15 Feb 2017: Social Hall SF San Francisco

Its Wednesday night in the middle of SF Beer Week, and theres a sense of alternate realities from the realm of science fiction seeping into the current timeline. Hogwash in Lower Nob Hill is hosting a Star Wars-themed Lagunitas tap takeover complete with an appearance by a lifesize wookie, drawing in a gathering of rebel rogues and would-be Jedi Knights. Theres no band like at the Mos Eisley Cantina, although some of the recordings are piped through. But those seeking live music with a Hollywood twist need only walk a half mile up Sutter Street to catch the artist best known as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder live in concert at Social Hall SF.

Its said that the truth can be stranger than fiction and actor David Duchovny probably knows something about that. Duchovny has become a living legend around the world for his iconic portrayal of Agent Mulder on FOX TVs The X-Files, where he spent a decade from 1993-2002 searching for the truth about aliens, the UFO cover-up and a slew of paranormal phenomena and government conspiracies. The show tapped the dark pulse of the modern zeitgeist like few others have and won Duchovny and co-star Gillian Anderson (as Agent Dana Scully) a legion of lifetime fans.

Pop cultures affinity for The X-Files surged again in 2016 when Duchovny and Anderson were reunited for a series reboot of six episodes, including a mind-blowing season premiere in which Mulder summed up the entire UFO cover-up in the episodes opening minutes. With a tagline of The Truth is Still Out There, Americas fascination with seeking the truth about UFOs and extraterrestrials was rekindled. Duchovny has done some fine work on other projects too like Californication and his scene-stealing cameo as the worlds greatest hand model in Zoolander, which mined pop cultures love of conspiracy theories for comic gold.

Then theres his recent turn as a hard-boiled detective in late 60s Los Angeles on the trail of Charlie Manson in the vintage noir of Aquarius. Duchovnys character Sam Hodiak plays a little bit of acoustic guitar when hes at home on the show, and this apparently was a direct result of the actor requesting such a character trait, so he could continue trailer guitar lessons hed started in his last season as Hank Moody on Californication.

Duchovny apparently caught the songwriting bug and cut an entire album, releasing Hell of Highwater in 2015. The album mixes low-key blues and brooding folk rock with flashes of country and alternative and holds together fairly well with its character-driven songs. Now Duchovny has put together a full band to go out and play some shows. His fans cant wait to check it out as a line forms over two hours before showtime for those who bought the VIP ticket package, of which there were many. And While hes done excellent work on those other projects, the concept of witnessing the man who plays Mulder live on stage in a rock band seems like its whats providing the buzz here for one of the more unique pop culture moments of recent years.

The band opens with 3000, utilizing one of the albums more rocking tracks to kick things off on a high note. Some of the lyrics may seem to rhyme a bit too easily, but when Duchovny sings of 3,000 steps between heaven and hell, it feels like Fox Mulder is there opening up his soul. Let It Rain features a sharp Americana style chord progression with some bluesy leads and Duchovny singing to his low vocal registers strength.

Some of the slower songs find Duchovny singing in an odd Leonard Cohen-esque drawl that doesnt seem to suit him as well. The vocals seem a little flat at times during the set, but its still interesting to watch an accomplished artist daring to put himself out there in a different realm. Duchovny introduces the new Strangers in the Sacred Heart as being about a church where people pray for others instead of themselves, an interesting theme in a crazy world where the gods offer no refunds for over-praying.

A cover of David Bowies Stay finds the band getting more funky with some stinging blues mixed in and Duchovny with some serviceable vocals. More vibe boosting occurs when Duchovny takes multiple trips out into the audience to give out handshakes, high fives and stir the vibe up ala Buddy Guy playing his guitar out in the audience. Its a classy move to break down the invisible wall between performer and audience, giving fans a chance to get even more up close and personal.

Duchovny seems somewhat obsessed with the concept of rain on his album, even dropping a box of rain line into The Rain Song that seems like a nod to the Grateful Dead and trying to find the splintered sunlight that can break through even the darkest clouds (and pictures from the VIP soundcheck session indeed show him sporting a shirt with the Deads Steal Your Face logo). When the Time Comesintroduced as a post-apocalyptic love songmines a similar bluesy Americana sound and both songs feel like they could be coming from a weary Mulder serenading Scully, conjuring an endearing vibe.

