here are a rotating list of 20 songs ...
"How I Feel" by Wax Tailor
"Yell Fire" by Michael Franti/Spearhead
"Nuh Skin Up Dub" by Keith Hudson and the Soul Syndicate
"Rising Up" by The Roots
"Sincerely Jasper" by Jasper & the Prodigal Sons
"The Stars Are Projectors" by Modest Mouse
"Supermodel-Superficial" by Voodoo Queen
"Sexopolis" by Jean Pierre Mirouze
"Kolory" by Post Regiment
"Let the World Turn" by Death
"Five String Serenade" by Mazzy Star
"Teen Age Riot" by Sonic Youth
"We Can't Make It Here Anymore" by James McMurty
"Supertheory of Everything" by Gogol Bordello
"FuckShitStack" by Reggie Watts
"Ain't no sunshine" by Ladysmith Black Mambazo & Des'ree
"Things You Can Do" by Deltron 3030
"We're Not Alone" by Peeping Tom
"Anything You Like" by Elysian Fields
"Paint It Black" by Rolling Stones
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
What is Anarchism for You?
(this is my idea of what it is, of course disregarding everything I have read, and the countless splinter groups--defined by me, for myself, and to be discussed with those I associate with...)
my answer: i can imagine a better world ... but it is the idea of multiple collectives coming together with ideas (practical and visionary) and putting them into play (openly) in which they rub against one another, shifting, adapting, learning, ... working together when it suits our needs ... developing a sense of who we are and basing our reputation (something that must be earned--not handed down) as the currency in which we interact with one another... but in any way "collectively" for that situation with those people working for the greater good.
my answer: i can imagine a better world ... but it is the idea of multiple collectives coming together with ideas (practical and visionary) and putting them into play (openly) in which they rub against one another, shifting, adapting, learning, ... working together when it suits our needs ... developing a sense of who we are and basing our reputation (something that must be earned--not handed down) as the currency in which we interact with one another... but in any way "collectively" for that situation with those people working for the greater good.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (USA: Gini Reticker, 2008): Fri. October 2, 7:00—9:00 pm
(Extra credit opportunity for my students)
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Pray the Devil Back to Hell is a multi award-winning gripping account of a group of brave and visionary women who demanded peace for Liberia, a nation torn to shreds by civil war. The women’s historic, yet unsung achievement finds voice in a narrative
that intersperses contemporary interviews, archival images, and scenes of present-day Liberia together to recount the experiences and memories of the women who were instrumental in bringing lasting peace to their country. It offers moving testimony to the power of regular people to make real change in their worlds.
The story of the role played by the women of Liberia in helping forge a peaceful resolution of the nation’s civil war might have been lost without the documentation
provided by “Pray the Devil Back to Hell”. While conflict and disagreement among people of different faiths often dominate world headlines, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” details the success of an unlikely interfaith alliance between Muslim and
Christian women in resolving the Liberian conflict.
-— Discussion Guide quotes written by Ellen Livingston,
Teachers College, Columbia University
Discussion to follow; Reception in Art Gallery
Fri. October 2, 7:00—9:00 pm
Lexington Public Library Theatre,
140 East Main St., Lex. KY
Sponsored in partnership with: Lexington’s One World
Films; Central Kentucky Council for Peace & Justice
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Pray the Devil Back to Hell is a multi award-winning gripping account of a group of brave and visionary women who demanded peace for Liberia, a nation torn to shreds by civil war. The women’s historic, yet unsung achievement finds voice in a narrative
that intersperses contemporary interviews, archival images, and scenes of present-day Liberia together to recount the experiences and memories of the women who were instrumental in bringing lasting peace to their country. It offers moving testimony to the power of regular people to make real change in their worlds.
The story of the role played by the women of Liberia in helping forge a peaceful resolution of the nation’s civil war might have been lost without the documentation
provided by “Pray the Devil Back to Hell”. While conflict and disagreement among people of different faiths often dominate world headlines, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” details the success of an unlikely interfaith alliance between Muslim and
Christian women in resolving the Liberian conflict.
-— Discussion Guide quotes written by Ellen Livingston,
Teachers College, Columbia University
Discussion to follow; Reception in Art Gallery
Fri. October 2, 7:00—9:00 pm
Lexington Public Library Theatre,
140 East Main St., Lex. KY
Sponsored in partnership with: Lexington’s One World
Films; Central Kentucky Council for Peace & Justice
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Jess Bravin: Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law
Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law
by Jess Bravin
Wall Street Journal
In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.
During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.
Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."
After a confirmation process that revealed little of her legal philosophy, the remark offered an early hint of the direction Justice Sotomayor might want to take the court.
"Progressives who think that corporations already have an unduly large influence on policy in the United States have to feel reassured that this was one of [her] first questions," said Douglas Kendall, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.
"I don't want to draw too much from one comment," says Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But it "doesn't give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded."
For centuries, corporations have been considered beings apart from their human owners, yet sharing with them some attributes, such as the right to make contracts and own property. Originally, corporations were a relatively rare form of organization. The government granted charters to corporations, delineating their specific functions. Their powers were presumed limited to those their charter spelled out.
"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible," Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in an 1819 case. "It possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it."
But as the Industrial Revolution took hold, corporations proliferated and views of their functions began to evolve.
In an 1886 tax dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the state of California, the court reporter quoted Chief Justice Morrison Waite telling attorneys to skip arguments over whether the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause applied to corporations, because "we are all of opinion that it does."
