The cast for the next season of Dancing With the Stars has some predictable controversy-stirrers, like Nancy Grace, people who are rehabbing their person and their celebrity, like David Arquette, and people who are not really famous, but are moving from one tranche of reality television to another, like The Hills veteran Kristin Cavallari. But two contestants bear particular mention: J.R. Martinez, an Army veteran who was severely burned in Iraq but is playing a wounded veteran on All My Children, and Chaz Bono.

Bono’s selection is notable, not just because he’s a prominent transgender rights advocate who will be appearing on a staunchly middle-American program, but because Dancing With the Stars has had some controversies about how gay contestants should be handled (Carson Kressley, who once told me my outfit was absolutely fabulous, is also competing). In Israel, a lesbian contestant danced with a heterosexual female dance partner, but I don’t know that that’s been repeated anywhere else.

And Martinez’s inclusion will make very visible someone who is both a representative of the costs of the war in Iraq — he had 32 surgeries to treat his burns — and a demonstration that of a way back from real trauma. Obviously not everyone’s goal is to be a soap star, and I think we’ll have achieved something significant as a society when this is a possible trajectory not just for a burn victim but for an amputee. But still, for veterans and transgendered folks to be offered up as rooting symbols in the same competition is a good thing — especially if it gives me an excuse to watch one of my guilty pleasures.

As an organizations nerd, I’ve felt a certain amount of impatience over the last few episodes of Deadwood as Al Swearengen’s machinations have kept the law at large at a distance from the careful little government he’s building in the camp. But I will admit that I’ve been glad to have the breathing room to see the emotional relationships on the show develop. And boy were these two episodes rollercoaster rides of emotion, to quote the honorable Tracy Jordan.

It’s totally fascinating to see the odd and specific and unexpected gender dynamics of Al objecting to Seth Bullock’s affair with Alma Garrett not because he objects on moral grounds like E.B. Farnum, who snarks that “While little Sofia is off with her tutor, Mrs. Garrett consults with Mr. Bullock,” but because he thinks that it’s distracting the sheriff from his duties. And he has a point. Seth’s having time making veiled conversations with Alma — “Is that my worth?” she asks him at one point. “That’s the amount on deposit,” he tells her. “Your worth is considerably more.” — before falling into bed with her, and he’s short-tempered and ineffectual in dealing with crime, much less establishing himself as an alternate power center in town. That said, Al’s preferred means of rectifying the problem, fighting with Seth until both of them pitch themselves over the balcony, is not a particularly convincing piece of community organizing.

And even worse than the physical aftermath is watching Alma and Martha realize that they’re not the only women in Seth’s life. Especially in a season of Breaking Bad where Anna Gunn’s increasingly taking center stage as Skyler, it’s fascinating to see her in a similarly repressed role, just 120-odd years earlier. Whether it’s her clipped address to Seth as Mr. Bullock, or the look on her face when A.W. Merrick tells her, “The readers of the Black Hills Journal would be interested in your journey and your first impressions of the camp,” only to have Doc note that “You don’t have to give ‘em all,” she’s a marvel. And while Alma and Seth are both naive to think that he’d ever walk away from his responsibilities, it’s still some beautifully vulnerable acting by all the parties involved.

Then there’s Jane’s return to town via what she refers to as “a rigging contraption of my own devising against repeated accidental falls that has temporarily malfunctioned.” It is an utterly glorious comedic moment, and the whole thing illustrates why Jane and Doc may be one of my all-time favorite male-female friendships on television. He can call her an “entangled inebriate” and talks her not just out of her militant insistence that everyone in town should “Keep your fucking distance. Remain on your side of the street. Do not interfere with me in any way.” And he can get her to take off her shirt, an act of extreme vulnerability for a woman who can see being courted by a Finnish man who thinks she’s another man as a joke. Doc may be the only person she’s comfortable being a woman with.

In the context of yesterday’s Game of Thrones discussion, I was reminded of the Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor tumblr, which I quite like. One of the reasons I think it works so well is that “reasonable” doesn’t appear to be required to mean “unattractive” or “disguising one’s gender.”

Obviously, men’s armor often displays sexual characteristics as well as protecting the bearer, whether it’s the nipples on the Batsuit or armored codpieces. If we’re going to have stories where women are warriors and get to pick their own gear, I think it’s reasonable to assume that some characters will pick things that disguise that they’re women or that minimize their sexual characteristics, while others will pick outfits that are built for style and comfort because they think displays of feminine power will unnerve their enemies (though Eowyn’s big reveal has its advantages for smirking after the fact), because riding astride is easier than riding side saddle so you need to wear pants (that necessarily show off more of your legs than skirts) or just because it feels good to display your body in all its fighting trim.

