The Comment Factory

It is true that had it not been for Dr. Conrad Murray giving Michael the heavy amount of medication that he did (apart from the ”usual” doses of Lorazepam and Midazolam, he was given an additional 4 mgs of each, plus 10 mg Valium and 25 mg Propofol mixed with Lidocaine), his heart would not have stopped that morning. Dr. Murray was directly responsible and he should be in jail, paying forthe crime he committed. However, it was the inhumane an crippling pressure caused by AEG executives that caused Michael to need those medications in the first place, and they are walking free with absolutely no accountability. Dr. Murray getting all the blame must fit them perfectly

I think in the past few rather than people being very into irony and very cynical, people are trying to work out how they relate as individual to the world because the world is impinging on our lives so much – we can’t deny it anymore that there is a crisis going on in the world, so it is impinging on the world they do. It doesn’t mean they do very direct images about it, but there is certainly that anxiety about how to live and what to do in the world is coming through in the work

Follow-ups are a crucible. The first novel brings the challenges of any piece of literature. At least half, if not more, of the book’s success comes the readers’ experiential discovery of the central characters. Ideally, every page is a new awakening, and the sense of wonderment shouldn’t cease until the book is done. So the second novel in a serial poses a problem. We know the characters. We’ve already tagged along through an adventure with them. If we’re reading the second book, that doesn’t mean we simply liked the plot and the protagonists; it means we enjoyed the process of learning to like the plot and the protagonists

Musicians can make a big difference, but can’t expect to inspire political movement, at least not in this country. I hope that more politically motivated bands join the fray, as it does ultimately dismay me that music has become so generally devoid of political meaning, and the advent of an exciting cultural movement could well be imminent. But for now, for most of us, to whatever extent we are the heroes of our own narrative, music serves only as the soundtrack to our development.

The effete art-industry intellectuals and academics who have proposed for so long that political art is merely crude agitprop or literary doggerel are being made to look stupid by a new generation of artists who don’t think see their role as making pretty pictures and designing clever concepts for boardrooms. They are using creativity as an integral part of a justice movement that is inchoate but growing in substance and definition. They have internalized Brecht’s timeless dictum that “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer to shape it”

Paradoxically many artists have tried in vain to keep such traditions alive; scornfully discrediting “the system” while developing increasingly reactionary and self interested justifications for its perpetuity. In delighting in the virtually unrestricted opportunities for the creation of wealth, many rappers criticism of the status quo reeks of dishonesty. The result is a frustrating paradox; an attempt to idealise and identify with the poor yet a ritualised debasement and ridicule of those who either fail to accumulate wealth or simply do not sufficiently value such endeavours

Sexual instincts and social morality do not always sit comfortably together: if imaginations roam free then there will be creativity and discovery, but there will also be misogyny and violence. The debate as it stands at the moment therefore seems to ask that women now make the uneasy choice of exploring one at the cost of accepting the other

The protest is not against the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City, nor does it in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF. However, especially in the wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza, protest is against the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what the South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime.

The public has waited and we’ve urned it. It took around two years and half a million pounds, but the London home where poet John Keats composed On a Grecian Urn, On Melancholy, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci is set to reopen this Friday. The Grade I listed house in Hampstead (a museum since [...]

You can be one of the finest filmmakers the world has ever known but still sail straight into the ego-inflated folds of the Auteur trap

Next week, on March 10th, it’s the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet. Here Denchen Pemba evaluates the aesthetic and political contributions of Woeser, one of Tibet’s most celebrated artists and freethinkers, who’s works were recently bought out in English translation under the title, “Tibet’s True Heart”.

Ali Harper talks to Gillian Slovo about good writing, the relationship between art and politics, and catharsis.