Few sequences in contemporary cin-ema evoke the sense of isolation we get from the sequence where a panicked Jessie refuses to go back into “stor-age,

WALL-E not only anthropomorphizes but Westernizes our robot hero and the loving sequences between WALL-E and the two loves of his life, EVE and his pet cockroach, are loaded with Disney’s signal sentimen-tality

the peculiar self-alienation—and particularly the alienation from the body—experienced by technologically immersed humans

Presenting objects with a utopian kinesthetic, they grant them just a bit more fluidity and less gravity than they have in reality. These films have therein shifted spectatorial possi-bilities—and enabled additional payoffs with repeat viewing (Belton 198).

The de-cision of Pixar to mirror the techniques of the cinema—to render things not in perfect focus but to invent in the realm of the digital blurry focus, shadow and darkness, is an important part of the emotional and philosophical make-up of these films, and links Pixar with “so-phisticated” cinema, making it a part of a cinematic canon in ways that margin-alized animation has rarely been.

Sharing with Toy Story the trope of mounting an overwhelming set of ethi-cal tragedies and concerns beneath the veneer of fun, kinetically-driven enter-tainment, the first several minutes of WALL-E underscore the literal massive-ness of Earth’s problems

resonant with the his-tory of slavery. Jessie tries to convince Woody that he is “valuable property” (a virtue we don’t know quite how to take) and that although he will be sold away from his “owner,” this is a good thing because he will be sold as “a set” with herself, Bullseye, and Pete—mak-ing him part of a new family with which he was always destined to belong. There is much anxiety about being sold away from the “set”—and about being left be-hind. In the same sequence, Stinky Pete even asks Buzz if Andy “broke” him, a double entendre that takes on a disci-plinary resonance within the surround-ing discourse on ownership, auctioning and captivity.

If identification with the object is ex-hilarating, it is also, at moments, fright-ening. The Toy Story films and WALL-Ealso generate important, though embed-ded, insights on both human and inani-mate objectification

Nostalgia is one of the central pleasures of the Pixar films, which not only focus on “classic,” vintage objects (the world worn, low-tech WALL-E and his collection of ephemera, and timeless classic toys in Toy Story), but also on a nostalgia for Hollywood

These films transform the interstitial space between man and his graven objects (robots and toys) into a virtue, exploiting its uncan-niness to provoke a distant kind of fear while maintaining an innocent and un-censorable narrative.

While its uncertain jitters are less obvious than the uncontrolled movement of a child, there is a sense in which adulthood is less about gaining control than about steadily losing control. It is about, as Woody and Buzz discuss, managing to fall gracefully rather than to fly.

Thus, these Pixar features exploit the tendency of the ratings system to judge the “adult-ness” of a film based on its sex and vio-lence quotient alone. They remind us of something that the rating system appar-ently doesn’t know: that sexual titilla-tion and violence are not the only wages of adulthood. They are only manifesta-tions of far deeper crises and struggles. The films revive a broad cinematic discourse open to child and adult alike about the strange, imaginary life of ob-jects and the complexity of the project of material being

The encouragement these toys offer each other to stop struggling and accept death undermines the hope-fulness of previous Toy Story texts, be-cause it reminds us that these toys will ultimately become maimed, broken, and tortured “junk.” It reminds us of the du-bious status of the object—and of the objectified—in a culture built around commodity fetishism. It encourages a kind of revisionist mental return to the previous texts, revising their innocent themes and visual pleasures against the weight of so dreadful a demise. What is more, it places spectators in the position of identifying with the toys in their help-lessness and in their reversion to junk

Reflect-ing perhaps Western concerns about the artificial extension of life through ma-chines, the Toy Story series represents a fear not so much about life’s brevity as about its unendurable length amidst hardly bearable changes.

It may be that the single most impor-tant theme in the Toy Story series is ob-solescence

these films call spectators to meditate on consumer objects but not in ways that always directly moralize consumerism. Instead they prompt adult spectatorial identification with the consumer object.

With optimism, these films suggest that these objects—and perhaps with them, their adult human viewers—can potentially exceed the limits of their frame and return to a position of har-mony with the surrounding beings and objects that define them.

That is, Pixar’s films encourage adult audiences to both encounter and deny each film’s veiled dark content and its implications for them.

The professional aspirations for fe-male characters thus become an oppor-tunity for ridicule within situation com-edies.