That seemingly off-hand comment reflected an "impulse to shield business activity from certain government regulation," says David Millon, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.
"A positive way to put it is that the economy is booming, American production is leading the world and the courts want to promote that," Mr. Millon says. Less charitably, "it's all about protecting corporate wealth" from taxes, regulations or other legislative initiatives.
Subsequent opinions expanded corporate rights. In 1928, the court struck down a Pennsylvania tax on transportation corporations because individual taxicab drivers were exempt. Corporations get "the same protection of equal laws that natural persons" have, Justice Pierce Butler wrote.
From the mid-20th century, though, the court has vacillated on how far corporate rights extend. In a 1973 case before a more liberal court, Justice William O. Douglas rejected the Butler opinion as "a relic" that overstepped "the narrow confines of judicial review" by second-guessing the legislature's decision to tax corporations differently than individuals.
Today, it's "just complete confusion" over which rights corporations can claim, says Prof. William Simon of Columbia Law School.
Even conservatives sometimes have been skeptical of corporate rights. Then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist dissented in 1979 from a decision voiding Massachusetts's restriction of corporate political spending on referendums. Since corporations receive special legal and tax benefits, "it might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere," he wrote.
To Read the Rest of the Report
by Jess Bravin
Wall Street Journal
In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.
During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.
Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."
After a confirmation process that revealed little of her legal philosophy, the remark offered an early hint of the direction Justice Sotomayor might want to take the court.
"Progressives who think that corporations already have an unduly large influence on policy in the United States have to feel reassured that this was one of [her] first questions," said Douglas Kendall, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.
"I don't want to draw too much from one comment," says Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But it "doesn't give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded."
For centuries, corporations have been considered beings apart from their human owners, yet sharing with them some attributes, such as the right to make contracts and own property. Originally, corporations were a relatively rare form of organization. The government granted charters to corporations, delineating their specific functions. Their powers were presumed limited to those their charter spelled out.
"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible," Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in an 1819 case. "It possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it."
But as the Industrial Revolution took hold, corporations proliferated and views of their functions began to evolve.
In an 1886 tax dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the state of California, the court reporter quoted Chief Justice Morrison Waite telling attorneys to skip arguments over whether the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause applied to corporations, because "we are all of opinion that it does."
That seemingly off-hand comment reflected an "impulse to shield business activity from certain government regulation," says David Millon, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.
"A positive way to put it is that the economy is booming, American production is leading the world and the courts want to promote that," Mr. Millon says. Less charitably, "it's all about protecting corporate wealth" from taxes, regulations or other legislative initiatives.
Subsequent opinions expanded corporate rights. In 1928, the court struck down a Pennsylvania tax on transportation corporations because individual taxicab drivers were exempt. Corporations get "the same protection of equal laws that natural persons" have, Justice Pierce Butler wrote.
From the mid-20th century, though, the court has vacillated on how far corporate rights extend. In a 1973 case before a more liberal court, Justice William O. Douglas rejected the Butler opinion as "a relic" that overstepped "the narrow confines of judicial review" by second-guessing the legislature's decision to tax corporations differently than individuals.
Today, it's "just complete confusion" over which rights corporations can claim, says Prof. William Simon of Columbia Law School.
Even conservatives sometimes have been skeptical of corporate rights. Then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist dissented in 1979 from a decision voiding Massachusetts's restriction of corporate political spending on referendums. Since corporations receive special legal and tax benefits, "it might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere," he wrote.
To Read the Rest of the Report
Truthdig: Financial Meltdown 101
Extensive history of the origins of our current economic crisis--great use of the online forum for mapping out complex histories:
Financial Meltdown 101
Financial Meltdown 101
Truthdig: Dennis vs Goliath
Dennis vs Goliath
Truthdig
Rep. Dennis Kucinich talks about winning a big victory for health care reform, grilling Hank Paulson over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger, and the battle against crony capitalism.
To Listen to the Episode
Truthdig
Rep. Dennis Kucinich talks about winning a big victory for health care reform, grilling Hank Paulson over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger, and the battle against crony capitalism.
To Listen to the Episode
Tapestry of the Times #16: The Country Gentleman; The New Lost City Ramblers; J.D. Short; Joe Hunter; Bill McAdoo; Lucy Stewart; Clyde "Kindy" Sproat
Tapestry of the Times #16
The lightning-fast fingers of banjo picker Eddie Adcock and The Country Gentlemen, Saint Louis blues from the legendary JD Short, a work-song sung by the inmates of a Texas prison camp, a chant learned in a trance by an Eskimo medicine man, a melody from the mountains of North Sumatra, and much more. Real music, real people, and the stories behind the sounds.
