February 7, 2012
A bible for screenwriters is a reference document used for information on a story’s characters, settings and other elements. Show bibles are commonly used in television series; new writers and freelancers are often referred to it when writing scripts for the show to ensure continuity with previous episodes; they’re also used by individual writers for books and movies to keep track of details.
However, according to writer and producer Jane Espenson, ‘Show bibles … just aren’t as important as you might think to the daily life of the [writing] staff. The truth is that once you’re living inside a show, you’re swimming as fast as you can from one island to the next, and there is neither the time nor the need to record decisions that have been made (these are in the scripts), or that are in the process of being made (these are in the notes taken in the room as the writers work).’
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February 6, 2012
A sleeper hit refers to a film, book, single, album, TV show, or video game that gains unexpected success or recognition. Sleeper hits often grow in popularity over time. Some sleeper hits achieve unexpected success at the box office immediately upon their initial theatrical release, but this is not typical. Because these films are not expected to do particularly well they often receive little promotion or advertising and take time to register with the public.
Typically the sleeper hit relies instead on positive ‘word of mouth’ as well as the publicity generated by awards and good reviews. Two good examples of these are Mike Judge’s ‘Office Space’ and ‘Idiocracy,’ both of which quickly became cult classics. The movie ‘Caddyshack’ is another good example.
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February 6, 2012
New sincerity is a term that has been used in music, aesthetics, film criticism, poetry, literary criticism and philosophy, generally to describe art or concepts that run against prevailing modes of postmodernist irony or cynicism. ‘New Sincerity’ was used as a collective name for a loose group of alternative rock bands, centered in Austin, Texas in the years from about 1985 to 1990, who were perceived as reacting to the ironic outlook of then-prominent music movements like punk rock and New Wave.
The use of ‘New Sincerity’ in connection with these bands began with an off-handed comment by Austin punk rocker/author Jesse Sublett to his friend, local music writer Margaret Moser: ‘All those new sincerity bands, they’re crap.’
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February 6, 2012
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base. A common component of cult followings is the emotional attachment fans have with the object of the cult following, often identifying themselves and other fans as members of a community.
Cult followings are also commonly associated with niche markets. Cult media are often associated with underground culture, and are considered too eccentric, bizarre, controversial or anti-establishment to be appreciated by the general public.
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February 6, 2012
A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences. Many cult movies have gone on to transcend their original cult status and have become recognized as classics; others are of the ‘so bad it’s good’ variety and are destined to remain in obscurity.
Cult films often become the source of a thriving, obsessive, and elaborate subculture of fandom, hence the analogy to cults. However, not every film with a devoted fanbase is necessarily a cult film. Usually, cult films have limited but very special, noted appeal. Cult films are often known to be eccentric, often do not follow traditional standards of popular cinema and usually explore topics not considered in any way mainstream—yet there are examples that are relatively normal. Many are often considered controversial because they step outside standard narrative and technical conventions.
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February 6, 2012
Qualia [kwah-lee-uh], singular ‘quale’ [kwah-lee], from a Latin word meaning for ‘what sort’ or ‘what kind,’ is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as ‘raw feels.’ Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the perceived redness of an evening sky.
American philosopher Daniel Dennett writes that qualia is ‘an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us.’ Erwin Schrödinger, the famous physicist, had this counter-materialist take: ‘The sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the physicist’s objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so.’
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February 6, 2012
A mashup novel is a work of fiction which combines a pre-existing text, often a classic work of fiction, with a certain popular genre such as vampire or zombie narratives. ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,’ which combines Jane Austen’s classic novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ with elements of modern zombie fiction, is arguably the first, and certainly one of the most famous and successful works in the genre, and has been credited with spawning a rash of imitations. The term ‘Mashup’ was borrowed from the world of computers and music. Mashup books are seen as distinct from parody novels like ‘Bored of the Rings,’ and parallel novels like ‘The Wind Done Gone’ or ‘Wicked’ since they do not merely make fun of the original text, or tell an alternative version of it, but also introduce the themes and characteristics of a wholly different genre.
While most works in this genre (or cross-genre trend) rely on fictional texts as their basis, other works like ‘Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter’ superimpose the popular genres over historical figures and events. A more recent phenomenon within the genre is the combination of more than two original works, or genres, as in the case of ‘Robinson Crusoe (The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope),’ which combines the original novel with elements borrowed from the works of H.P. Lovecraft as well as the popular genre of werewolf fiction, and is accordingly attributed to three authors – Daniel Defoe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Peter Clines.
