Roman Polanski isn't worth it

Hollywood has undoubtedly produced some of the most important pieces of art of the last 100 years, but directors like Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen should keep their opinions about Roman Polanski's arrest in Sweden last week and potential extradition to the United States for raping a 13-year-old girl 32 years ago to themselves.

Polanski may have directed some very important movies, including Chinatown and The Pianist. But Michael Vick being very good at football didn't mean he was above going to prison and, last I checked, drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl was a more heinous crime against humanity than dogfighting. Being good at something does not preclude anyone from being subject to the law.

And for those who argue that being kept out of the United States for 32 years should be punish enough for Polanski, imagine if it had been someone you love who had been drugged, given champagne and raped by the director. Would you still be protecting him?

The defense for Polanski is shocking, as the 32 years between the rape and Polanski's most recent arrest don't mean that the rape didn't happen. If anything, those years only reinforce the perception that Polanski was running from a crime that he had already pleaded guilty to committing.

If anything, that proves that he is a coward and an even more despicable human being than he had already proven himself to be.

For more on this subject, check out what Kate Harding said on Salon.com or what Kate Dailey wrote for Newsweek.

Fox's Glee deserves rave reviews

When the pilot episode of Glee aired last spring, Fox essentially guaranteed that it would be one of the smashing successes of this season's new TV shows. With Dancing With the Stars, High School Musical, American Idol and various other shows performing well in recent years, the stage has quickly become an automatic hit when it is transferred to the small screen.

The reasons for this could be argued forever, but the most simple reason is just that theatrical productions (and shows about them) seem to be more fun, something that the country hasn't been in recent years. The carefree attitude of the performers is the direct opposite of the frantic reaction to the economy by professionals throughout the land.

Glee succeeds, however, precisely because it allows the kids to shine as performers even though they all have their own set of issues that they bring to rehearsals with them. (The fact that they did one of the best versions of perennial cover-bait "Don't Stop Believing" might help, too.) The tangled plot lines are beginning to become confusing, as pregnancies, affairs, coming out and other typical teenage drama are explored, but when the lights go down, the characters all manage to excel.

The show's decision to open this week's episode with a performance of Beyonce's "Put a Ring on It" was an excellent one, as it emphasized that the show really was about these people being performers, not the performers trying to be people. When Kurt's dad comes in to find his son in a leotard, however, the fun quickly stops and lying begins, at least until Kurt performs on what his dad considers the most important stage - the football field, giving him the confidence to tell his father the truth.

Glee's over-produced set (everything looks a little bit fake) aids the show's message, as it refuses to take itself too seriously and, in turn, doesn't let viewers become caught up in all of its drama. And really, that's the message of Glee - that drama and issues do happen, but that the most important thing will always be performing when it counts.

How Kid Cudi made the song of 2009

To say that something is the song of the year is high praise, to say the least, but Kid Cudi may have nailed it on his first try. Ironically, the song is not "Day N Nite," the song he is using as the first single off of his new album. Instead, it's "Make Her Say," the Lady Gaga-sampling tune that features guest appearances by Kanye West and Common.


The reason that Cudi's song is the most representative of 2009 is fairly simple. By taking lyrics from many of the year's hits as well as borrowing the vocal skills of two of rap's superstars, the Cleveland rapper has managed to effectively utilize the spastic nature of pop culture right now.

The song directly references multiple hit songs from the past year, including T.I.'s "Whatever You Like," Asher Roth's "I Love College," Jamie Foxx's "Blame It," in addition to the omnipresent Lady Gaga.

Today's culture is a strange mixture of self-references and the same old formula, while this song points to the hits of 2009 and acknowledges them even as it makes something new out of them. By recognizing the typical creative process (and let's face it, nothing is completely new in this era), Kid Cudi has managed to make the perfect song of 2009.

Can Dan Brown save the blockbuster novel?

The death of the novel is something that critics have shouted about from rooftops for decades, claiming that the publishing industry is steadily grinding its way towards an anticlimactic demise, certain to be replaced by Kindles, e-books and other technology. To make matters worse, the only person in the entire world who is able to convince the American public that reading is a worthwhile endeavor is Oprah Winfrey, whose endorsement typically results in more than a million additional sales for a book (even though Oprah couldn't even convince America that Faulkner is worth reading).

Outside of Oprah stepping in, however, the blockbuster novel is essentially a thing of the past in America. Sure, Nicholas Sparks, James Patterson, the most recent entry in the Twilight series and the newest right wing propaganda roll of toilet paper will always sell copies. These are not, however, the books that people talk about. These are books that you read once and donate to your local library, hoping that nobody sees you furtively scanning the pages on the bus ride to work.

Dan Brown, however, seems to have somehow found the key to America's wallets. It turns out that if you lace a high-paced adventure with a story involving the church, large self-flagellating eunuchs and a dorky professor who nobody would actually like in real life (sort of like any athlete, but that's for another time) lacrosse moms everywhere will shell out 30 bucks a pop to read an absurd story. Seriously, though, Brown's latest novel, The Lost Symbol, has somehow sold "well over" one million copies.

The thinking, though, is that some kids out there will become excited about reading by Brown's novel and maybe start along the winding path towards "literature." Heck, they may even read the book on a Kindle and actually start buying books again.

I'm not sure, though, if the blockbuster novel is a reality anymore. For any fervent reader, there is already too much stuff out there, and Amazon has made everything extremely accessible. Every two years or so, a phenom like a Dan Brown novel or the newest Harry Potter (yes, I know the series is over) comes out, but the people who are reading those books are doing so more so that they can feel as if they are riding some type of paper-driven wave instead of actually sparking some type of revival of the novel.

Fiction as an art form will be alive and well as long as there are pockets of people who believe that the written word has the power to cure all. And, for what it's worth, if you are reading this post, I hope you are one of those people. The future of the novel does not reside in blockbusters, which are essentially the pop music of books, but in the novels that somehow provide us all with the sense that someone out there somehow gets it and, in turn, gets us.

After all, that's all that we really want.

An Introduction

This is a blog about popular culture, at its most basic. Over the course of at least the next ten weeks, I will attempt to determine why we care about what we care about and what implications these cultural decisions have on us. From Kanye dissing Taylor Swift to Patrick Swayze to Dan Brown's next blockbuster, I will delve into the stories that we care about the most and give my own take as well as writing about why I think they matter (or if they matter).

I should be back soon with a blogroll, but for now . . . well, I was going to make another Kanye joke, but you really don't need to hear it.