I had high hopes for director Kathryn Bigelow’s House of Dynamite, a new Netflix movie about U.S. nuclear command and control. There’s so much potential for cinema to unpack the dilemmas and tragedies of living under a nuclear sword of Damocles, and my initial...
There is perhaps no greater film institution than the James Bond franchise. Over 27 movies and 59 years from Doctor No (1962) to Goldfinger (1964) to the modern era of Goldeneye (1995) and Skyfall...
[As two fellow NGO researchers, Wendy and Maryam are going to collaborate on some posts to provide contrasting views on hot-button issues related to NGOs. Think of us as the Siskel and Ebert of NGOs...
More information about the genesis of this panel here. Paper abstracts here. Hope to see you February 18 in the Grand Salon 3 at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans at 4:00!
Editor's note: this post first appeared on my personal blog. 1. Tensions in the South China Sea are rising. Exhibit A (h/t Sean B. Rogers), exhibit B (h/t Jay Ulfelder). Right now, all eyes are on Ukraine. And rightfully so. But this is one to watch too. 2. Speaking of Ukraine, the National Interest wonders if that crisis could spark a world war (h/t Charli Carpenter). The article is a bit sensationalistic, and I doubt anyone would have written it if all this had happened in 2013 ("99 years ago" just doesn't have the same ring to it), but there are some good points here. I wouldn't put the...
Editor's note: this post originally appeared on my personal blog. It contains some links to posts that appeared here at the Duck. 1. An interview with Jim Fearon about Ukraine. Lots of good stuff here, both about Ukraine and in general. As you'd expect. 2b. Some thoughts from Branislav Slantchev about Russia's Cold War Syndrome. c. Anna Pechenkina reacts. d. Slantchev responds. 3. Still want to read more about Ukraine? Okay, check out Taylor Marvin on why it doesn't make much sense to use force in Syria in order to signal resolve. I agree. Using force in one crisis to influence perceptions...
Editor's note: this post previously appeared on my personal blog. I've been doing links posts on Tuesdays over there for a while now, so I guess I might as well start cross-listing them. 1. Excellent post by Reed Wood on targeting civilians in war. In it, he discusses two recent papers (one by himself and my colleague Jake Kathman, another by fellow PSU PhD Jakana Thomas) showing that insurgents who kill civilians—who resort to terrorism—do better than those who don't. All standard caveats about correlation and causation apply, of course, but bear in mind that there's good reason to...
The Chinese state media could perhaps be forgiven for mistaking fictional Battlestar Galactica blueprints for future US fleet schematics this week, given this. This incident has me thinking about Nexon/Neumann's argument regarding the fuzzy relationship between science fiction and ""reality."" (Yes, you did just read scare quotes in scare quotes.) In their Harry Potter and International Relations introduction, they point out that the "reality" we distinguish from "fiction" is itself expressed and accessed through representations that themselves include elements of fiction and narrative....
Daniel Drezner writes that Meghan McCain's proposition that attention paid to Miley Cyrus can crowd out attention paid to Syria is bunk. With all due regard to Drezner, let me debunk the bunk claim---or, at least, show that the "Twerking Kills" hypothesis is plausible: This paper studies the influence of mass media on U. S. government response to approximately 5,000 natural disasters occurring between 1968 and 2002. These disasters took nearly 63,000 lives and affected 125 million people per year. We show that U. S. relief depends on whether the disaster occurs at the same time as other...
In our conclusion to Kiersey and Neumann's Battlestar Galatica and International Relations, Peter Henne and I lament the relative lack of interest among cultural-turn international-relations scholars in video games. Our case rests on a comparison of the number of people who have played franchises such as Halo and Mass Effect to those who have watched the re-imagined BSG. But the downside to neglect isn't simply about the size of audience and consequent real-world significance. Non-gamers may not know it, but recent years have seen a wave of experimentation in video games driven by the rise...
In all the media frenzy over “killer robots,” Terminator imagery comes up a lot. So do references to Battlestar Galactica. So does a specific scene from Robocop, soon to be remade to resonate with public fears of domestic drones. These iconic narratives invoke a recurrent theme in American science fiction about lethal robot malfunctions or uprisings against their human creators. So prevalent is this theme in anti-killer-robot media coverage that some have argued concern over autonomous weapons is a product of science fiction itself: Hollywood is apparently to blame for priming the public...
Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post settled on a theme for her extremely negative review of the new "The Lone Ranger" flick. Indeed, one might argue that developing a unifying thread is an important part of short-form writing. It holds everything together and provides the reader with a single, if stylized, takeaway. He basic theme? That The Lone Ranger tries to combine too many different themes, tones, and film elements. It suffers from such a severe case of summer blockbuster-itis that it pushes through mashup, beyond potpourri, and into full-blown incoherence. As she writes: What’s more,...