The Power Of Mindfulness (Re-post To Fill A Nice Little Gap)

The thing about meditation is that they don't want to overwhelm you with information (oh what fun,meditating about meditating) or set up expectations that you might then go looking for so that that you would either not find what you expected (leading to frustration) or find it (& give your ego a nice party).

Also, it is considered a majorfaux pas to say too much about meditation experiences (except to a teacher), for the very same reasons.

However wise & sensible this is as a general set of guidelines (without them meditation could easily do much more harm than good), in my view this approach leads to 2 quite serious problems: i) because no one wants to say that they are enlightened or having experiences of kensho or satori or at that they are joyfully tripping through the jhanas & brahma virharas, beginners & lifers alike can sometimes have the feeling that they are trying to do something that no one they know has ever been able to do, which does not exactly help at 5.40am when all you want is a nice chai latte; ii) there is a lack of systematic mapping of what happens during different meditation experiences & how this relates to practice off the cushion.

The following astonishing essay by the Venerable Nyanaponika Thera offers a topography of meditation practice that is practical, honest & which in my experience covers just about everything that can happen when we try to sit.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel121.html

(I Hope That) We Were Never Being Boring...

although some perhaps might have preferred something a tad more stable, dull, normal, repressed, bland, Full Prof-worthy, instrumental in the boring business of a disenchanted everyday life & ergo lacking in voice, character & moxie. Well let those people live in that world that I do not wish to inhabit. I say this without racour, it is just a question of temperament & this blog was never meant as a die-like-a-lamb application form for the Gulag or its US campus equivs.

So. "I am a punk. And I always will be a punk."
-- Martin Fry

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I am now putting the professor into semi-retirement, as he is getting on my nerves & also getting in the way of a book that is nearly done; but not before posting, in the coming weeks (before 2009 is done with me), an account of my dear friend Janet Wolff's latest & very wonderful book The Aesthetics Of Uncertainty, and a lengthy 2-part interview with popular music/aesthetics expert Simon Frith (also a colleague, mentor & friend... & a patient & kind one @ that).

The delay with both posts is due to the fact that I have been thinking as hard as I can about the related issues that come up in both posts & I cannot bear to offer to the works of Professors Wolff and Frith anything but my very best effort.

& best efforts take the 3 vital Ps: patience, persistence & perseverance.

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Also -- a bonus! I am now back in touch with old band mates from our Sheffield, Yorkshire almost-famous indie rock/pop combo, VENDINO PACT. So I hope to post some tracks, including edited highlights of a live gig @ The Leadmill before years' end.

It is also the case that I have book on LED ZEPPELIN to finish & recent events @ USF have got in the way of this. Now the book must take central stage, well stage left then, after teaching.

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Semi-retirement can mean many things, as we know. Only time will tell where they Fates shall lead us.

Embrace your Uncertainty!

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BE SEEING YOU.

-- Dr. Andrew Goodwin

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Media Theory & Criticism Mid-Term Test # 2

“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”

n -- Thoreau

MEDIA THEORY & CRITICISM Fall 2009 Mid-Term # 2

All answers – with your FULL NAME please – due to professorofpop@gmail.com by midnight Wednesday November 18^th. Late answers will be docked points in an arbitrary and possibly unjust fashion according to the whims of the University instructor assigned to your case.

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# 1. “Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse.” – Leo Lowenthal. Explain this and briefly apply it to any popular culture/media text of your choice in about 250 words.

# 2. Outline, in about 250 words, your views concerning how you would write a paper that undertook a Marxist analysis of The Prisoner (using either the old British version, or the new AMC remake).

# 3. Provide a 250-word outline of a paper that combines Marxist analysis of a popular culture/media text (other than The Prisoner or The Truman Show) of your choice with ONE other theory/method utilized so far in our class (e.g. content analysis; semiotics; Proppian analysis; psycho-analysis).

# 4. Using material from the readings (Berger and/or White; Flitterman-Lewis [optional]) write 250 words on why Marxism is right and how you can prove this via the analysis of a media text of your choice (other than The Prisoner or The Truman Show).

# 5. Provide 250 words on why a Marxist analysis of The Truman Show might have defects of some kind. Do you agree with yourself? Give reasons, briefly and in note form if necessary.

For extra credit (answer ONE only): #6.

EITHER: Watch the new movie The Damned United and write 250 words on how it relates to our class;

OR: Analyze ‘The Peanut Song’ (worldwide copyright, Theory Sluts, 2009, infringe at your own risk) and write 250 words on how it relates to our class. [‘The Peanut Song’ may be sung to any melody of your choice -- including my own, which was hailed by one of your own as being a real smash hit job -- and goes like this, as you all should know: “I’m a little peanut/I live in a tree/So no one’s gonna make/Peanut butter out of me.”]

OR: Relate the ideals of the USF Mission Statement to our class and/or the actual workings of the University. (N.B. The absence of the term 'class' in this consideration of aspects of social diversity.)

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Addendum: Sophia Lozenzi has kindly sent us this guide to generating Proppian tales. Fascinating stuff. Thank you Sophia!

The Prisoner On AMC: 6 Problems

Problem # 1: If Number 6 cannot remember who he is, then he cannot be defiant.

Problem # 2: If Number 6 cannot be defiant, then Number 2 (Ian McKellen) becomes the star.

Problem # 3: If Number 2 is the star, then with whom can the audience identify?

Problem # 4: Maybe with Number 93 (clearly supposed to be the ex-star Patrick McGoohan) but he is killed off in the oh-so-tempting opening sequence with its brilliant use of "Be seeing you..." as McGoohan's (posthumous) dying words, so then we are left with...

Problem # 5: The mise-en-scene itself, sometimes evocative (the A-frame homes, the cabs) but shot in a manner that makes the show impossible to tell apart from the ads that surround it, just as the soap-opera within the show -- clearly ripped from Twin Peaks' 'Invitation To Love' -- has acting just as wooden as the program, which is framed by...

Problem # 6: Ridiculous voice-over teasers that so obviously manipulate the viewer ("Come back in 60 seconds to discover who killed Number 93" or some such baloney) as to make a mockery of the supposedly rebellious nature of the program.

Wrong framing, wrong lead actor, wrong filmic techniques (The Prisoner must look original not like a pale imitation of Sci-Fi TV or it becomes a joke about itself), wrong plot, wrong characterization, & wrong credit sequence (for it suggested that anti-American critics of the remake would be proved wrong -- oh how we wished for this outcome -- when in fact what followed was so boring that measure d & myself found ourselves drifting into discussion of the "All Cretans Are Liars" paradox, which the professor's son solved in about 5 minutes).

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33 Rebelutions Per Minute

Cruising around TradeMark & Christy's site, trying to catch up with the Evolution Control Committee this morning, we came across this & just had to share.

Somehow it seems to link with this, sent by the very brilliant Jeff Paris.

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