The Country Gentlemen
Album: Country Songs, Old and New
Track: # 7, Turkey Knob
Track: # 1, Roving Gambler
The New Lost City Ramblers
Album: American Moonshine & Prohibition
Track: # 2, Kentucky Bootlegger
J.D. Short
Album: Son House & J.D. Short
Track: # 1, So Much Wine
Joe Hunter
Album: John’s Island, South Carolina: It’s People& Songs
Track: # 9, Have You Ever Been Mistreated
Bill McAdoo
Album: Bill McAdoo Sings with Guitar
Track: # 6, Fare Thee Well
Lucy Stewart
Album: Lucy Stewart: Traditional Singer from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Vol. 1 - Child Ballads
Track: # 9, The Swan Swims So Bonnie O, The Two Sisters, Child 10
Clyde “Kindy” Sproat
Album: Musics of Hawaii: Anthology of Hawaiian Music, Special Festival Edition
Track: # 9, Latitu
Evaloo – Southampton Island
Album: The Eskimos of Hudson Bay and Alaska
Track: # 7, Before We Came to this Religion
Prisoners at the Ramsey and Retrieve State Farms
Album: Negro Prison Camp Work Songs
Track: # 8, You Got to Hurry
Big Bill Broonzy
Album: Trouble in Mind
Track: # 6, When Will I Get to be Called a Man
Watson, Price, and Howard
Album: The Original Folkways Recordings of Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley
Disc # 1, Track # 24, Daniel Prayed
Doc Watson
Album: The Original Folkways Recordings of Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley
Disc # 1, Track # 2, Sitting on Top of the World
Gondang Hasapi
Album: Music of Indonesia 4: Music of Nias and North Sumatra
Track: # 13, Gondang Si Bunga Jambu
To Listen to the Episode
The lightning-fast fingers of banjo picker Eddie Adcock and The Country Gentlemen, Saint Louis blues from the legendary JD Short, a work-song sung by the inmates of a Texas prison camp, a chant learned in a trance by an Eskimo medicine man, a melody from the mountains of North Sumatra, and much more. Real music, real people, and the stories behind the sounds.
The Country Gentlemen
Album: Country Songs, Old and New
Track: # 7, Turkey Knob
Track: # 1, Roving Gambler
The New Lost City Ramblers
Album: American Moonshine & Prohibition
Track: # 2, Kentucky Bootlegger
J.D. Short
Album: Son House & J.D. Short
Track: # 1, So Much Wine
Joe Hunter
Album: John’s Island, South Carolina: It’s People& Songs
Track: # 9, Have You Ever Been Mistreated
Bill McAdoo
Album: Bill McAdoo Sings with Guitar
Track: # 6, Fare Thee Well
Lucy Stewart
Album: Lucy Stewart: Traditional Singer from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Vol. 1 - Child Ballads
Track: # 9, The Swan Swims So Bonnie O, The Two Sisters, Child 10
Clyde “Kindy” Sproat
Album: Musics of Hawaii: Anthology of Hawaiian Music, Special Festival Edition
Track: # 9, Latitu
Evaloo – Southampton Island
Album: The Eskimos of Hudson Bay and Alaska
Track: # 7, Before We Came to this Religion
Prisoners at the Ramsey and Retrieve State Farms
Album: Negro Prison Camp Work Songs
Track: # 8, You Got to Hurry
Big Bill Broonzy
Album: Trouble in Mind
Track: # 6, When Will I Get to be Called a Man
Watson, Price, and Howard
Album: The Original Folkways Recordings of Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley
Disc # 1, Track # 24, Daniel Prayed
Doc Watson
Album: The Original Folkways Recordings of Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley
Disc # 1, Track # 2, Sitting on Top of the World
Gondang Hasapi
Album: Music of Indonesia 4: Music of Nias and North Sumatra
Track: # 13, Gondang Si Bunga Jambu
To Listen to the Episode
Radio West: Muses, Madmen and Prophets
Muses, Madmen and Prophets
Doug Fabrizio
Radio West
For much of history, those who heard voices were thought of as having a connection to the supernatural world: Socrates, Moses & Joan of Arc. People still hear voices today, but now it's explained as a trick of the human psyche or as a disease. After his own father struggled with voices, the journalist Daniel Smith set-out to understand the phenomenon. Smith joined Doug to talk about the history, the science and the meaning of auditory hallucinations.
To Listen to the Episode
Doug Fabrizio
Radio West
For much of history, those who heard voices were thought of as having a connection to the supernatural world: Socrates, Moses & Joan of Arc. People still hear voices today, but now it's explained as a trick of the human psyche or as a disease. After his own father struggled with voices, the journalist Daniel Smith set-out to understand the phenomenon. Smith joined Doug to talk about the history, the science and the meaning of auditory hallucinations.
To Listen to the Episode
Belinda Smaill: Documentary investigations and the female porn star
Documentary investigations and the female porn star
by Belinda Smaill
Jump Cut
Since the mid-nineties, documentary filmmakers have become increasingly interested in exploring the world of pornography. This subject matter represents one of the most marketable trends in contemporary documentary, particularly in terms of DVD distribution. These documentaries frequently have an argumentative logic as they investigate pornography's culture and production, creating a “behind the scenes” exposé of the industry and the individuals who work in it. Perhaps more than any other media form, pornography is shaped by and attracts a great deal of strong feeling. A documentary about the pornography industry, or what I term here the pornography documentary, similarly draws upon a range of emotional responses, and I argue that a number of these emotions cohere around the figure of the female porn star. Here I look in particular at three such documentaries: Sex: The Annabelle Chong Story (2000), The Girl Next Door (2000) and Inside Deep Throat (2004).
In their discussion of pornography and ethnography, Christian Hansen, Catherine Needham and Bill Nichols argue,
“Both pornography and ethnography promise something they cannot deliver: the ultimate pleasure of knowing the Other. On this promise of cultural or sexual knowledge they depend, but they are also condemned to do nothing more than make it available for representation” (225).