Dow demonstrates how the character’s qualities bring her career success while they also cripple her ability to sustain a relationship and start a family

Roles for female characters in early sitcoms were domestic ones, such as housekeeper and child care-taker

“The point of the hegemonic perspective is not that television never changes—it clearly does—but that it is less progressive than we think. The medium adjusts to social change in a manner that simultaneously contradicts or undercuts a progressive premise”

The comedy allows the genre to address taboo subjects through the show’s hu-mor and story lines. While the potential exists for commenting on and possibly even changing how these ideas get rep-resented, the situation comedy instead mostly reinforces the hegemonic under-pinnings and thus the status quo

Overall, neither Amy nor Bernadette are accepted just as intelligent, success-ful women by the group. Instead, their intelligence is not a feature that defines these characters for themselves, but in-stead functions as a means to attract and maintain the attention of their men.

The three main female characters do appear in the work situations at different times, but their locations remain primarily in the domestic ones.

Sitcoms fall into two broad types: domestic comedies and workplace comedies

The valuing of female attractiveness becomes the fourth theme. Steinke ana-lyzes filmic representations of how fe-male scientists are represented as attrac-tive, stylish, and fashionable (39). What the the naïve expert lacks in knowledge she makes up for in appearance (Flicker 312).

Traditional situation comedies fol-lowed rather rigid gender roles in that men were cast as the breadwinners and women as the homemakers. Follow-ing those divisions, men exercised the power over the family, while women catered to supporting men’s needs. The male’s power came not only from earn-ing potential but also from career gains and assumed authority.

Female scientists also struggle to engage in romantic relation-ships. Flicker refers to the lonely hero-ine, or the woman who exhibits extreme competence in her work yet still suffers from the lack of recognition or romance (315–16). In the end, though, a female scientist only can succeed at home life or work life, but not both

Even within these teams, the female scientists do experience chal-lenges and dismissals from their male colleagues

A professional role refers to a char-acter’s job or occupation outside the home. Roles for female characters in early sitcoms were domestic ones, such as housekeeper and child care-taker as in I Love Lucy (1951–1957), The Brady Bunch (1969–1974), and Leave It to Beaver (1957–1963). These domestic restrictions limited the range of oppor-tunities and expression available in that these women received little power and supported others in their roles as wives and mothers (Dow, “Hegemony” 264). These representations shifted during the 1970s and 1980s when more situation comedies featured women with careers and relocated their settings to work-places.

plain how female scientists’ capabilities get downplayed while their ineptitude gets played up in professional settings, sometimes highlighting their lack of skills (359). Flicker calls these women “the naïve expert;” these naïve experts might make some contributions to sci-ence, but their emotions become part of the problems in dramatic arcs

scientists were more likely to be male than female and were more likely to be white than of other ethnic groups (761). They also found that scientists were more likely to be “good” (Dudo et al. 762), but these scientists still overall were not as com-monly represented as other professions

The first theme to emerge is the domi-nance of males and masculinity in sci-ence (Steinke 35). This dominance leads to observations of the lack of female scientists in various media

he found that these characters exhibited features of intelligence but overall re-mained less attractive, sociable, or warm when compared to other television char-acters (Gerbner 41–44).

These appearances and audience reac-tions to them vary form genre to genre. Nonfiction programming includes news, talk shows, and children’s educational programs. Within nonfiction program-ming, scientists often appear for their expertise, but not all programs or audi-ences respect that expertise. For news, experts, including scientists, remain a staple part of these programs. While we might think that their increased use in news programs would affirm people’s views, instead, as their use in programs increases, the public trust in them de-clines

surface some challenging and even undermining of these stereo-types do appear, those challenges re-main short-lived in light of the situation comedy’s goals to entertain while rein-forcing the status quo.

It concludes by suggesting that while on the surface there is some challenging and even undermining of these stereotypes, those challenges remain short-lived in light of the situation comedy’s goals to entertain while reinforcing the status quo.

occurred to him to claim a Latino identity

Regulation through architecture is just as powerful as law, but it is less explicit, less identifiable, and less familiar to courts, legislators, and the general public

system in crisis.

We’ll start with extraction which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation which is a fancy word for trashing the planet

improves the scoring of co-occurrences and enhances PolySearch2's ability to distinguish genuine associations from incidental co-occurrences that arise by chance