Last week, Kim Akass blogged about how the US press response to Adolescence (Netflix, 2025) made visible certain blind spots in a culture seemingly unable to identify that a particular kind of masculinity might be a problem. Akass read this very much through a prism of Trump, and I here want to continue this focus in order to add further consideration to the question of why a convicted felon was elected president by the American people.

Everyone is talking about Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s latest venture: the 4-part series, Adolescence, that hit Netflix screens on March 13 ^th . https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/videoplayback.mp4

A CREAM, University of Westminster Conference June 19th and 20th 2025, University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus, LONDON, NW1 5LS Organisers Dr. Christopher Hogg – C.Hogg@westminster.ac.uk (University of Westminster) Dr. Kate McNicholas Smith – K.McNicholassmith@westminster.ac.uk (University of Westminster) Dr. Douglas McNaughton – D.Mcnaughton@brighton.ac.uk (University of Brighton)

Cathrin Bengesser (Aarhus University) in conversation with Francesco Casetti (Yale University) This interview accompanies the translation of “From Paleo- to Neo-Television: A Semio-Pragmatic Approach” by Francesco Casetti and Roger Odin, which was originally published in French in 1990.

Trump is back in office, letting Elon Musk loose and apparently giving in to Russia’s demands as far as Ukraine is concerned, all the while looking to see if he can get access to Ukraine’s minerals. Climate mitigating legislation has been and will be slashed further, while Ulrich Merz, newly elected Chancellor of Germany, is calling for greater European defence spending: these are troubling times.

‘In the not-too-distant future…’ For those of us of a certain age and from a certain geographic range, the lyric above was likely heard being sung by a range of voices including Joel Hodgson, Mike Nelson and/or any number of robot associates.

Co-editors: Gábor Gergely, Júlia Havas, Victoria K. Pistivsek What is “Europe”? The term is far from self-evident. The emerging canon of Eastern European decolonial sociological scholarship shows that Europe is the product of the far-reaching legacies of global colonialism and ongoing ideological, cultural, and geopolitical contestations (Baker et al. 2024; Boatcă and Parvulescu 2020;

Because of the ambiguities inherent in the job, spy dramas tend to have morally grey characters, mutable moralities and can, though do not have to, engage in subversive critique of geopolitics and governments (cf Oldham 2017).

Original call here. Exploitation. Lowbrow. Cult. Underground. Trash. Poverty Row. Programmers. Pulp. Popular. Mass. … These descriptors of the “B” movie apply just as well to what we term “B-TV,” as they describe an aesthetics derived from the industrial realities that produced them.

Editor: Sabrina Mittermeier View the full call here >> https://intellectbooks.com/tv-matters TV Matters is a new series of short monographs (40,000 to 50,000 words) on television series, analysing their production history, cultural context, main themes, as well as fandom and audience reception. The focus is on shows that both have critical acclaim (as reflected by awards, media reviews), but more importantly, are genuinely ‘popular’.

I have something of an ambivalent relationship with travel documentaries.  While I often enjoy them, as someone who partially specialises in media representation and has lived, worked and travelled outside my country of origin for the majority of my adult life, I frequently find myself critiquing the various portrayals.