Richard PowersThe Overstoryis a big novel of ideas about humans and the natural world that will keep me thinking long after turning the final page. Here I just want to pick up on one among many of its themes and offer a few brief reflections on it, perhaps as the final curtain to the present trio of posts on collapse.

In response to an episode of (male) violence between strangers, followed by a linked episode of (male) domestic violence, Powers puts this thought into the mind of one of his protagonists: Humankind is deeply ill. The species wont last long. It was an aberrant experiment. Soon the world will be returned to the healthy intelligences, the collective ones. Colonies and hives.

Reviewing the book inThe Guardian, Benjamin Markovits wrote Its hard not to feel that something slightly antihuman has crept into the philosophy. Maybe the quotation above is a case in point (and theres much else in the book that one could use to prosecute Markovits view).

But Id like to press a different line of reasoning. Is humankind deeply ill? Im not sure thats so when we think about our species as an aggregate of its individuals. Certainly, there are some ill or alienated people among us who cause a lot of damage. But maybe thats true of other species. In one study of a seagull colony, almost one in four chicks were eaten by adult birds, the majority by just four individual gulls one of whom ate his own offspring while allowing a chick hed stolen and brought back to his nest to survive. Seabird colonies seem rather like human slums, with the majority flocking together because thats what they need to do to get by, but thereby making themselves vulnerable to predatory violence.

Maybe well get somewhere different if we think about illness at the collective level. The constant refrain of cultural critics down the ages is that present society has lapsed into a sick, decadent or fallen state. And the pushback is often something along the lines of Markovits that this is an anti-human, or misanthropic or elitist position that maligns the ordinary struggles of everyday people. This kind of trick is often pulled by eco-modernists and other peddlers ofbusiness-as-usual porn that theirs is the pro-human position, while any wider cultural critique is mere nihilism or misanthropy. However, the point of cultural critique isnt to wallow in nihilism, but to diagnose the source of the malaise in order to improve the human condition. So, for me, to talk of humanitys deep illness isnt necessarily anti-human. I read the line in Powers novel as an invitation to human improvement. And an urgent one, as earth systems collapse around us, threatening our own wellbeing and that of other species.

Yet when I think about how to overcome that human illness and the perturbation in earth systems that its causing, I come to a different endpoint to Powers character on the matter of healthy intelligences. Because it strikes me that the malaise lies precisely in the way that wehavemade ourselves over into a hive culture.

The collective intelligence of humanity is that of the social ape, not the hive insect. Maybe the life history that most fits us to thrive is creating our livelihoods as competent, generalist individuals working within small collectivities families, bands, settlements. Those in turn may be part of larger culture areas, with shared languages and cosmologies and their own inherent ideological tensions, but the arrow of lifes activities is directed at the local specifics of wresting a personal livelihood alongside others in the community.

Yet when I think about modern life, the metaphor of the hive of social insects presents itself. I dont want to over-press it, because clearly there are differences and the mechanisms arent the same. But weve created a world with a ruling caste of queens and drones who determine the parameters of our hive, and a multitude of dependent workers who enact it, who are unable to exist independently of it, but who derive small individual benefit from it beyond the fact they no longer have the capacity to exist outside it. Among the social insects, and particularly among the worker majority, that patterning so far as we know seems to create no tension because, genetically and biologically, thats what theyre built to act out. But its not entirely what humans are built to act out, and it strikes me that a lot of our illness (metaphorical and probably actual) so much frustrated desire, so much ressentiment may stem from this mismatch between what were built to do and what we actually do. Inasmuch as humankind is ill, maybe itsbecauseweve tried to fit ourselves into a collective intelligence, into a hive mind, where we scarcely belong.

Perhaps this too is why so much of the wider biological world has become ill as a result of the human hive. Powers recognizes this elsewhere in his novel: Thats the scary thing about men: get a few together with some simple machines, and theyll move the world. When I lived for a time in the rainforests of British Columbia I was struck by how much of their old growth extent had been levelled by people with fairly rudimentary technologies by todays standards manual saws, winches, logging roads long before the industrialized destruction of chainsaws, forwarders and feller-bunchers had been invented. The secret of that destruction was human social organization, not technological development, and the secret of the social organization was preventing people from making a competent personal livelihood in their own backyards. The militarized, masculine, hive discipline of the logging camp and its analogues is a not a healthy intelligence for humankind.

Again, the pushback against such views always addresses the benefits that humankind has brought to itself through its vast collective organization modern health and wealth, the plethora of consumer goods on which our contemporary culture dotes, and all the rest of it. But I think we need to stop looking at ourselves in the mirror of the past and liking what we see so much, instead addressing the dramatically dangerous trade-offs that our modern hive intelligence poses for us in the here and now. More importantly, I think we need to address the possibility that a world of human autonomy outside the hive might suit us better.

I was struck by this when I read Maarten Boudrysresponseto the critique of his anti-localism article that I published in mylast post. Boudry wrote,

Now of course you can try to satisfy consumer demand in radically different ways (e.g. artificial meat), but you cant just IGNORE the demand. I get the distinct impression that, in @csmajes ideal future, we wont be able to choose what to eat, nor where to live.

It surprises me to read such dismissiveness about a supposed future where we wont be able to choose what to eat, nor where to live when so few of us in the present world have such choices. But, more importantly, Boudry seems to be assuming that consumer demand is something that just bubbles upsui generis, with economic systems arising to meet it and thereby making us happy. I struggle to see this as much more than a delusion from a limited vantage point within the capitalist hive one that insists we must admire only the intricate architecture within, rather than looking at the bigger world outside, and its universe of different possibilities.

In my forthcoming book, I provide a somewhat less admiring appraisal of the capitalist hive, and an alternative narrative about the search for human self-possession and autonomy that might make us seek a different habitat from choice as much as necessity. So I reject Boudrys implication that I seek to coerce people into my utopia (oh well, at least he didnt mention theKhmer Rouge). I think people can easily find fulfilling localisms for themselves, given the opportunity. Nor, I suspect, will consumer demand lead in the future quite where Boudry thinks. The two main businesses in which I have some involvement a small, local market garden and a small campsite have been inundated with customers since the Covid-19 outbreak as a result of the fracturing of the larger economic structures it caused. In the short-term, that fracturing may or may not diminish, but in the long-term I think it will prove the merest tremor to the changes that are afoot. Consumer demand will follow.

For these reasons, I think I absolutely can ignore consumer demand in its present incarnation. Instead, let me herald producer demand. Let everyone occupy their 1.6 acre share of global farmland, then raise as much (non-artificial) livestock for meat as they possibly can, should they wish. Itll turn out to furnish them with much less meat than the average North American or Western European currently eats, but the living animals will do a lot of other useful work on the farm. And Im not sure the producers will be significantly less happy than the average consumer in todays world. The difficulty is the transition from todays consumerism to that future producerism, not the lure of the producerist endpoint.

The journalist Rafael Behr writes in a different (butrelated context):

People are perfectly able to understand the concept of a painful trade-off because they occur in life all the time. All but the most privileged minority are forced to choose between what they want and what they can afford. All but the most selfish among us understands the need sometimes to suppress selfish impulses in favour of duty towards others. There are only a few who find that concept challenging.

I might go further and argue that accepting painful trade-offs can make us happy, and part of our contemporary illness is in supposing otherwise often at the behest of the few who think that selfish impulses lead to collective benefit (theres a whole sub-theme here on virtue versus vice as the motive force of collective intelligence that we could pursue through intellectual history from Bernard Mandeville to E.O. Wilson but lets leave that for another day).

Boudry calls future producerist visions of the future such as mine a pipedream. Hes probably right. As I see it, every positive vision of the future now is more or less a pipedream, certainly including his notion that we should retreat to a smaller area and decouple from the landscape, so that we can give as much land as possible back to nature. All Ill say here is that there are increasing numbers of people who have started to look outside the hive and find pipedreams like mine more appealing than pipedreams like Boudrys. This is just as well, because I think the future is more likely to look like my pipedream than his.

Well, perhaps Ill say just one more thing. Theres a gender dimension to this discussion that I havent highlighted, but I think is interesting. The violence investing the moments of Richard Powers novel was male, and so perhaps is the violence thats invested the construction of our contemporary human hive. Powers healthy, collective intelligences of colonies and hives, on the other hand Well, its only a thought.

Teaser photo credit: By Stanisaw Masowski Silesian Museum in Katowice, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38367774

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Outside the Hive - Resilience

There isn't much middle ground between when the Texas-shot movie decides to play it safe and when it decides to be jarringly nihilistic.

SAN ANTONIO For a drama about looking inward, The Good Wolf doesnt successfully encourage any meaningful reflection. For a movie thats fairly brisk, it persists with the subtlety of an insurance commercial. For a story that insists on finding the good in people, its violent flashes of nihilism are more indicative of a narrative mired in existential crisis.

But at least its only 90 minutes long?

The Good Wolf is the feature debut for Texas filmmaker Will Shipley, part of the lineup for this months San Antonio Film Festival and doesnt try to hide what kind of movie its going to be. Its opening shots consist of forest grounds and bits of security tape while, in the background, a news anchor broadcasts a warning of an escaped convict on the loose in Texas. The setup is one weve seen dozens, hundreds, thousands of times before in fiction, but the stakes are nonetheless set in stone on arrival.

Frustratingly, so is everything else. Successful dramas can ensnare an inquisitive moviegoer with a one-sentence elevator pitch; The Good Wolf does the opposite. A gold-hearted inmate befriends a fatherless boy playing in the woodsthat one sentence of plot is all thats needed for your mind to instantaneously map out where the movie probably will go and (unless this is the first film youve seen in 10 years) it will absolutely hit every single one of those beats, hoping we dont notice the lack of originality on the way.

Vic Trevino plays the inmate in question. We will learn the story behind his life sentence. Young Jack Dullnig is Sam, the 12-year-old who forges a connection with him. We will learn to become used to his shallow characterization. A few others fill in the periphery of a story that skirts the natural tension offered by its conceit Can we trust James? Is his friendly approach just an act to get what he needs out of Sam? for a bizarre bond that finds Sam the active agent in setting the movie in motion. After he warily agrees to let James sleep (and hide from the law) in his backwoods treehouse, he bounces back a few hours later with sleeping bag, clothes and an eagerness to camp out with this sweat-streaked man 30 years his senior. Whatever happened to stranger danger?

A feigned sweetness blossoms from the connection, one that never transcends Sams questionable motivations (wait: what exactly are his motivations?). And events pass how we expect them to, almost right when we expect them to. Of course James ends up filling the empty father role. Of course theres a Wanted poster with his face in the convenience store. Of course Sams mom comes home while James is taking a shower. Of course they divulge personal truths in an Independence Day-set scene thats so treacle itll give you cavities. The devotion to formula is overwhelming, and the primary source of intrigue becomes which bad decision of definitely-not-lying-low will have the cops come a-knockin.