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February 4, 2012
A gentlemen’s agreement is an informal agreement between two or more parties. It is typically oral, though may be written, or simply understood as part of an unspoken agreement by convention or through mutually beneficial etiquette.
The essence of a gentlemen’s agreement is that it relies upon the honor of the parties for its fulfillment, rather than being in any way enforceable. It is, therefore, distinct from a legal agreement or contract, which can be enforced if necessary. A variation on the gentlemen’s agreement is the gentlemen’s bet, wherein there is nothing to win or lose through the bet, other than the honor of winning and shame of losing.
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February 2, 2012
Goldbricking, in today’s terms, generally refers to staff who use their work internet access for personal reasons while maintaining the appearance of working, which can lead to inefficiency. The term originates from the confidence trick of applying a gold coating to a brick of worthless metal. Some employees do two non-work activities at once, a practice known as multishirking. In modern usage, the practice is also known as cyberslacking, cyberloafing or cyberbludging.
Instances of goldbricking have increased markedly since broadband Internet connections became commonplace in workplaces. Before that the slow speed of dial-up connections meant that the practice was rarely worthwhile. Many firms employ surveillance software to track employees’ Internet activity in an effort to limit liability and improve productivity. Other methods used to reduce goldbricking include installation of proxy servers to prevent programs from accessing resources like Internet Relay Chat, AOL Instant Messenger, or some online gambling services, strict disciplinary measures for employees found goldbricking, and carrot and stick measures like providing free or subsidized Internet access for employees outside of working hours.
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February 2, 2012
The Celestine Prophecy is a 1993 novel by James Redfield that discusses various psychological and spiritual ideas which are rooted in many ancient Eastern Traditions and New Age spirituality. The main character of the novel undertakes a journey to find and understand a series of nine spiritual insights on an ancient manuscript in Peru. The book is a first-person narrative of the narrator’s spiritual awakening as he goes through a transitional period of his life and begins to notice instances of synchronicity, which is the realization that coincidences may have deep meaning. Redfield has acknowledged that the work of Dr. Eric Berne, the developer of Transactional Analysis, and his 1964 bestseller ‘Games People Play’ as a major influence on his work. Specifically, the ‘games’ which Berne refers in his theories are tools used in an individual’s quest for energetic independence.
The novel has received some criticism, mostly from the literary community, who point out that the plot of the story is not well developed and serves only as a delivery tool for the author’s ideas about spirituality. Redfield has admitted that, even though he considers the book to be a novel, his intention was to write a story in the shape of a parable, a story meant to illustrate a point or teach a lesson. Critics point to Redfield’s heavy usage of subjective validation (a cognitive bias by which a person will consider a piece of information to be correct if it has any personal significance to them) and reification (making something real). Another point of criticism has been directed at the book’s attempt to explain important questions about life and human existence in an overly simplified fashion.
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February 2, 2012
‘Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships’ is a 1964 bestselling book by psychiatrist Eric Berne. Since its publication it has sold more than five million copies. The book describes both functional and dysfunctional social interactions.
In the first half of the book, Berne introduces transactional analysis as a way of interpreting social interactions. He describes three roles or ego states, known as the Parent, the Adult, and the Child, and postulates that many negative behaviors can be traced to switching or confusion of these roles. The book uses casual, often humorous phrases such as ‘See What You Made Me Do,’ ‘Why Don’t You — Yes But,’ and ‘Ain’t It Awful’ as a way of briefly describing each game. In reality, the ‘winner’ of a mind game is the person that returns to the Adult ego-state first.
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January 31, 2012
‘It girl‘ is a term for a young woman who possesses the quality ‘It,’ absolute attraction.’ The early usage of the concept is seen in a story by Rudyard Kipling: ‘It isn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just ‘It.” British writer Elinor Glyn lectured: ‘With ‘It’ you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man. ‘It’ can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.’
The expression reached global attention in 1927, with the film ‘It,’ starring Clara Bow. While ‘it girls’ of today are commonly young females in the worlds of fashion or show-business, the original concept focused on personality. Kipling’s ‘Mrs. Bathurst’ was a middle-aged widow, and Glyn significantly kept both Benito Mussolini and the doorman at the Ambassador hotel on her ‘It men’ list.
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