In other words, as viewers we desire pleasure but will never be pleased entirely (in pornography we extract pleasure but this is never the pleasure that is represented). Similarly, we desire to know but cannot fully appropriate the knowledge that is represented (the knowledge of the cultural other in the case of ethnography). Hansen, Needham and Nichols’ formulation is instructive for a number of reasons. These documentaries contain a representation of women that appeals to the viewer’s desire for knowledge about the other. And this desire is based in pre-existing spectatorial expectations shaped by the aesthetic qualities of documentary and pornography. Yet the pornography documentary emerges at an historical moment when female subjectivity and desire is itself a site of particular fascination and struggle. If these films are organized around the pleasure of knowing the other, and thus engage a narrative desire that works at the intersection of pornography and documentary, how is (heterosexual) female desire, or the female as desiring subject, positioned in the films?
In considering the larger issue of women's fantasy and film, Claire Johnston writes early in second wave feminism,
“In order to counter objectification in the cinema, our collective fantasies must be released: women’s cinema must embody the working through of desire: such an objective demands the use of the entertainment film” (31).
The problem of desire and female subjectivity in film has occupied scholars for some time, yet the terms of this problem have shifted greatly from the 1970s when Johnston was writing. The quest to release collective female fantasies has become complicated by the proliferation of sexual discourses in the contemporary media sphere, and many of these discourses attempt to articulate or explicate female desire. The sphere of popular culture in which pornography documentaries circulate is one that has seen mainstream representations, often fictional, explore what “female sexual agency” might mean, most notably in the much discussed examples of Sex and the City or Bridget Jones’s Diary. This sphere has emphasized female desire and pleasure, yet not necessarily on the terms second wave feminism might intend. Beyond the mainstream other examples have contributed to this revision of sexual agency, including the fiction filmmaking of Jane Campion or Catherine Breillait and the figures of Susie Bright and “post-porn Goddess” Annie Sprinkle.
My question of how female desire is evidenced in different texts stems from my broader interest in locating documentary within an economy of the emotions. For some time documentary scholars have sought to account for the spectatorial experience of pleasure and desire offered by documentary and how this sets it apart from narrative fiction film.[1] I wish to add to these discussions and think through pleasure and desire not only as theoretical constructs but also as embodied emotions and social discourse. In this essay my focus is on the emotions, both agreeable and aversive, that frequently shape the meaning of female corporeality and sexuality. These emotions find a particular focus in the pornography documentary.
I seek to locate the pornography documentary within a terrain that encompasses genre concerns and histories of signification, as well as feminist approaches to representation and sexual politics. More specifically, my discussion focuses in on the figure of the female porn star and how she is produced at the intersection of popular feminism, narratives of female agency, and historically-shaped genre conventions that seek to organize desire. In this sense, my discussion is limited to the problem of how female agency and desire is produced in the pornography documentary text through genre conventions and popular discourse. Questions that pertain to the female viewer and her desiring relation to pornography and the female porn star are significant yet beyond this essay's scope.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Belinda Smaill
Jump Cut
Since the mid-nineties, documentary filmmakers have become increasingly interested in exploring the world of pornography. This subject matter represents one of the most marketable trends in contemporary documentary, particularly in terms of DVD distribution. These documentaries frequently have an argumentative logic as they investigate pornography's culture and production, creating a “behind the scenes” exposé of the industry and the individuals who work in it. Perhaps more than any other media form, pornography is shaped by and attracts a great deal of strong feeling. A documentary about the pornography industry, or what I term here the pornography documentary, similarly draws upon a range of emotional responses, and I argue that a number of these emotions cohere around the figure of the female porn star. Here I look in particular at three such documentaries: Sex: The Annabelle Chong Story (2000), The Girl Next Door (2000) and Inside Deep Throat (2004).
In their discussion of pornography and ethnography, Christian Hansen, Catherine Needham and Bill Nichols argue,
“Both pornography and ethnography promise something they cannot deliver: the ultimate pleasure of knowing the Other. On this promise of cultural or sexual knowledge they depend, but they are also condemned to do nothing more than make it available for representation” (225).
In other words, as viewers we desire pleasure but will never be pleased entirely (in pornography we extract pleasure but this is never the pleasure that is represented). Similarly, we desire to know but cannot fully appropriate the knowledge that is represented (the knowledge of the cultural other in the case of ethnography). Hansen, Needham and Nichols’ formulation is instructive for a number of reasons. These documentaries contain a representation of women that appeals to the viewer’s desire for knowledge about the other. And this desire is based in pre-existing spectatorial expectations shaped by the aesthetic qualities of documentary and pornography. Yet the pornography documentary emerges at an historical moment when female subjectivity and desire is itself a site of particular fascination and struggle. If these films are organized around the pleasure of knowing the other, and thus engage a narrative desire that works at the intersection of pornography and documentary, how is (heterosexual) female desire, or the female as desiring subject, positioned in the films?
In considering the larger issue of women's fantasy and film, Claire Johnston writes early in second wave feminism,
“In order to counter objectification in the cinema, our collective fantasies must be released: women’s cinema must embody the working through of desire: such an objective demands the use of the entertainment film” (31).
The problem of desire and female subjectivity in film has occupied scholars for some time, yet the terms of this problem have shifted greatly from the 1970s when Johnston was writing. The quest to release collective female fantasies has become complicated by the proliferation of sexual discourses in the contemporary media sphere, and many of these discourses attempt to articulate or explicate female desire. The sphere of popular culture in which pornography documentaries circulate is one that has seen mainstream representations, often fictional, explore what “female sexual agency” might mean, most notably in the much discussed examples of Sex and the City or Bridget Jones’s Diary. This sphere has emphasized female desire and pleasure, yet not necessarily on the terms second wave feminism might intend. Beyond the mainstream other examples have contributed to this revision of sexual agency, including the fiction filmmaking of Jane Campion or Catherine Breillait and the figures of Susie Bright and “post-porn Goddess” Annie Sprinkle.