Right about now is a good time to mention a caveat about The Good Wolf, and Id be remiss not tothe movie was produced on the shoestringiest of shoestring budgets, with an estimated cost of no more than $10,000. Its a tiny dollar amount that probably represents the cost of lunch on Day 95 of Tenets production, and it certainly isnt a shock to hear it; Shipleys biggest set piece comes in a cruel scene involving a dog, a pillowsack and some firecrackers (yeah, its not one of the films more cathartic moments). But while there are numerous examples in early (and recent!) movie history of budget limitations yielding ingeniously creative works from young filmmakers, here a miniscule budget does not a source for economic movie magic make.

Instead, I was mostly left wanting to watch the Matthew McConaughey vehicle Mud or this years Australian drama Jasper Jones againtwo other films that are smarter and more captivating in their blend of crime drama and coming-of-age character study. There are moments in The Good Wolf including the confoundingly self-defeating climax that make its messaging feel so paradoxical that it borders on incoherence. Thats all the stranger given how straight-faced a story this is, save for a few scenes of jarringly violent character decisions that feel lifted from a bleaker movie.

The best thing about the movie is Trevino, who more often than not effectively personifies a lost soul who doesnt know where to go and might indeed have nowhere to go after nearly a quarter-century behind bars. James is weary of the world and perhaps not long for this version of it, and its the movies most interesting implication that where he ends up was the only place he could end up, so long as you can get past his baffling movie-ending decision, one that makes it feel like we never really got to know the real James at all. While Trevino is capable of the simple part, thought, the child performance anchoring the movies sentimentality just doesnt succeed in terms of believability, relatability or intentionalityand the sparse narrative of The Good Wolf needs plenty of each to be better than it is. Dullnig just isnt done any favors when sharing the screen with Trevino, which is more often than not. Youd find better chemistry on a network news panel, and maybe a more satisfying use of your time, too.

This review was written as part of KENS 5's 2020 San Antonio Film Festival coverage.

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SA Film Fest Review: A convict and boy bond in the overly predictable drama The Good Wolf - KENS5.com

As the culture of repudiation takes on pathological forms, aiming to replace Western civilization and American republicanism with a project of pure negation, those who wish to preserve our inheritance might profitably turn to thinkers from the past who can illumine the totalitarian nihilism all around us. One lesser-known thinker who truly belongs in the pantheon of anti-totalitarian thought is Aurel Kolnai (1900-1973), a Hungarian-born Jew who converted to Catholicism in 1926 under the influence of G. K. Chestertons writings.

A phenomenologist and moral and political philosopher of great insight, Kolnai, along with Dietrich von Hildebrand, wrote the first sustained critique of National Socialist ideology in the German-language press, beginning in 1926. His battle against the paganism of the National Socialist regime culminated in a best-selling book,War Against the West, published in Britain and the United States in 1938. Some of the chapter titles and subtitles give one immediate access to the spirit of the book:Tribal Egotism versus Humanity and Objective Standards, The Eros of Militarism, The Revolt against Liberty, The Revival of Elemental Forces, The New Paganism, Lawless Law, and Racial Purity. A lifelong critic of National Socialism, Kolnai self-consciously wrote as a Christian and philosopher defending the soul of the West (as he called it) against the primitivism of National Socialist ideologists.

After the war, Kolnai taught at the University of Laval in Quebec City before his final move to England and the University of Bedford in 1955. While in Quebec City, he concluded that communism, not Nazism, was the most perfected form of totalitarianism. In 1950, he wrote a daring and illuminating essay called Three Riders of the Apocalypse in which he discussed the affinities among Nazism, communism, and what he called progressive democracy. As we shall see, Kolnai saw much truth in democracy and in Chestertons plain man, but opposed the doctrinaire and even revolutionary democratic notions advanced in the name of the common man. In an essay from the same period, The Meaning of the Common Man, Kolnai outlined an alternative to the illusions of progressive democracy. A democracy worth its salt should emphasize its political continuity with Western traditions of constitutionalism and its moral continuity with the high tradition of Antiquity, Christendom, and the half-surviving Liberal cultures of yesterday. True democracy, informed by conservative constitutionalism and the moral law, is rooted in respect for the rule of law and a transcendental support for human liberty and dignity.

Unlike progressive democracy, Kolnai argued, conservative democracy respects the best of the liberal tradition and rests upon a balanced social and political order that limits all social powers and political prerogatives and defers to a Power radically beyond and above Man in his social reality, in his political dignity and in all manifestations of his will. Kolnai was a thoughtful partisan of what Tocqueville once called liberty under God and the law. Progressive democrats see no enemies to the Left. They too often indulge revolutionary regimes and destructive social movementsprecisely because these democrats have distorted and repudiated indispensable Christian categories. At a profoundly spiritual level, Christianity set men free and lifted [them] above the flats of his fallen nature. Modern humanitarianism, the religion of humanity, put forth a new, utopian program whereby angry and impatient human beings construed the automatic workings of [mans] fallen nature into a mirage of self-made heaven. And in the final, metaphysically mad epiphany, to cite a Burkean formulation, revolutionaries engage in destructive totalitarian projects that attack recalcitrant reality, afire with the unholy rage of . . . emancipation and sovereignty. All of this necessarily culminates in what Kolnai never tired of calling the self-enslavement of man.

In a 1972 essay that explored the respective Conservative and Revolutionary Ethos, Kolnai acknowledged that revolutionaries could from time to time constructively challenge the complacency of the rich and the powerful. In this essay, however, Kolnai argued that conservatives, much more than revolutionaries, could appreciate what was just and legitimate in the challenge from the other side. Reform, and appeal to objective and enduring verities, are essential to authentic conservatism. With a conservatism informed by Christian conscience, the table of moral duties remains inviolate in theory, and often in practice. Not so for revolutionaries, cultural and political.

As Kolnai wrote in his 1960 essay The Utopian Mind (he also left an unfinished but now published book by the same name), angry and moralistic revolutionaries make light of the concrete demands of the Ten Commandments and demonize real and imagined enemies of the people. Conscience and moral duties make no claims on their hearts, and are actively dismissed, even mocked, in the name of revolutionary ideology. In the end, Kolnai wrote in the conclusion of Conservative and Revolutionary Ethos, their critique is leveled not at this or that ruler, this or that system of power, nor at Nature, history, or mankind, but atthe world itself, atCreation.

Against the revolution of nihilism in its various permutations, against this project of emancipation-turned-self-enslavement, Christians and all persons of good will must take their stand with the guardians of continuity. If we have confidence in the natural order of things, if we do our civic and moral duties, if we have faith in the goodness of God our father and friend, we will surely outlast our opponents. But that depends on an anti-totalitarian Christian political philosophy worthy of the name, one open to the dual tasks of conservation and reform.

Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption University.

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Aurel Kolnai and the Assault on Creation | Daniel J. Mahoney - First Things

Lou Williams made headlines when the Clippers guard was forced into quarantine in the NBA bubble after it was revealed he went to a strip club in Atlanta without notifying anyone, potentially causing a Covid-19 outbreak inside the league. After hearing Williams explain what happened, it actually makes sense, believe it or not.

Williams had approval to go to Atlanta for a family-emergency, the funeral of Paul G. Williams a close friend of the family, and a man he considers a mentor throughout his life. On Tuesday night he spoke of the importance of the man to his life.

I went somewhere after a viewing of somebody I considered a mentor, somebody I looked up to, first black man I seen with legal money in my life.

Williams said he wasnt thinking clearly when he left the funeral and went to get food at one of his favorite restaurants in Atlanta, Magic City, a strip club. Now, before you laugh at that last sentence (and trust me, I laughed too at the idea of the strip club being a premiere restaurant) their food does look pretty amazing.

Williams love of Magic City is more than just an excuse. Its extremely well documented. Not only has he been espousing his love of their wings on social media for over a year, but he frequents the place so often that he even has his own sauce flavor there. If you ever want to eat like Lou Williams at a strip club, just get the Louwill Lemon Pepper BBQ, which sounds like it has a lot going on.

Of course, this was a dumb move. Williams acknowledges that now. He claims he just wasnt thinking clearly when he decided to put himself at risk of contracting Covid to get some wings, but honestly, weve all been there after the death of a loved one. You dont think clearly, theres a certain devil-may-care nihilism that creeps in where you dont care enough about personal safety, and youre looking for personal comfort above all else. I lost my father-in-law this summer, so I get it but of course this doesnt explain why a dancer at Magic City claims she gave Williams a lap dance while he was there. Thats beyond the pale, and clearly a very dumb move. Thankfully he didnt put the league in jeopardy due to his excursion.

I truly was grieving two weeks ago. I was really going through something. I was thrown under the bus, you know what Im saying? ... All the attention turned to Magic City because its a gentlemens club. I feel like if I was at a steakhouse or Hooters or whatever, it wouldnt be half the story.

Williams has a point here. Theres nothing inherently worse about going to a strip club than a restaurant, a casino, or any of the other places athletes have been traveling to during the pandemic it just makes for more salacious headlines. Sex sells, and the only thing a Bloomin Onion turns on is the hardening of your arteries. At the end of the day we can evaluate Williams bad decision for what it was: Leaving the bubble and going anywhere with a crowd during the pandemic, without adding a layer of judgement on for where he went.

Ultimately, things went about as well as anyone could have hoped. Williams didnt contract Covid, he didnt spread it through the league all he got was a 10-day quarantine when he returned to the bubble, where he used his time wisely.

I was able to finish a couple of books. I did some crossword puzzles.

Life is all about balance. Sometimes you need to read your books and do crosswords, sometimes you need wings from a strip club. The NBA dodged a considerable bullet, and Williams learned his lesson. Its important for us to understand why he made a bad decision, and have compassion for someone dealing with grief in his own way.

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Lou Williams trip to the strip club during a pandemic actually makes sense - SB Nation

The story behind the emergence of grunge on the runway begins like this. True fans of grungethe loud Seattle sound born in Americas Pacific Northwest during the late 1980sand the recalcitrant talents who unwittingly gave the world grunge style, didnt imagine, or more importantly, want what they represented to end up on the catwalk. But it happened anyways.

