Category: Shallow

Left to right, “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” by David Sedaris, and “White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference” by Fred Pfeil.
Make of that what you will.

From a sampling of reviews for Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me”:
Portland Oregonian, Karen Karbo:

In the tradition of the contemporary muckraking documentary — of which director Michael Moore is the most recent accomplished practitioner — “Super Size Me” entertains serious sociological and political questions.

Boston Globe, Ty Burr:

Morgan Spurlock’s outrageously amusing “Super Size Me” is the redheaded stepchild of Michael Moore and “Jackass,” a low-budget nonfiction stunt with a sharp point of view, a sheaf of alarming statistics, and the willingness to entertain us until we cry uncle. Like “Bowling for Columbine,” it’s less a documentary than a provocumentary, and, like Moore, Spurlock is a born showman.

Chicago Tribune, Mark Caro:

Spurlock is a lanky thirtysomething Manhattanite taking a Michael Moore-type approach to a subject previously surveyed in Eric Schlosser’s non-fiction bestseller “Fast Food Nation.”

USA Today, Claudia Puig:

Riveting and darkly comic Super Size Me is a whip-smart documentary in the tradition of Michael Moore‘s Roger & Me.

Dallas Observer, Robert Wilonsky:

The movie was a big hit at Sundance and beyond; it’s turned Spurlock, an aspiring filmmaker and graphic designer, into Michael Moore, an agit-prop star proselytizing about the greed of a company that doesn’t care about the content or impact of its unhealthy and potentially deadly product. Like Moore, he tries repeatedly to talk to someone at McDonald’s corporate headquarters about the nutritional value of its food, and of the results a monthlong diet has taken on his body. But he’s given the brush-off in a game of never-ending phone tag, and it feels like a page lifted from the Moore playbook of how to make a company look decidedly evil.

The Onion (A.V. Club), Nathan Rabin:

An irresistible combination of muckraking activism and populist entertainment, Super Size Me takes a page out of the Michael Moore playbook by using a David-vs.-Goliath-style personal quest as a starting point for an irreverent and impassioned critique of a pressing social issue.

Village Voice, Dennis Lim:

Indeed, Spurlock, whose affable-doofus persona is somewhere between Johnny Knoxville and Michael Moore, was responsible for MTV’s cash-for-stunts series I Bet You Will, and is preparing an SSM-modeled show called 30 Days.

Washington Post, Michael O’Sullivan:

A gonzo documentary in the Michael Moore mold — but without Moore’s grating presence — “Super Size Me” is an anti-junk-food screed that manages to entertain even as it informs and alarms.

New York Times, A.O. Scott:

Mr. Spurlock, originally from West Virginia, works in the good-natured, regular-guy populist style of documentary rabble-rousing pioneered by Michael Moore. He is a bit less confrontational than Mr. Moore (as well as thinner), but he similarly relishes letting polite, well-scrubbed corporate flacks entangle themselves in bureaucratic doublespeak.

“Write your own Thomas Friedman column!”
Michael Kubin, The New York Observer, May 19, 2004
“CREATE YOUR OWN THOMAS FRIEDMAN OP-ED COLUMN: DISORDER AND DREAMS IN [COUNTRY IN THE NEWS]”
Michael Ward, McSweeney’s, April 28, 2004

In preparation for the film’s July release date, Paramount has begun to reveal its marketing materials for Jonathan Demme’s upcoming “The Manchurian Candidate”, which is, of course, an oh-so-necessary remake of the John Frankenheimer-directed Cold War original.
Their campaign includes the release of teaser ads for the film appearing at the currently-in-progress 2004 Cannes Film Festival, as shown here and re-created above.
Advertising for a summer blockbuster at the Cannes Film Festival, alongside what was once ostensibly a gathering for artsy films…something seemed very “off” about this particular marketing ploy, until we stumbled upon the solution, below.

This week’s issue of Broadcasting & Cable breaks a scandal that most assuredly affects America’s core values of fairness, equality, and democracy. (NB: if that lead sentence had been published in the entertainment section of some mid-level newspaper reaching a metropolitan audience of about 50,000 people, you might have seen a greater effort to unimaginatively give the impression that this “scandal” is in some way connected to recent events in the Abu Ghraib prison, but alas, you’ve instead been subjected to this awful, self-reflexive introduction. Sorry.)
Deborah Starr Seibel’s “American Idol Outrage: Your Vote Doesn’t Count” offers a fair share of anecdotal evidence that, contrary to the seemingly democratic voting process promoted by the producers of the beloved show, millions of fans’ votes are disappearing into the ether. And speaking of vacuousness, the article, subtitled “An in-depth look at America’s most popular show reveals a seriously flawed voting system,” might have better read, “An in-depth look at America’s most popular show reveals a seriously flawed America.”
How else to explain some of the quotes and actions attributed to one Dee Law?

But as the show speeds toward its May 26 conclusion with three songbirds left, the 40-year-old Pennsylvania homemaker couldn’t care less about the outcome. A Clay Aiken fan, she lost faith in the process after making a shocking discovery last year: No matter how often she tried, she couldn’t place her vote.
Law says she tried to dial “five or six hundred times” on the final night of competition but hasn’t tried since. “I’m not gonna get suckered into voting again,” she says. “Why should we sit here and waste two hours of our time when our votes aren’t going to be counted?”

