George Case's Blog, page 11

Recently, and with remarkable speed and thoroughness, most major media organizations have amended their style guidelines to capitalize the word Black as a racial denominator, e.g. “The black shoes were worn by Oprah Winfrey, a Black celebrity,” or “It was a black day when Black leader Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.” This is an […]

In the early 1970s, Mad magazine noted that ordinary American conservatives “don’t understand what William F. Buckley says, but agree with him.”  Buckley, at the time editor of the National Review magazine and host of television’s Firing Line, was famous for bringing an erudite verbosity to positions more associated with hicks and hardhats.  Yet his […]

The proliferation of nonfiction films and television in recent decades – in the volume of programming on specialty channels, on DVDs, on Netflix, at cinemas, and on YouTube – has deeply changed our understanding of reportage, education, and advocacy.  Reality shows, political polemics, nature series, and behind-the-scenes “Special Editions” of commercial entertainments are so central […]

Though the formula of the commercial pinup or “cheesecake” illustration was established in the 1930s and 40s by craftsmen like Alberto Vargas and George Petty, representations of idealized female forms are as old as art itself.  And there were a crucial few decades preceding the genre’s classic era when its templates of pose and composition […]

I once read somewhere that the marking of historical anniversaries (other than that of the supposed birth of Jesus Christ) was something that only took root during the long reign of Queen Victoria, who ruled from 1837 until her death in 1901. In an age where life expectancy was shorter than it is now, the […]

In previous years I have posted a recurring speculation that the annual consumerist frenzy sometimes designated Christmas may eventually become extinct; perhaps that end has arrived sooner than I expected. But the pandemic that began in 2020 and which is approaching its fourth year might actually have rendered obsolete only the most traditional rituals of […]

Fans of heavy metal and horror movies should be familiar with the Antichrist, the Biblical character whose arrival on earth is said to foretell the end of the world; the same fans may be surprised to learn that their understandings are inaccurate.  The Antichrist appears exactly once in the Bible, in the First Epistle of […]

On October 2, 2019, a B-17 Flying Fortress crashed shortly after takeoff in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, killing both pilots and five passengers. The aircraft, built in 1945, had been exhibited and flown as an aeronautical history lesson: thousands of B-17s were operated by the United States during World War II and the model has long […]

As live music returns to the stages of the world, few performers will be happier getting back to work than the members of tribute bands. Just about every big-name artist of the Twentieth Century, at one time or another, has been paid homage (or imitated, or exploited, if you prefer) by sound- and lookalike acts; […]

Over twenty years since Saving Private Ryan premiered, it’s clear that Steven Spielberg’s 1998 World War II epic established a new category of movies.  In Enemy At the Gates (2001), Windtalkers (2002), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Fury (2014), the series Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), as well as Hacksaw Ridge (2016), Dunkirk […]