Brice Ezell
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briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell
@briceezell.bsky.social
640 followers 470 following 2.3K posts

Writer, critic (@PopMatters), teacher. ATL.
PhD in English, University of Texas.
Modern drama, theatre, and philosophy.
Writing a book on Tom Stoppard.
#COYS
https://boxd.it/1rEO5

Videos

Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical bases of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997. .. more

Art 49%
Philosophy 16%
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briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 23d
Humanities academic job seekers wondering if the job market is worth your time: it isn't.

Pinning this to the top of my profile in the hopes that this data helps people who are seeing so much hard work go unrewarded. I thought I'd have a rougher time post-market. This data explains why I haven't.
briceezell.bsky.social Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · Jun 26
The results of my 2024-25 academic job market experiment are in, and the numbers should be instructive to anyone considering university employment these days: don't. It's not worth your time, even if you've done all the work to get a PhD, even if it seems like a dream job.

Results breakdown below.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 8h
My favorite thing about the name (which, I know, is historical) is that it sounds like a straight-to-DVD rip-off of HAMLET. It's like when you read the Q1 text of HAMLET and see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's names as "Rossencraft and Gilderstone."

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 8h
Haven't seen HAMNET yet, so I make this judgment somewhat out of pocket, but are we really about to have a "give it to the Awards-y movie despite all the stone-cold future classics in the field" year?

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 8h
Love this OCEAN'S trilogy cast reunion coming in at the 11th hour. Basher and Danny!

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 9h
I'd have gone SENTIMENTAL VALUE on International Film, but THE SECRET AGENT -- while not perfect -- is the most "transported to another world" I've been in a movie theatre in 2025. Made me want to book a flight to Brazil.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 9h
PTA's movies, to me, have plenty of grounds for criticism on racial and especially gendered grounds, which makes it weird that ONE BATTLE is the movie to get targeted in the way it has, when it's objectively more complex on racial and gender grounds than anything he's done before.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 9h
As a White dude it is not my place to weigh in on Black representation in ONE BATTLE, but: I just don't get this line, or the "fetishizing Black women" line. ONE Black woman is fetishized by one character. All the other Black women are quite competent, and pissed off at the snitch!

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 10h
Whoever had the idea to have sportscasting-style commentators report *betting odds* on awards during the Globes... I'd like a word.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 10h
"Cinematic and Box Office Achievement" is a Mickey Mouse trophy in general, but given the ridiculous flak it took earlier this year, SINNERS winning it is the best possible outcome for an award of this kind.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 10h
Unlike ANORA, though, MARTY has that "Capital-A Acting" thing that's bait for these kind of awards. A deep but subtle performance like, say, Renate Reinsve's in SENTIMENTAL VALUE, will get noms but never the win.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 10h
One thing that always seemed like a reasonable fight: expanding tenure to include lecturer-style gigs. I knew plenty of people in my PhD years who would have been very happy teaching but didn't want to keep up with publish or perish.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 10h
I agree, but insofar as any collective action fight will be difficult, I'd say it redounds better to success if we set the bar at keeping an enviable and good thing, rather than scrapping that for some thing as yet to be defined.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 10h
Rose Byrne an extremely deserving winner for Best Actor, though how the hell she's categorized in Musical/Comedy is baffling to me. In terms of intense, solipsistic performances from 2025, gimme IF I HAD LEGS over MARTY SUPREME.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 10h
Loving PT Anderson's "magpie" speech. A lot of my qualms with the movies of his that I don't buy hook/line/sinker the way Filmsky/Twitter does (e.g. THE MASTER) have to do with his scripts, but with INHERENT VICE and ONE BATTLE he's really unlocked something through Pynchon.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 10h
Nikki Glaser just needs to be a permahost of the Globes. She commits, jokes are the right kind of sleazy for an awards ceremony of the Globes' vibe.

