The Silence of the Lambswool Cardigans
By Rebecca Solnit
Originally printed in Orion
Reposted at Alternet
There was a time not so long ago when everything was recognizable not just as a cup or a coat, but as a cup made by so-and-so out of clay from this bank on the local river or woven by the guy in that house out of wool from the sheep visible on the hills. Then, objects were not purely material, mere commodities, but signs of processes, human and natural, pieces of a story, and the story as well as the stuff sustained life. It's as though every object spoke -- some of them must have sung out -- in a language everyone could hear, a language that surrounded every object in an aura of its history.
"All commodities are only definite masses of congealed labor-time," said Marx, but who now could dissolve them into their constituent histories of labor and materials, into the stories that made them about the processes of the world, made them part of life even if they were iron or brick, made them come to life? For decades tales have circulated of city kids who didn't know that milk came from cows, and more recently the inability of American teenagers to find Iraq on a map made the rounds, but who among us can picture precisely where their sweater or their sugar comes from?
I've been thinking about that because a new shopping mall has opened up at the eastern foot of the Bay Bridge, in what was once, according to the newspaper, the biggest shell mound in northern California (though the town I grew up in claimed the same distinction for the Miwok mound it bulldozed -- without excavation for a shopping center -- in the 1950s). From the 1870s to the 1920s, this place was Shellmound Park, an amusement park, racetrack, dance hall, and shooting range, but Prohibition put the pleasure grounds out of business and the mound was bulldozed for industry. The remains of seven hundred Ohlone people that an archaeologist snatched from the construction site in 1924 are still at the University of California at Berkeley. Meanwhile, the industrialized site hosted paint and pesticide factories that eventually made it into a wasteland so toxic that those venturing into it wore moonsuits. It was reclaimed for shopping, and the cleanup disturbed the Ohlone remains that hadn't already been bulldozed.
The street that goes out there is still called Shellmound, but the mall itself hosts all the usual chains that make it impossible to know if you're in Phoenix or Philadelphia: Victoria's Secret, Williams-Sonoma, Express, all three versions of the Gap corporation, including Old Navy and Banana Republic, all laid out on a fake Main Street. Anti-Gap protestors haven't arrived yet, though they are frequent presences in downtown San Francisco, decrying both the Gap's reliance on sweatshop labor and the clearcutting of old-growth redwood forests in Mendocino owned by the Gap's CEO (see Gap Sucks ). But the day the mall opened, activists from the International Indian Treaty Council handed out flyers protesting the desecration of a burial ground. As a substitute for protecting the actual site, the city of Emeryville has offered a website with information about it, as if a place could be relocated to cyberspace. The mall is a distinctly modern site, a space that could be anywhere into which commodities come as if out of nowhere.
In "The Making of the English Working Class," Engels recounts the crimes behind the production of everyday things -- ceramics, ironware, glass, but particularly cotton cloth. He wrote in a time when objects were first becoming silent, and he asked the same thing that the activists from Gapsucks.org do, that we learn the new industrial languages of objects, that we hear the story of children worked into deformity and blindness to make lace, the story of the knifegrinders with a life expectancy of thirty-five years, or nowadays the tales of sweatshop, prison, and child labor. These industrial stories have always been environmental stories too, about factory effluents, cotton chemicals, the timber industry, the petrochemical industry.
Somewhere in the Industrial Age, objects shut up because their creation had become so remote and intricate a process that it was no longer readily knowable. Or they were silenced, because the pleasures of abundance that all the cheap goods offered were only available if those goods were mute about the scarcity and loss that lay behind their creation. Modern advertising -- notably for Nike -- constitutes an aggressive attempt to displace the meaning of the commodity from its makers, as though you enter into relationship with very tall athletes rather than, say, very thin Vietnamese teenagers when you buy their shoes. It is a stretch to think about Mexican prison labor while contemplating Victoria's Secret lavender lace boycut panties. The Western Shoshone rancher and land-rights activist Carrie Dann, whose own family graveyard has been flooded by a goldmine pumping out groundwater to get at the gold below, once remarked to me that everyone who buys gold jewelry should have the associated spent ore delivered to their house. At Nevada's mining rates, that would mean a hundred tons of toxic tailings for every one-ounce ring or chain you buy.
The objects are pretty; their stories are hideous, so you get to choose between an alienated and ultimately meaningless world and one that makes terrible demands on you. Most consumers prefer meaningless over complicated, and therefore prefer that objects remain silent. To tell their tales is to be the bearer of bad news -- imagine activists as Moses coming down from Sinai but cutting straight to Leviticus, the forty thousand prohibitions: against shrimp (see Monterey Bay Aquarium), against strawberries (methyl bromide, stoop labor; see Eric Schlosser and Strawberries), against gold (see Great Basin Mine Watch), and on and on. It's what makes radicals and environmentalists seem so grumpy to the would-be consumer.
Maybe the real question is what substances, objects, and products tell stories that don't make people cringe or turn away. For the past half century the process of artmaking has been part of its subject, and this making becomes a symbolic act that attempts to substitute for the silence of all the other objects. But nobody lives by art alone. There's food from the wild, from your own garden, from friends, ancient objects salvaged and flea-marketed, heirlooms and hand-me-downs, local crafts, and a few things still made with the union label, but it's not easy for anyone to stay pure of Payless and Wal-Mart. Good stories, too -- pricey organic and free-range and shade-grown food that is only available in the hipper stores of the fancier regions -- can be a luxury.
Some of the enthusiasm for farmer's markets, which are springing up like mushrooms after rain, is of meeting objects that aren't mute, because you see the people who grew the produce and know the places they come from are not far away. This alternative economy feeds people who want to be nourished by stories and connections, and it's growing. Some farmer's markets are like boutiques with little bunches of peas or raspberries displayed and priced like jewels, but I go to an intensely multiethnic mobscene called Heart of the City Farmer's Market. The food, even some of the organic stuff, is pretty cheap and everyone is present, including the homeless who hang out in that downtown plaza all week anyway, and the locals who use the market to make up for the way supermarkets boycott poor neighborhoods. Seeing the thorn scars on the hands of the rose growers there was as big a step in knowing what constitutes my world as realizing that, in this town where it never snows, our tapwater is all Sierra snowmelt.
What bothers me about the mall is its silence, a silence we mostly live in nowadays; what cheers me are the ways people are learning to read the silent histories of objects and choosing the objects that still sing.
Rebecca Solnit wrote the essay for photographer John Pfahl's new book Extreme Horticulture. It's titled "The Botanical Circus, or, Adventures in American Gardening."
This article originally appeared in Orion, 187 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230, 888/909-6568, ($35/year for 6 issues).
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Eminent Domain in Action, Pt. 2
On June 23 Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes and already Cleveland has begun the charge to claim private property for corporate use, in this case Progressive insurance (from a post on Scratchings):
Eminent domain: Progressive seeks man's land in Mayfield Village
Most telling is the city's condemnation of the private property as not being used effectively (the man uses it for storage, work and research, not for a residence--is Progressive planning on housing its executives in their headquarters?) and the city's rosy understanding of Progressive's benefit to the community structure (when we know the tax breaks that are cut for corporate move like this).
More and more Corporations Rule the World
Eminent domain: Progressive seeks man's land in Mayfield Village
Most telling is the city's condemnation of the private property as not being used effectively (the man uses it for storage, work and research, not for a residence--is Progressive planning on housing its executives in their headquarters?) and the city's rosy understanding of Progressive's benefit to the community structure (when we know the tax breaks that are cut for corporate move like this).
More and more Corporations Rule the World
NOW: Milton Glaser and the Design of Dissent
NOW
Intro to the show which I am watching as I write this--Highly Recommended!:
The NOW site which includes many other sources
The Design of Dissent Exhibit
Intro to the show which I am watching as I write this--Highly Recommended!:
The careful crafting of images and messages on TV, in advertising, and in politics is shaping the way Americans think and act. In uncertain times, legendary graphic artist and marketer Milton Glaser is questioning how people's responses to these symbolic messages is affecting democracy. David Brancaccio interviews Glaser for his thoughts on what the intersection of design and politics has done to the way Americans discern between truth and propaganda and how it's affected our ability to question the politics of the moment. "Everything is spun in terms of achieving a certain result," he says. "The fascinating thing about it is that the public, who's grown up conditioned by advertising, perfectly accepts political misrepresentation this way." For over 50 years, Milton Glaser has not only influenced the world of graphic design, but has had an impact on American culture. A founder of NEW YORK MAGAZINE, which became the model for city magazines around the nation, Glaser has worked in a wide range of design disciplines including print graphics and corporate identity, environmental and interior design, as well as design in publishing, music, theater, film, and civic enterprise. His 1976 "I ♥ NY logo" has been described as "the most frequently imitated logo design in human history." Glaser's work has been exhibited world-wide, and he is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His recent exhibition and book THE DESIGN OF DISSENT, which showcases over 100 political posters and other graphic art from around the world, examines the graphic response to the constraints of government to expose the truth beneath the surface of public discourse.
The NOW site which includes many other sources
The Design of Dissent Exhibit
Stan Goff: It's Time To Build a Mass Movement
(Courtesy of Scratchings and The River)
It’s time to build a mass movement
by Stan Goff
Feral Scholar
Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn’t come from the pen of FDR. The end of “separate but equal” didn’t come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy. It’s time to re-learn those lessons and build a new progressive mass movement in the United States.
Mass movements are against the law
Mass movements exist outside electoral politics, and outside the law, or they don’t exist at all. Mass movements are never respecters of law and order. How can they be? A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. Mass movements accomplish this through appeals to shared sets of deep and widely held convictions among the people they aim to mobilize, along with acts or credible threats of sustained and popular civil disobedience.
Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn’t come from the pen of FDR. The end of “separate but equal” didn’t come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy.
Entire Essay
It’s time to build a mass movement
by Stan Goff
Feral Scholar
Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn’t come from the pen of FDR. The end of “separate but equal” didn’t come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy. It’s time to re-learn those lessons and build a new progressive mass movement in the United States.
Mass movements are against the law
Mass movements exist outside electoral politics, and outside the law, or they don’t exist at all. Mass movements are never respecters of law and order. How can they be? A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. Mass movements accomplish this through appeals to shared sets of deep and widely held convictions among the people they aim to mobilize, along with acts or credible threats of sustained and popular civil disobedience.
Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn’t come from the pen of FDR. The end of “separate but equal” didn’t come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy.
Entire Essay
Friday, July 01, 2005
Cory Doctorow: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
I haven't read this yet, but I am very interested and will probably get a copy to read on my trip to Banff, Canada in July.
What I want to do here is just say thanks to Cory for staying true to his creative commons philosophy by once again concurrently making the book available online. I still enjoy my books in "book-form," but I appreciate the symbolic gesture and I'll definitely get a hardback copy (something I rarely pay for at cost).
Website for Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Also Cory's weblog:
Craphound
What I want to do here is just say thanks to Cory for staying true to his creative commons philosophy by once again concurrently making the book available online. I still enjoy my books in "book-form," but I appreciate the symbolic gesture and I'll definitely get a hardback copy (something I rarely pay for at cost).
Website for Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Also Cory's weblog:
Craphound
Silja J.A. Talvi: Torture Fatigue
Torture Fatigue
By Silja J.A. Talvi
In These Times
“The Christian in me says it’s wrong,” Army Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. said of torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “But the corrections officer in me says I love to make a grown man piss himself.”
Photos taken of him demeaning captives at Abu Ghraib exposed Graner as the sadist that his surroundings allowed him to be. But are the differences between brutal correctional officers like Graner and other Americans as stark as we would like to think?
An acquaintance of mine recently admitted how much he enjoyed watching the torture scenes in the new blockbuster, Sin City. “I know it’s strange,” he said, “but there’s something I get out of seeing torture and violence like that on the screen. It’s like it’s some kind of release.”
Entire Essay
Also check out from Psychology Matters:
Demonstrating the Power of Social Situations via a Simulated Prison Experiment
By Silja J.A. Talvi
In These Times
“The Christian in me says it’s wrong,” Army Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. said of torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “But the corrections officer in me says I love to make a grown man piss himself.”
Photos taken of him demeaning captives at Abu Ghraib exposed Graner as the sadist that his surroundings allowed him to be. But are the differences between brutal correctional officers like Graner and other Americans as stark as we would like to think?
An acquaintance of mine recently admitted how much he enjoyed watching the torture scenes in the new blockbuster, Sin City. “I know it’s strange,” he said, “but there’s something I get out of seeing torture and violence like that on the screen. It’s like it’s some kind of release.”
