…in sum, parecon creates conditions conducive to society benefiting from artistic talent and conducive to capable artists expressing themselves as they choose. More, parecon does all this consistently with economic equity and justice for the artists but also equally for all other workers and consumers. Parecon is an art friendly, even an artistic economy.
Michael Albert on Parecon and Art
March 31, 2008
Political Literary Criticism: 1903-2003
March 28, 2008
Fiction movies/film/video, novels, poetry Leave a comment
Some brief excerpts:
(1903) Frank Norris, The Responsibilities of the Novelist: “[The novel] may be a great force, that works together with the pulpit and the universities for the good of the people, fearlessly proving that power is abused, that the strong grind the faces of the weak, that an evil tree is still growing in the midst of the garden, that undoing follows hard upon unrighteousness, that the course of Empire is not yet finished, and that the races of men have yet to work out their destiny in those great and terrible movements that crush and grind and rend asunder the pillars of the houses of the nations.”
Public Effects of Fiction
March 21, 2008
Fiction, Iraq War Fiction Activist Theater, movies/film/video, novels Leave a comment
…Ken Kolsbun’s new book, Peace: The Biography of a Symbol. There’s also a fascinating article about it on the BBC.
They interview peace historian Lawrence S. Wittner who says that “it is still the dominant peace sign,” a fact partly due to its beautiful simplicity. It’s perfect for spraying on walls and is a universally recognised symbol of peace and resistance to repression.
Iraq War Novels and Iraq Conquest Novels – Where They Are and Are Not
March 21, 2008
Fiction, Iraq War Fiction Activist Theater, movies/film/video, novels, poetry 2 Comments
“Where’s the first wave of Iraq War fiction?” – asked at Paper Cuts: A Blog About Books, at the New York Times
There are number of good comments there on a variety of matters, though some that are wanting. In answer to that central question, the first waves of Iraq War fiction are in the movies, on TV, in plays and novels and short stories… While there is not nearly as much as one might hope to see, it hasn’t been too difficult to compile a list of dozens of such works, plus works on closely connected US militancy in the “Middle East,” Afghanistan in particular: http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/iraq-war-fiction-3/
Rigoberto González interviews Roger Sedarat
March 19, 2008
Uncategorized poetry Leave a comment
A discussion of Roger Sedarat’s Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic – poems. Sedarat:
The two respective governments of Iran and America certainly tend to speak and act in terms of rigid dichotomies. You know…like President George W. Bush’s infamous warning to nations of the world that “You’re either for us or against us.” On the whole, the speaker in this book is positioned like the majority of Iranians who love their country yet resent its leadership (I think a lot of Americans have felt the same way). …
As for the American side of the room, the book obviously is for them too. I want them to experience the kind of disorientation—through humor, form, and disparate subject matter (popular culture juxtaposed with ancient tradition, western paired with eastern sensibility, etc.)—that makes Iran more of a complex country than they see represented in the media. More than anything, I want to challenge the Orientalist gaze fixated on the veil (in this case the Iranian chador). I tried to do this in the book by setting up then violating expectations. Also, as grave as the situation appears in the Middle East, I want my American audience to understand that Iranians especially have a tremendous sense of humor, as well as deep sense of the poetic tradition.
Sociology, Art, Health – Susan Bell
March 18, 2008
Fiction Activist Theater, movies/film/video, novels, poetry Leave a comment
“Works of art can anchor social movements,” says Bell, Bowdoin’s A. Myrick Freeman Professor of Social Sciences. “Think of the AIDS quilt, or the Clothesline Project that is used to bring attention to issues of sexual assault and domestic violence against women. Images can be a powerful way to signal, engage, shock. People respond viscerally. It opens up a conversation.”
In a surprising twist on her discipline, Bell has turned to analyses of works of art to guide her in her research. In recent publications in journals including Health, Sociology of Health and Illness, and Qualitative Research in Psychology, Bell has made a case for incorporating the analysis of visual narratives into sociological work as documents and barometers of human experience.
Betsy Hartmann Novel – Deadly Election
March 16, 2008
Fiction novels Leave a comment
Betsy Hartmann on her new political thriller, Deadly Election:
In Deadly Election I explore what would happen if a right-wing administration in Washington definitively crossed the line between democracy and dictatorship. What steps would they take? Who would resist them? The book is also about the frailties and strengths of the human character, of both villains and heroes alike. As a novelist, I’ve always been interested in how political passions shape personal choices and how an unchecked lust for power has a corrosive influence on individuals. The book’s a fast, scary read, but the characters are multi-dimensional and their stories intertwine in interesting and unanticipated ways.
Ishmael Reed Interviewed by Wajahat Ali
March 16, 2008
Fiction movies/film/video, novels, poetry 2 Comments
ALI: It’s amazing how all the best selling Urban Ghetto writers – they’re all White.
REED: Right. “The Lords of Urban Fiction.” What I can’t understand why Blacks can’t achieve royal status when it comes to forms that they have largely created? I mean there’s a White King of Rock n’ Roll, there’s a White King of Jazz, how come we can never achieve titles of royalty in these fields we are supposed to prevail in? They held a so called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the other night, where White judges credit people who resemble them with the invention of Rock and Roll. I didn’t even see Blacks in the audience.
There would be no Rock and Roll without Ike Turner, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, etc. Fake ghetto books and fake ghetto music. Elvis Presley, whom they idol, is merely a karaoke makeover of James Brown and Chuck Berry.
