Monthly Archives: November 2009

Thank you to producer Kevin Sullivan and host Robin Young for granting me a chance to talk about Buppies, black web series and web series in general for their show Here and Now! And thank you to Aaliyah Williams, Buppies producer for doing the show and granting me an interview weeks ago. Click the photo [...]

Originally published at Splice Today. My first post about Precious here. Precious has arrived! For anyone following the film world, the push for Precious, at first titled Push, began months ago, in the beginning of the year. It has been a long haul. Some of us are tired. Now it is here and is bound for [...]

In the academy and in the humanities, we’re trained to be skeptics. It’s almost part of the job. When it comes to representation, the idea that what we see in the media is a reflection on the real world, the academy is still way behind the times, something I’ve written about before. Skepticism has turned [...]

The premiere of Buppies in two weeks seems to have captured a small bit of media attention! I’d like to think my article in The Root, probably the first on the issue, had a little something to do with it, and I’m glad to be researching a topic so fresh. (For my list of black [...]

The Black Web Series Page Due to the tremendous response to my last post on black web series, I’ve created a page with a more visually appealing list of shows I hope to update regularly. I’ll start writing descriptions and short reviews of the shows on the page as well, so check back for more [...]

UPDATE (11/29): MTV screened Valemont today at 6PM and the series is in talks for a possible second season produced for television. ORIGINAL: I’ve been very busy with researching, freelancing, curating, etc. and really I haven’t had much time to sit down and enjoy any of the media I study. With that, instead of going [...]

So at this point I’ve conducted around two dozen interviews with nearly thirty individuals working in the market for original (mostly scripted) web shows. It’s been fun! I still have much more to learn, but, being an academic, have already started writing. It’s what we do. Here is the first full paper I’ve written on [...]

I don’t normally do fashion, but I love it when two of my favorite things come together! Michelle Obama wore a Moschino jacket while visiting the Department of Energy for the National Science Bowl. I noticed the jacket from the fourth episode of this season (the fourth, and, likely, last) of Ugly Betty (“The Wiener, [...]

My first academic article has been published! The article, published in First Monday, titled, “Real Vlogs: The Rules and Meanings of Online Personal Videos,” looks at how users on YouTube talk about what vlogs are “real” or authentic, and “fake” or inauthentic. Here’s the abstract: This paper explores what the “rules” of vlogging (video blogging) are: the [...]

More than three years into her relationship, Kai Soremekun had a knife before her, her boyfriend’s hand on the handle. The emotional abuse had gone too far, and she needed to get out. “I had such a low self-worth at that point,” Soremekun told me. “When I finally got out, I spent a lot of [...]