Entire Essay
Also check out from Psychology Matters:
Demonstrating the Power of Social Situations via a Simulated Prison Experiment
Logo: First American Basic Cable Channel Devoted to Gay Programming Launches Tonight
This is a good move to increase positive representation of homosexuals during a repressive period.
In regards to the article I can sympathize with Monica Mehta's enthusiasm, but it is kind of naive to state that this station is the "kind that doesn't have any 'agenda'"? Doesn't it seek to portray homosexual populations in a positive light? Isn't that an agenda?
Merriam Webster
Mehta just because you think that Logo is a good idea, doesn't mean that Logo does not have an "agenda" and by stating that it doesn't we are misleading and easily dismissed as liars.
I'm tired of the fake bullshitting that has been going on at all levels of our society, demands that we should honor the rules of polite society and lets keep that for a time when the children aren't around (or for many people groups of people that they may believe lack mature sense: e.g. women, poor, minorities, etc...) The hell with that, look people in the eye and state yes we do have an agenda (if you have faith in your cause, state what it is--even when your cause is simply to entertain gay people). Tell people what it is and why you believe it is a positive agenda.
As for this polite society crap... don't get me started!
A small complaint in regards to an otherwise good posting.
Gay channel comes out tonight
For a more in-depth look at the new cable station and its surprising founder (what a long strange trip its been?), check out Adam Sternbergh's piece in New York magazine:
I Want My Gay TV
and if you are at all confused why I believe this channel is a good development:
Being Gay Is Just As Healthy As Being Straight
It is ridiculous at this point that we have to sit down with adults and explain this to them--look at the language in that last "positive" article which by implication of associating heterosexuals as "straight" it implies, still, even while telling us that they are healthy and well-adjusted, that homosexuals are "crooked" or "bent" (still considering the history of DSM tests and psychology's demonization of homosexuality, this can be viewed as progression?)
One more thing, since I'm ranting, when are we going to evolve to a point where sexuality is viewed as a positive force (while not ignoring its negative impulses) in society that needs to be seriously discussed, represented and studied... as opposed to being kept behind the curtain, exploited for profit and to be used as advertising fodder? I view the repression directed toward homosexuality as just one part of a larger move toward controlling our freedom of creative expression--one of the most basic and powerful is our expression of sexuality identity...
In regards to the article I can sympathize with Monica Mehta's enthusiasm, but it is kind of naive to state that this station is the "kind that doesn't have any 'agenda'"? Doesn't it seek to portray homosexual populations in a positive light? Isn't that an agenda?
Merriam Webster
Main Entry: agen·da
Pronunciation: &-'jen-d&
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, neuter plural of agendum, gerundive of agere
1 : a list or outline of things to be considered or done {agendas of faculty meetings}
2 : an underlying often ideological plan or program {a political agenda}
Mehta just because you think that Logo is a good idea, doesn't mean that Logo does not have an "agenda" and by stating that it doesn't we are misleading and easily dismissed as liars.
I'm tired of the fake bullshitting that has been going on at all levels of our society, demands that we should honor the rules of polite society and lets keep that for a time when the children aren't around (or for many people groups of people that they may believe lack mature sense: e.g. women, poor, minorities, etc...) The hell with that, look people in the eye and state yes we do have an agenda (if you have faith in your cause, state what it is--even when your cause is simply to entertain gay people). Tell people what it is and why you believe it is a positive agenda.
As for this polite society crap... don't get me started!
A small complaint in regards to an otherwise good posting.
Gay channel comes out tonight
For a more in-depth look at the new cable station and its surprising founder (what a long strange trip its been?), check out Adam Sternbergh's piece in New York magazine:
I Want My Gay TV
and if you are at all confused why I believe this channel is a good development:
Being Gay Is Just As Healthy As Being Straight
It is ridiculous at this point that we have to sit down with adults and explain this to them--look at the language in that last "positive" article which by implication of associating heterosexuals as "straight" it implies, still, even while telling us that they are healthy and well-adjusted, that homosexuals are "crooked" or "bent" (still considering the history of DSM tests and psychology's demonization of homosexuality, this can be viewed as progression?)
One more thing, since I'm ranting, when are we going to evolve to a point where sexuality is viewed as a positive force (while not ignoring its negative impulses) in society that needs to be seriously discussed, represented and studied... as opposed to being kept behind the curtain, exploited for profit and to be used as advertising fodder? I view the repression directed toward homosexuality as just one part of a larger move toward controlling our freedom of creative expression--one of the most basic and powerful is our expression of sexuality identity...
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Andre Weil on Simone Weil
André Weil, brother of the great, mystic philosopher Simone Weil:
"She was once describing to me ... some historical theory, or a historical fancy ... I said to her: 'This is a historical question. It must be discussed in terms of the evidence. What is your evidence for what you are saying?' She said: 'I don't need any evidence. It is beautiful, therefore it must be true'."
Source: Light My Fire (The Geology and Geography of Film Canons)
"She was once describing to me ... some historical theory, or a historical fancy ... I said to her: 'This is a historical question. It must be discussed in terms of the evidence. What is your evidence for what you are saying?' She said: 'I don't need any evidence. It is beautiful, therefore it must be true'."
Source: Light My Fire (The Geology and Geography of Film Canons)
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Reports from Zimbabwe, Pt. 2
(Courtesy of JL)
From The Independent (UK), 12 June
Zimbabwe undercover: how Mugabe is burning opponents out of their homes
Our reporter watches covertly as the urban poor are driven into the countryside in a campaign reminiscent of Pol Pot
By our special correspondent in Killarney squatter camp, Bulawayo
From the road you could see the smoke climbing out of the bush like giant black trees. Driving along the burnt-red dirt track, the only sign of life was a bewildered woman carrying a baby. She waved in the direction of the charred mud huts, and kept repeating the word "police". She said that seven truckloads of police with assault rifles had come in the morning. They had forced people from their homes at gunpoint and set them alight. "They told us to get out. They told us they will come back with dogs tonight to make sure we are gone," she told The Independent on Sunday. Beauty and her two children are just the latest victims of a Pol Pot-style campaign waged by President Robert Mugabe to empty the cities and force the population into the countryside. It is a war that has been launched with a concerted attack on the country's poorest and weakest people. Hundreds of thousands living in squatter camps or working in street markets have had their homes demolished or their livelihoods. Mr Mugabe calls the campaign a "clean-up operation" to restore order and beauty to the cities. His critics accuse him of waging a vindictive war on those who didn't vote for his Zanu PF party in the March general election.
Nearly half a million people have been displaced in a drought-stricken country where conservative estimates say that four million are in immediate need of food aid. The United Nations and the World Food Programme are warning of a "humanitarian disaster". "This is like Pol Pot, corralling people into the countryside where they can be controlled and indoctrinated," said Shari Eppel, a Zimbabwe resident and human rights expert. "We're heading into the dark ages here. What we're going to see is selective starvation. He wants people hungry and compliant," said Ms Eppel. Mr Mugabe shows no sign of following Pol Pot's personal example and moving to a rural mud hut. He continues to live in majesty in an expensive district of Harare, where a strict 6pm-to-6am curfew ensures no one can so much as approach the perimeter wall. Until yesterday, Beauty and her family had lived in a one-room house with mud walls and a corrugated iron and thatched roof. They were one of up to 400 families living in the Killarney squatter camp on the outskirts of Bulawayo. Now, only the blackened shell remains and the thick smell of burning thatch fills the air.
As the word spread that we weren't police, people started to appear out of the bush. Many barefoot, they came crunching through the husks of their failed maize crop, carrying whatever they had left. Angry and confused, they wanted to know why the police would do this and where they were supposed to go? One woman, still breast-feeding her baby, said there was nothing they could do. "What can we do to stop them? They had guns. They came suddenly and then they were shouting, 'Get away!' Where are we supposed to go?" she asked. As she spoke, a few hundred metres away on the main road, police pickups with armed men patrolled the roads. Further away roadblocks were set up to stop anyone coming closer to find out what was going on. These scenes have been repeated throughout Zimbabwe. At the Victoria Falls, the crowning glory of a once flourishing tourism industry, an estimated 30,000 people were evicted from squatter camps in a two-day operation that continued yesterday. As their homes were torched and their possessions looted by the security forces, they were told to "go home". One resident said he heard a government minister on the radio, saying that "the black man comes from the countryside and should go back to the countryside". In the capital, Harare, entire squatter camps - home to the majority of the urban poor - have been emptied and burned. Trudy Stevenson, an MP with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, witnessed hundreds of people being loaded on to trucks and sent one way, while their possessions were taken elsewhere. The government insists that their campaign, dubbed "Murambatsvina", or "drive out trash", was a long-overdue purge of the informal economy.
AG Ndlovu, the deputy mayor of Bulawayo, says this is a fiction. "The government came to us and told us to destroy the markets and we said 'no. This is illegal'. They were legally there, we had given them standards, told them where to put their things. They had applied and been given licences." In the past, repression has tended to focus on the opposition stronghold of Matabeleland, with Bulawayo as its capital, and home to the Ndebele people who make up 20 per cent of the population. But the latest campaign has hit just as hard in Harare, where the majority are, like Mr Mugabe himself, part of the Shona tribe. The results of the 31 March elections - condemned by all but Mr Mugabe's allies in neighbouring countries as illegitimate - showed that Zanu PF has lost the cities to the opposition MDC. With the economy in freefall after a five-year period in which Zimbabwe has moved from being the breadbasket of Africa to famine, even an allegedly rigged election cannot hide the scale of the crisis. Agricultural output has been devastated by the farm invasions that masqueraded as much-needed land reform. Little is moving on the streets as foreign currency reserves hit rock bottom and fuel imports have dried up. Fuel queues are so much part of daily life that newspapers advise readers on which is the most sociable queue to wait the four to five days it takes to get petrol. An attempted two-day national strike, organised by opposition groups, human rights activists, churches and unions was thwarted by a campaign of state intimidation. Graffiti on the city walls call for an uprising. But those who still have homes stay put out of fear. "The severity of the onslaught shows how desperate the state is," said Graham Shaw, a former Methodist pastor turned rights campaigner. "If they're raiding street vendors for foreign currency then they're close to the end. Lots of people are saying it's time to take to the streets, but nobody wants to lead them."
From The Sunday Times (UK), 12 June
Mugabe policy branded "new apartheid."
by Christina Lamb
Thousands of Zimbabweans made homeless in the government's ruthless clean-up campaign are being herded into re-education camps and told they can have a housing plot only if they swear allegiance to the party of President Robert Mugabe. Those who refuse are loaded into trucks and dumped in remote rural areas, far from their own homes, where food is scarce. Human rights workers say they are being left to die in what they believe is a deliberate strategy by the Mugabe regime to exterminate opponents. "This is social cleansing to try to eradicate the opposition," said Trudy Stevenson, an opposition MP whose Harare North constituency includes Hatcliffe, where 30,000 people had their homes demolished along with an orphanage for children whose parents had died of Aids. "It's horrific. They are dumping people in rural areas to get rid of troublesome elements to make sure they cant challenge the regime," she added. The government's three-week Operation Murambatsvina - Shona for "clean up the filth" - has left hundreds of thousands of men, women and children without homes. Many are sleeping in streets in winter temperatures with no water. Church groups are warning that thousands could die of disease. There have been outbreaks of diarrhoea and reports of babies freezing to death.
The United Nations estimates that 200,000 are homeless while the opposition claims it is more than 1m. Yesterday police rampaged through Harare, setting fire to the few remaining belongings that many homeless people had salvaged, and warning them against taking refuge in churches. So brutalised is the population that some torched their own possessions on police instructions. A Harare police commander was reported to have authorised the use of live ammunition against people resisting eviction. "I need reports on my desk saying we have shot people," he was said to told his officers. "The president has given his full support for this operation so there is nothing to fear. You should treat (it) as a war." The barbarous campaign has left observers to reflect on the chilling words of one of Mugabe's closest lieutenants, Didymus Mutasa, about weeding opponents out of the population. "We would be better off with only 6m, with our own people who support the liberation struggle," he said three years ago. "We don’t want all these extra people." Since then the population has indeed dropped, with an estimated 3.4m Zimbabweans now living outside the country. Almost half the remaining 11m are on the verge of starvation. A UN assessment last week estimated the maize harvest at only 300,000 tonnes, half as much as expected and one-sixth of Zimbabwe's minimum needs.
