Chris

Some of these criticisms are, to my mind, very valid critiques of the full extent of Sarah Koenig's reporting (although I think it's pretty clear that actually reporting the true entirety of this case would be basically impossible, and it also seems clear from her reporting that police records of the case were woefully inadequate), but framing them in aggregate as boiling down to a white woman reporting on a minority is a really gross oversimplification and I would wager mainly inaccurate. Yes, there are absolutely huge sentencing disparities by race, for instance. But is every single conceivable piece of connective tissue between all elements of race and justice in America automatically within the purview of this one show? I mean, maybe it is, I don't know. But I don't think every one of these things is automatic or a given. Serial primarily concerned itself with the specifics of why this case was unusual, which had to do with the relatively paper-thin case brought against the defendant, and the seeming impossibility to actually corroborate even that relatively light case with extensive reporting. It's also a show about people, a reminder that all of the figures we see represented as sound bytes and caricatures in crime reporting are complex individuals with wildly differing perspectives, memories, and experiences. This seems like a worthwhile goal to me, even if there are ALSO other worthwhile goals for a piece of longform crime reporting. The show does not aim to be a comprehensive examination of race in the American criminal justice system. That would be a laudable project, it's just one that probably has a fundamentally different identity and style from the very start.

I really wish there were more specific illustrations of what specifically Serial's problems with race are. I don't think it is in any way flawless, but as far as I can tell, at least in this thread, the people taking this tack seem to be taking it as a given that everyone understands what these problems are, instead of clearly and straightforwardly describing the specific problems. Serial is headed up by an experienced woman journalist, employing several other women, and focusing on an arguable miscarriage of justice against a person of color. (Again, I think there are many journalistic questions raised, but they would be equally applicable regardless of the ethnicity of the subjects, in my opinion.) Is this not a fairly laudible usage of journalism? In a world where Nancy Grace and the rest of her ilk exists, is Serial really the representative case of exploitative true crime coverage? That obviously does not in and of itself excuse any missteps when it comes to representations of race, but if the main criticism is simply that it's a white person reporting on a person of color then I'm not really convinced. I found Sarah's assumptions about the effects of racism on the trial to be pretty dubious but, as noted, she did then follow up with a great deal of reporting intended to highlight how racism probably DID in fact come into play. What are the other SPECIFIC objections people have with her treatment of the story? Maybe I'm somehow deluding myself or being willfully blind but I'm seriously having a hard time finding concrete arguments to respond to. When this exact kind of story happens and the subject is a white person, the common progressive response is "We're hearing about this because it was yet another white victim, and if it weren't the story would go unreported." (And that's a pretty fair observation because it often is the case.) Now this case is bringing an arguable injustice against a non-white person to light, and to me it has been done in an incredibly fastidiously reported way.

It wasn't a story only a white woman could tell. It was a story that this specific white woman stumbled onto. I really think that is a huge distinction. There are SO MANY people imprisoned whose cases almost certainly have some shred of reasonable doubt, insufficient evidence, flimsy testimony, etc. This one story was not simply uniquely waiting around for someone to cover it and a white woman picked up the flag. This one specific case and this one specific white woman ended up crossing paths because of the way life works: something intersected with her unrelated work because she is a reporter and she constantly puts herself in the path of information and connections.

Oh also, I found Sarah's skepticism about the racial component very bizarre, although she then did the intellectually honest thing of reporting and presenting a great deal of anecdotal evidence that pretty effectively destabilizes her suspicion. I am still not crazy about the way she framed that part of the investigation but I think it's clear she pounded the pavement and did her due diligence. In general this discussion is frustrating to me because so much of it is centered on general claims that the situation is problematic, but a lot of it feels like it would be literally impossible to avoid any time any white person reports anything about a non white person and I really can't accept that as an inherently problematic concept unto itself. The larger trends in representation are, again, clearly problems, but I feel like there are a lot of SPECIFIC problems or at least issues with Serial that merit discussion with respect to how this true crime story is reported that I strongly believe are only the most tangentially related to race but are MUCH more relevant to the general media/entertainment landscape of our culture and I have to admit it is kind of frustrating to see this very directly-relevant-to-this-one-specific-program issue get totally sidelined by discussions of representation that realistically could not have been individually addressed by this one reporter in this one story, at least not to any significant degree. But there are a lot of choices that ARE totally under her control that I think are vital and raise a lot of questions about how we receive reporting as entertainment, even aside from the race of the people involved.

I would like to make one small point about the notion that has been implied or directly claimed by several people which is that This American Life found a crime involving minorities and then assigned a white woman to cover it. No. An experienced reporter came upon this case for a variety of circumstantial reasons, including the fact that she had actually reported on related elements before (such as the defense attorney knvolved) and decided to investigate. There was no version of this where a black woman reported this story instead because it wasn't an assigned story. I'm not saying that that means there should not be better representation in media, because there should be, but if the white woman in question did not investigate this it almost certainly would not have been investigated.

I had already read the Awl piece, but did not find it persuasive. This Atlantic piece explains why, to me: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/unpacking-the-social-justice-critique-of-serial/383071/ I believe I am pretty decent in terms of recognizing privilege and coded language; obviously I am white so there is a limit to the amount of firsthand experience I can actually bring to bear in this, but in general I do honestly believe myself to be at least FAIRLY self-aware and thoughtful. And I fully accept--fully--that ANY cultural artifact in our society inherently exists in a context that comes along with a huge amount of unbalance of privilege and assumptions about experience. That is something that will always color every work, regardless of its text in and of itself, and I tried to indicate my awareness of this on the podcast. But I do think it is possible to over-read on the individual scale, and I think that Awl piece does that. It is, to me, poorly argued and poorly substantiated. There may be a better case to be made that would cause me to reevaluate my feelings on the matter, I just don't think it's this.