One of the many, many reasons I wish we’d see adaptations of Tamora Pierce’s books is that her female warriors uniformly have awesome fighting gear, from Alanna of Trebond’s gold-washed armor and lioness rampant-emblazoned shield to Beka Cooper’s many, many concealed knives. The Hunger Games should also be good on this score: Katniss, the heroine, tends to wear fairly comfortable clothes in the Arena, but the series is very smart about fashion and public image as something that can be approached strategically and politically, and not only through a gendered lens.

David Sirota is upset that the Defense Department has become very, very good at forcing Hollywood studios to trade script approval for access to information and subsidized rates on equipment for military movies:

The 1986 movie, starring Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis, was the template for a new Military-Entertainment Complex. During production, the Pentagon worked hand-in-hand with the filmmakers, reportedly charging Paramount Pictures just $1.8 million for the use of its warplanes and aircraft carriers. But that taxpayer-subsidized discount came at a price — the filmmakers were required to submit their script to Pentagon brass for meticulous line edits aimed at casting the military in the most positive light. (One example: Time magazine reported that Goose’s death was changed from a midair collision to an ejection scene, because “the Navy complained that too many pilots were crashing.”)

Although “Top Gun” was not the first movie to exchange creative input for Pentagon assistance and resources, its success set that bargain as a standard for other filmmakers, who began deluging the Pentagon with requests for collaboration. By the time the 1991 Persian Gulf War began, Phil Strub, the Pentagon’s liaison to the movie industry, told the Hollywood Reporter that he’d seen a 70 percent increase in the number of requests from filmmakers for assistance — effectively changing the way Hollywood works.

Military movies or movies where the military plays some sort of appearance are always going to be reasonably popular, so the Defense Department has an advantage in promoting itself, but it’s also been very smart and strategic. This strikes me less as an argument to shut down the work the Defense Department does reaching out to the film industry than an argument for other agencies and progressive organizations to be much more proactive about advertising that they are ready and willing to give advice to writers and directors working on a wide array of policy themes. Hollywood Health and Society‘s been very good at doing this on medical and health issues. I know the Center for a New American Security sometimes arranges briefings for people in the movie business. It’s not as if military dramas are the only genre that is inherently popular. There are huge openings on health and on criminal justice in particular for organizations that would be up for providing some free advice in exchange for accuracy in depictions.

Second, there’s a difference between movies that are generally approving of the military and movies that are approving of our current conflicts. It may be awesome that our men in uniform can help kick giant robot alien ass, but I can’t think of a single critically or commercially successful movie that argued that our involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan were a dandy idea and that our troops there are accomplishing their goals without fuss or bother. If there is evidence arguing that teaming up with Optimus Prime makes Americans more likely to support wars of choice, I would love to see it (interestingly, the first Transformers movie portrayed positive relationships between American soliders and the people who live near their base, particularly in the face of a giant robot threat, but I’m not sure that whitewashes the war or makes people more likely to support it). But I’m not sure I think that it is an inherently wasteful or problematic thing to make the case that the people who defend our country are competent and (as long as they live up to the codes set for them) worthy of our respect and appreciation.

Finally, the implication that X-Men: First Class is a military commercial, whatever the Army’s intentions in the joint promotion deal around it, is deeply strange. It’s a movie where the militaries of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union allow themselves to be manipulated to the brink of nuclear war, and then turn on a small minority that they are unfamiliar with and frightened of, and who have been established as sympathetic protagonists, and jointly try to annihilate that tiny group of people. It does not make being in the military look particularly awesome.

Since Aug. 20, more than 400 people have been arrested during protests at the White House against the expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada to Texas. To date, many of the protesters have been ordinary citizens or stars of the environmental movement, but today, movie star Daryl Hannah wrote her contact number on her arm, drew her own poster, and took her place outside the White House gates to get arrested with 76 other people.

“If President Obama approves the Keystone XL pipeline…he will be sentencing us to a future as slaves to fossil fuel dependency,” Hannah told an approving crowd, reminding them renewable energy “already exists and it’s truly liberating…We stand here today to just say no to slavery, to just say no to tar sands, to just say no to Keystone.” The expansion of the pipeline’s attracted criticism both because it would cross a number of fragile environmental sites, and because opponents believe it’s a distraction from finding renewable energy solutions.

Hannah’s no stranger to getting arrested in environmental protests, and I asked her what she hoped this arrest would accomplish.

“Obviously it’s good when pop culture figures come out because it gets a segment of the media that doesn’t pay attention to social or humanitarian issues,” she said. That certainly seemed to be the case today. Photographers swarmed Hannah as she sat on the front line of the protesters, and packed in close to the boundaries the police set up to clear space around the people they planned to arrest. Hannah says she hasn’t spent that much time building up a social media presence, joking, “I’m just not that computer literate,” and noting that while she tweets, “It’s all about action alerts,” rather than offering a window into her social life.

And Hannah emphasized that the movement against Keystone XL has been driven mostly by ordinary people rather than by celebrities, and said she thought that eventually, it would be impossible for the media to treat the White House protests as an aberration. “It’s been building the last couple weeks,” she told me. “At a certain point, it’s going to be impossible to ignore.”