Mutasa was made minister for national security in April, putting him in charge of the Central Intelligence Organisation, Mugabe's secret police. Many believe he is carrying out his threat to rid the population of Mugabe's opponents, targeting the cities that voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in elections last March. Youth militias dressed as riot police laughed last week as they smashed people’s homes and livelihoods with bulldozers and sledgehammers. Many were concrete houses where people had lived for years. Markets that have stood since 1945 were razed. The owners watched as everything they had worked for was destroyed in the space of an hour. "A grave crime has been committed against poor and helpless people," read a statement by some of Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic bishops. "We warn the perpetrators, history will hold you accountable." Some of the homeless have been taken to holding camps outside the city, such as Caledonia Farm. Police guard the barbed wire compounds. Church workers have revealed that those inside are being subjected to political re-education, forced to shout party slogans and warned that they will not be given new plots for homes or licences for market stalls unless they join Mugabe's Zanu PF party.
Miloon Kothari, the UN special envoy on adequate housing, called the evictions "a new form of apartheid". On Friday the White House joined the UN and the European Union in condemning the campaign. Yet within Zimbabwe, reaction has been muted. This is a population that has been cowed by years of torture, rape and food deprivation, where up to 40% are infected with HIV. A two-day mass "stay-away" from work fizzled out last week, leaving Mugabe triumphant and the opposition MDC in disarray. The state control of media meant many workers were unaware of the stay-away. Police went to the homes of those working for utility companies and forced them to go to work. Many within the opposition believe that they are in danger of becoming irrelevant if they do not act soon to topple Mugabe. Leading members are demanding that the party takes a more confrontational stance. "Passive resistance has not worked," said Nelson Chamisa, chairman of the MDC Youth League. "It is time to engage in active struggle."
From IWPR, 6 June
Driving out the rubbish
Government sells its massive demolition programme as regeneration, but many believe it is designed to remove populations from "disloyal" urban constituencies.
By Dzikamai Chidyausiku in Harare
Simon Phiri and his wife Tsitsi desperately battle to salvage a few belongings from their shack before a bulldozer sent in by the Zimbabwean government razes it to the ground. With a bit of luck and the help of their four children, Simon, 39, and Tsitsi, 32, manage to save the family's most essential items - a bed, blankets and kitchen utensils - before the bulldozer crushes their home. The shack, made from corrugated iron, cardboard and plastic, was where the Phiri family have lived for the past 12 years. Simon built it in the densely populated township of Mbare, just outside Harare, in 1993 and all his four children have been raised there. With Zimbabwe's new Chinese-made warplanes occasionally sweeping overhead, President Robert Mugabe's police and demolition squads have turned Mbare into a battleground, leaving houses and makeshift shelters flattened in street after street. Families carrying their remaining possessions on their heads or in carts - wooden planks, sheets of tin, pots wrapped in blankets and plastic - are on the march like refugees in some terrible war, after the mass demolition of their homes in Mugabe's "Operation Murambatsvina", which translates as "Operation Drive Out the Rubbish".
It is a scene of desolation and despair, and one that is being repeated all across the country in an apparent bid to drive hundreds of thousands of people from the towns back to rural areas. This new Mugabe strategy is being compared by critics to that of Cambodia's Pol Pot, who in his "Return to Year Zero" forced the inhabitants of cities into the countryside in the late Seventies. Miloon Kothari, the United Nations special representative on housing for the poor, told reporters in Geneva that he feared Mugabe planned to drive between two and three million Zimbabweans into the countryside in Operation Murambatsvina, launched two weeks ago when police began sweeping street traders from the pavements in Harare and the northern resort town of Victoria Falls. The operation subsequently spread throughout the country. "We have a very grave crisis on our hands," said Kothari. An added concern is that the land is no longer able to feed the people who live on it - let alone extra hungry mouths. A recent report by the Famine Early Warning System Network, a UN agency, said most rural homes have run out of food. It warned that around five million people could starve if the government does not allow international donors to bring in aid.
President Mugabe, in a speech to the central committee of the ruling Zanu PF party, explained the demolitions as a necessary part of urban regeneration, "Our cities and towns had become havens for illicit and criminal practices and activities which just could not be allowed to go on. From the mess should emerge new businesses, new traders, new practices and a whole new and salubrious urban environment. That is our vision." Zimbabwean local government minister Ignatius Chombo used the same utopian language, saying, "This is the dawn of a new era. To set up something nice, you first have to remove the litter, and that is why the police are acting in this way." The independent Standard weekly newspaper hit back with an editorial saying, "Chombo's explanation is nonsensical and an insult to the intelligence of the people of this country. The government should not delight in the suffering of people when it does not have a ready-made alternative for them."
As well as his home, Simon Phiri also lost the trading stall where he sold secondhand clothes at Mbare's colourful Mupedzanhamo market, the biggest in the country and recommended in the tourist guidebooks. As clouds of tear gas mixed with smoke from burning shacks wafted about him, he said, "They have destroyed my house and my small shop at the market. I have nowhere to go. I was born and grew up in Mbare. This is the only home I know." Phiri is only one of the countless thousands of Harare residents who have been rendered unemployed and homeless after police and other state agencies destroyed their homes and stalls as part of what President Mugabe describes as a "clean up" campaign. In Harare alone, some 30,000 informal traders like Simon have been driven out of business. The police say the aim is to rid the capital of "criminals". Victoria Muchenje, another Mbare resident whose shack was destroyed, said, "We are suffering, we have nowhere to go. Our children are not going to school, we are sleeping outside everywhere. If you walk, everywhere you see people sleeping in the road." Wellington Murerwa, was also in tears, as he watched his home burn. "I have lost the only source of income that I had after my vegetable stall was destroyed," he said. "Since 1981 the only place I have known as a home with my family was a backyard shack, and I cannot start all over again." Shacks and other "illegal" structures in other Harare townships such as Highfield and Glenview have been destroyed, ostensibly to "decongest the city".
As police in full riot gear moved in to torch shacks using petrol, many residents tore down their own homes to salvage some of the building materials. Many burned furniture they could not take with them. As well as the mass destruction of housing, more than 23,000 people have been arrested in the continuing campaign. The assaults have left huge numbers homeless and without a source of income. Whole families are now sleeping in the open as Zimbabwe's mid-winter night temperatures dip to freezing point. Others are battling to find scarce transport to take them to relatives' rural homes. About half of the poor in cities like Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare and Gweru live in shacks. Most of them came to the cities because of the failure of education, health services and agriculture in the rural areas, where AIDS deaths are also wrecking traditional social support mechanisms. In all, it is estimated that some 2.5 million people live - or did so until late May - in makeshift urban accommodation without adequate sanitation or clean water, the only kind of housing they could afford. With no access to mainstream jobs, given the imploding economy and unemployment at 80 per cent, such people have taken to the pavements and alleys - cutting hair, mending shoes, weaving baskets and chairs and selling fruit, vegetables and flowers in an attempt to earn a living. The assault has been seemingly indiscriminate. In Victoria Falls, for example, police burnt a six-mile long line of curio stalls that have catering to tourists for as long as anyone can remember. Even squatter camps set up by veterans of the war of liberation against the former white government were destroyed in the police rampage, including two named after war heroes Joshua Nkomo and Josiah Tongogara.
to be continued...
From News24 (SA), 10 June
Zim military awarded medals
Harare - Russia has given medals to Zimbabwe's defence minister and other senior military officials to mark "strong military ties" between the two countries, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported on Friday. Russia's ambassador to Zimbabwe, Oleg Scherbak, awarded the commemorative medals at a ceremony held on Wednesday to mark the 60th anniversary of Russia's defeat of the German army during World War 2. The paper reported defence minister Sydney Sekeremayi as saying Zimbabwe "would continue to source military equipment from Russia and to learn new military tactics in order to defend its territorial integrity". Zimbabwean fighters received equipment and training from Russia during the southern African country's 1970s war of independence from minority rule. Other Zimbabwean military officials who received medals from Russia on Wednesday included the country's defence forces commander, Constantine Chiwenga as well as the commanders of the air force and the army. In his speech Sekeremayi recalled Russia's assistance to Zimbabwe in the past. "Some of our officers are what they are today because of the doctrine they received while being trained in Russia," the minister said. "Some of the guerrilla tactics you used during (World War II) were also in a way modified by us in the fight against (white) settlers," he said.
From The Independent (UK), 12 June
Zimbabwe undercover: how Mugabe is burning opponents out of their homes
Our reporter watches covertly as the urban poor are driven into the countryside in a campaign reminiscent of Pol Pot
By our special correspondent in Killarney squatter camp, Bulawayo
From the road you could see the smoke climbing out of the bush like giant black trees. Driving along the burnt-red dirt track, the only sign of life was a bewildered woman carrying a baby. She waved in the direction of the charred mud huts, and kept repeating the word "police". She said that seven truckloads of police with assault rifles had come in the morning. They had forced people from their homes at gunpoint and set them alight. "They told us to get out. They told us they will come back with dogs tonight to make sure we are gone," she told The Independent on Sunday. Beauty and her two children are just the latest victims of a Pol Pot-style campaign waged by President Robert Mugabe to empty the cities and force the population into the countryside. It is a war that has been launched with a concerted attack on the country's poorest and weakest people. Hundreds of thousands living in squatter camps or working in street markets have had their homes demolished or their livelihoods. Mr Mugabe calls the campaign a "clean-up operation" to restore order and beauty to the cities. His critics accuse him of waging a vindictive war on those who didn't vote for his Zanu PF party in the March general election.
Nearly half a million people have been displaced in a drought-stricken country where conservative estimates say that four million are in immediate need of food aid. The United Nations and the World Food Programme are warning of a "humanitarian disaster". "This is like Pol Pot, corralling people into the countryside where they can be controlled and indoctrinated," said Shari Eppel, a Zimbabwe resident and human rights expert. "We're heading into the dark ages here. What we're going to see is selective starvation. He wants people hungry and compliant," said Ms Eppel. Mr Mugabe shows no sign of following Pol Pot's personal example and moving to a rural mud hut. He continues to live in majesty in an expensive district of Harare, where a strict 6pm-to-6am curfew ensures no one can so much as approach the perimeter wall. Until yesterday, Beauty and her family had lived in a one-room house with mud walls and a corrugated iron and thatched roof. They were one of up to 400 families living in the Killarney squatter camp on the outskirts of Bulawayo. Now, only the blackened shell remains and the thick smell of burning thatch fills the air.
As the word spread that we weren't police, people started to appear out of the bush. Many barefoot, they came crunching through the husks of their failed maize crop, carrying whatever they had left. Angry and confused, they wanted to know why the police would do this and where they were supposed to go? One woman, still breast-feeding her baby, said there was nothing they could do. "What can we do to stop them? They had guns. They came suddenly and then they were shouting, 'Get away!' Where are we supposed to go?" she asked. As she spoke, a few hundred metres away on the main road, police pickups with armed men patrolled the roads. Further away roadblocks were set up to stop anyone coming closer to find out what was going on. These scenes have been repeated throughout Zimbabwe. At the Victoria Falls, the crowning glory of a once flourishing tourism industry, an estimated 30,000 people were evicted from squatter camps in a two-day operation that continued yesterday. As their homes were torched and their possessions looted by the security forces, they were told to "go home". One resident said he heard a government minister on the radio, saying that "the black man comes from the countryside and should go back to the countryside". In the capital, Harare, entire squatter camps - home to the majority of the urban poor - have been emptied and burned. Trudy Stevenson, an MP with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, witnessed hundreds of people being loaded on to trucks and sent one way, while their possessions were taken elsewhere. The government insists that their campaign, dubbed "Murambatsvina", or "drive out trash", was a long-overdue purge of the informal economy.
AG Ndlovu, the deputy mayor of Bulawayo, says this is a fiction. "The government came to us and told us to destroy the markets and we said 'no. This is illegal'. They were legally there, we had given them standards, told them where to put their things. They had applied and been given licences." In the past, repression has tended to focus on the opposition stronghold of Matabeleland, with Bulawayo as its capital, and home to the Ndebele people who make up 20 per cent of the population. But the latest campaign has hit just as hard in Harare, where the majority are, like Mr Mugabe himself, part of the Shona tribe. The results of the 31 March elections - condemned by all but Mr Mugabe's allies in neighbouring countries as illegitimate - showed that Zanu PF has lost the cities to the opposition MDC. With the economy in freefall after a five-year period in which Zimbabwe has moved from being the breadbasket of Africa to famine, even an allegedly rigged election cannot hide the scale of the crisis. Agricultural output has been devastated by the farm invasions that masqueraded as much-needed land reform. Little is moving on the streets as foreign currency reserves hit rock bottom and fuel imports have dried up. Fuel queues are so much part of daily life that newspapers advise readers on which is the most sociable queue to wait the four to five days it takes to get petrol. An attempted two-day national strike, organised by opposition groups, human rights activists, churches and unions was thwarted by a campaign of state intimidation. Graffiti on the city walls call for an uprising. But those who still have homes stay put out of fear. "The severity of the onslaught shows how desperate the state is," said Graham Shaw, a former Methodist pastor turned rights campaigner. "If they're raiding street vendors for foreign currency then they're close to the end. Lots of people are saying it's time to take to the streets, but nobody wants to lead them."
