gives us a picture of the left challenging the establishment with fervor. Although it is opaque, the same history reveals that after the violent response by the powerful establishment (e.g., killing of students in Kent State) in the Anglo American world, the left started to look […]
INTELLECTUALS & ETHICS
I posit, whether one is an exponent of the reductive/disjunctive or a free-floating intellectualism, so long as such a one brings his or her intellectual work to the public (e.g., in published writing, teaching, and policymaking) he or she is a public intellectual. Given this special condition, does a public intellectual whose work influences humanity have a responsibility to the public citizenry at […]