My question of how female desire is evidenced in different texts stems from my broader interest in locating documentary within an economy of the emotions. For some time documentary scholars have sought to account for the spectatorial experience of pleasure and desire offered by documentary and how this sets it apart from narrative fiction film.[1] I wish to add to these discussions and think through pleasure and desire not only as theoretical constructs but also as embodied emotions and social discourse. In this essay my focus is on the emotions, both agreeable and aversive, that frequently shape the meaning of female corporeality and sexuality. These emotions find a particular focus in the pornography documentary.
I seek to locate the pornography documentary within a terrain that encompasses genre concerns and histories of signification, as well as feminist approaches to representation and sexual politics. More specifically, my discussion focuses in on the figure of the female porn star and how she is produced at the intersection of popular feminism, narratives of female agency, and historically-shaped genre conventions that seek to organize desire. In this sense, my discussion is limited to the problem of how female agency and desire is produced in the pornography documentary text through genre conventions and popular discourse. Questions that pertain to the female viewer and her desiring relation to pornography and the female porn star are significant yet beyond this essay's scope.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
The Brooklyn Paper: Anti-gay Kansans to picket at three shuls and Brooklyn Tech!
Anti-gay Kansans to picket at three shuls and Brooklyn Tech!
By Gersh Kuntzman and Sabrina Jaszi
The Brooklyn Paper
...
The church’s Web site explained the reason for the rallies.
“Yo what’s up, God haters?” the protest announcement stated. “Why you teach ‘It’s OK to be gay?’ WBC will be on hand to teach the rebels of Brooklyn what good looks like, and you had better behave.”
A church spokeswoman, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said the rallies were not anti-Jewish or anti-gay.
“How about we call it an ‘Obey your God’ rally?” she said. “You Jews and gays have got to put away your false gods, your idols and your filthy way of life.”
Brooklyn Bridge Realty
She added that “God hates the disobient.”
“We picked these weekends because these are the high holidays,” she said. “You Jews broke the covenant with God. The beast is going to bring the nations to march upon Jerusalem. Your houses will be destroyed and your women ravaged. It’s going to make the Holocaust, the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of the Temple look like a tea party.”
To Read the Rest of the Article
Update on the protest and images
By Gersh Kuntzman and Sabrina Jaszi
The Brooklyn Paper
...
The church’s Web site explained the reason for the rallies.
“Yo what’s up, God haters?” the protest announcement stated. “Why you teach ‘It’s OK to be gay?’ WBC will be on hand to teach the rebels of Brooklyn what good looks like, and you had better behave.”
A church spokeswoman, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said the rallies were not anti-Jewish or anti-gay.
“How about we call it an ‘Obey your God’ rally?” she said. “You Jews and gays have got to put away your false gods, your idols and your filthy way of life.”
Brooklyn Bridge Realty
She added that “God hates the disobient.”
“We picked these weekends because these are the high holidays,” she said. “You Jews broke the covenant with God. The beast is going to bring the nations to march upon Jerusalem. Your houses will be destroyed and your women ravaged. It’s going to make the Holocaust, the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of the Temple look like a tea party.”
To Read the Rest of the Article
Update on the protest and images
Mark Slouka: Dehumanized -- When Math and Science Rule the School
Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school
By Mark Slouka
Harper's
Many years ago, my fiancée attempted to lend me a bit of respectability by introducing me to my would-be mother-in-law as a future Ph.D. in literature. From Columbia, I added, polishing the apple of my prospects. She wasn’t buying it. “A doctor of philosophy,” she said. “What’re you going to do, open a philosophy store?”
A spear is a spear—it doesn’t have to be original. Unable to come up with a quick response and unwilling to petition for a change of venue, I ducked into low-grade irony. More like a stand, I said. I was thinking of stocking Kafka quotes for the holidays, lines from Yeats for a buck-fifty.
And that was that. I married the girl anyway. It’s only now, recalling our exchange, that I can appreciate the significance—the poetry, really—of our little pas de deux. What we unconsciously acted out, in compressed, almost haiku-like form (A philosophy store?/I will have a stand/sell pieces of Auden at two bits a beat), was the essential drama of American education today.
It’s a play I’ve been following for some time now. It’s about the increasing dominance—scratch that, the unqualified triumph—of a certain way of seeing, of reckoning value. It’s about the victory of whatever can be quantified over everything that can’t. It’s about the quiet retooling of American education into an adjunct of business, an instrument of production.
The play’s almost over. I don’t think it’s a comedy.
state of the union
Despite the determinisms of the day, despite the code-breakers, the wetware specialists, the patient unwinders of the barbed wire of our being, this I feel is true: That we are more nurture than nature; that what we are taught, generally speaking, is what we become; that torturers are made slowly, not minted in the womb. As are those who resist them. I believe that what rules us is less the material world of goods and services than the immaterial one of whims, assumptions, delusions, and lies; that only by studying this world can we hope to shape how it shapes us; that only by attempting to understand what used to be called, in a less embarrassed age, “the human condition” can we hope to make our condition more human, not less.
