There is, we are told, no ethical consumption under capitalism, and so it is. Any participation in a system of exploitation is exploitative, and one cannot engage in even the simplest acts of daily survival without being, in some way, complicit with the cruelty and destruction that the system is …
When one mask comes off, others start to follow, and in quick order. America’s rightward turn, its fascist lean, is finding allies everywhere; if they are not necessarily ideological allies, they are at least opportunistic ones. So it is that many of the country’s biggest and most rapacious corporations have …
Our wars are never just; our heroes are never pure. Paul Fussell, whose service in the American infantry during the Second World War defined his entire life and work, understood this. He wrote that all wars are ironic because the distance between the reasons for fighting them and the things …
This time, we are told, is not like the other times. This time — this this time, not all the other this times — it is nothing more than the future of democracy at stake. If we (and the ‘we’ here is not Republicans, never Republicans, nor is it liberal …
Gosh, do I love the ’70s! America’s Weirdest Decade is always a source of entertainment, whether it’s actual culture produced by the most drugged-up people in history at the time, or the tribute-culture produced by the slightly less drugged-up people who may or may not remember it. Many of the …
If you are an organizer or an activist, think about the time you felt most effective, most powerful, most joyful in struggle. Was it alone? Was it in solitude, your face bathed in the artificial light of a telephone or a laptop screen? Was it after finding le mot juste …
This weekend, in a squall of rain and a first breath of the cold months to come, we went to the Galewood Crossings AMC to see a movie. It was movie weather; the kind of weather that makes you want to spend a few hours in a warm, plush seat …
What is there to say, at a time like this? What is the point of speaking, of writing, of talking amongst ourselves, when a people who have been oppressed and harried unto death for almost a century are being obliterated on a daily basis? Why bother with such powerless pleading, …
At a time in which the ambition of most American cinema can be measured in centimeters, it seems almost unfair to judge Oppenheimer by the distance between the movie it is and the movie it’s trying to be. Based on a much-celebrated book (2005’s American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy …
Let us dispense, on this sad steaming Wednesday, with how strange it is to cry hot tears of loss and shame for someone you have never met. Let us take it as read the curious nature of fame, the odd parasocial relationships we develop with the famous, the very notion …
Let’s talk about the material analysis. Materialism is half of the brain-peelingly difficult (or quite simple, depending on who you ask) concept of dialectical materialism, and thus a cornerstone of Marxist theory and practice. Decades of cultural shorthand, including the catchy if false-consciousness-plagued #1 dance hit by Madonna in 1985, …
This has been a rough week and I’ve had to make some pretty grim decisions. I could tell you all about it, but then you’d just know about another set someone else’s problems you can’t do anything about. Instead, I’m going to tell you about ten ideas I had for …
We live in an age when the Culture War, the most avoidable conflict in human history, continues to drag on. Despite the fact that it turned out to contain practically nothing we haven’t seen before in half a dozen genres of film aside from some inconsequential shading, the moment Todd …
Every so often, a television series appears that is so unusual, so distinct and with such a deliberately crafted worldview, so unlike anything else that surrounds it in the shifting bars of the channel guides, that it seems like a small miracle that it ever made it on the air …
Who owns the working classes? The question would not seem to be a complicated one. Starting from a philosophical position, the working classes are comprised of individuals who own themselves; they must achieve their liberation through collective action, and only then can they truly become themselves and realize the potential …
