“Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process.  This has several consequences:  it leaves the domain of more or less everyday perception and enters that of the abstract consciousness; its effectiveness is seen as resulting from its inevitability, not from its visible intensity; it is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime.”

This is Michel Foucault talking about the decline of torture and public execution as crime-deterrents in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century.  Now compare this with the current methods the record and film industry are using to deter piracy.  The likelihood that any single pirate will be caught is essentially nil, but the fines that are handed out - quite publicly, I might add - are pretty much the equivalent of being drawn and quartered.

What interests me is the next passage.  “… in punishment-as-spectacle a confused horror spread from the scaffold; it enveloped both executioner and condemned; and, although it was always ready to invert the shame inflicted on the victim into pity or glory, it often turned the legal violence of the executioner into shame.”  Which is why they wore those black hoods, naturally.

Now tell me that’s not how a file-sharing lawsuit works!  When we hear about a six-figure fine being dropped on some college kid or soccer mom, we have nothing but pity and sympathy for the defendents, and nothing but shocked disgust for the plaintiff.

My point here is not that the RIAA is a bunch of leather-masked gimps.  (Well, not only that.)  My point has to do with our legal system.  The shift away from the torture and execution model was motivated, says Foucault, by our acceptance of the “essentially corrective character” of the legal system.  Torturing someone to death won’t reform them.  It might scare someone else off, but it’s not going to reform anyone.  Once we started trying to reform criminals, public executions had to be abandoned.

In 21st century America, our penal code is essentially corrective.  Our civil code, the code that copyright offenses are prosecuted under, is not.  It operates under the older - and crueler - principle of of an eye for an eye.  The punishment is not intended to serve the greater public good.  Neither does it repair the material harm caused by piracy (which is how civil suits are supposed to work).  It is a vehicle of catharsis, an opportunity for the wronged coporate entity to express its righteous indignation.  No more, and no less.

p.s.  Informed readers will note that all my quotes are taken from the first, like, nine pages of Discipline and Punish.  To which I respond… shut up.  I’m busy, ok?  I’ll read the rest of it eventually.

This radio show, made famous for its true-life storytelling on subjects ranging from building superintendents to summer camp, occasionally dabbles in the world of fiction. Very occasionally, they dabble in the world of superhero fan fiction. They’ve done so on at least 2 different occasions, both with stories by writer Jonathan Goldstein:

Episode 198: “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” A sad-sack man tells what it’s like to date Lois Lane after her break-up with Superman… while also serving as Superman’s ineffectual sidekick. It’s not easy being Superman’s sidekick, especially when he starts hitting on your girlfriend. Luckily, he finds a comforting soul in Clark Kent.

Episode 241: “20 Acts in 60 Minutes.” The Penguin and Mary Poppins compare notes on umbrella flight techniques only to find they have little in common. To make matters worse, Mary loses interest in the Penguin and strikes up a conversation with Bruce Wayne about controlled jumps off of buildings.

Note that we have at least two violations of Mlawski’s rules on good fanfic: both stray far from the mood and style of their original sources, and the second one crosses over two different fictional universes. Fortunately, these rules aren’t hard and fast; besides, more conventional fanfic wouldn’t really work in the context of, you know, NPR.

Readers: what are some other unlikely sources of fanfic, superhero or otherwise, that you’ve found?

On the same night that MTV unleashed The City upon the world, the network also premiered Bromance, a reality competition show in which 9 dudes vie to be the new best friend of Olympian offspring/former Hillster Brody Jenner. The ostensible motivation for the show is the increasing visibility of bromances- male homosocial relationships characterized by reasonably high levels of physical and emotional closeness. Although the concept of homosociality itself doesn’t imply anything other than a social relationship between two members of the same sex, a number of gender/queer studies theorists have argued that muted sexual desire has long been an intrinsic component of homosociality in Western culture, and that shifts in what kind of behavior society defines as “gay and therefore bad” have historically driven changes in the prevalence of homosocial romantic friendships.

