Tom Nicholas

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is the first interactive movie (certainly the first live action interactive movie) in some time to have achieved both popular and critical success.

The Poetics by Aristotle is one of the earliest works of literary theory or dramatic theory. Composed between 330 and 350BC, Aristotle's Poetics is a treatise on Greek Tragedy and theatre which examines how the narrative structure of Greek plays such as the Oresteia by Aeschylus or Oedipus Rex by Sophocles brings about catharsis (or katharsis) in an audience.

Need The Society of the Spectacle explained? Well, in this episode of What the Theory?, we’re doing just that.

Reading classic books can often seem daunting. Classic literature books within the English Literature canon come with a fair amount of cultural baggage and, because of this, many people are put off reading classics. Yet, since I've started trying to read more classics, I've been really enjoying the works of George Eliot, James Joyce, Charles Dickens and others.

Fuelled by my impatience for the release of The Good Place Season 4, today’s episode of Politix takes a look at the moral philosophy of The Good Place (created by Michael Schur for NBC) in order to consider what the show might reveal about classism in contemporary society and our tendency to conflate morality and class.

Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author is a seminal text in the development of literary theory. Often considered the moment when structuralism gave way to poststructuralism as the dominant approach to cultural analysis, in The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes argues not only that we should not place too much emphasis on authorial intent when analysing a cultural text but also that the popular conception of the act of authorship might be altogether wrong.

James Joyce’s Ulysses is perhaps the definitive example of literary modernism. And, despite its reputation as one of the most difficult books to read in all of English Literature, Ulysses by James Joyce—a retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey set in 1910s Dublin, Ireland and featuring such unforgettable characters as Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus (of A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man) and Molly Bloom) can be an incredibly engaging and rewarding read.

In my previous video on the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, I focussed on creating a summary of the Society of the Spectacle, explained in a fairly general sense, particularly placing within the context of the Situationist International, May 1968 and Debord's wider work on situationism.

As promised: a Q&A! I was gonna wait to put this out until reaching 15,000 subs but, ever keen to keep to schedule, it's going out a few days before. So let's just pretend, okay?

In this introduction to Foucault, we consider the relationship between knowledge and power through looking (primarily) at three books by Michel Foucault: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, The Order of Things and The History of Sexuality (as well as, very briefly, History of Madness—sometimes published as Madness and Civilisation—and The Birth of the Clinic).

Black Mirror Season 5 was released just a couple of weeks ago and Striking Vipers, starring Anthony Mackie, kicks things off with style (and the following episodes, Smithereens and Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, weren't too bad either). Having made a couple of Black Mirror analysis videos in the past, I thought I'd put some of the concepts surrounding queer theory, sexuality, gender and masculinity that we've begun to take a look at in my What the Theory? series into practice in unpacking this new episode and exploring the politics of new Black Mirror.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (recently the subject of a television adaptation with George Clooney in the role of the ruthlessly ambitious Colonel Cathcart for US streaming service Hulu) is one of the classic books of the twentieth century. In this Catch 22 summary and analysis video, I take you through a book report which outlines some of the background and context surrounding the book (and its author Joseph Heller) as well as discussing its style and (without spoilers) providing a brief plot summary.

Structuralism is a form of literary theory which, inspired by semiotics and the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, emerged in France in the 1950s. In this week’s episode of What the Theory?, we take a look at how structuralism and structuralist theory enable us to identify the underlying structures which inform how literature, film, performance, visual art and all other forms of cultural text are created and read.

As my Society of the Spectacle videos have been so well received, I thought I'd try out a slightly more overtly political video, putting ideas such as episteme (explored in my What the Theory video on Michel Foucault), Spectacle and Capitalist Realism (a concept developed by Mark Fisher and discussed in my second video on Guy Debord).

Neoliberalism (or neoliberal capitalism) is a term which gets thrown around a lot in cultural and political discourse. Is it often used to describe the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent premierships of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and the adjective "neoliberal" continues to be used as a derogatory phrase in the ongoing Democratic debates in the US. Yet it is also used with reference to the "gig economy" and services such as Uber, Deliveroo and Airbnb.

Copyright and Intellectual Property are issues that have prompted a number of controversies recently. The Dark Horse vs Joyful Noise court case in which Katy Perry was found to have infringed on the intellectual property rights of Christian rap artists Flame, for instance, recently provoked a great deal of astonishment online (and inspired a fantastic video by musicologist Adam Neely on the flaw in copyright law as it currently applies to music). Beyond this, the "fair use" or "fair dealing" doctrines which essentially allow for legal copyright infringement for the purposes of parody, commentary and critique regularly draw the frustrations of YouTube creators hit with a copyright claim (see, for instance, Nintendo's copyright policy which, until it was recently changed, was seen as somewhat draconian).

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord has been drawn upon frequently in recent years, particularly as a way of explaining the politics of Donald Trump. As “fake news” and “alternative facts” have dominated our political discourse, many have sought to see whether Debord’s concept of the spectacle and his other situationist writings might offer some insight into a world which has seemed to have lost sight of what is real and what is not.

Derrida, deconstruction and poststructuralism can all be sources of much confusion. In today’s episode of What the Theory?, I provide an overview of poststructuralism including the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler and other key figures in poststructuralist theory.

It’s been a few months since my 15,000 subs Q&A and, as I enjoyed it so much, I thought I’d make a follow-up! Packed with questions from subscribers and patrons on topics including semio-capitalism, Jean Baudrillard, poststructuralism, art, politics and some reflections on my PhD.

Unlike most developments in the employment market, the Gig Economy has received a great deal of press attention and established itself firmly as a point of reference in the popular consciousness. In recent years, increasing numbers of people have turned to services such as Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo, Just Eat, TaskRabbit and Fiverr as either a side hustle or their main source of income.