All of which puts me, and those in the humanities generally, at something of a disadvantage these days. In a visible world, the invisible does not compute; in a corporate culture, hypnotized by quarterly results and profit margins, the gradual sifting of political sentiment is of no value; in a horizontal world of “information” readily convertible to product, the verticality of wisdom has no place. Show me the spreadsheet on skepticism.
To Read the Rest of this Essay
By Mark Slouka
Harper's
Many years ago, my fiancée attempted to lend me a bit of respectability by introducing me to my would-be mother-in-law as a future Ph.D. in literature. From Columbia, I added, polishing the apple of my prospects. She wasn’t buying it. “A doctor of philosophy,” she said. “What’re you going to do, open a philosophy store?”
A spear is a spear—it doesn’t have to be original. Unable to come up with a quick response and unwilling to petition for a change of venue, I ducked into low-grade irony. More like a stand, I said. I was thinking of stocking Kafka quotes for the holidays, lines from Yeats for a buck-fifty.
And that was that. I married the girl anyway. It’s only now, recalling our exchange, that I can appreciate the significance—the poetry, really—of our little pas de deux. What we unconsciously acted out, in compressed, almost haiku-like form (A philosophy store?/I will have a stand/sell pieces of Auden at two bits a beat), was the essential drama of American education today.
It’s a play I’ve been following for some time now. It’s about the increasing dominance—scratch that, the unqualified triumph—of a certain way of seeing, of reckoning value. It’s about the victory of whatever can be quantified over everything that can’t. It’s about the quiet retooling of American education into an adjunct of business, an instrument of production.
The play’s almost over. I don’t think it’s a comedy.
state of the union
Then there’s amortization,
the deadliest of all;
amortization
of the heart and soul.
—Vladimir Mayakovsky
Despite the determinisms of the day, despite the code-breakers, the wetware specialists, the patient unwinders of the barbed wire of our being, this I feel is true: That we are more nurture than nature; that what we are taught, generally speaking, is what we become; that torturers are made slowly, not minted in the womb. As are those who resist them. I believe that what rules us is less the material world of goods and services than the immaterial one of whims, assumptions, delusions, and lies; that only by studying this world can we hope to shape how it shapes us; that only by attempting to understand what used to be called, in a less embarrassed age, “the human condition” can we hope to make our condition more human, not less.
All of which puts me, and those in the humanities generally, at something of a disadvantage these days. In a visible world, the invisible does not compute; in a corporate culture, hypnotized by quarterly results and profit margins, the gradual sifting of political sentiment is of no value; in a horizontal world of “information” readily convertible to product, the verticality of wisdom has no place. Show me the spreadsheet on skepticism.
To Read the Rest of this Essay
Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein: Male breast cancer patients blame water at Marine base
Male breast cancer patients blame water at Marine base
by Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein
CNN
The sick men are Marines, or sons of Marines. All 20 of them were based at or lived at Camp Lejeune, the U.S. Marine Corps' training base in North Carolina, between the 1960s and the 1980s.
They all have had breast cancer, a disease that strikes fewer than 2,000 men in the United States a year, compared with about 200,000 women. Each has had part of his chest removed as part of his treatment, along with chemotherapy, radiation or both.
And they blame their time at Camp Lejeune, where government records show drinking water was contaminated with high levels of toxic chemicals for three decades, for their illnesses.
"We come from all walks of life," said Mike Partain, the son and grandson of Marines, who was born on the base 40 years ago. "And some of us have college degrees, some of us have blue-collar jobs. We are all over the country. And what is our commonality? Our commonality is that we all at some point in our lives drank the water at Camp Lejeune. Go figure."
Starting in 1980, tests showed drinking water at Camp Lejeune had been "highly contaminated" with solvents. Several wells that supplied water to the base were found to have been contaminated in 1984 and 1985, and were promptly taken out of service after the pollutants were found, the Marine Corps told CNN.
Among the chemicals later identified in the drinking water were trichloroethylene, a degreaser; benzene; and the dry cleaning solvent perchloroethylene. Two independent studies have found no link between water contamination and later illnesses, according to the Marine Corps. But the men facing a debilitating and possibly lethal disease don't buy it.
"That's literally unheard of to have 20 men come from the same place, walking on the same dirt, drinking the same water," said Jim Fontella, who was based at the camp in 1966 and 1967. "I mean, there has to be a link there somehow. And they're saying that it couldn't happen."
To Read the Rest of the Report
by Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein
CNN
The sick men are Marines, or sons of Marines. All 20 of them were based at or lived at Camp Lejeune, the U.S. Marine Corps' training base in North Carolina, between the 1960s and the 1980s.
They all have had breast cancer, a disease that strikes fewer than 2,000 men in the United States a year, compared with about 200,000 women. Each has had part of his chest removed as part of his treatment, along with chemotherapy, radiation or both.
And they blame their time at Camp Lejeune, where government records show drinking water was contaminated with high levels of toxic chemicals for three decades, for their illnesses.
"We come from all walks of life," said Mike Partain, the son and grandson of Marines, who was born on the base 40 years ago. "And some of us have college degrees, some of us have blue-collar jobs. We are all over the country. And what is our commonality? Our commonality is that we all at some point in our lives drank the water at Camp Lejeune. Go figure."
Starting in 1980, tests showed drinking water at Camp Lejeune had been "highly contaminated" with solvents. Several wells that supplied water to the base were found to have been contaminated in 1984 and 1985, and were promptly taken out of service after the pollutants were found, the Marine Corps told CNN.