Indeed, a number of mass media trend pieces have postulated that the recent surge in the amount of bromantic behavior depicted in film and television has been driven in large parts by the integration of a number of aspects of gay subculture into the mainstream, which in turn has lead to more widespread social acceptance of man-on-man affection.

Is the cultural moment of the bromance really indicative of increased mainstream acceptance of homosexual norms and behavior, or is it just the status quo in new, more homoerotic clothes?

Although MTV’s Bromance purports to be about male bonding, it is absolutely no secret that the staging of the show is directly inspired by a long line of TV dating shows. In the earliest TV dating shows such as the Dating Game, Love Connection, Change of Heart, and even Blind Date, it was assumed that the contestants in the show were looking for love (or at least some kind of romantic or sexual relationship). During the reality-show explosion of the early 2000’s this assumption was shattered by a variety of more cynical dating shows such as “Who Wants to Mary a Multi-Millionaire” , “Joe Millionaire”, and “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé” which added the promise of financial gain to the quest for true love. The quasi-celebrity dating shows (of which Bromance is a close cousin) offer a weaker version of this type of incentive: developing a relationship with someone who once used to be sort of a little almost famous, and the possibility of using that connection to jumpstart a career in music/film/television/inexplicable famousness. Some runner-up contestants from these shows, such as New York from Flavor of Love and the Italian dude from A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila have won the greatest prize possible in this arena: being large enough quasi-celebrities that they got to host their own quasi-celebrity dating show.

The effect of the strong non-romantic incentives built into this type of dating show is that both the love-seeking quasi-celebrity and many of the contestants go to excruciating lengths to emphasize how important finding true-love is for them. Throughout “Flavor of Love” and “Rock of Love”, contestants frequently attempted to differentiate themselves from other contestants by claiming that they were “really there for Flavor Flav/Brett Michaels”, and on numerous occasions Flav/Brett used evidence of “being fake” (usually either prior participation in other reality shows or an ongoing relationship with a supposed ex-boyfriend) as sufficient cause to eliminate the contestant in question.

This obsession with authenticity is magnified by the premise of Bromance. The setup of a straight guy holding a competition to find a close male friend is made possible by a pithy and pervasive social norm (which the show itself hasn’t yet explicitly acknowledged): Bros Before Hoes. The assumption behind this “code” (which can be seen running through nearly all of the Urban Dictionary definitions of the phrase) is that male bonds are permanent, deep, and premised on mutual understanding and respect, whereas male-female bonds are capricious, shallow, and ultimately unfulfilling. Therefore if a man sacrifices his homosocial friendships in favor of a romantic relationship with a woman, he will be left in the lurch when she inevitably abandons, betrays, or tries to change (”pussywhip”) him.

The most interesting aspect of Bromance is how closely the power dynamics at play between Brody and the “bro-wannabes” echo those in more explicitly romantic dating shows, no matter how much Jenner insists that he is looking for a trustworthy friend whom he considers to be his equal. Critical theorists (particularly in the world of feminist film theory) articulated the concept of “the male gaze” to describe common representations of gendered power relationships in film, in which the depiction of male sexual desire involves the visual objectification of a woman. Given that the main challenge in the Bromance premiere was for the contestants to recruit two sexy ladies to come to a Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie party hosted by Jenner , it shouldn’t be a major surprise that the male gaze surfaced in full force. What is extremely surprising is that the primary objects of Brody’s gaze were the male bro-wannabe contestants, not the “sexy lingerie ladies”. The centerpiece of the lingerie party challenge was not the contestants joining Brody in evaluating the hotness of the female guests, but rather was each contestant delivering a toast to Brody, who observed the proceedings from a slightly elevated VIP section.

