Building the Boardwalk: Narrative Strategies in the Opening Sequence of Boardwalk Empire’s “Pilot”

This is a working draft of my essay on the opening sequence of Boardwalk Empire‘s “Pilot” for my course on Storytelling in Film and Media with Professor Jason Mittell. By all means, there are plenty of points I would like to expand upon in the future, but I think it’s interesting to at least begin considering the various strategies which Terrence Winter and Martin Scorsese employ to get viewers to invest in the narrative and fictional world. The response has been all over the place: some critics have called the exposition heavy-handed, others got exactly what they expected.

Obviously, spoilers ahead. Any feedback and criticism would be most welcome.

Edging on August

au·gust

–adjective
1. inspiring reverence or admiration; of supreme dignity or grandeur; majestic: an august performance of a religious drama.
2. venerable; eminent: an august personage.

How’s this for august, my little baby birds: I was recently accepted to present a tweaked version of my video essay on The Wire at the Re: Humanities digital media symposium—the first undergraduate conference of its kind—this coming fall at Haverford College! Many thanks to my professor Jason Mittell, who introduced me to the event and encouraged me to apply.

Brief Thoughts on Journalistic Blowjobs

(Image from The Sports Hernia Blog)

After the publication of a scathing nine-page profile on M.I.A. by the NYT’s Lynn Hirschberg, the rapper angrily tweeted the writer’s phone number. Not exactly a class-act move, but then again, it’s somewhat understandable after reading the utter disgrace Hirschberg wrought, with lines as brutal as: “‘I kind of want to be an outsider,’ she said, eating a truffle-flavored French fry.” At first, I tweeted my approval of Hirschberg. As Gothamist’s Jake Dobkin once remarked of a Times profile on Lockhart Steele, magazine profiles only seemed to entail a laudatory “blowjob.” It was fresh to hear Hirschberg’s unsparing take on a musician whose radical political statements were largely style and hardly substance.

A Blogger’s Manifesto: How The LOST Finale Taught Me To Write And Live

I should acknowledge from the start that anything I write is not to be trusted. ANY PIECE OF WORK IS A SHOW AND A LESSON. A year ago, I had that written on a post-it with blotchy marker, lest I found myself removing adverbs from my writing to appear “real” or, worse, “humble.”