Among the chemicals later identified in the drinking water were trichloroethylene, a degreaser; benzene; and the dry cleaning solvent perchloroethylene. Two independent studies have found no link between water contamination and later illnesses, according to the Marine Corps. But the men facing a debilitating and possibly lethal disease don't buy it.
"That's literally unheard of to have 20 men come from the same place, walking on the same dirt, drinking the same water," said Jim Fontella, who was based at the camp in 1966 and 1967. "I mean, there has to be a link there somehow. And they're saying that it couldn't happen."
To Read the Rest of the Report
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Left Field Cinema: Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1978)
Misunderstood Modern Cinema: Heaven's Gate
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema
Heaven’s Gate is a western, however is appears unlike any other western you’re ever likely to see. Based on historical events from 1890 Wyoming, a powerful group of land owners known as the association are in the midst of conflict with European immigrants who are trying to forge a life on the American frontier. The judicial system favours the immigrants, and the land owners decide that they must bypass the law in order to rid themselves of these interlopers. Their extreme solution is to create a death list with one-hundred and twenty-five names on it, and then hire a small army of bounty hunters and mercenaries to hunt down every man and woman on the list and kill them. Sheriff James Averill played by Kris Kristofferson comes to town and finds violence on the streets and murder brewing amongst civil unrest, he visits with his prostitute girlfriend Ella Watson played by a very young Issabelle Huppert; his former university friend from Harvard - Billy played by the incredible John Hurt; and a bar owner and prospector John played by Jeff Bridges. Slowly Averill gets a picture of the violently volatile situation and wants to convince Ella to leave before the situation explodes, but Ella is content with her life, she runs a successful brothel, and has everything she could want where she is. Averill isn’t the only one who wants Ella to leave, hired gun Nathan played by Christopher Walken wants to marry Ella and start a life together away from her prostitute occupation. A love triangle is formed with both men wanting the same thing, but neither of them may achieve their goal in the end as it comes to light that Ella’s name is also on the death list and the illegal army begin their march towards the town to kill the majority of the inhabitants.
To Read the Rest of the Analysis
To Listen to the Analysis as a Podcast
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema
Heaven’s Gate is a western, however is appears unlike any other western you’re ever likely to see. Based on historical events from 1890 Wyoming, a powerful group of land owners known as the association are in the midst of conflict with European immigrants who are trying to forge a life on the American frontier. The judicial system favours the immigrants, and the land owners decide that they must bypass the law in order to rid themselves of these interlopers. Their extreme solution is to create a death list with one-hundred and twenty-five names on it, and then hire a small army of bounty hunters and mercenaries to hunt down every man and woman on the list and kill them. Sheriff James Averill played by Kris Kristofferson comes to town and finds violence on the streets and murder brewing amongst civil unrest, he visits with his prostitute girlfriend Ella Watson played by a very young Issabelle Huppert; his former university friend from Harvard - Billy played by the incredible John Hurt; and a bar owner and prospector John played by Jeff Bridges. Slowly Averill gets a picture of the violently volatile situation and wants to convince Ella to leave before the situation explodes, but Ella is content with her life, she runs a successful brothel, and has everything she could want where she is. Averill isn’t the only one who wants Ella to leave, hired gun Nathan played by Christopher Walken wants to marry Ella and start a life together away from her prostitute occupation. A love triangle is formed with both men wanting the same thing, but neither of them may achieve their goal in the end as it comes to light that Ella’s name is also on the death list and the illegal army begin their march towards the town to kill the majority of the inhabitants.
To Read the Rest of the Analysis
To Listen to the Analysis as a Podcast
Left Field Cinema: Terence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978)
Terence Malick's Days of Heaven
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema
“The Magic Hour” also known as “The Golden Hour” are the two hours of the day when the sun is setting and rising; painting the sky, ground, objects and people with a sort of golden yellow hue, pronouncing shadows as the light hits everything at an angle rather than the blanket of light we usually witness throughout an average day. Softening light and enhancing colours through mother natures own form of diffusion. “The Magic Hour” will improve even a mundane image through what are considered to be idyllic and beautiful lighting conditions. No filmmaker has ever captured the intoxicating beauty of “The Magic Hour” as exceptionally as director Terrance Malick did with cinematographer Nestor Almendros in the 1978 production of Days of Heaven. Malick’s second film before his twenty-year hiatus from film making, but even the stunning beauty of his third film The Thin Red Line can not match the majesty of this most gorgeous of American films. This ranks amongst the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful film ever made. It may be clichéd to describe the imagery as such, but it is no exaggeration to say that every single frame of picture in the film is a potential still you could hang on a wall. Magnificently painterly and extraordinary to look at, but its dream like sensibilities are not limited to imagery and its beauty as a film goes beyond cinematography – it extends to every facet of the film – music, editing, pacing, plotting, and emotions.