In this segment, shots of the contestants performing their toast were intercut with close shots of Jenner’s face while he watches and judges them, along with with brief “confessionals” in which Jenner or individual contestants recap the challenge while talking directly into the camera. Although this type of confessional is a hallmark of this type of reality dating show (and can probably be traced even further back to the first seasons of The Real World), the differences between Brody’s confessionals and those delivered by the contestants are worth noting. In the moments in which Brody breaks the fourth wall, it is usually to ridicule, undercut, or occasionally grant praise to something one of the contestants has done. In contrast, when contestants speak to the camera, they constantly express their desire to please Jenner and to receive his approval. To further hammer home the stark difference in status between Brody and the contenstants, the bro-wannabes have to deliver their anxiety-ridden soliloquies while sitting on the toilet (which some genius producer named the “can-fessional”. Har har!)

These power dynamics also inform much of the sexual tension that permeates the show. As in many other hyper-masculine environments (such as fraternities and military units), both entry and exit from the group is marked by a fusion of bodily humiliation and homoeroticism. At the beginning of the episode, Brody hires security guards to roust the sleeping contestants from their hotel beds and drag them, hooded and in their underwear, to the “Bromansion” (the garish prefab frat house where they will live for the duration of the show). The dudes are then lined up on their knees and then the hoods are whisked off to reveal… Brody, in all of his shiny-faced heterosexual splendor.

The elimination ceremony is staged in a similar manner, but in a freaking hot tub, with all of the bro-testants lined up nearly on top of one another on one side of the tub, and Brody facing them on the other side, making them sweat while he reveals which of them still have a chance to win his favor and which ones have to go back to their hum-drum bromance-less lives.

With all of this near-nakedness, hottubbery, and rampant homosocial desire, what did Brody and his cronies consider the “gayest” thing that happened in the episode Well, of course it was when Michael, the one contestant who is actually gay, gave Brody a birthday card at the lingerie party. Although Brody feigned politeness to Michael’s face, his comment to the camera tells the real story, “A greeting card? At a Lingerie Party? Really?”. Later, Brody and his “right hand man”, Frankie Delgado mocked the gesture, while Michael looked on in soft-faced sadness.

As a result, in the world of Bromance, gayness (in the negative sense) is identified primarily with being needy and clingy; not surprisingly, these are the same qualities that are referenced as being typical of women in many of the urban dictionary definitions of “bros before hoes”. Indeed this dynamic is precisely what characterized a lot of Brody and Lauren Conrad’s tortured relationship/friendship on the Hills, and is in the background of Brody’s assertion in the show’s intro that what separates a bro from a female friend is that there is “no drama” and “no games”.

More generally, what this series of events reveals is that bromance (both the show and the broader cultural phenomenon it may or may not reperesent) hardly represents a move away from homophobia, but is rather a redefinition of what constitutes appropriate heterosexual homosocial behavior, vis a vis deviant homosexual behavior. Michael himself recognized this dynamic for what it was, and became visibly more and more uncomfortable throughout the course of the episode,  eventually pulling Brody aside to tell him that he was quitting the show and going home. What the sequence of events leading to Michael’s departure from the show indicates is that homophobia and heteronormativity have not disappeared in bromantic culture (and the broader popular culture in which it is embedded), but rather that these norms have mutated and fused with a particular form of misogyny. Alpha-dudes like Brody and company might now be going on man-dates, hugging it out, and sharing their deep feelings with each other, but that doesn’t make their behavior any less brotesque.

• Our New Theme Song
• New Year’s Resolutions
• Reality Television
• Quantum Mechanics (including a pretty detailed explanation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle)
• Oscar® Contenders
• and, the return of…

Overthink This
Our occasional listing of things you should buy. And if you use these links, we’ll even make a few pennies off you.

• Lee: Don’t Stop Belevin’: How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0306815834?tag=overtit-20)
• Fenzel: www.johnstonefitness.com
• Shechner: The Fake Thundercats Movie Trailer by Wormy T (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb50GMmY5nk)
• Wrather: The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1585425524?tag=overtit-20)
• Stokes: The Phantom of Twenty Faces (K-20) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1156395/)
• Belinkie: Team America World Police: The Soundtrack (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00122X6YC?tag=overtit-20)

As always, email us at podcast AT overthinkingit DOT com with your comments, or call 20-EAT-LOG-01 (that’s (203) 285-6401) to leave a voicemail.