The outsider genre that went pop in the early 1990s originally rose out of the ashes of punk rock and the chaos of heavy metal in a rainy place that, by the 1980s, touring bands refused to visit (going only as far as San Francisco, some 800 miles south). Long before middle-class teenagers from New York to Tokyo were wearing slouchy Nevermind T-shirts, this yet-to-be-named scene serviced local musiciansand it was feverishly high-jinx. The humour (a mix of arch wit and outright goofiness) and wisdom of grunge originals Mudhoney, Green River, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden would later be misconstrued as nihilism by the mainstream media, meaning that most of the world missed the pointthat the music at the centre of the movement had kind of begun as an inside joke between self-satirising Seattle bands who purposefully never used more than three chords in any one song and sang about being sick, as Mudhoneys Mark Arm deadpans in Doug Prays 1996 documentary Hype!

For early audiences (made up mostly of other local bands), witnessing the fun that grunge acts had while performing was both the dissolving solution and the ultimate retort to the banalities of suburban life. The question is: how did it become chic?

In spite of the mass commodification of the grunge uniform, the clothes bands wore on and off stage were a pretty regular rendition of Seattle style at the timejust, perhaps, a little off. Before long, the baggy T-shirts and long johns caught on (thanks to the underground hype created by record label Sub Pop) and grunge became emblematic of a changing America eager to dismiss the glamorous ideals of the 1980s that didnt deliver in reality.

Footage of Kurt Cobainthe antithetic poster boy of grungeat the first public performance of Smells Like Teen Spirit shows the Washington native wearing a nondescript flannel shirt over a nondescript T-shirt (standard logger territory attire). His hair was red at the time, or at least it looks red in the clubs lighting.

The fashion world caught the mood when Nevermind, Nirvanas second album, was released in the autumn of 1991. By the next year, grunge-like layering made its way down the runway at Calvin Klein on an 18-year-old Kate Moss. Soon after, plaid, proportion-play and silhouettes that hinted to suburban thrift (including shrunken babydoll dresses and antique-styled slip dresses) became a catwalk staple at New York Fashion Week where, just as in music, a changing of the guard was taking place. Then in SS93, Marc Jacobs chose to showcase an all-grunge-themed collection for American sportswear label Perry Ellis. In less than 30 minutes, Jacobs had put a spoke in the wheel of high fashion, offering something entirely accessible that mirrored the universal youth movement that was in full flow. It was a show that, as Vogue reports, both got him fired and made his career.

This is your recap of the runway moments that were born out of high-fashion admiration for the authenticity and anarchy of grunge.

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The real story behind the birth of grunge on the runway - Vogue India

Major League Baseball was not the first American professional sports league to return to play during the pandemic when it started the 2020 season on July 23. By then, both the National Women's Soccer League and Major League Soccer had gotten tournaments off the ground. Since Dr. Anthony Fauci delivered the ceremonial first pitch, the Women's and Men's National Basketball Associations, as well as the National Hockey League, have all lit their candles.

What MLB was, and what MLB remains, is the only of those leagues to take its show on the road. The other five have not sent their clubs traveling to and fro across the country (MLS, however, intends to play in home markets later this month). Instead, they have been tucked away in secured bubbles. The WNBA, NBA, and MLS made their homes in various parts of Florida; the NWSL held a tournament in Utah; and the NHL is off and skating in Canada, which has a better handle on the pandemic than the United States does.

It is perhaps not a coincidence, then, that MLB is the only one of those leagues whose resumption has become endangered. Last week, commissioner Rob Manfred reportedly told MLB Players Association head Tony Clark that the season could be scrapped soon if the COVID-19 situation didn't improve. Manfred's warning came after the Miami Marlins had suffered an outbreak, but before the St. Louis Cardinals had engendered one of their own. The season was not canceled on Monday, a presumed potential stopping point by those privy to the conversation. Whatever spirit that had inhibited Manfred days earlier was gone by the weekend, when he told ESPN's Karl Ravech that, among other things,he was not a "quitter."

Maybe not, but Manfred is the overseer of a league that has had, in two weeks' time, two COVID-19 outbreaks; that has had to sideline 20 percent of the league due to those outbreaks (or related complications); that has a team who is unable to enter its host country; that has seen more and more veteran players opt out instead of playing on; and that has already seen one player lost for the season due to the heart ailment developed because of a bout with COVID.

Manfred may not have plans to quit, but perhaps he has regrets. Between MLB's season teetering on the edge and the comparable success of the other American sports league, it's fair to wonder: did MLB err by eschewing a bubble? CBS Sports spent the past week asking various MLB front-office types what they thought. Here's what came from those conversations.

It's important to remember that MLB did consider the bubble concept. A month into the pandemic, CBS Sports was the first to report on the possibility of the league employing a three-hub arrangement. MLB would have had teams stationed across Arizona, Texas, and Florida, ostensibly playing a regional schedule (similar to the current agreement) at various big-league and minor-league stadiums. MLB was said to have again pondered the bubble after the Philadelphia Phillies experienced an outbreak at their spring-training facilities in mid-June.

The accepted explanation around the league is that the bubble concept was left on the drawing room floor because the players were not on board with the idea. One source, who indicated that the owners are responsible for much of what ails the league, said this aspect of the season falls on the players. Another nodded to the length of the season as a reason why players objected.

A few players were vocal about their reservations, including Mike Trout, the Los Angeles Angels outfielder who doubles as the sport's best player and de facto face.

"[Being] quarantined in a city, I was reading for -- if we play -- a couple of months, it would be difficult for some guys. What are you going to do with family members?" said Trout, whose wife Jessica recently gave birth to the couple's first child. "[The] mentality is that we want to get back as soon as we can. But it has to be realistic. It can't be sitting in our hotel rooms, and just going from the field to the hotel room and not being able to do anything. I think that's pretty crazy."

The players' reluctance to leave their families behind for months at a time was understandable. So was their optimism that the country's pandemic response would allow for improved traveling conditions later in the year, paving the way for a season that was shorter but more conventional.

"I think it would be a weird product on the field, guys wouldn't be as motivated, we'd be playing in 100 degrees in the summer of Arizona," Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Ross Stripling said. "Why don't we wait a month, get it to more of a safer place, and play a little bit less games."

Unfortunately, that hope was wasted. The pandemic was in a worse state when the league started play in July than when it shuttered operations nearly four months prior. There were 17,656 new positive tests nationwide on March 26, the originally scheduled Opening Day; comparatively, there were more than 33,021 positive tests on July 24, Opening Day 2.0, according to covidtracking.com.

The league and its owners were not responsible for the pandemic's re-ignition. What they were responsible for was the seemingly disproportionate amount of time that was spent on finances instead of health protocols. (Even now, the two sides are having to play catch-up on seemingly obvious manners, like the hiring and installation of compliance officers.) They were responsible, too, for creating an untrusting, confrontational environment rather than the collaborative one shared by other leagues, wherein players were more accepting of the bubble.

More is known about COVID-19 now than in March: how it, despite being a respiratory disease, affects the pulmonary system; how it is more likely to spread through the air than on surfaces; how it incubates, with better estimates on the lag time between infection and contagion, between infection and a positive test, and between infection and the onset of symptoms; and so on. All that additional information, plus lived experience, has led to some course-correction.

Marlins outfielder Harold Ramirez, who was one of the 18 Miami players to test positive for COVID-19, suggested last week that MLB should consider changing lanes. "Right now [a bubble] is a good idea," he said, "that could avoid something like [Miami's outbreak]."

The majority of the front-office types surveyed by CBS Sports thought that a bubble was preferable, but not everyone in the game agrees that it was doable, or that it would've worked (and not just because of the obvious ethical issues).

Independent of the players' consent, the main argument against the bubble's viability concerns logistics. MLB's needs are so different from other leagues, in terms of size and scope, that it is thought that a complex approach would not be feasible.

There is some mathematical validity to this point. One NBA team's roster comprises 15 players; a complete MLB squad, the 30-player roster plus the alternate-site reserves, is 60. If a single MLB team equals four NBA teams, then the entire MLB would equate to about four whole NBAs. The intake process, where the players are tested upon arrival and then quarantined for a length before they're permitted to congregate and resume practice, would have required four times as many hotel rooms and beds, four times as many meals, and four times as much diligence.

"It would've been an incredibly massive undertaking," a National League executive said.

Under the three-hub proposal, MLB would've split the teams and spread the demands. The league still would have had to find a way for 10 teams to practice daily, and for their alternate-site players to remain fit. Even if the schedule was built in a way where teams split five ballparks, rotating hosting duties, those backfield scrimmages needed a place of their own.

Other complications would have included the weather, since there's only so many domed or climate-controlled stadiums to go around; the differences between big-league and minor-league facilities for training and recovery purposes; and the differences between big-league and minor-league facilities for lighting and gameplay purposes. If the Toronto Blue Jays' forced nomadic lifestyle proves anything, it's that even the lighting is better in the Show.

It wouldn't have helped MLB's efforts to keep the season off the ground that Florida, Texas, and Arizona were all COVID-19 hotspots entering July. "The facilities exist there, obviously," a veteran American League front office member said, "but the environments are ... nope."

There is another argument against life in the bubble, one that veers toward nihilism and goes like this: no amount of strategic planning would have prevented the virus from eventually infiltrating and wreaking havoc on the league's best-laid plans. "The belief is this thing is not controllable," the AL exec said, "so we would have outbreaks no matter where we staged it."

Other leagues haven't yet had their bubbles penetrated by COVID-19. Because of the longer runtime and the size of the involved party, MLB might have found it difficult to keep the virus out -- and not just because of poorly or incompletely designed protocols, or careless behavior. The simple reality is that the U.S.'s efforts to contain COVID-19 have failed. Current forecasts indicate that one in 52 Americans is infected. Even if that's an overstatement, the league would've had to keep more than 2,000 individuals away from the virus for more than two months.

Would MLB have been able to maintain the high-grade diligence, the constant testing, and the good luck to pull it off? Perhaps. Would it likely have been preferable to what MLB went with instead? Based on the first two weeks of the season, it's hard to argue otherwise.

See more here:

Why MLB didn't use bubble plan for 2020 regular season; and what league insiders think of the decision - CBS Sports

The story behind the emergence of grunge on the runway begins like this. True fans of grunge the loud Seattle sound born in Americas Pacific Northwest during the late 80s and the recalcitrant talents who unwittingly gave the world grunge style, didnt imagine, or more importantly, want what they represented to end up on the catwalk. But it happened anyways.

The outsider genre that went pop in the early 90s originally rose out of the ashes of punk rock and the chaos of heavy metal in a rainy place that, by the 80s, touring bands refused to visit (going only as far as San Francisco, some 800 miles south). Long before middle-class teenagers from New York to Tokyo were wearing slouchy Nevermind T-shirts, this yet-to-be-named scene serviced local musicians and it was feverishly high-jinx. The humour (a mix of arch wit and outright goofiness) and wisdom of grunge originals Mudhoney, Green River, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden would later be misconstrued as nihilism by the mainstream media, meaning that most of the world missed the point that the music at the centre of the movement had kind of begun as an inside joke between self-satirising Seattle bands who purposefully never used more than three chords in any one song and sang about being sick, as Mudhoneys Mark Arm deadpans in Doug Prays 1996 documentary Hype!