From The Sunday Times (UK), 12 June
Mugabe policy branded "new apartheid."
by Christina Lamb
Thousands of Zimbabweans made homeless in the government's ruthless clean-up campaign are being herded into re-education camps and told they can have a housing plot only if they swear allegiance to the party of President Robert Mugabe. Those who refuse are loaded into trucks and dumped in remote rural areas, far from their own homes, where food is scarce. Human rights workers say they are being left to die in what they believe is a deliberate strategy by the Mugabe regime to exterminate opponents. "This is social cleansing to try to eradicate the opposition," said Trudy Stevenson, an opposition MP whose Harare North constituency includes Hatcliffe, where 30,000 people had their homes demolished along with an orphanage for children whose parents had died of Aids. "It's horrific. They are dumping people in rural areas to get rid of troublesome elements to make sure they cant challenge the regime," she added. The government's three-week Operation Murambatsvina - Shona for "clean up the filth" - has left hundreds of thousands of men, women and children without homes. Many are sleeping in streets in winter temperatures with no water. Church groups are warning that thousands could die of disease. There have been outbreaks of diarrhoea and reports of babies freezing to death.
The United Nations estimates that 200,000 are homeless while the opposition claims it is more than 1m. Yesterday police rampaged through Harare, setting fire to the few remaining belongings that many homeless people had salvaged, and warning them against taking refuge in churches. So brutalised is the population that some torched their own possessions on police instructions. A Harare police commander was reported to have authorised the use of live ammunition against people resisting eviction. "I need reports on my desk saying we have shot people," he was said to told his officers. "The president has given his full support for this operation so there is nothing to fear. You should treat (it) as a war." The barbarous campaign has left observers to reflect on the chilling words of one of Mugabe's closest lieutenants, Didymus Mutasa, about weeding opponents out of the population. "We would be better off with only 6m, with our own people who support the liberation struggle," he said three years ago. "We don’t want all these extra people." Since then the population has indeed dropped, with an estimated 3.4m Zimbabweans now living outside the country. Almost half the remaining 11m are on the verge of starvation. A UN assessment last week estimated the maize harvest at only 300,000 tonnes, half as much as expected and one-sixth of Zimbabwe's minimum needs.
Mutasa was made minister for national security in April, putting him in charge of the Central Intelligence Organisation, Mugabe's secret police. Many believe he is carrying out his threat to rid the population of Mugabe's opponents, targeting the cities that voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in elections last March. Youth militias dressed as riot police laughed last week as they smashed people’s homes and livelihoods with bulldozers and sledgehammers. Many were concrete houses where people had lived for years. Markets that have stood since 1945 were razed. The owners watched as everything they had worked for was destroyed in the space of an hour. "A grave crime has been committed against poor and helpless people," read a statement by some of Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic bishops. "We warn the perpetrators, history will hold you accountable." Some of the homeless have been taken to holding camps outside the city, such as Caledonia Farm. Police guard the barbed wire compounds. Church workers have revealed that those inside are being subjected to political re-education, forced to shout party slogans and warned that they will not be given new plots for homes or licences for market stalls unless they join Mugabe's Zanu PF party.
Miloon Kothari, the UN special envoy on adequate housing, called the evictions "a new form of apartheid". On Friday the White House joined the UN and the European Union in condemning the campaign. Yet within Zimbabwe, reaction has been muted. This is a population that has been cowed by years of torture, rape and food deprivation, where up to 40% are infected with HIV. A two-day mass "stay-away" from work fizzled out last week, leaving Mugabe triumphant and the opposition MDC in disarray. The state control of media meant many workers were unaware of the stay-away. Police went to the homes of those working for utility companies and forced them to go to work. Many within the opposition believe that they are in danger of becoming irrelevant if they do not act soon to topple Mugabe. Leading members are demanding that the party takes a more confrontational stance. "Passive resistance has not worked," said Nelson Chamisa, chairman of the MDC Youth League. "It is time to engage in active struggle."
From IWPR, 6 June
Driving out the rubbish
Government sells its massive demolition programme as regeneration, but many believe it is designed to remove populations from "disloyal" urban constituencies.
By Dzikamai Chidyausiku in Harare
Simon Phiri and his wife Tsitsi desperately battle to salvage a few belongings from their shack before a bulldozer sent in by the Zimbabwean government razes it to the ground. With a bit of luck and the help of their four children, Simon, 39, and Tsitsi, 32, manage to save the family's most essential items - a bed, blankets and kitchen utensils - before the bulldozer crushes their home. The shack, made from corrugated iron, cardboard and plastic, was where the Phiri family have lived for the past 12 years. Simon built it in the densely populated township of Mbare, just outside Harare, in 1993 and all his four children have been raised there. With Zimbabwe's new Chinese-made warplanes occasionally sweeping overhead, President Robert Mugabe's police and demolition squads have turned Mbare into a battleground, leaving houses and makeshift shelters flattened in street after street. Families carrying their remaining possessions on their heads or in carts - wooden planks, sheets of tin, pots wrapped in blankets and plastic - are on the march like refugees in some terrible war, after the mass demolition of their homes in Mugabe's "Operation Murambatsvina", which translates as "Operation Drive Out the Rubbish".
It is a scene of desolation and despair, and one that is being repeated all across the country in an apparent bid to drive hundreds of thousands of people from the towns back to rural areas. This new Mugabe strategy is being compared by critics to that of Cambodia's Pol Pot, who in his "Return to Year Zero" forced the inhabitants of cities into the countryside in the late Seventies. Miloon Kothari, the United Nations special representative on housing for the poor, told reporters in Geneva that he feared Mugabe planned to drive between two and three million Zimbabweans into the countryside in Operation Murambatsvina, launched two weeks ago when police began sweeping street traders from the pavements in Harare and the northern resort town of Victoria Falls. The operation subsequently spread throughout the country. "We have a very grave crisis on our hands," said Kothari. An added concern is that the land is no longer able to feed the people who live on it - let alone extra hungry mouths. A recent report by the Famine Early Warning System Network, a UN agency, said most rural homes have run out of food. It warned that around five million people could starve if the government does not allow international donors to bring in aid.
President Mugabe, in a speech to the central committee of the ruling Zanu PF party, explained the demolitions as a necessary part of urban regeneration, "Our cities and towns had become havens for illicit and criminal practices and activities which just could not be allowed to go on. From the mess should emerge new businesses, new traders, new practices and a whole new and salubrious urban environment. That is our vision." Zimbabwean local government minister Ignatius Chombo used the same utopian language, saying, "This is the dawn of a new era. To set up something nice, you first have to remove the litter, and that is why the police are acting in this way." The independent Standard weekly newspaper hit back with an editorial saying, "Chombo's explanation is nonsensical and an insult to the intelligence of the people of this country. The government should not delight in the suffering of people when it does not have a ready-made alternative for them."
As well as his home, Simon Phiri also lost the trading stall where he sold secondhand clothes at Mbare's colourful Mupedzanhamo market, the biggest in the country and recommended in the tourist guidebooks. As clouds of tear gas mixed with smoke from burning shacks wafted about him, he said, "They have destroyed my house and my small shop at the market. I have nowhere to go. I was born and grew up in Mbare. This is the only home I know." Phiri is only one of the countless thousands of Harare residents who have been rendered unemployed and homeless after police and other state agencies destroyed their homes and stalls as part of what President Mugabe describes as a "clean up" campaign. In Harare alone, some 30,000 informal traders like Simon have been driven out of business. The police say the aim is to rid the capital of "criminals". Victoria Muchenje, another Mbare resident whose shack was destroyed, said, "We are suffering, we have nowhere to go. Our children are not going to school, we are sleeping outside everywhere. If you walk, everywhere you see people sleeping in the road." Wellington Murerwa, was also in tears, as he watched his home burn. "I have lost the only source of income that I had after my vegetable stall was destroyed," he said. "Since 1981 the only place I have known as a home with my family was a backyard shack, and I cannot start all over again." Shacks and other "illegal" structures in other Harare townships such as Highfield and Glenview have been destroyed, ostensibly to "decongest the city".
As police in full riot gear moved in to torch shacks using petrol, many residents tore down their own homes to salvage some of the building materials. Many burned furniture they could not take with them. As well as the mass destruction of housing, more than 23,000 people have been arrested in the continuing campaign. The assaults have left huge numbers homeless and without a source of income. Whole families are now sleeping in the open as Zimbabwe's mid-winter night temperatures dip to freezing point. Others are battling to find scarce transport to take them to relatives' rural homes. About half of the poor in cities like Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare and Gweru live in shacks. Most of them came to the cities because of the failure of education, health services and agriculture in the rural areas, where AIDS deaths are also wrecking traditional social support mechanisms. In all, it is estimated that some 2.5 million people live - or did so until late May - in makeshift urban accommodation without adequate sanitation or clean water, the only kind of housing they could afford. With no access to mainstream jobs, given the imploding economy and unemployment at 80 per cent, such people have taken to the pavements and alleys - cutting hair, mending shoes, weaving baskets and chairs and selling fruit, vegetables and flowers in an attempt to earn a living. The assault has been seemingly indiscriminate. In Victoria Falls, for example, police burnt a six-mile long line of curio stalls that have catering to tourists for as long as anyone can remember. Even squatter camps set up by veterans of the war of liberation against the former white government were destroyed in the police rampage, including two named after war heroes Joshua Nkomo and Josiah Tongogara.
to be continued...
From News24 (SA), 10 June
Zim military awarded medals
Harare - Russia has given medals to Zimbabwe's defence minister and other senior military officials to mark "strong military ties" between the two countries, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported on Friday. Russia's ambassador to Zimbabwe, Oleg Scherbak, awarded the commemorative medals at a ceremony held on Wednesday to mark the 60th anniversary of Russia's defeat of the German army during World War 2. The paper reported defence minister Sydney Sekeremayi as saying Zimbabwe "would continue to source military equipment from Russia and to learn new military tactics in order to defend its territorial integrity". Zimbabwean fighters received equipment and training from Russia during the southern African country's 1970s war of independence from minority rule. Other Zimbabwean military officials who received medals from Russia on Wednesday included the country's defence forces commander, Constantine Chiwenga as well as the commanders of the air force and the army. In his speech Sekeremayi recalled Russia's assistance to Zimbabwe in the past. "Some of our officers are what they are today because of the doctrine they received while being trained in Russia," the minister said. "Some of the guerrilla tactics you used during (World War II) were also in a way modified by us in the fight against (white) settlers," he said.
Friday, June 24, 2005
CFP: Water--Resources & Discourses
Passing this along for my colleagues at Reconstruction
---------------------------------------------------------
CALL FOR PAPERS
“Water: Resources & Discourses”
You’ve heard about it all your life: “six glasses a day,” “essential to
life,” “60% of your body,” “the next oil,” “don’t drink the...,” “like a
fish out of...,” “a wall of...” Water is one of the most common
compounds on our blue planet; we can’t live in it yet we can’t live
without it. It’s a prerequisite for life and a leading cause of death.
Recent events overwhelm human capacities for management and
understanding: the tsunami that killed a quarter million people and
poisoned the survivors’ fresh water supplies is being followed by
drought; a seven-year drought that nearly emptied two of the largest
man-made reservoirs in the world is being washed out by record rains;
the Arctic is melting while an Antarctic ice sheet the size of Delaware
heads to sea; rovers continue to find definitive evidence of vast
extraterrestrial oceans. On the arts and culture front, water continues
to be, as it has been for millennia, one of the most prevalent,
resilient, and dynamic topics and symbols. If one’s identity, like
Keats’, is writ on water, what is the potential (or possibility) of
writing on water? It seems as good a time as any to find out.
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
is calling for papers for a special issue
on the resources and discourses of water. The editors will be
particularly interested in: interdisciplinary studies, especially works
that combine physical science with social and/or conceptual analysis;
multi-media projects; hybrid formulations of
creative/theoretical/scholarly writing; and essays that strike a middle
ground between academic, private, and public sectors.
Abstracts (500 words) due by July 1, 2005 to: Justin M. Scott Coe
and W. Scott Howard .
Completed papers (5,000-10,000 words) due by December 1, 2005;
publication expected, August, 2006.