(Streaming audio is available on the site.)

Download Episode 27 (MP3)

A little TOO quixotic. And yeah, I really do think.

(By the way, read to the bottom of the article. Turns out before he was a writer, he was a hobo. Yes: a hobo.)

“A leap second!  What will they think of next?”

“Silly scientists.  They have too much time on their hands.”

“Who needs a leap second, anyway?”

But I have a public service announcement for all of you.  The leap second is serious business.   If you failed to change your clocks and watches, please change them now.

Think about it.  One day in the future, you may want to travel back in time.  Maybe you’re a resistance fighter trying to defeat the robots that are trying to defeat John Connor (who is trying to defeat the robots).  The robots, of course, know about the leap second and have changed their internal computers accordingly.  But you, dumb human, have forgotten all about the leap second.  Ignored it as silliness.

Well, who is going to have egg on their face when they arrive on Earth in 2008 IN THE MIDDLE OF A MOUNTAIN?!  You, that’s who.

Because, as we all know, time doesn’t work independently.  Time is connected to space.  So if you arrive at the wrong time, even if you’re only a leap second off, you’ll arrive in the wrong place.  Maybe you’ll only end up down the road from your original destination.  Or maybe you’ll end up in the Earth’s orbit.  I don’t know; I assume it depends on how your time travel device works.  But I wouldn’t want to leave it to chance.  Would you?

So please, OTI readers, for humanity’s sake, obey the leap second.  John Connor is counting on you.

1. 40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes
2. The Philosophy of Batman
3. Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women
4. Fixing Pirates of the Carribean
5. Eight Hit Songs from Obscure Movies
6. The Nazgul = EPIC FAIL
7. The Math of Steel
8. The Blockbuster Bell Curve: Are We Running Out of Good Movies, Too?
9. The Joker’s Magic Pencil
10. The Philosophy of Batman, Schopenhauer Edition

We’ve been working hard on OTI all year, but still we’re amazed at the success of what started as a lark (”Hey, guys, want to write a website?”) in January of 2008. Needless to say, we owe it to our brilliant, opinionated, passionate, fantastic readers; on behalf of all the writers, thank you for making OTI a part of your compulsive web browsing on company time!

We’ve got great things planned for 2009. We’ll let you know what they are as soon as we’ve figured them out. Happy New Year!

And not only did he write 80 pages of All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy, he made sure each page is formatted in a different delightfully insane way. And he’s blurbed OTI on the back cover. I am disproportionally proud of this.

Sadly, it’s too late to get a copy for Christmas, but I guarantee this will start conversations on the subway. Nice work, Phil.

All Work and No Play… [Blurb]

10:00 - Whitney says she’s moving to New York City to “risk it all.” This is already exactly what annoys me about The Hills and its spawn. She is moving to New York City to star in her own MTV show. This is clearly a great deal, but she’s pretending she’s just a struggling career girl, living by the seat of her pants, one rent check away from moving back in with her parents. I guess she can’t really say, “I’m moving to New York City to star in a spinoff of The Hills. MTV has gotten me a fake job and some fake friends and told us all exactly what to do and say. Let’s see what happens!”

10:02 - Is “Meatpacking District” really three words? They just spelled it “Meat Packing District.” This is news to me.

10:04 - It’s definitely two words. I Googled it.

10:04 - Whitney is having a painfully staged conversation with her new workplace bestie, Olivia. Olivia is pretending she doesn’t know who Whitney is. I guess it’s an unspoken premise of this show that The Hills does not exist.

10:06 - Here is Jay, Whitney’s “boyfriend.” Dan is pointing out, correctly, that the odds that Whitney just happened to meet the perfect douchey New York boyfriend in the runup to The City are slim. Seriously, somebody has to explain the appeal of The Hills/The City in The Comments. This is every bit as fake as the WWE, but nobody gets hit with a folding chair. Sadly.