No grunge catwalk was complete without 90s supermodels Kristen McMenamy, Stella Tennant, and Eve Salvail.

Photography Getty Images

For early audiences (made up mostly of other local bands), witnessing the fun that grunge acts had while performing was both the dissolving solution and the ultimate retort to the banalities of suburban life. The question is: how did it become chic?

In spite of the mass commodification of the grunge uniform, the clothes bands wore on and off stage were a pretty regular rendition of Seattle style at the time just, perhaps, a little off. Before long, the baggy T-shirts and long johns caught on (thanks to the underground hype created by record label Sub Pop) and grunge became emblematic of a changing America eager to dismiss the glamorous ideals of the 80s that didnt deliver in reality.

Footage of Kurt Cobain the antithetic poster boy of grunge at the first public performance of Smells Like Teen Spirit shows the Washington native wearing a nondescript flannel shirt over a nondescript T-shirt (standard logger territory attire). His hair was red at the time, or at least it looks red in the clubs lighting.

The fashion world caught the mood when Nevermind, Nirvanas second album, was released in the autumn of 1991. By the next year, grunge-like layering made its way down the runway at Calvin Klein on an 18-year-old Kate Moss. Soon after, plaid, proportion-play, and silhouettes that hinted to suburban thrift (including shrunken babydoll dresses and antique-styled slip dresses) became a catwalk staple at New York Fashion Week where, just as in music, a changing of the guard was taking place. Then in spring/summer 1993, Marc Jacobs chose to showcase an all-grunge-themed collection for American sportswear label Perry Ellis. In less than 30 minutes, Jacobs had put a spoke in the wheel of high fashion, offering something entirely accessible that mirrored the universal youth movement that was in full flow. It was a show that, as American Vogue reports, both got him fired and made his career.

This is your recap of the runway moments that were born out of high-fashion admiration for the authenticity and anarchy of grunge.

Link:

16 Moments That Tell The Real Story Behind Catwalk Grunge - British Vogue

Let us take a moment for Generation X, the forgotten middle child buttressed by the primary combatants in the great schism currently defining American culture. Trend-charting magazine articles have left them stuck between the Boomers, desperately clinging to the last vestiges of a disappearing status quo, and the Millennials, ushering in a brave and confusing new world with the help of the ascendant Gen Z. As dominant forces in the mainstream, theyve accordingly enjoyed the spoils of the nostalgia market, with Disney cranking out live-action remakes of 90s favorites for twenty-to-thirtysomethings while Rolling Stone and other legacy publications continue to prop up the musical tastes of people in their 60s. Will no one think of the eye-rollers, the alt-rock pioneers, the disaffected masses that slagged consumerist ambitions decades before the first meme joking about the utter brokenness of capitalism?

That may soon change, however, based on a handful of recent announcements from the TV industry. A mini-revival of seminal Gen-X animation has been slated for the immediate future, ostensibly catering to a demographic raised to view this sort of thing as a crass corporate cash-grab. Last year saw MTV unveil plans for the new cartoon Jodie, a spinoff focusing on a secondary character from the zeitgeist-seizing comedy Daria, itself a spinoff from the adventures of wonder-idiots Beavis and Butthead. The sniggering twosome will also get another shot at the small screen, as Comedy Central announced just last month that creator Mike Judge will bring his most famed creations back for a new series loosing them on the world of 2020. And the network made similar headlines again earlier this week when it revealed that Ren and Stimpy, those hyperactive icons of grotesque Saturday morning dadaism, would also mount a comeback after nearly 30 years off the air.

Jodie eventually jumped MTVs ship for Comedy Central as well, concentrating what now seems like a concerted effort around a single programming slate. In theory, animated intellectual property should be fertile for rebooting; the faces of Daria, Beavis and the like wont age, and the voices of the actors portraying them behind the scenes generally dont either. In the event that they have, its easy enough for a network to find a dead auditory ringer for a replacement. But retrofitting these properties to a new era, which have spent so long identified with their own, could prove problematic.

It seemed like the time was right to get stupid again, came the quote from Judge attached to the Beavis and Butthead press release, a stirring declaration of intent. The beatific dumbness of the characters made them folk heroes to a generation marked by disillusionment and healthy cynicism, a pair of holy fools whose belief system didnt have to extend far past rocking out and cracking wise. Daria Morgendorffer, the over-everything Gen-X-er, was the only one in their world who really seemed to understand what they were about. When Daria got a program of her own, she would lob the occasional feminist critique, while still remaining committed to her core ironic detachment. Ren and Stimpy, meanwhile, leaned into a juvenile nihilism with giddy violence and innuendo that pushed the envelope on kid-friendly host Nickelodeon.

As these shows return, theyll have to contend with a greatly altered entertainment landscape that may not be as hospitable to their distinct sensibilities. Many greeted the news of Ren and Stimpys return with anything from dread to revulsion, due to the recent revelation that the series creator John Kricfalusi had sexually harassed two underage girls during the 90s. As if to speak directly to this point, the Variety item breaking the news about the Ren and Stimpy reboot notes that Kricfalusi will be in no way involved with the series production, and that he will receive no financial remuneration from it. Even so, the series was so integrally informed by his sense of humor that any reboot cannot be fully free of his influence.

The outline for Jodie in Deadlines report makes a more perceptible overture to timeliness: Jodie will satirize workplace culture, Gen Z struggles, the artifice of social media and more. With themes of empowerment across gender and racial lines, explorations of privilege, and a wicked sense of humor, Jodie marks the first adult animated sitcom to center around an African American female lead in nearly two decades. The agreeably progressive ethic aside, this spirit of feelgood go-getter copywriting would activate the real Darias gag reflex.

Thats as clean an omen of the impending friction as one could expect, a sign that these characters may be less than compatible with our present moment of earnest cause-championing and overdue awarenesses. Judge has evolved with the times in his capacity as showrunner for Silicon Valley, and yet when it comes to those hooligans Beavis and Butthead, it feels like its only a matter of time until they get themselves cancelled.

This article was amended on 10 August 2020 to remove a reference to underage women.

Read more from the original source:

Are we ready for the big Generation X animation comeback? - The Guardian

The Oscar-winning film Joker is heading to UK streaming services for the first time this month.

The Joaquin Phoenix fronted film will arrive to NowTV on Friday, August 7 via the Cinema Pass.

Viewers can sign up to the pass for a seven-day free trial at nowtv.com. Then you can cancel it before your free trial is up or continue it and pay 11.99 per month.

Based on DC Comics characters the film is set in in 1981, it follows Arthur Fleck, a failed stand-up comedian whose descent into insanity and nihilism inspires a violent counter-cultural revolution against the wealthy in a decaying Gotham City.

The film also features Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz and Frances Conroy and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards winning two, including Best Actor for Phoenix.

Upon its release the film received polarising reviews with praise for Phoenix and the film's score, while some criticised the violence in the film and portrayal of mental illness.

The NowTV Cinema Pass is also home to big hits Spider-Man: Far From Home, Detective Pikachu, Rocketman, Toy Story 4 and The Lion King.

To find out more and to sign up go to NowTV website here.

More:

How to watch the Joker movie in the UK - Wales Online

(August 3, 2020 / JNS) Ending capitalism, that is the ultimate solution, preached Rabab Abdulhadi, the radical, Israel-hating San Francisco State University associate professor of ethnic studies. Throughout the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israels (USCACBI) June 30 webinar, she and other professors pilloried Israel as an outpost of Western colonial oppression.

Pitzer College anthropology professor and Zoom host Daniel Segals introduction set the stage for the webinars repetitive droning. He began with the now ubiquitous virtue-signaling land acknowledgement that Californias Pitzer College continues the project of settler-colonialism with the occupation of indigenous land. The wider Claremont Colleges must seek to resist, disturb and work through this settler-colonial facet of racial-capitalism, as well as its devaluing of black lives, to reach a future defined by restorative social justice. Pivoting via intersectionality to the webinars topic, he asserted that Pitzer is complicit also in Israeli state apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing through an Israel study-abroad program. For good measure, Segal praised college chapters of JVP and its thuggish ally: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Thuggish leftist nihilism also characterized Abdulhadis comments, as when she sputtered that companies should just go out of business, or in her references to Lenins dictum on imperialism. She warned that trying to actually appear that we are conciliatory towards the Zionist project [i.e., Israel] is very problematic. She also praised Americas ongoing riots and Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement as having the makings of an intifada.

Consequently, Abdulhadi lauded the then-upcoming July 1 Day of Rage against Israels possible declaration of sovereignty in the disputed West Bank. Such events ostensibly commemorate the fallen of a racial project encompassing such disparate places as Brazil, Kashmir, Puerto Rico and the wider United States. Adhering to the ideology of intersectionality, she looped in the myth that Michael Brown was killed and martyred by a police officer in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.

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Abdulhadis targets included universities, which are also corporations and act like corporations, as indicated by their dismissals of lecturers and junior scholars, actions, she claimed, that threatened to silence activists like her. She ignored widespread shouting down and even violence against conservative speakers in academic cancel culture. Rather, she claimed a de-legitimization of rage, de-legitimization of anger, de-legitimization of emotions in order to kind of rescue a colonialist notion of civility of doing the proper things, Mrs. Emily Post, and the proper etiquette. By contrast, for her militancy is really important, although oftentimes in the academy, there is a construction of activism and commitments as something outside of what we do like a hobby.

Comrade Rabab had a soulmate in her fellow webinar participant, UCLA African-American studies professor Robin D.G. Kelley. We go way back, he said of Abdulhadi, whom he praised for organizing numerous African-American delegations to Israel and thereby linking Israeli apartheid to anti-black racism. Epitomizing the hyperbolic, thin-skinned academic, he claimed that Rabab has faced decades, decades, decades of repression, violent repression within institutions she works win. This astonishingly overlooks that the securely employed Abdulhadi freely speaks and writes without violent repression from any institution.

While Abdulhadi nodded in agreement, Kelley proclaimed that justice is indivisible and global. He praised Palestinian-black solidarity that since the 1960s has been resisting racialized, state-sanctioned violence, a new abolitionist generation, as if Abraham Lincoln would have hated Israel. This has started a post-1967 radical insurgency that moved beyond the nation-state as a path of decolonization that is dedicated to eradicating all forms of oppression.