About the journal: Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
(ISSN: 1547-4348) is an innovative cultural studies journal dedicated to
fostering an intellectual community composed of scholars and their
audience, granting them all the ability to share thoughts and opinions
on the most important and influential work in contemporary
interdisciplinary studies. Reconstruction is published quarterly--in the
third week of February, May, August, November--and is indexed in the MLA
International Bibliography.
---------------------------------------------------------
CALL FOR PAPERS
“Water: Resources & Discourses”
You’ve heard about it all your life: “six glasses a day,” “essential to
life,” “60% of your body,” “the next oil,” “don’t drink the...,” “like a
fish out of...,” “a wall of...” Water is one of the most common
compounds on our blue planet; we can’t live in it yet we can’t live
without it. It’s a prerequisite for life and a leading cause of death.
Recent events overwhelm human capacities for management and
understanding: the tsunami that killed a quarter million people and
poisoned the survivors’ fresh water supplies is being followed by
drought; a seven-year drought that nearly emptied two of the largest
man-made reservoirs in the world is being washed out by record rains;
the Arctic is melting while an Antarctic ice sheet the size of Delaware
heads to sea; rovers continue to find definitive evidence of vast
extraterrestrial oceans. On the arts and culture front, water continues
to be, as it has been for millennia, one of the most prevalent,
resilient, and dynamic topics and symbols. If one’s identity, like
Keats’, is writ on water, what is the potential (or possibility) of
writing on water? It seems as good a time as any to find out.
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
on the resources and discourses of water. The editors will be
particularly interested in: interdisciplinary studies, especially works
that combine physical science with social and/or conceptual analysis;
multi-media projects; hybrid formulations of
creative/theoretical/scholarly writing; and essays that strike a middle
ground between academic, private, and public sectors.
Abstracts (500 words) due by July 1, 2005 to: Justin M. Scott Coe
Completed papers (5,000-10,000 words) due by December 1, 2005;
publication expected, August, 2006.
About the journal: Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
(ISSN: 1547-4348) is an innovative cultural studies journal dedicated to
fostering an intellectual community composed of scholars and their
audience, granting them all the ability to share thoughts and opinions
on the most important and influential work in contemporary
interdisciplinary studies. Reconstruction is published quarterly--in the
third week of February, May, August, November--and is indexed in the MLA
International Bibliography.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Hope Yen: Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
(Courtesy of Melissa Purdue)
Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
by Hope Yen
Yahoo
A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.
The 5-4 ruling — assailed by dissenting Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as handing "disproportionate influence and power" to the well-heeled in America — was a defeat for Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They had argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.
As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.
The case was one of six resolved by justices on Thursday. Among those still pending for the court, which next meets on Monday, is one testing the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on government property.
Writing for the court's majority in Thursday's ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens said local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community. States are within their rights to pass additional laws restricting condemnations if residents are overly burdened, he said.
"The city has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue," Stevens wrote.
Stevens was joined in his opinion by other members of the court's liberal wing — David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. The bloc typically has favored greater deference to cities, which historically have used the takings power for urban renewal projects that benefit the lower and middle class.
They were joined by Reagan appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy in rejecting the conservative principle of individual property rights. Critics had feared that would allow a small group of homeowners to stymie rebuilding efforts that benefit the city through added jobs and more tax revenue for social programs.
"It is not for the courts to oversee the choice of the boundary line nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project area," Stevens wrote.
O'Connor argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
Connecticut residents involved in the lawsuit expressed dismay and pledged to keep fighting.
"It's a little shocking to believe you can lose your home in this country," said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said he would refuse to leave his home, even if bulldozers showed up. "I won't be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last word."
Scott Bullock, an attorney for the Institute for Justice representing the families, added: "A narrow majority of the court simply got the law wrong today and our Constitution and country will suffer as a result."
At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for "public use."
Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Conn., filed suit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.
New London officials countered that the private development plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.
Connecticut state Rep. Ernest Hewett, D-New London, a former mayor and city council member who voted in favor of eminent domain, said the decision "means a lot for New London's future."
The lower courts had been divided on the issue, with many allowing a taking only if it eliminates blight.
Nationwide, more than 10,000 properties were threatened or condemned in recent years, according to the Institute for Justice, a Washington public interest law firm representing the New London homeowners.
New London, a town of less than 26,000, once was a center of the whaling industry and later became a manufacturing hub. More recently the city has suffered the kind of economic woes afflicting urban areas across the country, with losses of residents and jobs.
City officials envision a commercial development that would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum.
New London was backed in its appeal by the National League of Cities, which argued that a city's eminent domain power was critical to spurring urban renewal with development projects such Baltimore's Inner Harbor and Kansas City's Kansas Speedway.
Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to "just compensation" for their homes as provided under the Fifth Amendment. However, Kelo and the other homeowners had refused to move at any price, calling it an unjustified taking of their property.
The case is Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108.
On the Net:
The ruling in Kelo v. New London
Article Link
Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
by Hope Yen
Yahoo
A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.
The 5-4 ruling — assailed by dissenting Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as handing "disproportionate influence and power" to the well-heeled in America — was a defeat for Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They had argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.
As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.
The case was one of six resolved by justices on Thursday. Among those still pending for the court, which next meets on Monday, is one testing the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on government property.
Writing for the court's majority in Thursday's ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens said local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community. States are within their rights to pass additional laws restricting condemnations if residents are overly burdened, he said.
"The city has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue," Stevens wrote.
Stevens was joined in his opinion by other members of the court's liberal wing — David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. The bloc typically has favored greater deference to cities, which historically have used the takings power for urban renewal projects that benefit the lower and middle class.
They were joined by Reagan appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy in rejecting the conservative principle of individual property rights. Critics had feared that would allow a small group of homeowners to stymie rebuilding efforts that benefit the city through added jobs and more tax revenue for social programs.
"It is not for the courts to oversee the choice of the boundary line nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project area," Stevens wrote.
O'Connor argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
Connecticut residents involved in the lawsuit expressed dismay and pledged to keep fighting.
"It's a little shocking to believe you can lose your home in this country," said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said he would refuse to leave his home, even if bulldozers showed up. "I won't be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last word."
Scott Bullock, an attorney for the Institute for Justice representing the families, added: "A narrow majority of the court simply got the law wrong today and our Constitution and country will suffer as a result."
At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for "public use."
Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Conn., filed suit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.
New London officials countered that the private development plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.
Connecticut state Rep. Ernest Hewett, D-New London, a former mayor and city council member who voted in favor of eminent domain, said the decision "means a lot for New London's future."
The lower courts had been divided on the issue, with many allowing a taking only if it eliminates blight.
Nationwide, more than 10,000 properties were threatened or condemned in recent years, according to the Institute for Justice, a Washington public interest law firm representing the New London homeowners.
New London, a town of less than 26,000, once was a center of the whaling industry and later became a manufacturing hub. More recently the city has suffered the kind of economic woes afflicting urban areas across the country, with losses of residents and jobs.
City officials envision a commercial development that would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum.
New London was backed in its appeal by the National League of Cities, which argued that a city's eminent domain power was critical to spurring urban renewal with development projects such Baltimore's Inner Harbor and Kansas City's Kansas Speedway.
Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to "just compensation" for their homes as provided under the Fifth Amendment. However, Kelo and the other homeowners had refused to move at any price, calling it an unjustified taking of their property.
The case is Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108.
On the Net:
The ruling in Kelo v. New London
Article Link
Chris Hedges, Jeff Sharlet and Arthur Silber: Observing the "Soldiers of Christ"
This is a repost: Mason just reminded me to revisit it and Harry suggested this essay by Arthur Silber NOT A LAUGHING MATTER ANY LONGER: GAYS AS THE NEW ENEMY WITHIN in the comments of the previous post.
Earlier this month I posted about a NOW TV interview featuring Chris Hedges On the Rise to Political Power of the Dominionists which was following up on an earlier post about a pair of excellent articles in the May 2005 issue of Harper's called the The Soldiers of Christ. Now, thanks to a comment from Bill, I have found out that Jeff Sharlet's "Soldiers of Christ I: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch and Chris Hedges' Soldiers of Christ II: Feeling the hate with the National Religious Broadcasters are now availble online at Harper's website.
These are "must read" essays to understand the "far" right religious control freaks and what their plans are for our country--and why we should be worried!
Also check out an earlier piece in Harper's by Jeff Sharlett in which he examines how the Magic of State is supported by corporate entertainment:
How Clear Channel Programs America
Another must read, is in the June 2005 issue of Harper's, is Karl Meyer's "Forty Years in the Sand," a history of the 20th century British occupation of Iraq and the lessons we should have learned from their experiences ... chilling in the historical similarities.
Harper's magazine is one of the best publications for progressives. Every issue has articles that interest me and I usually read it cover-to-cover. You can't beat a subscription either--12 issues for only $16.97!
Earlier this month I posted about a NOW TV interview featuring Chris Hedges On the Rise to Political Power of the Dominionists which was following up on an earlier post about a pair of excellent articles in the May 2005 issue of Harper's called the The Soldiers of Christ. Now, thanks to a comment from Bill, I have found out that Jeff Sharlet's "Soldiers of Christ I: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch and Chris Hedges' Soldiers of Christ II: Feeling the hate with the National Religious Broadcasters are now availble online at Harper's website.
These are "must read" essays to understand the "far" right religious control freaks and what their plans are for our country--and why we should be worried!
Also check out an earlier piece in Harper's by Jeff Sharlett in which he examines how the Magic of State is supported by corporate entertainment:
How Clear Channel Programs America
Another must read, is in the June 2005 issue of Harper's, is Karl Meyer's "Forty Years in the Sand," a history of the 20th century British occupation of Iraq and the lessons we should have learned from their experiences ... chilling in the historical similarities.
Harper's magazine is one of the best publications for progressives. Every issue has articles that interest me and I usually read it cover-to-cover. You can't beat a subscription either--12 issues for only $16.97!
Developing My Film Course
Thanks everyone for your comments. A few explanation: 1) I decided to concentrate on contemporary films as the main texts to discuss current issues--with clips from older films to show the development of the cinematic traditions, genres and theories; 2) the films reflect my tastes and interests--there might be some better films or more relevant films, but I can't teach what I can't bear to watch; 3) thus, while I have a populist streak, I am also making statements about quality films and political issues; 4) I kept in mind the interests of my students who would be studying film for the first time--I want them to learn to appreciate and critique film--I want them to understand that it is a business--and I want them to think about the politics of representation--but I also want them to be able to engage with the texts and I do not want to chase them off before they have begun (its a 200 level course at a community/technical college)... so accessibility was a concern in choosing films and readings
This is still a work-in-progress so please feel free to make more suggestions about films and, definitely, readings (online and print). The sections are arranged alphabetically and are not structured for a course yet. In most of them the first film would be shown in the class and the students would choose one of the additional films to watch outside of class. The students will post responses to those films on a weblog and the class will then produce a body of critiques for each section.
From now on I will work with this over at the weblog Cineaste which I have set up as a Film Studies Resource site.
Thanks again to those that offered suggestions
--------------------------------------------------
Auteur Theory: Two New York Directors
Do the Right Thing Directed by Spike Lee. Criterion Collection, 1989: 120 minutes.
Tasker, Yvonne. “Spike Lee.” Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers. ed. Yvonne Tasker. NY: Routledge, 2002: 235-243.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Say the Right Thing.” Movies as Politics. Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press, 1997: 13-21.
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Political Objectives Through Cinematic Storytelling.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 114-121.
Gangs of New York. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Miramax, 2002: 167 minutes.
Larke, George S. “Martin Scorsese: Movies and Religion.” Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers. ed. Yvonne Tasker. NY: Routledge, 2002: 289-295.
Tepper, Craig. “Dickens, Griffith and the Gangs of New York: The Belatedness of a Modern Epic.” The Film Journal 12 (April 2005)
Cinematography: From the Silent Era to Digital Films
Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography Directed by Todd McCarthy. American Film Institute, 1992: 95 minutes. {Easily one of the best films I have ever seen about making films. A history of cinematography that is gripping and beautiful—as soon as it was over, I wanted to start from the beginning again.}
Dyer, Richard. “Introduction to Film Studies.” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. NY: Oxford University Press, 1998: 3-10. {Good place to begin in that he maps out the two main ways of looking at film technique/aesthetics and cultural/political.
Watch one (or more) of M. Night Shyamalan’s first three movies: The Sixth Sense (Disney, 1999); Unbreakable (Touchstone, 2000); Signs (Touchstone, 2002).
Totaro, Donato. “Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s Fantastic Trilogy, Part 1: The Long Take.” Offscreen (November 30, 2003)
---. “Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s Fantastic Trilogy, Part 2: Mise en Scène.” Offscreen (November 30, 2003)
The Art of Cinematography
Documentary: Truth is Stranger Than Fiction?
