popular culture

After years of anticipation, The Book of Mormon—the Broadway musical from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, and Robert Lopez, one of the people behind Avenue Q—is in previews; it opens March 24.

It may indeed be a good sign that a man calling himself a vampire is more trusted than our nation’s banks. Can we set aside our differences for the economy’s sake?

Can Matt Damon’s love trump God’s Will? Does it have to?

Rappers often credit God in their liner notes, acceptance speeches, and raps. They brag about being God’s sons and daughters. Some Five Percenter rappers have even claimed to be God, but few mainstream rappers have done so with the gusto of Jay-Z, also known by the nickname Jay-Hova, after the Judeo-Christian God.

The top films for 2010—especially those up for this Sunday’s awards—leave most of the species-specific questions behind. Instead this year’s crop reflects anxieties (as well as promises) about who we are and who we might be becoming in and as humans, in our own skins—never mind the “prawns” or “Na’vi.” Questions provoked by this year’s films include those concerning the nature of our selves in connection and collision with our families, our larger social institutional entanglements, and our own bodies. The other key theme, effecting each of the others, had to do with the ways new media technology is inserting itself into our intimate lives, and changing our identities, both public and private.

The GCB pilot is being criticized by conservative Christian groups as “hate speech” and “misogyny.” How lovely that they’re taking feminism seriously!

Mark Salzman’s latest work tells the story of an optimistic, but highly anxious, seeker whose sense of enthusiasm and adventure dried up when the chaotic monotony of domestic life intervened with a vengeance.

So, about that Chrysler “Imported from Detroit” Super Bowl ad with Eminem. Not too long after I first saw the spot on the internet, I started thinking about how the pop-culture ubiquity of the black gospel choir belies its complicated cultural capital.

As National Day of Unplugging looms (it begins a week from today) I hope we all can agree that taking time away from the frenzy of everyday life is a good thing. And pausing to reflect on the role of technology in our lives is important at a time when social technologies in particular are becoming increasingly integrated into daily life with effects that we are just beginning to describe and understand. But I do have to wonder if the keen, even if not hostile, focus on technology as such misses the phenomenological, relational, and spiritual mark just a bit.

Annie Lobért knows that sex sells. The 16 years she spent as a stripper, prostitute, and high-class escort, most recently on the Las Vegas Strip, taught her that.