One of Harrogate's absolute favorite sites for getting the latest on vital information in the world of popular culture is indeed The Slug. You can always count on Derrik J. Lang to provide the scoop, and he has been among the first blogs to jump on Bob Barker's retirement from The Price is Right, the show Harrogate watched religiously whilst a small boy staying with babysitters in the summertime. Since The Slug provides such a great AP picture of Barker at his virtuosic best (Come on Down!), Harrogate (left) depicts Barker contributing to one of the great achievments of modern cinema, Happy Gilmore (send the ball home).
Go to The Slug, readers, for all the relevant links and information regarding Barker's retirement, and indeed for many of your pop culture needs that we just can't get to here on The Rhetorical Situation.
A question for our readers does emerge from all this: wonderously, amazingly, almost orgasmically (hat tip Andre Lepecki)! What precisely are the parameters, what is The Rhetorical Situation of the Game Show, as a genre? How do we intellectuals tackle Game Show culture, which has been such an integral part of America (Harrogate in his infinite wisdom of course realizes that other nations have a history with game shows but then, now that Bush has shown us the glories of unilaterality, Harrogate can simply reply: Who Cares about Old Europe?)? Does the genre represent, exploitatively tap into nascent national desires to score the quick buck? Is it simply the voyeurism of the scantily-clad women and the brand new STUFF (can't you just hear Barker, readers, intoning "A NEW CAR!"?) parading in front of the daytime television day after day after day, doing the bidding of one highly charismatic white guy named, simply, Bob?
2 comments:
I love The Price is Right, if only because of the Cliff Hangers challenge that pops up from time to time. Oh, how I love hearing that little mountain man yodel his way up the hill. He will be missed! As will Bob, of course.
I'd forgotten the Cliff Hangers challenge. Good times, good times.
The one that always stood out for me was his putt-putt golfing. Nailed it every time, much to the adulation of his "beauties." Bob will be missed. But perhaps there will be new Bobs on the horizon.
And isn't that a great picture of Bob and Adam?
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