This insurgencys utopian aims included replacing police, military and prisons with non-carceral paths for safety and justice. Similarly fanciful are freeing the body from the constraints of inherited and imposed normativities, protecting the earth, ending precarity, acknowledging indigenous sovereignty. Staying with this evidence-free cant, he lamented that subjugation of racialized subjects has been foundational to modern finance and industrial capital around the globe.

Kelleys liberation theology did not include Jews in Israels colonial project or in America, for whom the 1960s ghetto rebellions had signaled the demise of the old black-Jewish alliance. Concurring with Abdulhadis support of Jewish Voice for Peaces (JVP, where she is an adviser) Deadly Exchange campaign, he promoted the blood libel of devastating consequences of U.S. and Israeli joint police trainings for American minorities. The knee-to-neck choke hold that [Minneapolis police officer Derek] Chauvin used to murder George Floyd has been used and perfected to torture Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces through seventy-two years of ethnic cleansing and dispassion.

The terrorism-supporting, former SJP member Nerdeen Kiswani, chair of New York Citys unapologetically anti-Zionist organization Within Our Lifetime/United for Palestine, spouted Marxism while sporting a hijab. She maligned Israels ongoing genocide and current nefarious agenda that dates from the initial annexation of Israels very 1948 independence. For her, militancy is principles and not trying to make yourself palatable for white, Western consumption in an America built on white supremacy, and imperialism, and capitalism are laudable traits.

The webinars tiresome, jargon-laden discussion contained not a single original thought; anyone exposed to academia over the past few decades has heard it all before. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced these webinar participants to abandon live events for now. But their universities are already begging Congress, state legislatures and donors for massive bailouts in order to continue indoctrinating students with hate-filled, anti-American, anti-Israel propaganda. To the contrary, taxpayers, alumni and anyone concerned about the growing nihilistic, violent, Marxist far-left should demand the defunding of academe absent serious reform. It is past time for Abdulhadi and her ilk, who use their constitutional liberties to undermine the civilization that makes their lives possible, to lose their publicly supported sinecures.

Andrew E. Harrod is aCampus Watch Fellow, freelance researcher and writer who holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project. Follow him on Twitter at:@AEHarrod.

View post:

Privileged profs don mantle of victimhood to rage against Israel and America - JNS.org

My friend David French, one of the most admirable voices in America today, argues that conservatives need not vote against Republican senate candidates in order to send a message about Trumpism. I disagree. He writes, A rage, fury, and a burn it all down mentality is one of the maladies that brought us to the present moment.

This assumes that the reason some plan to evict Republican senators is simply a matter of anger. But voting against a candidate or even a whole party is not nihilism. Its the legal, Constitutional way to express approval or disapproval. The current Republican Party has chosen to become the burn-it-all-down party. The most demoralizing aspect of the past four years has not been that a boob conman was elected president but that one of the two great political parties surrendered to him utterly.

David suggests that voting against Republican senators ignores that they had bad choices.

Its certainly true that Republicans perceived their options to be limited. If they speak up, they say, they will flush their careers down the drain. Look at what happened to Jeff Flake, Mark Sanford and Bob Corker!

But this overstates things. A number of Republicans have stood up to Trump and maintained their electoral viability especially when they challenged him on matters in which he has shown little interest, namely public policy. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., for example, voted against the presidents USMCA trade agreement and (gasp) wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal explaining his reasoning.

When the president abruptly announced, following a phone call with Turkish leader Recep Erdogan, that he was withdrawing American troops forthwith from Syria, a number of Republicans voiced horror. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said it would lead to a slaughter. Sen. Ted Cruz said it would be DISGRACEFUL. Rep. Liz Cheney called it a catastrophic mistake that puts our gains against ISIS at risk and threatens Americas national security. Senators Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and others weighed in as well.

When the president suggested lifting sanctions on Russia, Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said it would be horrible for the United States. And after Gen. James Mattis wrote an op-ed saying that Donald Trump was making a mockery of the U.S. Constitution, Sen. Lisa Murkowski said: I was really thankful. I thought General Mattis words were true, and honest and necessary and overdue.

So, it is possible to speak up about this president and survive. I use that word advisedly, because these Republican officeholders often use words like kill or destroy or annihilate when contemplating what Trump would do to them if they raise their heads too far above the parapet. In fact, all that actually threatened them was the possibility of nasty tweets and the chance that they might lose their seats.

David is right that very few people in any walk of life display courage on anything, though craven Republicans holding House and Senate posts might want to pause from time to time to contemplate the extraordinary valor of protesters in Hong Kong, Iran and Egypt who continue to put their freedom and sometimes their lives at risk by taking to the streets. And should being an elected official really be ones life work?

As noted above, Republicans have criticized the president on policy matters, sometimes even harshly. Where they have shrunk into their shells was on matters that are even more critical to the health of our republic. They have, by their silence, given assent to his cruelty, his assaults on truth, his dangerous flirtations with political violence and his consistent demolition of institutions.

Institutions are like scaffolding. When a societys institutions are weakened, the whole edifice can come crashing down.

Donald Trump undermined the institution of the free press, urging his followers to disbelieve everything except what came from the leader. He weakened respect for law enforcement and the courts, suggesting that he was the victim of a deep state and that so-called judges need not be respected. He scorned allies and toadied to dictators. He has cast doubt on the integrity of elections. He ran the executive branch like a gangster, demanding personal loyalty and abusing officials such as the hapless Jeff Sessions, who merely followed ethics rules. He ignored the law to get his way on the border wall. He violated the most sacred norms of a multiethnic society by encouraging racial hatred. He made the U.S. guilty of separating babies from their mothers.

Elected officials, terrified of their own constituents, have cowered and temporized in the face of a truly unprecedented assault on democratic values. They believed that they were powerless and acted accordingly. Since they were powerless when it counted, perhaps we should make it official?

Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her new book is Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense.

Original post:

Charen: Who Is really burning things down? | National Commentary - Standard-Examiner

Four years ago, Trump was elected under a fog of accusations and outrage. In November, itll be time to do it all again. His 2016 march on the White House left commentators wondering: if Barack Obama had been the first to really leverage the promise of technology in political campaigning, perhaps Trump was the first to wield its dark side.

Committees in the Commons and the Lords and the Electoral and Information Commissioners have in the past year or so raised the alarm, not to mention voices in the media, in civil society and even in technology itself. Our electoral laws are not fit for purpose.

The ability of Big Tech to understand and sculpt political messaging for the electorate and crucially to be able to communicate with specific groups of voters with specially crafted advertisements, which are not accessible by other voters who may be put off by the same messages is an unprecedented and dangerous power. And yet it is currently subject to far lighter regulation than traditional campaigning mediums like television ads and leaflets, our laws left un-updated from a time when the use and misuse of digital campaigning was in the realm of science fiction, not established fact.

We are at the mercy of the platforms. That Big Tech now plays a pivotal role in our democracies is lost on few, and for the most part, we seem to be ready for change. Whether they are headlines about Russian interference, or whispers about the dangers of Big Data and profiling, the power of technology to shape our politics is now a mainstream worry: the public overwhelmingly back greater regulation of the role of Big Tech in politics. Eight in ten now favour campaigns having to openly publish all advertising materials used and how much they are spending in digital campaigning.

Eight in ten, but not everyone.

The shape of regulation, and who should be leading the way, remain topics of division. And it seems the fight to convince sceptics is against public apathy and nihilism, rather than principles of free speech or faith in democracy.

Thats the key finding of a new report from Demos and the Open Rights Group exploring public attitudes around data driven political campaigning. We used Polis, an open-source tool which allows participants to submit their views in their own words, and to vote as to whether they agree or disagree with each others statements with this project pioneering the use of the tool with a nationally representative sample for the first time. It also maps out how opinions interact, and how different groups of views hang together.

Who, then, is not on board with regulation? Just over half of people think there should be less red tape stopping politicians saying and doing what their voters want, and say authorities shouldnt control what politicians are allowed to say.

But there is more to it than just an irritation with bureaucracy. This group of regulation sceptics, who over-indexed among working class Britons and Leave voters, were remarkably in favour of abolishing political campaigning altogether. More than two thirds of the group agreed to the following statements, submitted by their peers:

Doing this would likely mean more regulation, not less, but it would be wrong to discount this simply as a contradiction. The voices of these regulation-doubters help us understand where they are coming from.

The anti-regulation group were most likely to be distrustful of both politicians and regulators alike. They want change, but dont trust the powers that be with making it happen. The vast majority agreed with the statements I dont trust any of the politicians or their departments to keep my data safe, nor use it for the right purposes and I dont trust the people who regulate campaigns to be unbiased.

They were also the most convinced that political campaigns have no impact on their voting behaviour, with around seven in ten agreeing with each of the following again all submitted by participants:

In other words, regulation of data driven political campaigns is unnecessary bureaucracy itself. Instead, lets abolish political campaigning wholesale. This is anti-regulation not on grounds of freedom of speech or faith in the political system, but through a strong feeling of being fed up. Fed up with the political sphere, fed up with regulators, and fed up with the media.

To win the argument for regulation, sceptics must be convinced of the dangerous power of data driven political campaigning. Most opponents of regulation are convinced that politicians and Big Tech are not to be trusted but they also think the same is true for regulators, and that none of it really matters anyway. The challenge is to persuade them that it does matter that the power of Big Tech represents a far graver threat to democracy than the untrustworthy politicians that have always been fixtures of our lives and to distinguish between political actors and those looking to hold them to account.

Many of the issues around regulating Big Tech are extremely difficult to legislate for, and require radical new ideas to deal with unprecedented new problems. Regulation of data driven political campaigning is not one of them. The same principles as have governed political campaigning for decades can be updated to apply to the modern world: records of online political adverts should be collated and published for everyone to see; political campaigns should have to report how much they are spending using digital advertising, what they are spending it on, and how they are funded; and those who break electoral laws should face harsher penalties rather than a slap on the wrist. The vast majority of the public support each of those changes. An issue will be that whoever has just won an election may feel they have an advantage of the way the system currently works.

November is coming. As we look across the pond, we might allow ourselves a little hope as Biden leads Trump in poll after poll. But lets not get too excited. There are plenty of voters who are still fed up, still sceptical that this political system offers them anything. That same feeling that many realised (too late) was behind Trumps election, that many blamed (too late!) for the Brexit vote, is still alive and well. Many politicians have found success in promising to reinvigorate their democracies: to take back control, to drain the swamp, to get back to the things that matter. If our findings are anything to go by, many of those for whom this sounded like the change they wanted remain outside our democratic fold.

Harry Carr is director of innovation at Demos

More:

Public apathy is the most powerful enemy of tech regulation - NS Tech

My friend David French, one of the most admirable voices in America today, argues that conservatives need not vote against Republican senate candidates in order to send a message about Trumpism. I disagree. He writes, "A rage, fury, and a 'burn it all down' mentality is one of the maladies that brought us to the present moment."