Idle Thumbs 179: Shadow of Something We all live in the shadow of something. We all have our daemons. When Chris set foot in the world of Alien: Isolation, all he could think about was the time he killed a billion Orcs who never forgot him. When Danielle played Alien: Isolation, all she could think of was how the love affair would inevitably end, no matter how nicely designed the posters on the wall looked. Jake downloaded Alien: Isolation, but spent the weekend playing Smash Bros on his 3DS. Games Discussed: Alien: Isolation, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Team Fortress 2: Shadow of the Machines, No One Lives Forever: Shadow of H.A.R.M., Super Smash Bros (3DS), Human Resources, Worms: Armageddon Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

I was the one who got engaged! And also Sarah Argodale. Both of us. To each other. It's exciting!

This is how I read it as well. Not that she's so impressed that he shot a guy, but more that the fallout of him shooting a guy prompts a gesture that prods them out of their funk.

I think a lot of that material was gathered months and months ago. They're EDITING the podcasts in real time and that allows them to respond to things that are currently coming to light, but I think the actual primary source reporting was done before they even started releasing. That doesn't mean they won't do more, but I think stuff like the Jay interview was part of the original reporting.

Idle Thumbs 178: CS Losers Join us as we all embark on our own personal trips through the dusty dunes. After 15 years clean, Sean gets a taste of Counter-Strike and is feared lost, Chris embarks on a journey of the mind on Desert Golfing's back 1500 and comes out changed, Jake falls through a time hole into his past, and Danielle is trapped on a deserted island with Carl Sagan and Terry Gross after facing off against one of gaming history's most controversial figures. Nick Breckon hasn't been seen for weeks. Games Discussed: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Uwe Boll, Road Redemption, Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, Desert Golfing Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

I don't think it's "forgiven", but I do think it's a slightly different discussion. There isn't really "forgiven" at least in my case because my overriding opinion at this point is no opinion since I haven't played the game.

The point of "not real" was that you could declare any fictional character to be anything and it wouldn't necessarily actually be substantiated in any way beyond that declaration. Maybe in Far Cry 4 the fact that he's an Asian guy with uncommonly white features really is a thoughtful and significant dichotomy but on the ad for the game it isn't really.

I really don't know anything about either of these people and am not prepared to offer a strongly held opinion about them, but in a very general sense, they are both not just "being a girl", they are broadcasting an image of how to be a girl out to millions of people, including other young girls. So while I don't personally have the knowledge to know if either of them is doing something worth publicly criticizing (which is why I didn't really chime into that discussion on the air) I think that conceptually it is completely within rights to consider whether a performing artist is putting forth a worthwhile message. We consider plenty of male and female artists in that context, certainly (authors, filmmakers, video game designers, and so on). That doesn't mean such evaluation can't be done poorly, or in a misogynistic way, but I do think that when you're a massively successful cultural force you are implicitly open to criticism for what your art tells people, especially if you are disproportionately targeting young people who we all know are a lot more impressionable. (I sure was.) That of course doesn't mandate anyone to listen to said criticism.

CLWheeljack I think that's a good take.

Twin Peaks Rewatch 0: The Pre-Episode We introduce the concept of Twin Peaks Rewatch--more to come in just a few days! In the meantime, follow us on Twitter at @peaksrewatch, on Facebook at facebook.com/twinpeaksrewatch, or on our website at idlethumbs.net/twinpeaks. Email us your comments or questions about the pilot episode at twinpeaks@idlethumbs.net! Listen on the Episode Page Subscribe to the RSS Feed

Welcome, everyone new to the forums!

Yeah we've talked about doing two episodes per cast during some of the Season 2 doldrums.

Glad you're enjoying! I imagine there might be episodes with longer spoiler sections, and we were actually expecting them to be longer when we started the cast, but as it turns out we just generally get most of our discussion out of the way before the break. We also really don't want episodes to get longer than an hour (and ideally they'd be more like 45 minutes) so adding more spoiler stuff would be pushing it.

Nothing happened that is as major as you seem to be imagining. Sean doing any amount of major re-scope would have to pass through a bunch of other people who that re-scope would hit before it becomes real. (But it doesn't matter because he was just referring to some stuff he specifically is writing for the game.)

All this coffee stuff is good fodder for twinpeaks@idlethumbs.net!

The best thing about those two covers is that they both adhere to a contractual obligation that any poster/cover art for the movie must represent Lancaster and Curtis' faces at the same scale, so as not to imply a greater "starring" role for either one of them. The Criterion cover obviously does it in a much subtler and more meaningful way, by putting a photo of Lancaster in the background so we understand that in the actual world his face would be at 3x scale looming over Curtis, while still keeping the literal depiction in line with the requirement.

I don't think you do. "The creature from Alien." It's hard for me to imagine a situation where it's not clear that you're already talking about Alien/Aliens, or where you are talking about so many different monsters or Aliens that you absolutely don't have the linguistic time to append the very brief "from Alien" for context. Also, "the creature from Alien" or "the monster from Alien" or even "the alien from the Alien movies" is WAY clearer than "xenomorph", which isn't an actual word and can't be assumed to be in most people's vocabulary. Considering it's not even actually called a "xenomorph" in the fiction of the world, it seems overly affected to me to use it as though it were.

shh what are you talking about