Sixties Backlash
Parody is an art form for "children who have had imposed upon them a meaningless iconography."
Josh Glenn
Josh Glenn is a Boston-based consulting semiotician. He is cofounder of the consultancy Semiovox, editor of the websites SEMIOVOX and HILOBROW, and series editor of The MIT Press's RADIUM AGE. He is an adjunct instructor at RISD and convenor of the monthly online "Semiofest Sessions." His books include The Idler's Glossary, Significant Objects, and the family activities guide Unbored. In the ’90s, Josh published the zine/journal Hermenaut; in the 2000s, he was a Boston Globe staffer and columnist.
Meet the Semionauts
"Between the experiential cunning of the animal and the more self-disciplined and attentive cunning of the man."
Fifties Backlash
"Disney sold him into slavery, and he’s nothing. He's nothing."
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
A non-compact topological group of bare-breasted women in G-strings.
Thick Description (Abduction)
How do we identify codes, and in doing so begin to construct a meaning matrix?
Disney Co. Mascot
"He’s so much of an institution that we’re limited in what we can do with him."
The African Queen
How to survive not war, but peace, with one’s humanity intact?
Thick Description (Deduction)
How do we identify paradigms and thematic complexes?
Forties Backlash
"A degenerate 'middlebrow' horror, mass-produced for profit."
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Comical yet not funny, equal-opportunity in its portrayal of human folly, artificial in the extreme.
Dazed and Confused
Single-night movies aren’t snapshots, they’re moonlit summoning rituals.
Scientist vs. Life Coach
Making sense of how brands, media and culture are responding to COVID-19. (4 of 4)