This assumes that the reason some plan to evict Republican senators is simply a matter of anger. But voting against a candidate or even a whole party is not nihilism. It's the legal, Constitutional way to express approval or disapproval. The current Republican Party has chosen to become the burn-it-all-down party. The most demoralizing aspect of the past four years has not been that a boob conman was elected president but that one of the two great political parties surrendered to him utterly.

David suggests that voting against Republican senators ignores that they had bad choices.

It's certainly true that Republicans perceived their options to be limited. If they speak up, they say, they will flush their careers down the drain. Look at what happened to Jeff Flake, Mark Sanford and Bob Corker!

But this overstates things. A number of Republicans have stood up to Trump and maintained their electoral viability -- especially when they challenged him on matters in which he has shown little interest, namely public policy. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., for example, voted against the president's USMCA trade agreement and (gasp) wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal explaining his reasoning.

When the president abruptly announced, following a phone call with Turkish leader Recep Erdogan, that he was withdrawing American troops forthwith from Syria, a number of Republicans voiced horror. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said it would lead to a "slaughter." Sen. Ted Cruz said it would be "DISGRACEFUL." Rep. Liz Cheney called it a "catastrophic mistake that puts our gains against ISIS at risk and threatens America's national security." Senators Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and others weighed in as well.

When the president suggested lifting sanctions on Russia, Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said it would be "horrible" for the United States. And after Gen. James Mattis wrote an op-ed saying that Donald Trump was making a "mockery of the U.S. Constitution," Sen. Lisa Murkowski said: "I was really thankful. I thought General Mattis' words were true, and honest and necessary and overdue."

So, it is possible to speak up about this president and survive. I use that word advisedly, because these Republican officeholders often use words like "kill" or "destroy" or "annihilate" when contemplating what Trump would do to them if they raise their heads too far above the parapet. In fact, all that actually threatened them was the possibility of nasty tweets and the chance that they might lose their seats.

David is right that very few people in any walk of life display courage on anything, though craven Republicans holding House and Senate posts might want to pause from time to time to contemplate the extraordinary valor of protesters in Hong Kong, Iran and Egypt who continue to put their freedom and sometimes their lives at risk by taking to the streets. And should being an elected official really be one's "life work"?

As noted above, Republicans have criticized the president on policy matters, sometimes even harshly. Where they have shrunk into their shells was on matters that are even more critical to the health of our republic. They have, by their silence, given assent to his cruelty, his assaults on truth, his dangerous flirtations with political violence and his consistent demolition of institutions.

Institutions are like scaffolding. When a society's institutions are weakened, the whole edifice can come crashing down.

Donald Trump undermined the institution of the free press, urging his followers to disbelieve everything except what came from the leader. He weakened respect for law enforcement and the courts, suggesting that he was the victim of a "deep state" and that "so-called judges" need not be respected. He scorned allies and toadied to dictators. He has cast doubt on the integrity of elections. He ran the executive branch like a gangster, demanding personal loyalty and abusing officials such as the hapless Jeff Sessions, who merely followed ethics rules. He ignored the law to get his way on the border wall. He violated the most sacred norms of a multiethnic society by encouraging racial hatred. He made the U.S. guilty of separating babies from their mothers.

Elected officials, terrified of their own constituents, have cowered and temporized in the face of a truly unprecedented assault on democratic values. They believed that they were powerless and acted accordingly. Since they were powerless when it counted, perhaps we should make it official?

See the rest here:

CHAREN: Who is really burning things down? - Odessa American

The Oscar-winning film Joker is heading to UK streaming services for the first time this month.

The Joaquin Phoenix fronted film will arrive to NowTV on Friday, August 7 via the Cinema Pass.

Viewers can sign up to the pass for a seven-day free trial at nowtv.com. Then you can cancel it before your free trial is up or continue it and pay 11.99 per month.

Based on DC Comics characters the film is set in in 1981, it follows Arthur Fleck, a failed stand-up comedian whose descent into insanity and nihilism inspires a violent counter-cultural revolution against the wealthy in a decaying Gotham City.

The film also features Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz and Frances Conroy and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards winning two, including Best Actor for Phoenix.

Upon its release the film received polarising reviews with praise for Phoenix and the film's score, while some criticised the violence in the film and portrayal of mental illness.

The NowTV Cinema Pass is also home to big hits Spider-Man: Far From Home, Detective Pikachu, Rocketman, Toy Story 4 and The Lion King.

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Joker is now available to stream in the UK - Chronicle Live

In advance of a CAPA livestream performance, the Whiles and Beatles marathon frontman talks about making a new album culled from tunes written during his 2017 '52 songs in 52 weeks' project

Around noon on January 20, 2017, Joe Peppercorn was at Giant Eagle drinking coffee while his kids scampered around the grocery stores play area. Just a few weeks earlier, the musician had given himself an ambitious challenge: Write a new song every week, all year long 52 songs in 52 weeks.

While his kids were occupied on the playground, Peppercorn decided to work on lyrics for that week's song. Nearby, a TV was broadcasting the inauguration of Donald Trump. Glancing at a newspaper next to him, Peppercorn noticed a headline about the death of Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon. Nothing felt good.

I'm sitting there in a Starbucks in Giant Eagle, with super awful lighting, watching [Trump] give this horrifying, nightmare inaugural address about how awful everything is, and I look over at the newspaper and I was just like, This is so depressing, said Peppercorn, who managed to transform the ominous scene into a thing of beauty.

Theres no one left who walked on the moon/Darkness falling at the break of noon, Peppercorn sings on Walked on the Moon, the leadoff track on the musicians forthcoming album, Darkening Stars. The song's chorus is bathed in the harmonies of his Sgt. Peppercorns Marathon bandmates, who have developed a palpable musical chemistry after years of performing every song in the Beatles catalog in one day (not to mention the countless rehearsals in Peppercorns basement leading up to the event).

Peppercorn completed the 52-song project at the end 2017, and over time he culled the tracks down to 14 songs that he re-recorded last year with some of his Beatles bandmates: bassist Chris Bolognese, drummer Jesse Cooper, guitarist Jon Wink, guitarist Tommy Young, multi-instrumentalist Phil Cogley and engineer/guitarist Jake Remley, with additional contributors adding parts in the last few months (several of the musicians overlap with Peppercorns other band, the Whiles). Peppercorn will perform some of theDarkening Stars songs at a piano tonight (Thursday, Aug. 6) at 7 p.m. in a livestream event tied to Apart Together, CAPAs series of virtual concerts.

Revisiting the 2017 songs after some time away, Peppercorn was pleasantly surprised by how much he enjoyed them. Some he didnt even remember writing. It's almost like hearing someone else, he said. Looking back, the songs are all about this need to attach to something and feel some sort of meaning when it feels like there's this horrifying nihilism that surrounds you all the time. If I go on my phone and start reading news, I can get swallowed up and end up in these really dark places where you're imagining this Mad Max situation, like, How am I gonna hide my kids in a bunker?

References to celestial bodies are threaded throughout Darkening Stars, which Peppercorn attributes to the time he spent staring at the night sky on evening runs and the books he was reading at the time. When I was writing the lyrics, I was reading ancient Roman poetry, which, a lot of the time, they're talking about how insignificant they feel looking up at the moon or the stars. Its comforting, and then also it makes you feel like you're nothing, said Peppercorn, who, over the course of previous Whiles album Mercury Ghost and the forthcoming Darkening Stars, has grown increasingly comfortable with the idea of making himself smaller.

Every breath is yours/Every move is yours/All of my blood are yours/I don't need myself anymore, he sings on I Dont Need Myself Anymore, one of several songs inextricably linked to Peppercorns roles as husband and father. I was just embracing the moments and my situation, he said. It's not sexy to be writing songs while being a dad, but I think it's more interesting than a dad trying to be sexy.

Peppercorn plans to officially release Darkening Stars, which is currently being mixed and mastered by Jon Chinn, by the end of the year, and possibly much sooner in digital form. Hes convinced the album contains some of the best songs hes ever written (hes not wrong), from beautiful ballads (Lean Against Me, Never Be Ready to Say Goodbye) and shimmery, jangle-pop sing-alongs (Floor of My Heart) to Guided By Voices-indebted fist-pumpers (She Sparkles).

Plus, the record provides a needed dose of musical excitement to keep him sane especially as the possibility of a December Sgt. Peppercorn's Marathon looks less and less likely.

My 20s were defined by the Whiles and trying to establish some sort of music career, and that ended up working in certain ways and really failing in others. And then my 30s were defined by raising children, and the Beatles show started when I was 30. And now I'm 40, Peppercorn said. Now that the kids are in school, I kind of want my 40s to be defined by making music. Ive been making a lot more of it than I ever have in my life, and I think I'm better than I've ever been.

Read more:

Joe Peppercorn looks to the sky on forthcoming Darkening Stars - Columbus Alive

The artist known as Knox the Dog just dropped a mixtape tailored to sync with the 1988 sci-fi epic Akira and it could scarcely arrive at a better time. Anime and electronica fans have been starved for diversion since the pandemic hit, and Knox's new release, Akita, brings the sustenance they crave.

Akira, the landmark anime classic directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, is a graphic tour de force that set a new standard for hyper-kinetic, nearly wordless storytelling when it came out. Akita updates the film's original soundtrack with a mostly contemporary tracklist of curated bangers. Its title subs a "k" for the original's "r," turning a proper noun into a Japanese dog breed. Otomo's delirious vision of a post-nuclear, cyberpunk Neo-Tokyo circa 2019 now unfolds to an expertly sequenced playlist of reggae, dub and electronica tracks that mingle frosty nihilism with hedonism to make you dance.

Knox the Dog is a nom de turntable for Arcata-based DJ Brian Curtis, aka Pandemonium Jones, whose work behind the wheels of steel is known to local listeners through his regular pre-pandemic sets at Richards' Goat and the weekly show "Mixed Messages" he hosted on the late, lamented KHSU. Knox notes unexpected synchronicities and "layers of contextual meaning" among Akita's side effects, reporting: "Unsurprisingly, it's fun while high."

Synchronicities do compel attention from Akita's opening moments, when the first notes of the Upsetters' "Underground" chime out in sync with the ominously flashing buttons that initiate the film's action. Its initial scenes unfold against that disarmingly measured sonic backdrop, amplifying discordant vibes already latent in the spacey reverberations. Tracks pair up with scenes in ways that sound entirely right in the moment, even if they seem counterintuitive on paper.