Shudder.
Anyway, putting aside a range of misanthropic feelings for the moment, we at low culture would like to take this moment to actually assist (yes, help) those poor sad-sack losers who have chosen to devote two nights of their week to feverishly clutching their handset while shrieking inconsolably as Diana Degarmo erupts into so-called “song”.
Below, we’ve coordinated (all in one place, and sorted by manufacturer or service provider) a series of links to speed-dialing instructions at various telephone manufacturers’ websites, such that hardcore Jasmine Trias devotees (or fans of Fantasia Barrino, or Diana Degarmo, or Crystal MacAzure, or Jacinta DuPres, or who-the-fuck-ever) can learn to get more votes in during those precious two hours.
Brother
Cavalier Telephone
Cisco
Z-tel
Meridian Digital
AT&T
Nokia
Panasonic
SBC Communications
Oh, fuck it. However immoral this may be:
Cool Ways to Kill Yourself

From Reuters, “Shrek Finds More Beauty in Being Ugly in ‘Shrek 2′”:
“Shrek 2” zeros in on a cultural obsession with image, and there’s no better place to do that than in Hollywood.
From The Sun, “Diaz Sends for Zit Squad”:
Beauty Cameron Diaz sent an SOS after bursting out in zits before the Cannes premiere of Shrek 2.

We live in a world full of sneaky journalists and duplicitous editors who hide the subtexts just below the, um… well, the text. How is a reader supposed to understand what an article is actually about if everything is all coded and coy?
That’s where The low culture Subtext Finder comes in! Using our patented formula, we unearth a given article’s subtext and bring it to you, the reader. Today’s sample: A Mobile Link for 90 Mutual Friends from The New York Times‘ Circuits section. Using our formula, this article would be renamed Cool New Tool to Get You Laid. Now, read the new article with the subtext in the text (and in bold):

Gone are the nights when Brian Battjer left barhopping in New York to chance.
He took control of his social fate when he signed up for Dodgeball.com, a free social-networking service that is becoming popular with young singles. The site uses cellphone text-messaging to wirelessly connect thousands of friends, and friends of friends, to get laid.
Just hours after he subscribed, Mr. Battjer, 27, received his first Dodgeball message: Alyssa, a friend of his friend Greg, it read, was at Luna Lounge, only two blocks away. Mr. Battjer had never met Alyssa, but inspired by the thumbnail-size picture sent with the message, he decided to find her and get laid.
[…]
“Dodgeball has changed the social fabric of everything,” he said. “The technology augments [getting laid] in a way that has never been done before.”
[…]
Based on the mutual-friends model popularized by Web sites like Friendster, Dodgeball helps users meet up with their friends or new acquaintances – but while they’re out on the town instead of sitting in front of their computers, where it’s harder to get laid.
[…]
“It’s like a shortcut,” said Alexander Clemens, 36, a political consultant and Dodgeball user in San Francisco. “All it takes is one quick note to tell my friends where the party’s at so we can all get laid.”
[…]
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor of communications at N.Y.U., predicts that with a little time and fine tuning, software that “caters to users’ geography rather than their affinities” will [help you get laid] with the same force Friendster did two years ago.
“It has already been successful [getting people laid],” Mr. Shirky said. “But eventually, Dennis and Alex are going to figure out uses and applications they hadn’t even thought of before.”
Like, um, totally getting your ass laid!

Related: This article is like a Gothamist Interview Reunion: Brian Battjer, Dennis Crowley, Clay Shirky. Someone needs to cut Andrew Krucoff a check.

The Guardian reports that encouraging teenagers to engage in oral sex could prove the most effective means of curbing teen pregnancy. Not only does low culture applaud such bold initiatives, but we would like to provide a few of our own. Teenagers need never be “troubled” again.
First the problem, then the solution:
Gang Violence – Encourage your teen to become a sulky loner
Bulimia – Encourage your teen to develop other insecurities. Acne, lack of popularity, and athletic inability are all excellent alternatives.
Secret Cutting – While secret cutting affects untold numbers of teens, public cutting never hurt anyone. Even successful, well-adjusted rock stars like Iggy Pop, Britney Spears and Richey Manic are doing it.
Huffing Glue – Move out of the trailer park.
Underage Drinking – Although alcohol is an omnipresent danger for teens, Ecstasy users typically drink water instead of liquor. Try to give your teen a roll before he goes out for the night.
Oral Sex – If your teen is engaging in oral sex to avoid pregnancy, encourage him or her to experiment with anal sex.
Anal Sex – Do you suspect that your teen is having anal sex to avoid having oral sex to avoid getting pregnant? Try turning your teen onto pregnancy-safe alternatives such as foot fetishism, bdsm or homosexuality.
Social Difficulties – Does your teen have trouble fitting in at school? Teach him or her to give a really good hummer. Everyone loves a slut.

low culture exclusive: must credit low culture (or not):
On Thursday, May 6, 2004, while fifty million Americans tuned in to see the end of Friends on NBC, what were Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld doing? Eating hotdogs and watching the Mets battle Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants from behind the visitors’ dugout at Shea Stadium.
Finally, an explanation for that whole sitcom-star subplot of Larry David’s “Sour Grapes“.