Friday, February 13 2009
State of the Slasher Address 2: We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
Stephen Graham Jones revisits the slasher film genre in the wake of My Bloody Valentine 3D to show how we may just be on the verge of another slasher renaissance.
Thursday, February 5 2009
Stuff White People Like: A Theory of the Liberal Leisure Class
"Look at our generation … Stuff is all we have … It's not a display of wealth. It's about a display of authenticity and taste."
Friday, January 30 2009
Killing for Coal: An Interview with Thomas G. Andrews
Andrews' book distinguishes itself from conventional labor histories by going beyond sociological factors to look at the total physical environment and the role it played in the lives of both labor and management, and how it would lead to the Ludlow Massacre of 1914.
Tuesday, December 16 2008
Bettie Page, Dead Since 1957
What might be remembered of the life of a woman who was long ago replaced by her own representation?
Friday, December 12 2008
Hong Kong Graffiti: Not for Lack of Inspiration
Subversive commentary should be thriving in Hong Kong. All the ingredients to spark graffiti are there -- the divides in social class, the thriving materialistic culture, and political antagonism with Mainland China.
Wednesday, December 10 2008
20 Questions: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge warns PopMatters 20 Questions readers, "Pleasure is a cultural weapon. Use it wisely."
Tuesday, November 25 2008
The ‘Murderous’ Art of George Baselitz
For Baselitz, the true artist is the eternal outsider. While he leads a good bourgeois family life, at his art he becomes a murderer, a man on the fringes of good society, a destroyer.
Monday, November 17 2008
Hamburg: Germany’s Port of Rock ‘n’ Roll
PopMatters shoulders its backpacks and treks to Hamburg to check out Germany's pop music capital, to partake of four days of Kunst und Kultur, historical wanderings, and indulge in a bit of Gemütlichkeit.
Thursday, September 18 2008
Makes You Paranoid
Things have taken yet another sinister turn in this overcrowded train car: I have now been assigned the role of the carriage madman -- the obligatory Northern Line loonie.
Wednesday, August 20 2008
Brighton Wok: The Legend of Ganja Boxing
Brighton Wok is England’s first marijuana Kung-Fu movie. You get the bong, I’ll get the nachos.
Thursday, July 24 2008
Give ‘Em Helvetica
The famed font aspires to eerie emptiness of meaning. Now, has it persuaded us to do the same?
Wednesday, July 23 2008
Pop Culture: Finding Meaning and Purpose in the Neighborhood
Whether intentionally spiritual or not, popular culture and its products serve many of the same drives of religion: making meaning and forging the bonds of community.
Monday, July 21 2008
Pathways to Creation: Exploring Sacred Music in Fes, Morocco
PopMatters goes to Morocco for the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music to honor and share the world’s great spiritual music traditions. At this 14th annual festival, Derek Beres would hear the indigenous sounds of Vietnam, Tunisia, Norway, Pakistan, Belgium, America, and much more.
Friday, June 13 2008
Flying Alone: Edward Hopper and America’s Night Side
Isolation is more than being alone. That is why the greatest and most discomforting presentation of isolation can be found in Hopper's paintings that include more than one person.
Monday, February 25 2008
I Am Obama: The American Imagination and the New Black Hero
If Americans are willing to believe that the former Fresh Prince of West Philly can save the world all by himself, then there is a possibility that a black man may be the next president of the United States.
Friday, February 22 2008
Move Over Alpha Geeks, Here Come the Fangrrls
Thousands of women gather for a sci-fi convention, and they have a pretty great life, thanks very much.
Monday, February 18 2008
America’s Most Policed Art Form: Subway Graffiti, NYC’s Visual Criminal
The policing of the art form has been so thorough and enduring that it’s become possible to see hip-hop as just that: an agent, or better, a target, that has a life over and above the individuals that practice it.
Monday, February 11 2008
No Punk Left Behind
How dissent is sustained in the face of consumerism and co-optation in Bloomington, Indiana, a quintessential midwestern college town.
Wednesday, February 6 2008
Plough Shares: Gardening’s Radical Edge
Can political activism be achieved with a trowel and some bulbs? For Guerrilla Gardeners, the act of urban planting is more than beautification, it's a reclamation of public space that challenges concepts of municipal ownership.
Friday, October 26 2007
Teenage Wasteland
A night in a police cruiser in a typical American college town reveals the cumulative effects of suburban boredom.
