For five decades, David Bowie has been a cultural chameleon in musical history: “Space Oddity” played in the background as BBC broadcast the first footage from the moon. The deep V-necks and laced-up red boots of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane could drive crowds insane. Few aren’t lured by Bowie’s lyricism in “Let’s Dance.” Bowie … Read more
In a recent installment of Black Girl Dangerous, a popular blog of the post-new left, Mia McKenzie questions the willingness of people of color to defend The Colbert Report against Suey Park’s #CancelColbert Twitter campaign. “What is white racial satire doing for us that is so important?” McKenzie asks, wondering why people of color would put themselves on the line in defense of a … Read more
It could not be in Jesus’ name, Beneath the bedroom floor, On Christmas night the killers Hid the bomb for Harry Moore. It could not be in Jesus’ name The killers took his life, Blew his home to pieces And killed his faithful wife. Langston Hughes, “Ballad of Harry T. Moore” When It All Began … Read more
Jennifer Lopez recently released the music video for “I Luh Ya Papi,” the leading single of her upcoming eighth studio album. The music video effectively engages in a reverse role parody of the objectification of women by objectifying men, ultimately illustrating just how ludicrous the normalized phenomenon of hyper-sexualizing and objectifying women is in … Read more
The prologue of Telex From Cuba, published in 2008, opens with a young girl, Everly Lederer, fascinated by the notion of a physical boundary, the Tropic of Cancer, represented as a simple line on her globe. With her unconstrained imagination, “she pictured daisy chains of seaweed stretching across the water toward a distant horizon.” When … Read more
Six glass towers. Six for the six concentration camps constructed in Poland, their names engraved on the pathway that guides visitors through the towers. Majdanek, Treblinka. Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec. Six for the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. And at night, light shines up from the bottom of the towers to illuminate the … Read more
Kader was a student at a French university in Paris in 1961. Though we know little about him, it is possible that he was the French-born son of an Algerian immigrant who had moved to France after having served for the French army in one of the world wars. Kader’s life was not easy: he … Read more
“The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man …” Thus begins Article XI of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The document signifies a landmark in the history of human rights, no doubt. But it contains an unavoidably moral approach to … Read more
Two movies that premiered in November 2013 differed in genre, rating, target audience, and production studio, among other things, but shared two critical features: they were among the most successful movies of the year, and they both had female protagonists. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the sequel to the popular 2012 movie The Hunger Games … Read more
The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon … Read more