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Tarantino being who he is, the speech in Pulp Fiction is itself taken from another source, a Sonny Chiba martial arts movie www.reddit.com/r/FanTheorie...

Abstract Pulp Fiction, as a film classic of the Internet age, circulates through a culture of online quotation. Fans of the movie repeat bits of dialogue such as ‘royale with cheese’, share images from the film such as the shot of Jules and Vincent aiming their guns, and recreate scenes such as the dance scene with Mia and Vincent. This paper historicizes classic films through the example of Pulp Fiction fans who share expressions of their fandom in YouTube videos and Tumblr postings of images and GIFs. It looks at these quotations as evidence of audiences' interpretive work, which produces ideological meanings about the film. These meanings speak of dominant structures of knowledge and understanding that come from the broader society and its unequal relations of power. Meanings about race and gender, and to a lesser extent class, are especially important in the film's circulation. Some examples of moments and characters of Pulp Fiction analyzed in this paper are Jules and Vincent's interracial hit-man partnership, Mia and Vincents twist at Jack Rabbit Slim's, Jules as an icon of a certain ideal of black masculinity, and Mia's revival after her near-fatal drug overdose. Sometimes these quotations are straightforwardly appreciative, and sometimes they are parodic remixes and mashups. This paper also considers the importance of an absence of certain parts of the film from quotation culture that can be regarded as threatening to dominant conceptions of masculinity, such as the dungeon rape scene.

I wrote an essay in 2014 about how circulation of Pulp Fiction quotations have made the film an internet-age classic. Pete Hegseth delivering Jules' "great vengeance" speech as a call to war is a bonkers addition to these. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Jürgen Habermas, influential German philosopher, dies at 96 German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has died at age 96. Habermas' work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figur...

RIP Jürgen Habermas. Somehow this obit manages to include his cleft palate (today I learned) and omit his theory of the public sphere.

More Than Sewers - Dissent Magazine The pragmatism of the Milwaukee socialists was inseparable from the international world of socialism that they inhabited and helped to shape.

Check out my former UWM colleague Aims McGuinness on the often misunderstood idea of "sewer socialism," Milwaukee history, and the interconnection of local and international politics.
dissentmagazine.org/article/more...

Gotta appreciate good news when it comes along. Long live the 111 year-old Downer.

"This is such a dad car" -- stinging remark I remember from the late 90s (it was my dad's early 90s Taurus).

screenshot of a retargeting advertisement for both editions of The Media Studies Toolkit

Retargeting advertising today is selling me both editions of my own book.

Here's a discount code for The Media Studies Toolkit 2e www.routledge.com/The-Media-St... or ask your university library to acquire it

Thanks for writing the book! I am ambivalent about calling TV shows long movies, but analogies are useful and you're pretty persuasive.

After mass media: storytelling for microaudiences in the twenty-first century Published in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies (Ahead of Print, 2026)

New work: a review of After Mass Media by @drtvlotz.bsky.social in Continuum. Important book for TV studies, lots to learn from it. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

After mass media: storytelling for microaudiences in the twenty-first century Published in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies (Ahead of Print, 2026)

New work: a review of After Mass Media by @drtvlotz.bsky.social in Continuum. Important book for TV studies, lots to learn from it. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I could also kvetch about some other details, such as Rowlf and Kermit appearing in the same scene (reminding me that Jim H isn't performing either one of them) and a lack of bad puns, but the episode was generally a pleasure to watch so check it out if you like Muppets.

I liked the new Muppet Show and am glad they made it but I'm gonna be really nitpicky and complain that there should not be extra human beings in this show including Seth, Maya, and the lucky folks sitting in the audience. A guest star is the only human in the Muppet Theatre. Sabrina C was perfect.

This is a great text for teaching

I started using the 1st edition of this book in my intro class a few years back, can't recommend it enough

I wrote this book to be as accessible as possible to students at any level, including students whose first language isn't English, to be a good starting point for newcomers to studying media or to readers from other fields looking for guidance. Check it out or ask your library to acquire it.

endorsements for The Media Studies Toolkit

I'm grateful for the endorsements from colleagues I really admire who have assigned the book in their courses. Means a lot. Also grateful to an editor at Routledge who solicited these on my behalf (doesn't always work that way any more). Everyone there has been really great to work with.

Much of the updating was more adding or subtracting a paragraph or a sentence, and I did my best to get rid of every possible mention of Twitter. I replaced a discussion of Hamilton as problematic representation with some points about the Sabrina Carpenter record cover controversy from last summer.

screenshot of table of contents for The Media Studies Toolkit

screenshot of table of contents for The Media Studies Toolkit

screenshot of table of contents for The Media Studies Toolkit

The table of contents shows two added sections: an in-depth analysis of Jaws as an example of ideology critique of a popular text, and a glossary of terms.

For this edition, I got feedback from reviewers who have been assigning the book, including (I'm pretty sure) readers from different countries and academic backgrounds (the cultural studies and more mass comm sides of the field). I followed a lot of their excellent suggestions.

book cover of Michael Z. Newman, The Media Studies Toolkit, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2026

The Media Studies Toolkit, 2nd edition, dropped this week. I'm excited for this refreshed, updated, and expanded version to reach students and instructors of introductory courses in media studies. www.routledge.com/The-Media-St... A short thread about what's inside.

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio) YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

Yeah, I heard about this in a podcast just today and was like, you mean Netflix is television?

incredible work (though I love Cream City and don't care what anyone thinks)

I tried to delete as much of this stuff as possible and use other examples for 2e. No Bluesky mentions, though.

nice to hear!

I just sent in the proofs and index to the 2nd ed. of The Media Studies Toolkit, coming soon.

Added index entries for 2e include: Beyoncé, Carpenter, S., The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Spielberg, S., Swift, T., Wednesday, X (social media).

Protesters demonstrating at a No Kings rally

Protesters demonstrating at a No Kings rally, including a unicorn and chicken with a RESIST sign

Protesters demonstrating at a No Kings rally as seen from a bridge over the street

Protesters demonstrating at a No Kings rally.

Shorewood, WI
#NoKings

congrats, looks great!

excerpt about the blacklist and red scare from Bernstein's book. "They were really after the New Deal and the welfare state and panty-waist liberals and the civil rights movement and militant unions and the traitors in the State Department..."

Walter Bernstein, Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist (172). Where do we find ourselves now?

(This is from next week's course readings in my Media and Society class.)