Reposted by Tom Stoppard

ryanboyd.bsky.social
Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 11h
Liquidating civil society, shared epistemological reality, and the biosphere itself, all so a few pedophiles can have backup yachts

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 11h
Digging the Geoguessr feature they go through when they go out to a wide shot of the audience.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 11h
If that's your position, I'm not sure why the professoriate shouldn't fight for universal tenure, insofar as any collective labor effort for standards that would differ from tenure would be just as difficult, if not more so.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 11h
Love these Supporting Actor award choices. After the SAG nominees I wondered if SENTIMENTAL VALUE, my movie of the year, would get iced out of any awards recognition, and Stellan gives an amazing performance. And Teona Taylor, so good in a role that haunts the movie once her character leaves it.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 11h
A live thread of my Globes thoughts.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 11h
I mean, "needs to go" seems superfluous, given the direction tenure's already going. I don't know how tenable it really is as a long term play, but to me, thinking more idealistically, the move should be to collectively advocate for tenure AND robust full-time appointments.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 15h
People be out here talking about the Golden Globes... I think we all know what Golden thing should really be on everyone's mind today www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkxL...
The Golden Calf
YouTube video by Prefab Sprout - Topic
www.youtube.com

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 17h
What is the deal with these calls in NFL games where the refs get together and talk for like 5 minutes before announcing the call? Insanely annoying feature of the game.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 18h
A fantastic conceptualization. Philosophy's important, folks!
markrubin.bsky.social Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 3d
Baseless Skepticism

"When skepticism lacks empirical grounding or logical justification, it ceases to function as a truth-seeking instrument and becomes a performative posture of intellectual superiority."

philarchive.org/archive/BIPABS
Skepticism is widely regarded as the immune system of rational inquiry. However, when skepticism is unmoored from empirical grounding, logical rigor, or proportional standards of evidence, it degenerates into "Baseless Skepticism"—a form of obstructionist cynicism. This paper argues that rational doubt must be treated as a claim requiring justification, specifically subject to the constraints of reality. Drawing on principles of Bayesian inference and virtue epistemology, we formalize the Principle of Demonstrated Competence, arguing that claims surviving adversarial, real-world constraints establish a high epistemic prior. We further propose the Law of Epistemic Symmetry, positing that the rejection of a validated claim incurs a burden of proof identical to its acceptance. We conclude that dismissing demonstrated competence without counter-data is not intellectual rigor, but a violation of the ethics of belief.

Reposted by Tom Stoppard

juddlegum.bsky.social
Judd Legum @juddlegum.bsky.social · 22h
REMINDER: The Trump administration was required by law to release all the Epstein files by December 19 and still has not released 99% of the files

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
but was it really a Sorkin skeet if it didn't have a completely gratuitous Gilbert & Sullivan reference?

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
As fate would have it, booked my first trip back to Chicago in too long yesterday evening. Won't be until March but happy for my favorite city in the meantime.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 2d
30 percent of this movie will be people posing for their action figure shots. Hilarious.

Reposted by Anne Norton, Tom Stoppard, Meredith Farkas , and 2 more

mn50501.bsky.social
Minnesota 50501 @mn50501.bsky.social · 2d
Thank you for telling us you neither serve nor protect. Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud. That was state murder in broad daylight, captured from multiple angles by multiple witnesses, and the people of Minneapolis have eyes.

You support murder.

Reposted by Tom Stoppard

markrubin.bsky.social
Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 3d
Baseless Skepticism

"When skepticism lacks empirical grounding or logical justification, it ceases to function as a truth-seeking instrument and becomes a performative posture of intellectual superiority."

philarchive.org/archive/BIPABS
Skepticism is widely regarded as the immune system of rational inquiry. However, when skepticism is unmoored from empirical grounding, logical rigor, or proportional standards of evidence, it degenerates into "Baseless Skepticism"—a form of obstructionist cynicism. This paper argues that rational doubt must be treated as a claim requiring justification, specifically subject to the constraints of reality. Drawing on principles of Bayesian inference and virtue epistemology, we formalize the Principle of Demonstrated Competence, arguing that claims surviving adversarial, real-world constraints establish a high epistemic prior. We further propose the Law of Epistemic Symmetry, positing that the rejection of a validated claim incurs a burden of proof identical to its acceptance. We conclude that dismissing demonstrated competence without counter-data is not intellectual rigor, but a violation of the ethics of belief.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 4d
Look, people do dumb things in idea, but even floating the idea of a grad student plagiarizing a philosopher like Giorgio Agamben in their DISSERTATION is a catch-it-early-in-writing mistake.