Aamir on September 6, 2010 2 Comments
Bad is the new good: redefining sexual freedom in the West
Culture
Shoeshine Man – a poem by Spencer Michael Farmans
Spencer Michael Farmans — August 12, 2010 0 Comments
Shoeshine Man High upon the chair they sit, the dull ones and the lively wits, to see some gook slap their shoes and hear an old man tell his news. Thirty-five years in this same spot He’s twirled a rag as a spinning top To summon hide just off the street And thus caressing hungry [...]
Art, Culture
Ever Get The Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?
mark kelly — August 4, 2010 2 Comments
The title is a phrase uttered by Johnny Rotten at the end of his final appearance,
(prior to numerous comebacks) with the Sex Pistols, punk’s prime threat to the
establishment and scourge of traditional British values. Following his success
on “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here”, Mr Rotten now supplements his income
as a property developer by advertising Country Life butter, the anarchist spread
of our time.
We’re in a mess, socially, politically and, rather obviously, economically.
But all we get from the mainstream media is a flood of bland, insipid comment,
designed more to shore up the existing order than to question its legitimacy.
We’re sleepwalking into a nightmare and all we hear are lullabies.
This book intends to energise as well as inform and entertain. As Mr Rotten
said in his leaner, hungrier days : Anger is an energy. Humour can also be
a weapon. “Ever Get The Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?” explains how society
works and why it fails to work. It is written in simple, non-technical language,
though well-researched and properly sourced. The building blocks of modern
capitalist consumer society are demolished and alternatives put forward.
Effectively, this is a new Communist Manifesto for the twenty first century -
a manifesto with jokes.
Culture, Editor's Pick
Mona Simpson’s new book, My Hollywood, reviewed
Ana Heller — August 2, 2010 0 Comments
Reading My Hollywood, Mona Simpson’s new novel about the lives of a Filipina nanny in Santa Monica and the woman she works for, feels like stepping back in time. The book affirms the fact that certain arcane household pracices persist, notably the use of servants, in more outwardly “progressive” families and neighborhoods. Similarly, the novel shows the disparity between male and female roles in marriage and in family, roles that were said to have been equalized decades ago but which Simpson shows retain a rigidity that would make Gloria Steinem wince
Culture
Toy Story 3 in 3D: More serious than you’d think
Ana Heller — June 30, 2010 6 Comments
Watching Toy Story 3 in glorious 3D raises several ontological questions. For instance, do toys ever die, or do they live indefinitely, forever in fear of being discarded? Why can Slink, the dachshund with an expandable, slinky abdomen, talk but Bullseye, Woody’s horse, cannot? What’s with truckers tying stuffed animals to the grilles of their trucks?
Culture
Massive Attack on influences, war and the cult of fame
Matt Kennard — June 20, 2010 0 Comments
I think a lot of it is damaging and I feel there has to be at some point a change in the way we deal with different peoples situations and development. I hate double standards more than anything – I hate the current row over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and whether they should be allowed to have nuclear technology or even nuclear energy. It seems to me that our history is littered with hypocrisy and I find that quite hard to live with being a British citizen
Culture
Through A Glass Darkly: A Review
Ali H — June 20, 2010 2 Comments
Through a Glass Darkly opened at the Almedia theatre this month, the only adaptation of the film ever approved by Bergman for the stage. Bergman himself was famously unhappy with the original, calling it ‘a desperate attempt to present a simple philosophy: God is love and love is God.’ But Worton adeptly shows that there is far more substance in the script than its urge to impose certainty.
Culture, Editor's Pick
Fash pack do feminism…in an Ann Summers way, that is
Kirsty Henderson — June 13, 2010 2 Comments
Women care about their rights. Whether we pack it up in a pink box and wrap a ribbon around it, or tell women it’s about ‘burning bras’ and ‘hairy legs.’ Most of us will have an opinion on it.
Culture, Editor's Pick
sTate Modern: Tate Makes Surveillance An Art Form
Leah Borromeo — May 28, 2010 1 Comment
A new show called Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera opens at Tate Modern this week. It features images made surreptitiously or without the explicit permission of the subject. It is the history of spying with a lens in just over 250 photographs.
Culture
Revisiting The Boys in the Band, a queer cinema classic
Matt Shea — March 23, 2010 5 Comments
Time and social progress have helped give new life to the Mart Crowley-penned, William Friedkin-directed film, The Boys in the Band
Culture, Editor's Pick
Michael Jackson is still exploited in death. AEG and Dr. Death should both pay
Sandra Sasvari — February 8, 2010 36 Comments
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
Culture, Editor's Pick
Interview: Peter Kennard, unofficial war artist, on the aesthetics of activism
Matt Kennard — January 25, 2010 3 Comments
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