The Thin Blue Line Directed by Errol Morris. MGM, 1988: 102 minutes.
Buckland, Warren. “The Non-Fiction Film: Five Types of Documentary.” Teach Yourself Film Studies. 2nd edition. Blacklick, OH: McGraw Hill, 2003: 130-150.
American Movie Directed by Chris Smith. Columbia/Tristar, 1999: 104 minutes.
Beyond the Mat (Director’s Cut) Directed by Barry W. Blaustein. Universal Studios, 2000: 108 minutes.
Bowling For Columbine Directed by Michael Moore. MGM, 2002: 120 minutes.
Brother’s Keeper Directed Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. New Video Group, 1992: 105 minutes.
Buena Vista Social Club Directed by Wim Wenders. Artisan, 1999: 105 minutes.
Capturing the Friedmans Directed by Andrew Jarecki. HBO, 2003:
The Celluloid Closet Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Columbia/Tristar, 1996: 101 minutes.
Confederacy Theory Directed by Ryan Deussing. University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning, 2001: 57 minutes.
The Corporation Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. Zeitgeist Video, 2004: 145 minutes.
Crumb Directed by Terry Zwigoff. Columbia/Tristar, 1995: 119 minutes.
Dark Days Directed by Marc Singer. Ryco, 2000:
Derrida Directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Zietgeist Video, 2002: 85 minutes.
Dogtown and Z-Boys Directed by Stacy Peralta. Columbia Tristar, 2001: 91 minutes.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye Directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Universal Studios, 2000: 80 minutes.
Fahrenheit 9/11 Directed by Michael Moore. Columbia/Tristar, 2004: 122 minutes.
Laskowski, Nicole. “Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control Directed by Errol Morris. Columbia Tristar, 1997: 82 minutes.
The Filth and the Fury: A Sex Pistols Film Directed by Julien Temple. New Line, 2000: 103 minutes.
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara Directed by Errol Morris. Columbia/Tristar, 2004: 107 minutes.
Calhoun, Laurie. “Death and Contradiction: Errol Morris’s Tragic View of Technokillers.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Go Tigers! Directed by Kenneth A. Carlson. New Video, 2001: 102 minutes.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse Directed by Eleanor Coppola. Paramount, 1991:
Hoop Dreams Directed by Steve James. Criterion Collection, 1994: 171 minutes.
Hype! Directed by Doug Pray. Republic Studios, 1996:
Independent Media in a Time of War Speech by Amy Goodman intercut with media clips. Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center, 2003: 29 minutes.
The Kid Stays in the Picture Directed Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen. Warner Brothers, 2002: 93 minutes.
The Laramie Project Directed by Moisés Kaufman. HBO, 2001: 96 minutes.
Lost in La Mancha Directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. New Video, 2002: 93 minutes.
Madonna: Truth or Dare Directed by Alek Keshishian. Artisan, 1991: 120 minutes.
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision Directed by Freida Lee Mock. American Film Foundation, 1995: 83 minutes.
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Directed by Errol Morris. Universal Studios, 2000: 91 minutes.
Calhoun, Laurie. “Death and Contradiction: Errol Morris’s Tragic View of Technokillers.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism Directed by Robert Greenwald. The Disinformation Company, 2004: 114 minutes.
Paradise Lost II: Revelations Directed Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. New Video, 2001: 146 minutes.
Opel, Andy. “Paradise Lost I & II: Documentary, Gothic and the Monster of Justice.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Roger and Me Directed by Michael Moore. Warner, 1989: 91 minutes.
Scratch Directed by Doug Pray. Palm Pictures, 2001:
Startup.com Directed Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim. Artisan, 2001: 103 minutes.
Stranger With a Camera Directed by Elizabeth Barrett. Appalshop, 2000: 60 minutes.
The Subtext of a Yale Education Directed by Laura Dunn. Citizen Films, 1998: 31 minutes.
Super Size Me Directed by Morgan Spurlock. Hart Sharp Video, 2004: 96 minutes.
Lee, Christina. “Super Size Me.” The Film Journal #9 (July 2004):
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Birth of a Nonfiction Film Style: The Thin Blue Line.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 305-311.
Unconstitutional: The War On Our Civil Librties Directed by Nonny De La Peña. The Disinformation Company, 2004: 66 minutes.
The Weather Underground Directed by Bill Siegel and Sam Green II. New Video Group, 2003: 92 minutes.
When We Were Kings Directed by Leon Gast. Usa Films, 1999: 94 minutes.
Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzee’s Cry? Directed by Carol L. Fleischer. Artisan, 2000: 100 minutes.
The Fantastic: Identity
Donnie Darko (Directors Cut: 2004) Directed by Richard Kelley II Fox Home Entertainment, 2004: 133 minutes.
Eig, Jonathan. “A Beautiful Mind(Fuck): Hollywood Structures of Identity.” Jump Cut 46 (Summer 2003)
Fight Club Directed by David Fincher. Fox Home Entertainment, 1999: 139 minutes.
Rothe-Kushel, Jethro. “Fight Club: A Ritual Cure for the Spiritual Ailment of American Masculinity.” The Film Journal (2002)
Taubin, Amy. “So Good It Hurts.” Science Fiction/Horror: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Kim Newman. London: British Film Institute, 2002: 103-107.
Zavodny, John. “I Am Jack’s Wasted Life: Fight Club and Personal Identity.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 47-60.
Jacob’s Ladder Directed by Adrian Lyne. Artisan, 1990: 116 minutes.
Memento Directed by Christopher Nolan. Columbia/Tristar, 2000: 113 minutes.
Baur, Mchael. “We All Need Mirrors To Remind Us Who We Are: Inherited Meaning and Inherited Selves in Memento.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 94-110.
Mulholland Drive Directed by David Lynch. Universal Studios, 2001: 147 minutes.
Gender:
Boys Don’t Cry Directed by Kimberly Peirce. Twentieth Century Fox, 1999: 116 Minutes.
Leigh, Danny. “Boy Wonder.” American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Jim Hiller. London: British Film Institute, 2001: 110-114.
Rich, B. Ruby. “Queer and Present Danger.” American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Jim Hiller. London: British Film Institute, 2001: 114-118
Hanrahan, Rebecca. “Popping It In: Gender Identity in Boys Don’t Cry.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 77-93.
G.I. Jane Directed by Ridley Scott. Hollywood Pictures, 1997: 125 minutes.
Williams, Linda Ruth. “Body Talk.” Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. José Arroyo London: British Film Institute, 2000: 44-50.
But I’m a Cheerleader Directed by Jamie Babbit. Lions Gate Home Entertainment, 1999: 86 minutes.
History and Film:
Iron Jawed Angels Directed by Katjia von Garnier. Warner, 2004:
Hotel Rwanda Directed by Terry George. MGM, 2005: 122 minutes.
American Cinema: The Western (60 minute documentary)
Horror:
Jancovich, Mark. “General Introduction.” Horror: The Film Reader. ed. M. Jancovich. NY: Routledge, 2002: 1-19. {Excellent intro to horror as a genre, the history of horror genre criticism and the problems with genre criticism. Jancovich as always provides a general understanding while, at the same time, problematizing traditional assumptions.}
Russell, David J. “Monster Roundup: Reintegrating the Horror Genre.” Refiguring Film Genres: Theory and History. ed. Nick Browne. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998: 233-254. {Analysis and critique of past typologies of the horror genre, with an attempt at a more refined and inclusive system of mapping out horror genres. Good attempt that would be productive for the classroom.}
Guillory, Bradley P. “Stained Lens: Style as Cultural Signifier in Seventies Horror Films.” The Film Journal #10 (October 2004)
American Nightmare: A Celebration of Films From Hollywood’s Golden Age of Fright. Directed Adam Simon. (2004: 73 minutes) {Interesting look at five groundbreaking horror films of the 60s/70s, in particular, how they were a product of their social and political era. This documentary is not a long view history of the genre, rather it is a snapshot of a moment. The focus is on George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, John Carpenter’s Halloween, Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and David Cronenberg’s Shivers.}
Candyman Directed by Bernard Rose. Columbia-Tristar, 1992: 98 minutes.
Frailty Directed by Bill Paxton. Lions Gate Home Entertainment, 2002: 99 minutes.
Event Horizon Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Paramount, 1997: 97 minutes.
In the Mouth of Madness Directed by John Carpenter. New Line Home Entertainment, 1995: 95 minutes.
Lord of Illusions Directed by Clive Barker. MGM, 1995: 121 minutes.
Se7en Directed by David Fincher. New Line, 1995: 127 minutes.
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Defining Theme, Metaphor, and Character Through Color, Texture and Environmental Design: Se7en.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 280-285.
Independent Film: Dialogue/Language
Rausch, Andrew J. “A Shark, a Jedi Knight, and the Modern Blockbuster.” Turning Points in Film History. NY: Citadel Press, 2004: 199-210.
Shaw, Richard. “Are the U.S.A.’s Independent Films a Distinct National Cinema?” The Film Journal #6 (2002)
Schizopolis Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Criterion Collection, 1997: 96 minutes.
Slacker Directed by Richard Linklater. Criterion Collection, 1991: 97 minutes.
Miller’s Crossing Directed by the Coen Brothers. Twentieth Century Fox, 1990: 115 minutes.
Coughlin, Paul. “Language Aesthetics in Three Films by Joel and Ethan Coen.” The Film Journal 12 (April 2005)
Clerks Directed by Kevin Smith. Miramax, 1994: 92 minutes.
Military Film:
Three Kings Directed David O. Russell. Warner, 1999: 115 minutes.
Kataeff, Lila. “Three Kings: Neocolonial Arab Representation.” Jump Cut 46 (Summer 2003)
Apocalypse Now: Redux Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Paramount, 1979/2001: 202 minutes.
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Tableau Narrative Structure and Sound Design.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 14-19.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Vietnam, The Theme Park.” Movies as Politics. Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press, 1997: 134-139.
The Thin Red Line Directed by Terence Malick. Twentieth Century Fox, 1999: 170 minutes.
Saving Private Ryan Directed by Steven Spielberg. Dreamworks, 1999: 169 minutes.
Born on the Fourth of July Directed by Oliver Stone. Universal Studios, 1989: 145 minutes.
Platoon Directed by Oliver Stone. MGM, 1986: 120 minutes.
Full Metal Jacket Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Warner Studios, 1987: 117 minutes.
Philosophy and Film: Movies and the Meaning of Life
I Heart Huckabees Directed by David O. Russell. Twentieth Century Fox, 2004: 107 minutes.
Garrett, Daniel. “David Owen Russell’s I Heart Huckabees.” Offscreen 9.1 (January 31, 2005)
American Beauty Directed by Sam Mendes. Universal Studios, 1999: 122 minutes.
Hole, George T. “American Beauty: Look Closer.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 153-168.
Contact Directed by Roger Zemeckis. Warner Studios, 1997: 150 minutes.
Keith, Heather and Steve Fesmire. “Our Place in the Cosmos: Faith and Belief in Contact.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 17-31.
Science Fiction:
Blade Runner (Director’s Cut) Directed by Ridley Scott. Warner Brothers, 1982/1993: 117 minutes.
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Production Design: Blade Runner.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 39-45.
The Matrix Directed by the Wachowski Brothers. Warner, 1999: 136 minutes.
Solaris Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Twentieth Century Fox, 2002: 99 minutes.
Starship Troopers Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Columbia Tristar, 1997: 130 minutes.
O’Hehir, Andrew. “Starship Troopers (Review)” Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. José Arroyo London: British Film Institute, 2000: 254-256.
Social Realism: Class
Ginsberg, Terri, Chuck Kleinhans and Dennis Broe. “Bibliography on Class in Film and Media Studies.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Slam Directed by Marv Levin. Vidmark/Trimark, 1998: 103 minutes.
Gosford Park Directed by Robert Altman. Universal Studios, 2001: 138 minutes.
Matewan Directed by John Sayles. Lions Gate, 1987:
Teen Films: The Sites of Youth
Foxfire Directed by Annette Haywood-Carter. Columbia-Tristar Studios, 1996: 102 minutes.
Boyz N the Hood Directed by John Singleton. Columbia-Tristar, 1991: 112 minutes.
Diawara, Manthia. “Black American Cinema: The New Realism.” Film and Theory. ed. Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000: 236-256.
Dazed and Confused Directed by Richard Linklater. Universal Studios, 1993: 103 minutes.
Naploean Dynamite Directed by Jared Hess. Twentieth Century Fox, 2004: 89 minutes.
Writer: Charlie Kaufman
Being John Malkovich Directed by Spike Jonze. Universal Studios, 1999: 113 minutes.