To Read the Rest of the Analysis
To Listen to the Podcast of the Analysis
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema
“The Magic Hour” also known as “The Golden Hour” are the two hours of the day when the sun is setting and rising; painting the sky, ground, objects and people with a sort of golden yellow hue, pronouncing shadows as the light hits everything at an angle rather than the blanket of light we usually witness throughout an average day. Softening light and enhancing colours through mother natures own form of diffusion. “The Magic Hour” will improve even a mundane image through what are considered to be idyllic and beautiful lighting conditions. No filmmaker has ever captured the intoxicating beauty of “The Magic Hour” as exceptionally as director Terrance Malick did with cinematographer Nestor Almendros in the 1978 production of Days of Heaven. Malick’s second film before his twenty-year hiatus from film making, but even the stunning beauty of his third film The Thin Red Line can not match the majesty of this most gorgeous of American films. This ranks amongst the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful film ever made. It may be clichéd to describe the imagery as such, but it is no exaggeration to say that every single frame of picture in the film is a potential still you could hang on a wall. Magnificently painterly and extraordinary to look at, but its dream like sensibilities are not limited to imagery and its beauty as a film goes beyond cinematography – it extends to every facet of the film – music, editing, pacing, plotting, and emotions.
To Read the Rest of the Analysis
To Listen to the Podcast of the Analysis
Friday, September 18, 2009
Hillel Italie: Ralph Nader turns to fiction
Novel approach: Ralph Nader turns to fiction
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph Nader, the consumer activist and corporate scourge, is saying nice things about the kind of folks you'd expect him to despise.
"Never in America have there been more super-rich people with relatively enlightened views," says Nader, lean and hopeful at age 75, dark eyes aglow as he speaks at the offices of Public Citizen, the progressive research and advocacy group he founded nearly 40 years ago.
"Not all the super-rich are craven greedhounds, dominators and bullies. Some of them take on their counterpart greedhounds, dominators and bullies."
It's as if Glenn Beck had found the bright side of socialism.
Nader hasn't turned conservative and he isn't making this stuff up, although he is, in a way. After decades of speeches, articles, policy papers and policy books attacking corporations and politicians, Nader has turned to fiction.
"Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" is more than 700 pages, worthy of a billionaire's portfolio, and its heroes are a gang of 70-something plutocrats, from Warren Buffett and Ted Turner to Bill Cosby and Yoko Ono, who conspire to set off a progressive revolution.
The story begins in 2005, not long after Hurricane Katrina. A secret gathering is convened by Buffett at a Maui mountain retreat, where 17 very wealthy people agree to take back the country they think has been betrayed.
They give speeches, write books, organize community action groups. They infiltrate corporate boards of directors, stage demonstrations for the environment and better wages. They start a People's Chamber of Commerce, advocate changing the national anthem to "America the Beautiful" and dream up a politicized parrot, "Patriotic Polly," that becomes a media folk hero.
"Fiction is a way to liberate the imagination," Nader says, "to see what could happen if 17 billionaires and super-rich people really put their minds to it, along with a parrot, and took on the existing business power bloc and the politicians in Washington who serve (it)."
To Read the Rest of the Article
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph Nader, the consumer activist and corporate scourge, is saying nice things about the kind of folks you'd expect him to despise.
"Never in America have there been more super-rich people with relatively enlightened views," says Nader, lean and hopeful at age 75, dark eyes aglow as he speaks at the offices of Public Citizen, the progressive research and advocacy group he founded nearly 40 years ago.
"Not all the super-rich are craven greedhounds, dominators and bullies. Some of them take on their counterpart greedhounds, dominators and bullies."
It's as if Glenn Beck had found the bright side of socialism.
Nader hasn't turned conservative and he isn't making this stuff up, although he is, in a way. After decades of speeches, articles, policy papers and policy books attacking corporations and politicians, Nader has turned to fiction.
"Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" is more than 700 pages, worthy of a billionaire's portfolio, and its heroes are a gang of 70-something plutocrats, from Warren Buffett and Ted Turner to Bill Cosby and Yoko Ono, who conspire to set off a progressive revolution.
The story begins in 2005, not long after Hurricane Katrina. A secret gathering is convened by Buffett at a Maui mountain retreat, where 17 very wealthy people agree to take back the country they think has been betrayed.
They give speeches, write books, organize community action groups. They infiltrate corporate boards of directors, stage demonstrations for the environment and better wages. They start a People's Chamber of Commerce, advocate changing the national anthem to "America the Beautiful" and dream up a politicized parrot, "Patriotic Polly," that becomes a media folk hero.
"Fiction is a way to liberate the imagination," Nader says, "to see what could happen if 17 billionaires and super-rich people really put their minds to it, along with a parrot, and took on the existing business power bloc and the politicians in Washington who serve (it)."
To Read the Rest of the Article
Jon Lewis: Real Sex -- Aesthetics and Economics of Art-House Porn
Real sex: aesthetics and economics of art-house porn
by Jon Lewis
Jump Cut
...
So let’s ask the obvious question: which is the more obscene: Shortbus or Saw IV ? I think it is an easy question to answer, but one the film industry is disinclined to examine or discuss. Commenting on the writhing bodies in the climactic orgy scene in Shortbus, a character exclaims (speaking as much to the images on screen as to our present cultural predicament):
“It’s just like the 60s, only with less hope.”
It’s a curious pay-off line for such an upbeat film, but nonetheless telling.
To Read the Entire Essay
by Jon Lewis
Jump Cut
...
So let’s ask the obvious question: which is the more obscene: Shortbus or Saw IV ? I think it is an easy question to answer, but one the film industry is disinclined to examine or discuss. Commenting on the writhing bodies in the climactic orgy scene in Shortbus, a character exclaims (speaking as much to the images on screen as to our present cultural predicament):
“It’s just like the 60s, only with less hope.”
It’s a curious pay-off line for such an upbeat film, but nonetheless telling.
To Read the Entire Essay
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)