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martha shearer

@marthashearer.bsky.social

4.6K followers 1.6K following 440 posts

asst prof in film studies, university college dublin. film/tv + real estate since 2008 • nyc + hollywood musical • musicals at the margins • women and new hollywood. she/her https://letterboxd.com/pauseforthejet/ https://people.ucd.ie/martha.shearer/

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · Apr 15

here is my new article on mad men, real estate, the past, the future (open access!): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
this is part of an upcoming special issue of rethinking history on "memories of the future" edited by louis bayman and tim vermeulen

‘Undeveloped property’: Mad Men, crisis, and real estate
Martha Shearer

ABSTRACT
Mad Men is perhaps the preeminent example of nostalgia television of the last 20 years. And yet its version of the Sixties is relatively uninterested in what Fredric Jameson has characterised as that decade’s ‘shared feeling that everything is possible’. Instead, its primary concern is the feeling of being unmoored in history, encapsulated in the falling man of its title sequence, but also in its formal shifts between delay, deferral and slowness and the shock of historical and narrative events. As a number of scholars have observed, that slowness calls attention instead to the image and to space, and especially to production design. In this essay, I argue that the show increasingly calls attention to that space as real estate, with seasons punctuated with domestic and commercial real estate sales and acquisitions, real estate transactions as major plot points, and the introduction of real estate agent and property developer characters in its final season. I suggest that real estate, in both aesthetic and narrative terms, is critical to the show’s ambivalence about the future, caught between optimism regarding the expansion of global capitalism and knowledge of crises that follow, both in the 1970s and in 2008.

[now attentive and loving readers of my posts will know that there is a typo in there that they've told me is getting fixed, and if you, dear reader, notice it can I please assure you that I am not illiterate, cheers]

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Sharae Deckard @sharaerua.bsky.social · 11h

UCD BDS & UCD Justice for Palestine ask UCD students and workers to join the national Workplace Standout for Gaza on 16th Oct at 1 PM. Walk outside your workplace with a sign or flag, and if you can, join the rally organised by UCD students in front of Newman Arts at 1 PM.

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 17h

the old is dying and the new cannot be born (old loafers are falling apart, new loafers not broken in yet)

martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 1d

great, well done everyone.

SF conundrum: Mansion shortage hits as AI booms
City just flush with cash’ as latest batch of tech barons shop for luxury digs

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 2d

lol

he said that 'comprehensive due diligence' was done, but the idiot of the €3,300 tent issue was "probably buried somewhere in the recesses of his (jim gavin's) mind".

martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 2d

can't vote in this election, just here for a good time

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Susan Murray @murraysd.bsky.social · 2d

NYU-MCC is hiring! Asst. Prof in the area of “Media and Global Cities.” Please help us get the word out.
apply.interfolio.com/174886

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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? @ahhhhhlt.bsky.social · 3d

Hi guys. I’m the most insufferable person you’ve ever interacted with. Here’s why you should be nice to robots and computer programs billionaires are using to take your jobs and your future on this planet

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Paul T. Levin @paultlevin.bsky.social · 4d

““They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,” the Turkish activist ErsinÇelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.”+

Israel accused of detaining Greta Thunberg in infested cell and making her hold flags

Activist tells Swedish officials she has been subjected to harsh treatment, including insufficient food and water

www.theguardian.com

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Rob Delaney @robdelaney.bsky.social · 7d

Livestream of Global Sumud Flotilla as they approach Gaza. Watch & share: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEN2...

Tracker of Global Sumud Flotilla as it approaches Gaza

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 8d

thinking about the time i was in a dublin pub after a book launch and an irish colleague contextualised something I was saying by shouting SHE'S FROM THE LAND OF DOGGING

keir starmer's horrible racist little weasel face saying "that's real britain"

martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 8d

Lyrically, Summer's rendition is also curious, in that it adds the word "Chinese" to clarify what type of checkers was being played.

martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 8d

whatever happens there is always macarthur park suite

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 12d

this guinness show isn't very good is it

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 15d

JOB: lecturer/assistant professor in global film and media studies.