Human Nature Directed by Mike Gondry. New Line Home Entertainment, 2001: 96 minutes.
Adaptation Directed by Spike Jonze. Columbia-Tristar, 2003: 115 minutes.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Directed by George Clooney. Miramax, 2003: 114 minutes.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Directed by Mike Gondry. Universal Studios, 2004: 108 minutes.
Mount, John. “How To Get a Head in Movies: Interview of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman.” American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Jim Hiller. London: British Film Institute, 2001: 190-192.
Romney, Jonathan. “Being John Malkovich (Review).” American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Jim Hiller. London: British Film Institute, 2001: 192-194.
Future Movies profile
MSNBC profile
Salon profile
Spliced profile
This is still a work-in-progress so please feel free to make more suggestions about films and, definitely, readings (online and print). The sections are arranged alphabetically and are not structured for a course yet. In most of them the first film would be shown in the class and the students would choose one of the additional films to watch outside of class. The students will post responses to those films on a weblog and the class will then produce a body of critiques for each section.
From now on I will work with this over at the weblog Cineaste which I have set up as a Film Studies Resource site.
Thanks again to those that offered suggestions
--------------------------------------------------
Auteur Theory: Two New York Directors
Do the Right Thing Directed by Spike Lee. Criterion Collection, 1989: 120 minutes.
Tasker, Yvonne. “Spike Lee.” Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers. ed. Yvonne Tasker. NY: Routledge, 2002: 235-243.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Say the Right Thing.” Movies as Politics. Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press, 1997: 13-21.
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Political Objectives Through Cinematic Storytelling.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 114-121.
Gangs of New York. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Miramax, 2002: 167 minutes.
Larke, George S. “Martin Scorsese: Movies and Religion.” Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers. ed. Yvonne Tasker. NY: Routledge, 2002: 289-295.
Tepper, Craig. “Dickens, Griffith and the Gangs of New York: The Belatedness of a Modern Epic.” The Film Journal 12 (April 2005)
Cinematography: From the Silent Era to Digital Films
Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography Directed by Todd McCarthy. American Film Institute, 1992: 95 minutes. {Easily one of the best films I have ever seen about making films. A history of cinematography that is gripping and beautiful—as soon as it was over, I wanted to start from the beginning again.}
Dyer, Richard. “Introduction to Film Studies.” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. NY: Oxford University Press, 1998: 3-10. {Good place to begin in that he maps out the two main ways of looking at film technique/aesthetics and cultural/political.
Watch one (or more) of M. Night Shyamalan’s first three movies: The Sixth Sense (Disney, 1999); Unbreakable (Touchstone, 2000); Signs (Touchstone, 2002).
Totaro, Donato. “Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s Fantastic Trilogy, Part 1: The Long Take.” Offscreen (November 30, 2003)
---. “Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s Fantastic Trilogy, Part 2: Mise en Scène.” Offscreen (November 30, 2003)
The Art of Cinematography
Documentary: Truth is Stranger Than Fiction?
The Thin Blue Line Directed by Errol Morris. MGM, 1988: 102 minutes.
Buckland, Warren. “The Non-Fiction Film: Five Types of Documentary.” Teach Yourself Film Studies. 2nd edition. Blacklick, OH: McGraw Hill, 2003: 130-150.
American Movie Directed by Chris Smith. Columbia/Tristar, 1999: 104 minutes.
Beyond the Mat (Director’s Cut) Directed by Barry W. Blaustein. Universal Studios, 2000: 108 minutes.
Bowling For Columbine Directed by Michael Moore. MGM, 2002: 120 minutes.
Brother’s Keeper Directed Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. New Video Group, 1992: 105 minutes.
Buena Vista Social Club Directed by Wim Wenders. Artisan, 1999: 105 minutes.
Capturing the Friedmans Directed by Andrew Jarecki. HBO, 2003:
The Celluloid Closet Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Columbia/Tristar, 1996: 101 minutes.
Confederacy Theory Directed by Ryan Deussing. University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning, 2001: 57 minutes.
The Corporation Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. Zeitgeist Video, 2004: 145 minutes.
Crumb Directed by Terry Zwigoff. Columbia/Tristar, 1995: 119 minutes.
Dark Days Directed by Marc Singer. Ryco, 2000:
Derrida Directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Zietgeist Video, 2002: 85 minutes.
Dogtown and Z-Boys Directed by Stacy Peralta. Columbia Tristar, 2001: 91 minutes.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye Directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Universal Studios, 2000: 80 minutes.
Fahrenheit 9/11 Directed by Michael Moore. Columbia/Tristar, 2004: 122 minutes.
Laskowski, Nicole. “Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control Directed by Errol Morris. Columbia Tristar, 1997: 82 minutes.
The Filth and the Fury: A Sex Pistols Film Directed by Julien Temple. New Line, 2000: 103 minutes.
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara Directed by Errol Morris. Columbia/Tristar, 2004: 107 minutes.
Calhoun, Laurie. “Death and Contradiction: Errol Morris’s Tragic View of Technokillers.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Go Tigers! Directed by Kenneth A. Carlson. New Video, 2001: 102 minutes.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse Directed by Eleanor Coppola. Paramount, 1991:
Hoop Dreams Directed by Steve James. Criterion Collection, 1994: 171 minutes.
Hype! Directed by Doug Pray. Republic Studios, 1996:
Independent Media in a Time of War Speech by Amy Goodman intercut with media clips. Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center, 2003: 29 minutes.
The Kid Stays in the Picture Directed Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen. Warner Brothers, 2002: 93 minutes.
The Laramie Project Directed by Moisés Kaufman. HBO, 2001: 96 minutes.
Lost in La Mancha Directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. New Video, 2002: 93 minutes.
Madonna: Truth or Dare Directed by Alek Keshishian. Artisan, 1991: 120 minutes.
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision Directed by Freida Lee Mock. American Film Foundation, 1995: 83 minutes.
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Directed by Errol Morris. Universal Studios, 2000: 91 minutes.
Calhoun, Laurie. “Death and Contradiction: Errol Morris’s Tragic View of Technokillers.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism Directed by Robert Greenwald. The Disinformation Company, 2004: 114 minutes.
Paradise Lost II: Revelations Directed Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. New Video, 2001: 146 minutes.
Opel, Andy. “Paradise Lost I & II: Documentary, Gothic and the Monster of Justice.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Roger and Me Directed by Michael Moore. Warner, 1989: 91 minutes.
Scratch Directed by Doug Pray. Palm Pictures, 2001:
Startup.com Directed Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim. Artisan, 2001: 103 minutes.
Stranger With a Camera Directed by Elizabeth Barrett. Appalshop, 2000: 60 minutes.
The Subtext of a Yale Education Directed by Laura Dunn. Citizen Films, 1998: 31 minutes.
Super Size Me Directed by Morgan Spurlock. Hart Sharp Video, 2004: 96 minutes.
Lee, Christina. “Super Size Me.” The Film Journal #9 (July 2004):
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Birth of a Nonfiction Film Style: The Thin Blue Line.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 305-311.
Unconstitutional: The War On Our Civil Librties Directed by Nonny De La Peña. The Disinformation Company, 2004: 66 minutes.
The Weather Underground Directed by Bill Siegel and Sam Green II. New Video Group, 2003: 92 minutes.
When We Were Kings Directed by Leon Gast. Usa Films, 1999: 94 minutes.
Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzee’s Cry? Directed by Carol L. Fleischer. Artisan, 2000: 100 minutes.
The Fantastic: Identity
Donnie Darko (Directors Cut: 2004) Directed by Richard Kelley II Fox Home Entertainment, 2004: 133 minutes.
Eig, Jonathan. “A Beautiful Mind(Fuck): Hollywood Structures of Identity.” Jump Cut 46 (Summer 2003)
Fight Club Directed by David Fincher. Fox Home Entertainment, 1999: 139 minutes.
Rothe-Kushel, Jethro. “Fight Club: A Ritual Cure for the Spiritual Ailment of American Masculinity.” The Film Journal (2002)
Taubin, Amy. “So Good It Hurts.” Science Fiction/Horror: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Kim Newman. London: British Film Institute, 2002: 103-107.
Zavodny, John. “I Am Jack’s Wasted Life: Fight Club and Personal Identity.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 47-60.
Jacob’s Ladder Directed by Adrian Lyne. Artisan, 1990: 116 minutes.
Memento Directed by Christopher Nolan. Columbia/Tristar, 2000: 113 minutes.
Baur, Mchael. “We All Need Mirrors To Remind Us Who We Are: Inherited Meaning and Inherited Selves in Memento.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 94-110.
Mulholland Drive Directed by David Lynch. Universal Studios, 2001: 147 minutes.
Gender:
Boys Don’t Cry Directed by Kimberly Peirce. Twentieth Century Fox, 1999: 116 Minutes.
Leigh, Danny. “Boy Wonder.” American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Jim Hiller. London: British Film Institute, 2001: 110-114.
Rich, B. Ruby. “Queer and Present Danger.” American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Jim Hiller. London: British Film Institute, 2001: 114-118
Hanrahan, Rebecca. “Popping It In: Gender Identity in Boys Don’t Cry.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 77-93.
G.I. Jane Directed by Ridley Scott. Hollywood Pictures, 1997: 125 minutes.
Williams, Linda Ruth. “Body Talk.” Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. José Arroyo London: British Film Institute, 2000: 44-50.
But I’m a Cheerleader Directed by Jamie Babbit. Lions Gate Home Entertainment, 1999: 86 minutes.
History and Film:
Iron Jawed Angels Directed by Katjia von Garnier. Warner, 2004:
Hotel Rwanda Directed by Terry George. MGM, 2005: 122 minutes.
American Cinema: The Western (60 minute documentary)
Horror:
Jancovich, Mark. “General Introduction.” Horror: The Film Reader. ed. M. Jancovich. NY: Routledge, 2002: 1-19. {Excellent intro to horror as a genre, the history of horror genre criticism and the problems with genre criticism. Jancovich as always provides a general understanding while, at the same time, problematizing traditional assumptions.}
Russell, David J. “Monster Roundup: Reintegrating the Horror Genre.” Refiguring Film Genres: Theory and History. ed. Nick Browne. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998: 233-254. {Analysis and critique of past typologies of the horror genre, with an attempt at a more refined and inclusive system of mapping out horror genres. Good attempt that would be productive for the classroom.}
Guillory, Bradley P. “Stained Lens: Style as Cultural Signifier in Seventies Horror Films.” The Film Journal #10 (October 2004)
American Nightmare: A Celebration of Films From Hollywood’s Golden Age of Fright. Directed Adam Simon. (2004: 73 minutes) {Interesting look at five groundbreaking horror films of the 60s/70s, in particular, how they were a product of their social and political era. This documentary is not a long view history of the genre, rather it is a snapshot of a moment. The focus is on George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, John Carpenter’s Halloween, Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and David Cronenberg’s Shivers.}
Candyman Directed by Bernard Rose. Columbia-Tristar, 1992: 98 minutes.
Frailty Directed by Bill Paxton. Lions Gate Home Entertainment, 2002: 99 minutes.
Event Horizon Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Paramount, 1997: 97 minutes.
In the Mouth of Madness Directed by John Carpenter. New Line Home Entertainment, 1995: 95 minutes.
Lord of Illusions Directed by Clive Barker. MGM, 1995: 121 minutes.
Se7en Directed by David Fincher. New Line, 1995: 127 minutes.
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Defining Theme, Metaphor, and Character Through Color, Texture and Environmental Design: Se7en.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 280-285.
Independent Film: Dialogue/Language
Rausch, Andrew J. “A Shark, a Jedi Knight, and the Modern Blockbuster.” Turning Points in Film History. NY: Citadel Press, 2004: 199-210.
Shaw, Richard. “Are the U.S.A.’s Independent Films a Distinct National Cinema?” The Film Journal #6 (2002)
Schizopolis Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Criterion Collection, 1997: 96 minutes.
Slacker Directed by Richard Linklater. Criterion Collection, 1991: 97 minutes.
Miller’s Crossing Directed by the Coen Brothers. Twentieth Century Fox, 1990: 115 minutes.
Coughlin, Paul. “Language Aesthetics in Three Films by Joel and Ethan Coen.” The Film Journal 12 (April 2005)
Clerks Directed by Kevin Smith. Miramax, 1994: 92 minutes.
Military Film:
Three Kings Directed David O. Russell. Warner, 1999: 115 minutes.
Kataeff, Lila. “Three Kings: Neocolonial Arab Representation.” Jump Cut 46 (Summer 2003)
Apocalypse Now: Redux Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Paramount, 1979/2001: 202 minutes.