10:09 - Commercial for The Real World: Brooklyn. Tagline: “The real New York is on the other side of the bridge.” Wait, is this a dig at The City? It pretty much has to be, right?

10:14 - Question: Is Diane Von Furstenberg getting paid by MTV to be Whitney’s employer, or is she paying THEM? And either way, how much?

10:16 - Nevermind. We’re getting a big DVF fashion show montage. Took 16 minutes for this to become a paid commercial. (Yes, I realize me complaining about product placement on MTV is like complaining water is too damp.)

10:19 - Whitney is at a party, and she was just invited to another party tomorrow night. I am exhausted just watching her.

10:19 - Jay thinks Whitney’s new friend doesn’t seem “genuine.” I’ve decided that the best way to watch this show is as an elaborate, Andy Kaufmanesque practical joke played on the audience.

10:26 - They are having some kind of outdoor dinner party, while I eat leftover Chinese food. I hope they all get eaten by a Cloverfield monster.

10:28 - Meanwhile, Jay is playing pool and complaining to his bro about how clingy Whitney is. Wait, hasn’t she only been in New York for two days?

10:28 - Olivia is grilling Whitney about Jay. Jay Jay Jay…

10:29 - … and like something out of a dream, there he is. Note to self: Refusing to go to party with girlfriend and then showing up unexpectedly seems to work really well.

10:30 - So here is the plot of the first episode of The City: Jay does not want to come with Whitney to a party, but then goes anyway. That’s pretty weak sauce, MTV.

10:31 - Oh God, there are two episodes back to back.

10:32 - Whitney is meeting up with a previous suitor, Alex. He is taking her out to lunch to tell her that Jay is secretly still in love with an ex, Danielle. “I have to choose who I can trust,” says Whitney.

Goddamnit, this show is terrible, America. I’m ashamed of you all for liking this.

10:35 - Scene 2: Whitney is recapping her conversation with Alex to Erin. This show rivals Dragonball Z in its ability to fill time without advancing the plot.

10:36 - I really wish David Foster Wallace was alive to write a book length deconstruction of The City. It is so unintionally complex.

10:40 - How did I never notice that every single person in New York is lit bright orange, from the side?

10:42 - I’ll go ahead and say it. I kind of want to see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Is Bill Nighy in this one? (Googling…) YES.

10:45 - Dan says he’s “loving hating this show.” He declares it “disappointing, but not disappointing enough not to continue watching.” So MTV, there’s your blurb.

10:46 - Manolo Blahnik makes a cameo. Whitney is treating him like Orlando Bloom.

10:48 - Ooooh, Alex is at the same bar. Showdown with Jay! If this was Gossip Girl, one or both of them would probably get killed now.

10:50 - This is kind of a great argument. They have to argue 6 inches apart, because of the club noise, and every other word is bleeped. It’s like Mamet.

Homestretch, people.

10:57 - Whitney is meeting with some woman older than 30. Over the last hour, I had actually forgotten those people were allowed in New York.

10:58 - Now she’s telling Grandma about Alex and Jay. “Maybe you can’t trust both of them,” she muses.

10:59 - Here’s a teaser for future episodes. “This season on The City…” a lot of girls complaining about their boyfriends’ behavior, and a lot of guys resenting their girlfriends. Where do I sign up?

11:00 - This Pussycat Dolls music video over the end credits is my favorite part of the last hour. Goodnight, people.

Matthew Wrather leads a panel consisting of Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and eventually Matthew Belinkie to overthink:

• Listener Feedback
• One Man’s Pun (see Venn Diagram)
• The Tenets of National Socialism
• Various Attempts to Kill Hitler (one by Tom Cruise, one by the Highlander)
• Anglo-American Relations

Disclaimer: We are all ANTI-Nazi. Nazis are bad.

As always, email us at podcast AT overthinkingit DOT com with your comments, or call 20-EAT-LOG-01 (that’s (203) 285-6401) to leave a voicemail.

(Streaming audio is available on the site.)

Download Episode 26 (MP3)

[Venn Diagram by Mark Lee]