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In this article, I present an analysis of Steven Soderbergh's The Limey that is informed by auteurism and an effort to unpack the film's antinomies. Although it was not as high profile as subsequent Soderbergh films. The Limey presents an interesting entry in the director's corpus for its stylistic signature and its "liberal" politics; a political posture that, nonetheless, only extends so far in entertaining a critical discourse about the society that produced it. I begin the Investigation by filling in the background. First, I unpack the newer formulations of auteur theory and emphasize themes, stylistic signature, and social determinations in constituting auteurs. Second, I characterize the independent sector of U.S. film production and its relation to the major studios while positioning Soderbergh as a chimerical case between an independent and a studio director. Thereafter, 1 orient to the film and its place within Soderbergh's corpus. I analyze Soderbergh's striking and acclaimed stylistic signature (notably with respect to editing). Proceeding to the themes embedded in the film, I examine some of the antinomies in The Limey and their political valence. In particular, I discuss The Limey's class antinomies, its presentation of the United Kingdom in contrast with that of its former colony, the US and the tropes of femininity that circulate within the film. On the view developed here. Soderbergh's The Limey entertains some fundamental criticisms of the United States, class striation, masculinity and femininity, before making a partial and uneven retreat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contentious post-election discourse that followed the balloting in the 7 November 2000 US presidential election. More specifically, I discuss the post-election coverage in two news media: the venerable Washington Post and the upstart internet daily Salon.com. In developing a comparison between the two, I characterize media-state relations in the US and, second, tease out differences between "old" and "new" media. With these explanatory frameworks in place, I compare the two media with respect to the degree of formality that they present in their coverage of the post-election, the extent to which they do or do not adopt "vox pop" and "insiderly" storylines, and their respective critiques of media as media. The article then directly addresses the content of each publication's coverage of the post-election. I argue that, along with channeling some of the "legitimate controversies" that circulated around the post-election, Salon exceeded the Post in developing an explanatory framework in the aftermath of 7 November. Alongside some op-ed words of circumscribed criticism, the Post closed ranks and garnished the Supreme Court's favorable decision for George W. Bush with legitimacy. By contrast, several of Salon's op-ed pieces addressed their critique to a multidimensional right-wing effort to dictate the political weather with strict construction of the constitution as its final instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the first three films directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. One of the rising auteurs in the U.S. film industry, Anderson's films have generated passionate and mostly favorable responses from audiences and critics. In their narratives and visual style, Anderson's films are striking for their sympathetic portrayals of marginal figures and their audacious use of the film medium to tell stories. In examining the ideology that is inscribed within the three films, I will argue that they strain against the core ideologies of the market and patriarchal family. Although the strain is considerable, the films affirm the ideology of the patriarchal family in part by transposing it to the surrogate family. Similarly, the films present relations of dominance and submission within market relations; nonetheless, slippage occurs and market relations are recuperated as the optimal steering mechanism for society. In this manner, Anderson's films demonstrate how far a liberal critique may extend before closing ideological ruptures that it has opened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation presents an analysis of 650 articles published in the New York Times from 1996 to 1998 concerning the US-backed UN sanctions regime against Iraq. After a brief survey of media-state relations in the US, and background on Iraq before and after the advent of sanctions, I argue that the Times adhered closely to US government claims in crafting its news narratives. Although more than one million Iraqis have died preventable deaths as a result of the sanctions regime, the Times 's reporters and editorialists largely ignored the sanctions' part in the disaster and its civilian impact. Rather, the Times hewed closely to the US government's emphasis on alleged Iraqi defiance of the UN and the attendant narrative of monocausal Iraqi blame for the consequences of the sanctions. Moreover, the Times personalized US policy toward the nation of Iraq as a confrontation with one Iraqi, Saddam Hussein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]