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Tableau Narrative Structure and Sound Design.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 14-19.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Vietnam, The Theme Park.” Movies as Politics. Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press, 1997: 134-139.
The Thin Red Line Directed by Terence Malick. Twentieth Century Fox, 1999: 170 minutes.
Saving Private Ryan Directed by Steven Spielberg. Dreamworks, 1999: 169 minutes.
Born on the Fourth of July Directed by Oliver Stone. Universal Studios, 1989: 145 minutes.
Platoon Directed by Oliver Stone. MGM, 1986: 120 minutes.
Full Metal Jacket Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Warner Studios, 1987: 117 minutes.
Philosophy and Film: Movies and the Meaning of Life
I Heart Huckabees Directed by David O. Russell. Twentieth Century Fox, 2004: 107 minutes.
Garrett, Daniel. “David Owen Russell’s I Heart Huckabees.” Offscreen 9.1 (January 31, 2005)
American Beauty Directed by Sam Mendes. Universal Studios, 1999: 122 minutes.
Hole, George T. “American Beauty: Look Closer.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 153-168.
Contact Directed by Roger Zemeckis. Warner Studios, 1997: 150 minutes.
Keith, Heather and Steve Fesmire. “Our Place in the Cosmos: Faith and Belief in Contact.” Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. eds. Kimberly A. Blessing and Paul J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005: 17-31.
Science Fiction:
Blade Runner (Director’s Cut) Directed by Ridley Scott. Warner Brothers, 1982/1993: 117 minutes.
LoBrutto, Vincent. “Production Design: Blade Runner.” Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 39-45.
The Matrix Directed by the Wachowski Brothers. Warner, 1999: 136 minutes.
Solaris Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Twentieth Century Fox, 2002: 99 minutes.
Starship Troopers Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Columbia Tristar, 1997: 130 minutes.
O’Hehir, Andrew. “Starship Troopers (Review)” Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. José Arroyo London: British Film Institute, 2000: 254-256.
Social Realism: Class
Ginsberg, Terri, Chuck Kleinhans and Dennis Broe. “Bibliography on Class in Film and Media Studies.” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005)
Slam Directed by Marv Levin. Vidmark/Trimark, 1998: 103 minutes.
Gosford Park Directed by Robert Altman. Universal Studios, 2001: 138 minutes.
Matewan Directed by John Sayles. Lions Gate, 1987:
Teen Films: The Sites of Youth
Foxfire Directed by Annette Haywood-Carter. Columbia-Tristar Studios, 1996: 102 minutes.
Boyz N the Hood Directed by John Singleton. Columbia-Tristar, 1991: 112 minutes.
Diawara, Manthia. “Black American Cinema: The New Realism.” Film and Theory. ed. Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000: 236-256.
Dazed and Confused Directed by Richard Linklater. Universal Studios, 1993: 103 minutes.
Naploean Dynamite Directed by Jared Hess. Twentieth Century Fox, 2004: 89 minutes.
Writer: Charlie Kaufman
Being John Malkovich Directed by Spike Jonze. Universal Studios, 1999: 113 minutes.
Human Nature Directed by Mike Gondry. New Line Home Entertainment, 2001: 96 minutes.
Adaptation Directed by Spike Jonze. Columbia-Tristar, 2003: 115 minutes.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Directed by George Clooney. Miramax, 2003: 114 minutes.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Directed by Mike Gondry. Universal Studios, 2004: 108 minutes.
Mount, John. “How To Get a Head in Movies: Interview of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman.” American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Jim Hiller. London: British Film Institute, 2001: 190-192.
Romney, Jonathan. “Being John Malkovich (Review).” American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader. ed. Jim Hiller. London: British Film Institute, 2001: 192-194.
Future Movies profile
MSNBC profile
Salon profile
Spliced profile
CFP: Theories/Practices of Blogging
This is a call for papers for a special theme issue on “blogging” to be published as a threshold issue in the journal Reconstruction. The editors of this theme issue are looking for papers/projects/manifestos on the subject of “blogging.”
Possible topics:
Theorization of the Blogosphere
Blogging Manifesto
Politics and/of Blogging
Aesthetics of Blogs
Activist Blogging
Auto/Biographical Blogs
New Media/Communication Theories and Blogging
New Journalism Blogging
Civil Rights of Bloggers
Global Culture and Blogging
Local Culture and Blogging
Education and Blogging
Gender and Blogging
Race and Blogging
Collective Blogs
Community of Bloggers
Unrealized Potential of Blogging
Critiques of Blogging
Representations of Space/Place on Blogs
Purpose of a Unique Individual/Collective Blog
Audio and Visual Blogs
We are especially interested in the experiences, theories and perspectives of those who actually blog. We are looking for longer theoretical essays and shorter statements/manifestos about blogging--including pieces that have already been posted on your blogs. We are also soliciting reviews of books about blogging and your favorite weblogs. Deadline for submissions is October 20, 2006. The issue is scheduled to be published as Winter 2006 issue.
Feel free to propose other topics to the editors: Michael Benton (University of Kentucky; editor for Reconstruction; founder of the blog Dialogic) and Lauren Elkin. Send all queries, proposals and manuscripts to mdbento@gmail.com
Possible topics:
Theorization of the Blogosphere
Blogging Manifesto
Politics and/of Blogging
Aesthetics of Blogs
Activist Blogging
Auto/Biographical Blogs
New Media/Communication Theories and Blogging
New Journalism Blogging
Civil Rights of Bloggers
Global Culture and Blogging
Local Culture and Blogging
Education and Blogging
Gender and Blogging
Race and Blogging
Collective Blogs
Community of Bloggers
Unrealized Potential of Blogging
Critiques of Blogging
Representations of Space/Place on Blogs
Purpose of a Unique Individual/Collective Blog
Audio and Visual Blogs
We are especially interested in the experiences, theories and perspectives of those who actually blog. We are looking for longer theoretical essays and shorter statements/manifestos about blogging--including pieces that have already been posted on your blogs. We are also soliciting reviews of books about blogging and your favorite weblogs. Deadline for submissions is October 20, 2006. The issue is scheduled to be published as Winter 2006 issue.
Feel free to propose other topics to the editors: Michael Benton (University of Kentucky; editor for Reconstruction; founder of the blog Dialogic) and Lauren Elkin. Send all queries, proposals and manuscripts to mdbento@gmail.com
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Rob Halford
I just listened to this in-depth NPR profile of the metal icon Rob Halford of the band Judas Priest and was struck by his intelligence and humor:
Listen to the Interview and Songs From the New CD
Listen to the Interview and Songs From the New CD
Judas Priest has a new album out, Angel of Retribution, and is on tour this summer. Originally from Birmingham, England, Judas Priest pioneered the heavy metal sound in the 1970s and '80s. Lead singer Halford left the band in 1991, citing internal tension, and in 1998, he disclosed that he is gay during an interview on MTV. Nicknamed the "Metal God," Halford returned to Judas Priest in 2003. The band -- which takes its name from the Bob Dylan song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" -- is best known for songs such as "Breaking the Law," "Hell Bent for Leather" and "Livin' After Midnight."
Democracy Now: PBS TV Station President Warns CPB Funding Cuts Will Launch "Spiral of Death for Public Broadcasting"
Some left-leaning colleagues have commented lately that it really doesn't matter if PBS is defunded (of course, even more are seriously pissed off and are attempting to stop this move)... I think that this attitude ignores the important role PBS and NPR play in initiating critical thought in our citizens. True, they are not radical as many would desire (and perhaps that is valuable in itself), but they are an intelligent option that does reach those that do not access other independent, alternative news and entertainment agencies. NPR and public radio stations also play vital roles in providing forums for independent artists and presenting diverse issues and opinions on our radio airwaves (much better than the piped in dreck of the corporate airwaves). For instance, where else on TV (where for better or worse most people get their info about the world), are you going to find a documentary criticizing the role of private warriors in Iraq? For more on that show check out Frontline: Private Warriors
In the last class that I showed Amy Goodman's documentary Independent Media in a Time of War I asked my 25 students how many of them had heard of Amy Goodman and 5 said they had heard her broadcasts for Democracy Now. All five of these students had heard it on the afternoon local NPR radio station (two on their own and three when there parents were playing the station) and none of them knew that you could access the show online for free. What will be lost through the defunding of this important public resource?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PBS TV Station President Warns CPB Funding Cuts Will Launch "Spiral of Death for Public Broadcasting"
Special Report by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee voted to drastically cut
funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We host a roundtable
discussion on the continuing fight over public broadcasting in this country
with the presidents of two PBS stations as well as Jeff Chester of the
Center for Digital Democracy.
Watch/Listen/Read
In the last class that I showed Amy Goodman's documentary Independent Media in a Time of War I asked my 25 students how many of them had heard of Amy Goodman and 5 said they had heard her broadcasts for Democracy Now. All five of these students had heard it on the afternoon local NPR radio station (two on their own and three when there parents were playing the station) and none of them knew that you could access the show online for free. What will be lost through the defunding of this important public resource?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PBS TV Station President Warns CPB Funding Cuts Will Launch "Spiral of Death for Public Broadcasting"
Special Report by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee voted to drastically cut
funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We host a roundtable
discussion on the continuing fight over public broadcasting in this country
with the presidents of two PBS stations as well as Jeff Chester of the
Center for Digital Democracy.
Watch/Listen/Read
Monday, June 20, 2005
Norman Mailer: Superman Comes to the Supermarket
"America's politics would now be also America's favourite movie, America's first soap opera, America's best-seller."
Mailer, Norman. Superman Comes to the Supermarket Esquire (November 1960)
Also:
Once There Was a New Journalism
Prize Writer
Mailer, Norman. Superman Comes to the Supermarket Esquire (November 1960)
Also:
Once There Was a New Journalism
Prize Writer
Friday, June 17, 2005
Katha Pollitt: Brooklyn Professor in Godless Shocker
(Courtesy of Henri Mensonge)
Brooklyn Professor in Godless Shocker
by Katha Pollitt
The Nation
Excerpt:
As long as a believer ascribes his views to his faith, he can say anything he wants and if you don't like it, you're the bigot. Simplistic as Shortell's essay is, it does raise a useful point: Faith and morality are not only not the same, as Americans like to think, they express contradictory impulses. I believe Kierkegaard said something along these lines in Fear and Trembling in his discussion of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. Or as the physicist Steven Weinberg put it more recently: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Would Weinberg be too "offensive" for CUNY?
The Tim Shortell case is not a blip, even at CUNY. Around the same time it went after Shortell, the Sun ran a front-page story accusing Priya Parmar, a young untenured professor in Brooklyn College's School of Education, of attacking standard English as "the language of oppressors," based on a reading assignment and complaints from two students accused of plagiarism. Under the guise of depoliticizing academia, David Horowitz is pushing the "Academic Bill of Rights," which would empower state legislatures to mandate "balance" in the classroom. His website invites students to report their teachers for such sins as "introduced controversial material," "mocked political/religious figures" and the ever-popular "biased grading."
Entire Article
Brooklyn Professor in Godless Shocker
by Katha Pollitt
The Nation
Excerpt:
As long as a believer ascribes his views to his faith, he can say anything he wants and if you don't like it, you're the bigot. Simplistic as Shortell's essay is, it does raise a useful point: Faith and morality are not only not the same, as Americans like to think, they express contradictory impulses. I believe Kierkegaard said something along these lines in Fear and Trembling in his discussion of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. Or as the physicist Steven Weinberg put it more recently: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Would Weinberg be too "offensive" for CUNY?
The Tim Shortell case is not a blip, even at CUNY. Around the same time it went after Shortell, the Sun ran a front-page story accusing Priya Parmar, a young untenured professor in Brooklyn College's School of Education, of attacking standard English as "the language of oppressors," based on a reading assignment and complaints from two students accused of plagiarism. Under the guise of depoliticizing academia, David Horowitz is pushing the "Academic Bill of Rights," which would empower state legislatures to mandate "balance" in the classroom. His website invites students to report their teachers for such sins as "introduced controversial material," "mocked political/religious figures" and the ever-popular "biased grading."
Entire Article
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Amy Goodman: Crackdown on Dissent in Ethiopa
Crackdown on Dissent in Ethiopia
Report by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
Following last month's elections, Ethiopian security forces are cracking down on protests against alleged fraud. We speak to Human Rights Watch about police violence and a peace agreement that aims to address election-related complaints.
Watch/Listen/Read this report
Report by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
Following last month's elections, Ethiopian security forces are cracking down on protests against alleged fraud. We speak to Human Rights Watch about police violence and a peace agreement that aims to address election-related complaints.
Watch/Listen/Read this report
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