Brilliantly creepy episodes in the film's second half that pinpoint the pathology of its nameless fascist state within the dysfunction of its ruling nuclear family (sound familiar?) are now paired with tracks by Big Youth ("Children Children") and Atomic Dog ("Natural Born Killers"). Meanwhile the psychedelic metamorphoses experienced on screen by an elite cadre of telekinetic psychics are now scored to Remarc's "Thunderclap," DJ Rashad ("I'm Gone") and the shivery tones of Rob & Goldie's "The Shadow (Process Mix)." Cuts from the original soundtrack by Geinoh Yamashiroguni, heavy on gamelan percussion and themes from Noh theater, appear near the film's beginning and close it as well.

It's the summer of 2020, and pairing these classic anime images with contemporary sounds updates the experience with unsettling new inflections. The iconic red motorcycle ridden in Akira by iconoclast biker and freedom fighter Shtar Kaneda bears corporate logos for American and Japanese brands, including Citizen and Canon, as well as the insignia of the U.S. Air Force. Projecting a future United States of America whose economic power and global prestige are ranged in opposition to the forces of fascism might have been a no-brainer in 1988, but watching Akita now is a reminder of how much things have changed.

Otomo's paranoid projection of a 2019 dystopia looks more and more like social realism. Maybe that's why it feels like the culture is on the cusp of an Akira moment right now, with an electronica soundtrack remix from Bwana called "Capsule's Pride" released in 2016, an Akira-themed Kanye West video ("Stronger") from 2018 and a hotly anticipated live-action adaptation from director Taika Waititi scheduled for release in May of 2021.

It's undeniably weird to be watching an animated Japanese film about people fighting in the streets against the paramilitary forces of a fascist state at a time when the American news cycle is filled with similar images of protesters battling federal agents in the streets of Portland, Austin, Seattle and Washington D.C. The contemporary voices of Vince Staples, Young Thug, Fatima Al Quadiri, FKA Twigs, Tinashe and others seem to acknowledge this dissonance as they emerge from the sonic textures of Knox's mix. These voices constitute a gnomic chorus that provides a running commentary on current events, a compilation of the alternately dazed and frenzied chants, spells, threats and exhortations the moment deserves.

You can get your paws on this mixtape in multiple ways: watch on Veoh, listen on Mixcloud, download via WeTransfer, or buy a cassette or USB drive on Bandcamp. The USB that ended up on my desk came in a sleek little box featuring original album art and a jaunty, suggestively shaped pink cap for the dongle.

To order, watch, download or listen to Akita go to http://www.knoxthedog.com.

Gabrielle Gopinath (she/her) is an art writer, critic and curator based in Arcata. Follow her on Instagram at@gabriellegopinath.

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Beats from the Underground | Art Beat - North Coast Journal

In 1987, aged 20, I returned to Newcastle, having been away for four years. I needed somewhere to live and I ended up taking the keys to a two-bedroom upstairs Tyneside flat in Scotswood for the huge sum of 29 a week. It was film or rent, and I chose film.

Above, children racing their motorbikes, Lemington 1992. Right, a performing dog, Fenham, 1989. Far right, children with a rock Salmon, Fenham, 1989. Below, children playing in the remains of the Robin Adair pub, Scotswood Road, 1989

Even in its heyday, the West End of Newcastle, and Scotswood especially, had always had a certain reputation for its poverty and deprivation, most notoriously as the home to the child killer Mary Bell back in the 1960s. But by the mid- to late-1980s it had been hit extremely hard by the waves of deindustrialisation that had closed down most of Armstrongs munitions works, the areas biggest employer, that ran all the way from Elswick to Scotswood along Scotswood Road, heading west out of Newcastle.

Conservative party election poster for the 1992 general election, Denton Road, Scotswood, 1992

In September 1991, the West End of Newcastle was hit by riots that spread across Tyneside after two joy-riders died in a police chase on the Coast Road at Wallsend to the east of Newcastle. By comparison to events such as Handsworth or the Broadwater Farm riots, the rioting was pretty subdued, but it still resulted in the burning out of the post office on Armstrong Road where Id photographed women queuing to cash their child benefit cheques four years earlier.

Despite being largely forgotten, these riots caused ructions among policymakers and politicians because of their nihilism lacking the ready-causes such as the institutionalised racism Leslie Scarman addressed in the wake of the Brixton and Toxteth riots in the early 1980s. The causes of these riots were structural to the Thatcherite project that no fact-finding visits by Michael Heseltine were going to address adequately. We are still living with the consequences three decades later.

Top, upstairs on the No 1 bus, Rye Hill, 1989. Above, anti-poll tax graffiti, Scotswood, Newcastle, 1990. Right, Michael Heseltine visits Scotswood in 1992 in the wake of the rioting that occurred there in September 1991. Far right, child benefit day, Scotswood post office, 1988.

Most of the pictures in this series were shot incidentally as Id go for a walk, go get the bus, or just live my life rather than as a specific project. It has resulted in a broad survey of the historical, political and economic changes that my home region has undergone; and these photographs are simply one strand of a much wider, more polemical essay charting my own responses to those changes.

Living there for nine years was often surreal, as twocked and burnt cars became so common that it took something interesting such as a Mini stuffed down the steps of the Old Scotswood station to register as a bit unusual.

Top, children playing in the remains of the Scotswood post office after it went up in flames during riots in 1991. Above, Lemington in the snow, 1985. Right, a view from a bridge, Lemington 1992.

I moved from Scotswood in 1996, having lived there for 9 years. The area was in seemingly terminal decline as the anti-social behaviour grew, and my old street was finally flattened in the early 2000s, despite the tens of millions of pounds that had been pumped into the area in the wake of the rioting.

Jeremy Deller, an artist, wanted to be photographed in a Coronation Street setting. Although Robert Street in Scotswood, where I was living at the time, was not exactly like Salford, all we had to do was go out of my front door for a suitably northern location, where we proceeded to photograph each other. Technicolor was still several years off and the north of England really felt black and white in those days.

The lower part of Scotswood and Benwell, above Scotswood Road, is currently being redeveloped as part of a large public/private initiative to build housing and attract people back to the area. If it can rid itself of the stigma of poverty and deprivation that blighted the area for many years, it does have a lot going for it, such as wonderful views across the Tyne valley and great transport links being close to the A1, which runs north/south, and the A69, which runs east/west.

Mark Pinder is a documentary and editorial photographer living near Newcastle upon Tyne. He is currently working on a book and exhibition project with the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland exploring the political and social history of his home region. His book Newcastle West End: Elswick to Newburn is available from Cafe Royal Books.

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Newcastle West End: Elswick to Newburn | Art and design - The Guardian

One of my favorite films from last years Toronto International Film Festival, The Shadow of Violence (renamed from its UK release title Calm with Horses) has finally arrived stateside. A critical darling with enough momentum for Saban Films to reward it with an exclusive theatrical window despite the COVID-19 shutdown, you have to wonder if it might find its way to the eyes of Oscar voters looking for screeners now that the field is wide open with rule changes and postponements.

If nothing else they need to watch it to make certain that star Cosmo Jarvis performance isnt left out of the conversation. A career-making turn just a couple years after being introduced internationally in Lady Macbeth, the US-born Englishman provides Arm the complexity and pathos to earn our empathy from the first frame.

The following is our email conversation with Jarvis about his process, acting partners, and a character that wears his heart and pain on his sleeve.

The Film Stage: Howdid your casting in The Shadow ofViolence come about? And what attracted you to the project whether ColinBarretts original short story, Joe Murtaghs script, Nick Rowlands vision asa first-time feature director?

Cosmo Jarvis: ShaheenBaig, the casting director, had cast me before in a movie called Lady Macbeth, but, just in general, shesalways working on interesting stuff. I remember reading the script and admiringthe character of the language Joe used and his dedication to honoring the feelof the place and its inhabitants.

Ive met Arms [hischaracter]. I remember looking forward to whittling away at Arm and beingexcited that a character like him had been written [along with] the archetypalnature of the story. Also Nick was my age and so was the producer Dan Emmersonand it really felt, even in the early days, like this could be somethinginteresting. It felt like a mission that would be great to be on. Nicksattention to emotion, his care for his actors and love for the story was clearin the audition room. I got a callback and then did another and yeah.

You packed on muscleand adopted what your cast-mates call a pitch-perfect Irish accent, but whatwas your mental process like digging into an emotionally and psychologicallycomplex character such as Arm with all the trauma hes experienced and carriesupon his shoulders?

Mentally, I found it to be a case of minimizing futureprojections and past reflections and just sort of trying to get on with thingsin their immediacy with very little thought put anywhere other than what washappening. I knew there was a reason why Arm wasnt able to see what seemed tobe happening to himdespite the shouts from his beloved around him. I tried toreside in that head.

How did shooting onlocation in the west of Ireland help shape the character especially consideringyou were an Englishman within an Irish cast?

I learned a great deal whilst researching there. Theresnowhere like Ireland. I interacted with as many Irish people as I could andjust generally lived. There is a kind of character alive in Irelands peopleand a musicality that is just unique. It was great having so many people totalk to in the crew and in the towns where we shot.

Yours is a year-bestperformance for me thats so heartbreaking to watch as a whole, but the scenesyou share with Niamh Algar as your ex-girlfriend Ursula really stick outbecause they allowas her character saysfor Douglas to peak through Armsfaade. How was it working with her to construct their affectingly tragicshared history?

Amazing. Naimh is some force breathing stark, unfiltered,brutal life and logic into everything and every crack in the space around her.We spent a lot of time together before shooting to establish a feeling of thehistory between them. We sort of had a bunch of good, easy times as Ursula andArm would certainly have had to form that familiarity and the comfort they havewith each other. Drinking beers and chatting shite by the lake. Just beinghuman, etc.

What was it likeshooting that final telephone call with her in a long take focused solely onyour emotional reaction in saying congratulations and goodbye? The simultaneousshow of pride in her accomplishment, hope in your familys future, and anguishin knowing you wont be with them is unforgettable.

Ursula (Naimh) was in the same room with us delivering herperformance with Arm off camera, which was brilliant and kept it real. Our crewwas amazing and everyone was just ace. As usual Nick was at the helm observingand gently guiding the proceedings. I dunno what to say, really. When I firstread the script that scene had stuck with me, I felt I understood it. Greatcrew we had in that room.

One could say you arethe Ursula to Barry Keoghans Dympnathe single real(ish) relationship he hasbeyond the true nightmares that are his uncles. What was it like toeing thatline between friendship and subservience with his character, knowing compassionstill exists beneath the obvious utility? Juggling loyalty against humanity andmorality?