On Brian De Palma’s Redacted
March 14, 2008
Fiction, Iraq War Fiction movies/film/video, novels Leave a comment
Perhaps without quite realising it, De Palma is applying his extensively developed idiom of slash, splatter and gore. After a while, Redacted starts to feel like a sort of politicised exploitation-horror picture. I am still not entirely sure if it is just the director’s default position for representing violence, or if the wayward genius in him senses that, in the era of Abu Ghraib, this is the truest way of representing the essentially grotesque nature of the military adventure in Iraq.
The Corporate-Military Grip on Culture, Art
March 14, 2008
Fiction, Iraq War Fiction movies/film/video, novels Leave a comment
Nick Turse via the Indypendent:
The military has enmeshed itself in American pop culture, infiltrating not only Hollywood, but everything else: from the video-game industry to bigtime sports to the world of online social networking.
Liberatory Poetry
March 12, 2008
Pretending poetry, or any considered creation, is not political is sheer ignorant (to put it poetically) or a lie. Pretending poetry is not political is itself extremely political, as poem or otherwise, extremely ideological.
“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see —
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
-Emily Dickinson
Split This Rock [poetry festival] calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of activist poets. The festival will explore and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change: reaching across differences, considering personal and social responsibility, asserting the right to free speech, bearing witness to the diversity and complexity of human experience through language, imagining a better world. It will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions on poetry and social change, youth programming, open mics, films, parties, walking tours, and activism.
Some further notes on the politics of art, from a discussion at Common Dreams:
Karl Rove and Dick Cheney in Hollywood and TV – at taxpayer expense
March 12, 2008
Fiction, Iraq War Fiction movies/film/video, novels Leave a comment
Michael Weldon, interviewed by Ryan Lambie:
DoG: On your website you say that movies are more politicized now than at any time since WWII or the Cold War. Could you give any examples?
MW: This is a huge topic. Many movies, producers, and production companies, and some studios, stars and directors have close ties to the American DOD (Department Of Defence), arms dealers (American and Israeli), oil companies, and/or the ruling Republican Party and neocon Bush backers. The Hollywood/D.C. connection has existed for a long time to some extent but it’s stronger now than ever. After 9/11 Karl Rove met with studio heads and top producers and directors and convinced most of them to be part of the war on terror and to be more patriotic and pro FBI, CIA, Armed Forces…
If an American movie features spies, the military, and military hardware and does not explicitly criticized the government and the Iraq war – it has the full cooperation of the DOD. Some of our tax dollars actually go to providing military planes, boats, weapons, soldiers, advisors… to pro military movies that we pay too much to see – then go buy DVDs of! Many major movies have government agents and agencies right in the credits if you know where to look. Even most people who look back at WWII era movies or early Cold War era movies and realize that they were propaganda, don’t realize what’s happening now. More
The Never-Never Land of Corporate TV
March 12, 2008
Fiction, Iraq War Fiction movies/film/video, novels Leave a comment
Not that M*A*S*H* was all that libratory in many ways, but compared to today…?
“M*A*S*H” started out as a sitcom, and the early chapters were the funniest by far. The show initially stayed away from the controversial dramatic plots that developed in later years when it almost bordered on being preachy sometimes.
The series was based on the best-selling novel and movie about the Korean War, but that war soon became a stand-in for the war in Vietnam.
The strongest anti-war scripts arrived long after the United States had left Korea. But the protest against the Vietnam War was still at a fever pitch when “M*A*S*H” first appeared, and not just with college kids and war protesters but with a majority of people who wanted the fighting to end and the soldiers to come home.
If the polls are right, that’s the same way most people feel today about the war in Iraq. But there’s nothing even remotely like “M*A*S*H” on television today.
Redacted, Valley of Elah, Rendition, and other Iraq war films
March 8, 2008
Fiction, Iraq War Fiction movies/film/video, novels Leave a comment
No one wants to know by Simon Hattenstone
“Brian De Palma, Nick Broomfield and Paul Haggis have been called traitors and villains, their films branded ‘Bin Laden cinema’. They are desperate to tell the truth about what is going on in Iraq. But there seems little appetite for war films right now.”
Benjamin Percy, “Refresh, Refresh,” and Iraq war fiction
March 8, 2008
Fiction, Iraq War Fiction movies/film/video, novels Leave a comment
– expanded –
What can be said of Iraq war fiction thus far? What of the art of partisan fiction? In an interview with Courtney E. Martin, Benjamin Percy notes:
I wrote about the [Iraq war] battleground at home [in 2005], something that had been neglected entirely. A few months ago I did a reading with Brian Turner, who served as an infantry leader in Iraq and who wrote a beautifully haunting book of poetry called Here, Bullet. When we were hanging out afterward, he clapped me on the back and said he thought what I was doing was important and he couldn’t understand why more people weren’t writing about the war. That was a great affirmation for me.
In fact the “Iraq war battleground at home” had not been “neglected entirely.” Noah Cicero wrote about it in an accomplished short novel The Human War published in 2003; Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint was published in 2004; and my own novel Homefront was first [self] published with other fiction in January 2005 after not being picked up by a publisher through the end of 2003 and 2004.
Ishmael Reed – The Terrible Twos
March 4, 2008
Fiction novels Leave a comment
Ishmael Reed, interview with Wajahat Ali:
I predicted there would be a theocracy in the 80′s in my book The Terrible Twos, where I had a preacher running the White House in 1982.
You see, I think when you’re an independent intellectual you’re going to get it from all sides. I get it from the Left, the Right, the Middle. When I proposed that people said it was silly, but now we have Huckabee and Bush, and others. I mean they’re all still players. But, when I said it, they thought it was silly.
