As always, feel free to leave your comments below.

It’s been my pleasure to have supervised the conversion of the old site to what you see before you. This complex transformation could not have happened without the generous support of our faculty sponsor, Michael Kackman, and our senior editors Marnie Binfield, Jean Lauer, and Alexis Carreiro. Also, many, many thanks to our tireless columnists and our selfless grad editors.

Regards,
Matt

…

I need to make a public declaration: I cannot turn off the hurricane coverage … and I don’t know why. I’m not sure if this is a damning confession (expressing unconscious schadenfreude), an all-too-common heart-felt reaction (an empathic need to connect), or self-preservation. It almost feels as though not exactly knowing why I incessantly watch, is worst than questioning whether (no pun intended) I should watch at all.

Instead of trying to identify a precise answer to this question, I’ll share some of my disparate impressions of the cable news coverage thus far. In no particular order …

I am captivated by the sophisticated techno-science of storm tracking. I love the real-time tracking of Rita’s eye, its fluctuations in barometric pressure, its ever-shifting “cone of uncertainty,” and the ubiquitous clip of the pixilated vortex slowly retracing its ominous route through the gulf’s impossibly colored digital waters … again … and again, in its endless loop. And why does this graphic look more like Munch’s The Scream, than any electronic tool of meteorological divination?

Like Katrina, Rita has emboldened cable news reporters. Even the pre-Katrina-talking-head species now willfully challenge politicians on their disaster relief choices, and cable news channels have actually started producing investigative content. For example, immediate and vociferous public outrage at witnessing 1.5 million citizens making their agonizing stop-and-go exodus out of Houston encouraged the Texas Department of Transportation to open its southbound lanes to the congested northbound traffic. Furthermore, answers were demanded of Governor Rick Perry (Rep.) as to why these empty lanes weren’t made available earlier. CNN has also been running an investigative piece on the New Orleans Police Department, asking whether officers looted private residences following Katrina’s devastation. And many of the cable networks have aired extended interviews with poor survivors, many who are also people of color. This practice, on some level, is commendable.

These natural disasters have ruptured wide fissures of social desperation. Political chicanery, poverty, race and its undeniable intersection are available for public discussion and scrutiny … well, at least for the time being. Both New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s wrenchingly naked plea for assistance, (which is just about the most un-politician-like diatribe I’ve ever heard), and the Bush administration’s bold-faced attempt to spin their pathological commitment to politico-corporate cronyism, evidence the power of natural disasters to highlight the trite and inhumane quality of the political discourse that’s crafted for most news narratives.

Austin has been more directly affected than many other cities in the domestic South/Southwest during these successive calamities. Yet, we Austinites are still able to successfully insulate ourselves from the enormity of the situation (e.g., we don’t have to donate food or money, or visit the convention center). We can experience this televised spectacle as we do most; vicariously, from the safety of our own domestic spaces. But as I anxiously waited in long lines today for gas, batteries, ice, and water (which I have still not located) this hurricane event suddenly became a much more visceral, and lived experience.

…

I named these remarks after Zeno’s Paradox, the famous pre-Socratic philosopher who engineered a number of paradoxes concerning movement and motion. Zeno’s most famous paradox (the dichotomy paradox) states that one can never get from point A to point B because you must always arrive at a midpoint, and that there are an infinite number of successive mid-points between any two fixed points (i.e., between 0 and 1 is .5, and between 0 and .5 is .25, etc.). Ergo, motion is impossible.

For me, Rita’s Paradox has a similar frustrating quality, though its motion (or lack thereof) has more of a moral than metaphysical quality. The paradox is that our televised news coverage has recently had its most resonant moments of clarity when faced with abject travesty. That is, that the disintegration of social support networks and infrastructure offer the greatest catalyst for respectable and responsible journalism. The challenge of Rita’s paradox, as I see it, is to fuel additional and continued televised news reform (i.e., honest, progressive movement) without relying on hellish acts of god.

Please feel free to comment.

In a less than two months, many of us will (again) face the age-old question: “So … what did you do on your summer break?”

This inquiry may have once been met with tales of a family road trip, a voyage to a summer camp, or simply holing-up in a cool, shady spot for long stretches of time. For the academic neophyte (and perhaps the established scholar), however, this question comes armed with a more ominous undercurrent. The inquiry is many things at once — it is probing, rhetorical, and sometimes, accusatory. As in, “What did I do this summer? What did you do this summer?” But before we lose our tempers and become another victim of the summer heat (and there’s plenty to go around here in central Texas), we should pause to remember that real summer breaks, like the cliché about aging wines, only get better with time.

This call to unapologetically enjoy your summer is not an open invitation to revel in wanton sloth. Fortunately, for those of us unable to save us from ourselves, Flow is here to offer a helping hand. How? You have in front of you the very best the web has to offer in television and new media criticism. In a continuing effort to keep our readership (John Hartley’s “Flowers”) mentally fit for the looming fall semester, I am pleased to present Issue 8, another free and healthy offering in mental calisthenics from your friends at Flow.

In this issue, Mary Beth Haralovich hits the road, and offers us a ringside account of The Contender Finale from Las Vegas, a city that also makes a cameo in the Jennifer Wilbanks “Runaway Bride” news narrative, deconstructed here by Diana Negra. Meanwhile, half a globe away, Mimi White reflects on her TV experiences in Finland, comparing its domestic product to American TV fare. Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner focus their attention on the political significance of academic scandals turned media spectacles, as John Downing explores the representations of a different brand of strife in writer-director Paul Haggis’ film, Crash (2004). And rounding out the issue, Megan Mullen investigates the ideological makeup of the programming on AmericanLife TV, while Thomas Streeter questions commonly held notions of commercialism, and how it is positioned to serve political ends.

We encourage all readers to add to the diversity of our dialogues by posting a comment (or two), and hope that FLOW enriches your summer reading and your summer break.

Please feel free to comment.