With regard to this matterI learned a great deal about Armfrom the script [and] his interactions with Dympna. The sort of person Armwould have to be to keep going forward with Dympna as he does. I concluded thatArm just doesnt consider the flavors of hierarchy in Dympnas actions to beanything alarming. Arm just sees Dympna, this amazing confident character, assomeone whos willing to associate with him. A friend. That wonderful unhingedfriend we all have or perhaps are.

Ive met many groups of people who consider themselvesfriends with each other, but one party clearly has more interest to plan ormaintain the structure of the groups activities and momentum than the otherpartyeventually leading the other party, by default, to end up just going alongwith flow of activity. This utility (good choice of word by theway) can sometimes only be observed and acknowledged from an outside party. Itis possible for the accused propagator of this arguably one-sided arrangementto be subjectively and sincerely innocent in his/her influence on the otherparty because they themselves truly have no wider context. The other party hasno objections.

Dympnas mum makes Dypmna and Arms and Hectors breakfast.Dympna does the talking. Arm does the threatening. Its like if Im the friendwho brings the beer and youre the friend whos house were at: No big deal. Soif Dympna was raised in this cycle of the Devers family model and Glenbeigh(the setting) was small in sizeif Arm had been with the Devers for some time,I thought his friendship with Dympna, warts and all, would be the onlyfriendship with Dympna that Arm could know. A spade with cracked wood along itsshaft and rust on its blade is still a spade.

Whats your opinionon the title change for America from Calmwith Horses to The Shadow of Violence?There seems to be such a huge disparity between the optimism and hope of theformer as it deals with your characters son and the potential for healing andthe nihilism of the latter as an all-consuming darkness Arm will never be ableto escape.

I remember refusing to watch This Spinal Tap for many years because the title, just the words,conveyed the sentiment of badly lit horror movies with blood that is way toolight red from the early 80s. I admit that was my own precursory illusion. WhenI [finally] watched Spinal Tap, Ifell in love with it and the title seamlessly morphed into the only truereflection of the movies sentiment that I could imagine henceforth.In the end, however, I am aware that I am working in an industry.I know certain territories may react better, commercially, to certain stimulior language, but in catering to this, or our idea of this, do we hijackeveryones ability to adapt?

The Shadow of Violence is currently in limited theatrical release.

Read more from the original source:

Cosmo Jarvis on The Shadow of Violence, His Acting Process, and Title Changes - The Film Stage

Archie Hamerton

Tragically overlooked in favour of the Hemmingways, Eliots, and big players of 1930s literature, Stefan Zweigs writing remains mawkishly enticing, and incontestably doomed from the outset. Despite the bourgeois gentility his World of Yesterday, there is a pervasive sense of grave predestination in Zweigs writing: he created a damned reality, with its cultural paradise of the upper-middle class self-indulgently deluding itself to the rise of totalitarianism.

Set predominately among comfortable society of fin de sicle Europe, his works consistently negate to mention the rise of the right, and instead fondly mourn for a European past historical even to him; he turns away from the conventional, plot-driven narratives of contemporaneity, in favour of a deeply sentimental style of writing, that relies heavily on memory and anecdote to recall world that has arguably ended long before he has even begun writing it: the late Nineteenth Century through the eyes of a writer in the midst of the Twentieth.

"His naivety is doomed from the outset"

The readers knowledge of the looming second world warand indeed the characters ignorance to itprovides an equivocal and non-negotiable answer to a question that Zweig is resolutely decided to keep asking. His works wonder if the old Halcyon days of coffee houses and spa town retreats will return, if old charm and manners will replace what he perceives as vulgarity, if literature and art will continue to flourish. No, comes the resounding answer from the rise of fascism. Zweig writes predominately in the late thirties and early forties, when Nazism was in full control, meaning the naivety with which his texts believe in the untoppleable cultural Europeanness is misguided and doomed from the outset.

His is a spectral grimness, always with the threat of the endbe it of the sentence, the plot, or even lifelooming. His works often take the form of recounted stories: our protagonist functions as little more than an active listener, a framing device to open and close the book. They typically begin with Protagonist A, a sort of authorial parallel for Zweig, stating something along the lines of I was sitting in a caf with Protagonist B when she told me this story, that I set down now exactly as it was told to me.

Even the recounted story is recounted once again to us; the narrative ended long ago for Protagonist B to be looking back anecdotally on it; and the meeting of Protagonists A and B also happened long enough ago for A to have translated it into the written record the reader is holding. In short, the story is tangible proof of its own end and place in the past, Zweigs own sword of Damocles. It is perhaps understandable that Zweigs writing functions as a large inspiration for Wes Andersons The Grand Budapest Hotel, a similarly nostalgic film that uses the Matryoshka format to create an atmosphere of sentimentality.

"The stories have an innate grace, wealth, and splendour that could only belong to the turn of the century"

This predestined end is due, in part, to the Europeanness of his works. His characters meet in literary salons or grand hotels, historic universities or riviera guesthouses. They are stories steeped in a sort of innate grace, wealth, and splendour that could only belong to the turn of the century in his beloved Europe, the last vestiges of Victoriana; for a Europe that by the time he writes, is long since decimatedthis fondness for a lost Europe leads one to wonder why his popularity hasnt soared, post-Brexit: the other day a tweet from Cameron in 2015 resurfaced, the replies exhibiting a retroactive dread reminiscent of Zweigs stories.

In having the stories recounted and retold by their now aged, nostalgic protagonists looking back with regret or longing, we are made aware of their ending: the central figure is alive and likely miserable. Confusionbegins with a now celebrated lecturer mournfully looking back on his student days and his relationship with an English professor; but from the immediate tone of unease and the lone nature of the character, the love affair of the novel is already tainted with misery, doomed by the innate melancholy of anecdotal format.

In doing so Zweig rejects the conventions of narrativeplot, surprise, and hopeand favours the melancholic plotless nihilism that seems to inspire postmodernism: he is arguably writer of atmosphere, not narrative, a progenitor of the postmodern stylings and yet in a distinctly historic fashion.These little episodes often span no more than a year, a month, even a single day24 Hours in the Life of a Womana notable example, in which the sparse events of the book (a woman witnesses a man gamble, and offers to pay for a hotel) chronologically take up only 24 hours, and yet the anecdotal retelling, and the haunting regrets span almost a lifetime.

This is perhaps most poignantly mirrored in Zweig himself: cast out like an exile from his beloved Europe, and turned into a macabre parody of The Wandering Jew pastiche, finally settling and dying in south America, as his homeland falls to fascism. The fateful, fatal war is ominously present in all his writing: his Europe, his fictionalised selfboth ignorant and hyper awarehaunted by the rise of Nazism, and his own eventual death. In his works, he toys with disappointment, the omen-like knowledge of the present, to depict the sentimental world of the past with a sort of grim naivety as it steps into sepia obscurity.

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.

We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding, and during this unprecedented global crisis, we have a tough few weeks and months ahead.

In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content for the time being.

Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as 1, to help with our running cost at least until we hopefully return to print on 2nd October 2020.

Many thanks, all of us here at Varsity would like to wish you, your friends, families and all of your loved ones a safe and healthy few months ahead.

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Don't Look Back in Anguish: Post-narrative Nostalgia in the work of Stefan Zweig - Varsity Online

We are at the extremities now. At the end of this tunnel of darkness, however, there is invariably a light, which we already divine, and for which we have only to fight to ensure its coming. All of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism.

Albert Camus, The Rebel

We are in the midst of a cultural revolution. On the one hand, we have the neo-fascist movement, telling us we need to return to a mythical past. That things were better then. And to ram home their point, a militarized response to peaceful protests is beginning to look more like Nazi Germany than America.

Of course there are plenty of marauders foisting chaos and vandalism upon the movement, and it sadly trivializes and obscures whats actually going on.

Black Lives Matter is an easily digestible, three-word assertion that has spread around the world. But its become so much more. Its a movement of awakened youth who are facing a nihilistic future of despots, science and climate deniers, health crises, discrimination, seismic wage discrepancies, and a ruthlessly oppressive and individualistic winner-take-all economy. Yes, capitalism has failed them.

How will we resolve these depths of conflict and misery? The same way theyve been conquered for years. Through art. Through a full-throated renaissance of ideas that unite us in the power of brotherhood, sisterhood, equality and love. As the philosopher Herbert Marcuse wrote, In its refusal to accept as final the limitations imposed upon freedom and happiness by society, in its refusal to forget what can be, lies the critical function of the artist.

It was Emerson and Thoreau who first refused to accept slavery and American Imperialism. It was Mark Twains The Gilded Age that predated Teddy Roosevelts attack on the plutocrats. It was Picassos Guernica that expressed the horror of war. And it was Bebop music and beat poetry of the 1950s that led to Bob Dylan and the Civil Rights movement.

Which brings me to the rather milquetoast state of art in Laguna, where saying pretty much nothing is the norm. Take the recent $100,000 grant money allocated by the Arts Commission, where $1,000-8,000 will be awarded to resident artists to create artworks for the benefit, enjoyment and economic revitalization of the community. A noble cause under the title Fostering Creativity in a Time of Crisis.

One would think this was an ideal forum to express a personal vision to reflect back what is happening around us through an artists lens. In fact, Arts Commission Chair Adam Schwerner states in a video, We have an opportunity to be brave, think creatively and do what we do best. But apparently, what we do best is pretty pictures of marine life and landscapes.

Artist Jorg Dubin, who has spent his working life here and has created a multitude of political art (including his last city commission, the award winning 9/11 memorial Semper Memento which was installed in Heisler Park in 2011), was specifically asked to submit something, Anyone who knows Jorg knows he will not shy away from controversy, as he sternly believes that is the role of the artist.

Jorg came back with a sculptured steel silhouette of a man kneeling while a police officer lunges at him with a nightstick and another cop stands by passively. Does that make Jorg anti-police? Of course not. This is the guy who did a portrait of fallen officer Jon Coutchie and donated it to the Laguna PD.

The Commission rejected Jorgs submission, without offering an explanation.

They then asked for another submission, and while irked, Jorg complied, this time sending in a silhouette of five people of all colors from black to white, kneeling with their fists in the air. A striking expression of the solidarity happening everywhere around us. Except here. Rejected, without explanation.

Who are these judges and why are they engaging in censorship? At a time when so many cities are emboldened to stencil giant Black Lives Matter on their streets, we dont have the will to allow one of our most esteemed artists to express his point of view in a temporary installation? Its antithetical to a community that was built on the back of subversive artists who stepped out of the Festival of Arts to create the Sawdust Festival.

The Arts Commission should be ashamed that they are perverting the unique power of art and the role it plays in society. Dont be afraid of the future, commissioners. Embrace it. With real art.

Original post:

Opinion: Resolving the Depths of Conflict Through Art - Laguna Beach Local News - Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper