Friday, January 6 2012
The 2011 Looking Glass Awards: Anger Is An Energy
Welcome to the 2011 Through the Looking Glass awards, the Anger Is An Energy edition. This was the year the whole earth shook, sending shock waves in all directions. We don't mean to imply that the seismic shifts were of equal magnitude: not every violent disturbance registered the same on our Richter scale.
Monday, December 5 2011
Subversive Sexology!: A Conversation with Annie Sprinkle!
With a pure heart and a heavy dose of body politic rebellion, Annie Sprinkle re-invents ecology in the age of eroticised digital culture.
Thursday, December 1 2011
Herman Cain and the Myth of Acceptable Black Behavior
Called a 'Stepin Fetchit', an 'Uncle Ruckus' and worse by black pundits, I have to wonder... Has Herman Cain found a way to talk about racism in America without actually saying that word?
Tuesday, November 8 2011
Humor vs. Religion: An Unholy War. Part Two: Dispatches from the Front Lines
For comedians like Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher and others, the non-rational beliefs and behaviors that religion fosters are, from a “material” perspective, manna from heaven.
Friday, October 28 2011
Art Endures, Capitalism Degenerates: The Evolving Career of Amanda Palmer
The arts have always suffered and survived in times of economic depression. Amanda Palmer has forged a career that has not only weathered the recession, but rejects the received wisdom of the music industry. Is she an exception to the rule, or an example other artists should follow?
Thursday, October 27 2011
The Celestial Railroad: Shifting Debates on the Immigrant Experience in ‘Sin Nombre’
Illegal immigration is a hotly contested topic in American society and politics. Sin Nombre opens up important questions about migration that documentaries often ignore: there is no such monolithic category as "the immigrant", and migration is not solely an economic decision.
Monday, October 24 2011
Michael Moore vs. Jon Stewart: The Self-Destruction of the American Left
Michael Moore is a populist and Jon Stewart is an elitist. The blind liberal embrace of the superficial smugness of Stewart and detachment from the heroism of Moore is the most powerful and convincing illustration of the suicidal tendencies, moral bankruptcy, and spiritual decay of the American left.
Monday, October 10 2011
The Survival of the Industrial Sonic in a Deindustrialized West
In the '90s, industrial music crossed over into the mainstream with heavy guitar and massive personalities, but blue collar labor itself was disappearing...
Friday, September 2 2011
Humor vs. Religion: An Unholy War, Part One
Even within the US, where democracy and political openness have fostered a rich tradition of rebellious humor, stains still linger from those periods when “God-is-on-our-side” attitudes swept the nation into a mass hysteria of obedience and fear.
Tuesday, August 30 2011
Your Brain in the Voting Booth
President Obama may not be everything people’s brains deceived them into thinking he was, but he’s who he said he would be all along.
Friday, July 29 2011
Kaleidoscopic Istanbul
Perhaps more than any other world city, Istanbul transforms with the seasons. In this kaleidoscopic city, thriving and chaotic, cosmopolitan with entrenched provincial colour, you sometimes feel like you’re at the centre of the world.
Friday, July 22 2011
No One Is Untouchable: Not Federico Garcia Lorca, Not Ai Weiwei
Governments tend to take on their worst form, to devolve to their most horrific manifestation, when they kill artists. Artists look out into the horrors of the world, and inevitably, the horrors sometimes reach back.
Wednesday, June 22 2011
So You Think You Can Govern? The Much-Needed Political Equivalent of ‘So You Think You Can Dance’
What reality television has done for prime time programming it can also do for presidential politics.
Tuesday, June 21 2011
In Praise of Silliness
They say you gotta laugh to keep from crying. A simple dose of pure silliness taken on a regular basis is much needed, these days.
Friday, May 27 2011
They Won’t Stay Dead: The Changing Guises of Horror Film and Censorship
The controversy surrounding A Serbian Film is symptomatic of an ominous development in the horror genre's combative relationship with the censors.
Friday, May 20 2011
Killing Osama bin Laden and David Mamet’s Special Ops Drama, ‘The Unit’
Viewing the world through a haze of vaguely remembered TV shows, tough-guy dialogue and TV jingles, the news about Osama bin Laden’s death quickly turned thoughts to The Unit, the TV series created by once-great writer David Mamet.
Wednesday, May 18 2011
Jalen Rose and Bernard Hopkins: The Miseducation of the Black Athlete
Bernard Hopkins, Jalen Rose and any other athlete that is confused about black male identity, might want to spend a few hours at their local public library and read up on Muhammad Ali and Duane Thomas.
Thursday, May 12 2011
The Civil War and the Uneasy Fabric of American Identity
America's obsession with the Civil War reveals not-so-invisible wounds that linger to this day in the landscape and the nation's psyche.
Monday, April 11 2011
In the City of Friction and Frisson: Street Art and Urbanism
All the illegal art, if taken as a combined unstable code and signature, are like short-lived tattoos on the municipal skins of cities.
Thursday, March 24 2011
‘Reading Jackie’: When Literary Choices Become Biography
Despite her love of books, Jackie Kennedy Onassis spent a lifetime trying to prevent people from writing about her, sometimes with the accompanying threat of legal action. Her entire life was led with one arm thrust outward, eyes cast downward, keeping the world at bay.