5yr contract, salary scale €64,753-€102,538, closes noon (Irish time) on October 20th.

pls share and lmk if you have any questions!
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU194/l...

ad for job at ucd, crucial para reads:
We welcome applications for the post of Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Global Film and Media Studies. We are

interested in applications from candidates who can expand the geographical and historical range of our subjects, and

particularly from those with expertise in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and/or Latin America. Those with
expertise in indigenous media cultures from any region are also welcome. Film and Media Studies is a vibrant, always-
growing area of teaching and research in UCD, and we are seeking an excellent academic with a proven track record of teaching, research and publication to expand the range of our expertise. The post offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to the design and development of our expanding undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and to collaborate with colleagues to build and promote the subject's reputation for excellence in research. Candidates will be asked to teach a first year module, Media and Globalization, as well as being able to offer ambitious and innovative ideas for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in aspects of their regional specialty, global cinemas and film histories, as well as research-focused modules for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate seminars.

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 15d

dream apartment

Dr Florence H R Scott @florencehrscott.bsky.social · 15d

Having a little autumnal social media break in an attempt to achieve whatever this is

Mice from brambly hedge sitting by an open fire

martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 15d

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 18d

the bodyguard soundtrack

Carlos Estrada @ctothelos77.bsky.social · 20d

What is Dad playing?

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 18d

the virgin strether vs the chad chad is this anything

martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 21d

The Mirror Has Two Faces - teaching example

YouTube video by English Wiki

youtu.be

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 21d

incredible moment in the mirror has two faces when jeff bridges gets some pedagogical training from babs and takes his jacket off to keep the kids interested

jeff dressed as boring professor (bowtie)

jeff dressed as interesting professor (jacket off to remind you he's hot. also he's wearing jeans now)

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🇵🇸 Dean Tāne 🇵🇸 @dean-tane.bsky.social · 21d

This honestly should’ve been the bigger scandal for Rayner than her underpaying stamp duty

Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 21d

No words.

The lives of those living in Gaza are deemed less important than maintaining relations with Israel and, by proxy, the US. At the personal level, on Labour's doorsteps, this approach plays out in the most callous of ways. Dalloul al-Neder is a Palestinian refugee from Gaza, who was a constituent of the former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner.
He got to know her, meeting several times: she visited his takeaway shop in 2019 and posed for pictures, declaring "Palestine must be free". She took him on a tour of parliament.

PHOTO: Dalloul al-Neder, who lives in Manchester, with an image of his late mother - he has lost several family members in Gaza bombings.
Photograph: Sean Hansford/MEN Media

Within weeks of the genocide beginning, in October 2023, his mother, brother, sister-in-law and two young nieces were killed by an Israeli airstrike. Desperate to evacuate his wife and four-month-old daughter - who had been buried under rubble three times by Israeli attacks - he emailed Rayner twice to seek help evacuating his family. He says received no response.

In January 2024, he attended a Labour fundraiser in Stockport addressed by Rayner and her colleague, Jonathan Reynolds, and got to his feet, clutching pictures of his dead mother, begging her to support a ceasefire, emotionally declaring "I lost my family in Gaza". The whole tawdry episode is on camera: he was aggressively ejected from the meeting and on to the street. Rayner did nothing, except to say "thank you, you've made your point". She then unfollowed him on social media. Days later, she was interviewed by Sky News' Beth Rigby, who framed the incident as an example of the threats politicians face, linking it to the murder of the MPs Jo Cox and David Amess.
Since then, so many of Neder's relatives have been slaughtered by the Israeli state that their names take up three pages of a notebook.

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 22d

I once got an A on an exam answer on postwar american tv that I wrote based purely on knowledge gleaned from QUIZ SHOW. rip and thank u robert redford

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martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 23d

how many fascists do you think it takes to kill someone

martha shearer @marthashearer.bsky.social · 23d

if I see one more person saying oh the people's vote march was bigger i am going to lose it

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