Leigh M. Johnson

Poverty Porn, Pre-Humanism and Beasts of the Southern Wild

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 0 Comments

Several weeks ago, I saw Beasts of the Southern Wild (adapted from the one-act play Juicy and Delicious by Lucy Alibar), the first feature-length film by director Benh Zeitlin and possibly one of the toughest films to characterize that I’ve ever seen.  Whatever other faults it may have– and I will get to those shortly–…

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2012 Year in Politics

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 2012 Year in Review Lists, Dr. J's Lists, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Year in Review Lists 0 Comments

Election years are always crazy years for American politics.  They’re not always Clint-Eastwood-talking-to-an-empty-chair crazy, though.  Nor are they, as a rule, “legitimate rape”- or “binders full of women”- or “fiscal cliff”- or “austerity”- crazy, that is, so crazy that one requires a Crazy-to-English translator to watch the evening news.  And although American politics is never…

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The “Real” and “True” You

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Film, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Relativism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology, Weak Humanism 0 Comments

Last week, my Philosophy and Film class took up the theme of “documentary truth.”  In preparation for our Tuesday night seminar, students were required to choose one film from a list of documentaries (Grizzly Man, The Thin Blue Line, Night and Fog, Bowling for Columbine, Capturing the Friedmans, Man on Wire, Super Size Me, Ghosts…

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Film of Exception: Zero Dark Thirty

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

I’m not sure exactly where to place the blame for the total disappointment that is the (Academy Award-nominated) film Zero Dark Thirty, which tells a based-on-real-events story of “the greatest manhunt in history.”  The hunted is, of course, al-Qaeda founder and mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks Osama bin Laden.  Zero Dark Thirty is organized as…

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I Bet You Gonna Find Some People Who Live in Memphis

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Music, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Sports 0 Comments

Apologies in advance to my close friends and family, but the truth is that there is quite literally nothing in the world that I love more than Memphis. Thanks in part to the Grizzlies’ inspiring display of our city’s three most valuable homegrown resources– heart, grit, and grind– and in larger part thanks to the…

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Concepts in Motion (or, Why You Should Assign Short-Films in Philosophy Courses)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Thinking in Images 0 Comments

“I say that I do philosophy, which is to say that I try to invent concepts.  What if I say, to you who do cinema: what do you do?” –Gilles Deleuze French philosopher Gilles Deleuze famously speculated in Cinema 1 (1983) that what he called the “movement-image,” a unique creative product of cinema, makes it…

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Facebook Privacy Dis-Agreement

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

It’s been a little while since the inhabitants of Facebookistan got all fired up about something–  where are you now Kony2012?— so I was half-delighted and half-disheartened to see the newest brouhaha to hit the social media site, which I’m calling the Facebook Privacy Dis-Agreement (FPD).  As these things tend to happen, FPD had been…

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Storytelling and Incredulity

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

The new film version of Yann Martel‘s 2001 novel Life of Pi, directed by Ang Lee and starring the  wide-eyed and captivating Saraj Sharma in the title role, is (exactly as the posters promise) an “epic journey of adventure and discovery.”  And that’s the problem with it. I read Life of Pi shortly after it…

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American Values Project Exhibition Gets the Greenlight!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson American Values video project, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

After much Sturm und Drang for the AVP team, we’re happy to announce that we’ve finally managed to secure a location and date for our exhibit! So, mark your calendars: We’ll be staging the VERY FIRST exhibition of the entire American Values Project collection on MAY 5 at Marshall Arts gallery in downtown Memphis. May…

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The Vicissitudes of Netiquette

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

In the last couple of days, I’ve received a lot of criticism about this post, in which I solicited Dr. Vincent Hendricks (and encouraged my readers to solicit Dr. Hendricks) to grant an interview with me, for the benefit of his English-speaking audience, about the recent kerfuffle surrounding his decision to post on his website–…

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