The bridge is yours.

-There will be a third season of Luther.

-Iron Man v. Green Lantern.

-Stephen Soderbergh’s going to explore painting.

-Ten cultural assumptions this year’s college freshman have grown up with.

-The Twin Towers in film:

I think Matt’s not quite right here about the term “guilty pleasure” as it applies to art:

I know it’s just a turn of phrase, but I think the whole conceptual framework of “guilty pleasures” speaks to some weird underlying puritanical elements in American life. Despite the whole “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” thing in the Declaration of Independence, our public culture is very resistant to the idea that people should try to spend more time doing things they enjoy or that producing enjoyment for others is a good thing to do in life.

The other area to which the term’s commonly applied is to food, particularly to foods that we think we shouldn’t eat because we think they are actively detrimental to our health, or to a fitness or weight goal. However frivolous the calculation, there’s a way to quantify the impact of guilty pleasure foods. And I think there often is a Puritanical streak there that’s exemplified by this Yoplait ad that was pulled earlier this year for miming anorexic thought patterns, that sells the idea that you can eliminate the guilt and still have the pleasure:

But there are not actual measurements, or health arguments, or demonstrable proof that listening to, say, classical music makes you a better person than listening to Lil Mama (which, if there’s room for Rye Rye, there ought to be room for the both of them):

This isn’t a moral judgment, or a value one. It’s about social positioning through cultural positioning, with a fluctuating definition of what’s guilty and what’s not. Sometimes it’s the opera, or the ballet, or the symphony that’s non-guilty, and sometimes it’s TV On the Radio. And if you’re going to conflate the two kinds of guilty pleasures, there’s an argument to be made that what’s guilty in pop might help you do a better job of doing guilt-free things for your health.

This piece in Playboy on reality television and mental illness covers a lot of familiar territory, but I was struck by this passage, which seems to undermine the claims of therapeutic shows like Hoarders that they are solely effective interventions into their subjects’ lives:

Paxton echoes this. “I would not be doing this if we were not helping. If we didn’t offer that aftercare, this would absolutely be cruel, because then you’re not giving them the chance to get better.” Besides paying for the cleanup to alleviate whatever crisis exists and, if necessary, making emergency repairs, producers offer therapy and continued work with an organizer. The money can’t be used for anything else, though sometimes it pays for family members to get counseling. A dedicated staff member now coordinates aftercare, researching therapists and following up with the hoarder a few days after the cameras leave. The goal is to have therapy start immediately because, as series producer George Butts says, “it can be traumatic for them when the shows air.” He adds, “Unfortunately, we can’t force them to take mental health therapy.”

He estimates that fewer than half actually do.

Senna expects to be among the majority of hoarders who reject aftercare. “I don’t believe in any way, shape or form I need therapy. There’s nothing wrong with me,” he says, his jacket flecked with sawdust from his lunchtime work yesterday, his black, graying hair unraveling from its wavy curls.

Obviously therapy should be voluntary, but it’s interesting that the claim to treatment after the cameras stop rolling isn’t any sort of guarantee. This is the kind of thing coverage of reality television needs more of: pure numbers. How many folks on therapeutic shows voluntarily continue treatment? How many of them relapse? How many of theme appear to have defeated their phobias and addictions in a way that the medical community would treat as sustainable? Are the instances of reality show participants attempting suicide before their participation in reality programming higher than the general population? And what about after? Do folks on extreme dieting shows suffer health problems?

I’m sensitive to the argument that we should just not watch this stuff, but I think it’s one that’s unlikely to gain broader traction. And at the end of the day, I think people do have the right to sell their experiences, even if caveat venditor is hard to live by if you’re not actually sure what you’re selling, and when vendors seem unwilling to learn all the lessons of previous entrants into the market. It will be harder to do so, but I think it’s more likely to create meaningful change by building a case for regulation of the industry through minimum wage and workplace safety laws than by urging a boycott.

I joked a couple of weeks ago that I wanted a Persepolis video game. Instead, I’m having to settle for a live-action adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Chicken With Plums that has an odd whiff of Roberto Benigni about it, at least in the trailer:

I thought the Persepolis adaptation was both an excellent condensation of Satrapi’s story and a translation of her cartoons into animation, and I’ll admit to wanting more of this. If she’s inclined to do that again, I’d really love to see someone adapt Embroideries, her hilarious book about the sex lives of an intergenerational group of women. I don’t know that a movie could take the exact form of the novel, which is rather conversational, but it’s a lovely book that puts the kind of mainstream sexual and romantic topics that are the subject of American women’s movies on a continuum with issues like arranged marriages and restored virginity. The idea that everyone has the exactly same concerns around the world is silly. But illustrating the commonalities is useful, and makes it easier to absorb the differences.