Duchovnys vocal delivery seems to work best on the more up-tempo rocking material, however. This is confirmed in the encore when he and the band break out a surprise rendition of the Velvet Undergrounds Sweet Jane. The band plays through the extended introduction, leading to a cathartic breakthrough when they launch into the main progression. The crowd eats it up, especially when Duchovny sings Me, babe, Im in a rock n roll band. Then its more classic rock goodness with The Weight, as Duchovny dons one of the trending pink pussyhats that have become a symbol of solidarity with the feminist movement against the Trump regimes assault on womens rights. Another endearing audience sing-along ensues, and its been a fun night out at the very least.

Duchovnys musical soul searching may not hit quite as deep as Mulders quest for the truth, but he seems to somehow tap into a similar existential journey.

Greg M. Schwartz has covered music and pop culture for PopMatters since 2006. He focuses on events coverage with a preference for guitar-driven rock 'n' roll, but has eclectic tastes for the golden age of sound that is the 21st century music scene. He has a soft spot for music with a socially conscious flavor and is also an award-winning investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @gms111, where he's always looking for tips on new bands or under the radar news items.

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David Duchovny Hits the Road to Seek the Musical Truth That's Out There - PopMatters

Courtesy of Image Comics

One of the largest comics publishers has reached a milestone anniversary this year. Image Comics, now in its 25th year, also happens to be experiencing of its most successful years ever. Initially a major driver of the speculation boom in the early 90s comics market, Image has recently reached the pop culture zeitgeist again with numerous bestselling titles which put most of Marvel and DCs output outside the box office to shame. Image has represented very polarizing ideals in the comics scene over the years, a seeming contradiction in the direct market paradigm. On one hand, they have represented the utter absence of artistry in the mainstream, the muscle-bound inanity and collectors items of the late nineties boom and bust at their most abject. Yet at the same time, Image has stood as an ideal publishing model to many: an outlet for popular and original concepts with the creators retaining full ownership.

When Image was founded in 1992, the intent was a self-proclaimed comics revolution. Spearheaded by seven of Marvel Comics most popular artists at the time namely Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Jim Valentino and Erik Larsen the explicit purpose of the publisher was to offer a feasible alternate within mainstream superhero comics to Marvel and DCs contracts, which robbed the writer/artist of any rights to their own work. Historically, exploitation has always been the dark not-so-secret side of superhero comics. For example, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, spent much of their lives hovering close to the poverty line while their iconic man of steel became a billion dollar property. Taking a stand against this nonsense was and remains a big deal. Image series featured original characters without 50 years of popular baggage and sold on the popularity of the creators behind them. And unlike an indie publisher like Fantagraphics, Image comics reached a mass audience beyond the hip graphic novel scene, which had not yet grown to encompass bookstores and newspaper columns.

In many ways, Image was the ideal model, but their marketing strategies were less than utopian. Many mock the content of their comics from this time, shoulderpadded extreme nonsense drawn quickly with a poor sense of proportion and all the worst boys club impulses. I actually wouldnt go that far myself, as these comics arent exactly Persepolis, but they have a certain charm in their exclamatory energy. Liefeld and McFarlane are particularly appealing in a gnarly camp sort of way. The real issue wasnt the content, but how irrelevant the content was. Most every comic Image Comics published at that time was sold as a collectors item with at least a couple variant covers (the most infamous of these being Bloodstrike #1, whose gelatinous variant cover beckoned the buyer to Rub the Blood!). This inflated collectors market was initially fueled by the then-shocking auction sales of rare superhero comics from the 40s, 50s and 60s, but Images ferocious push on this speculation back and forth with Marvel and others added gasoline to the bonfire. Eventually, people began to realize that Violator vs. Badrock #2 wasnt going to put their kid through college, and the flame of speculation was extinguished, leading to a moment of industry-wide failures and bankruptcy even Marvel filed for chapter 11 from which the direct market scene arguably still hasnt totally recovered.

Recently, Image has come back into vogue as a publisher, mainly due to the success of The Walking Dead, a TV show spun off from one of their longest-running comics. However, what has allowed Image to muscle in on that coveted third place in the mainstream market alleged third, seeing as the sci-fi series Saga outsells most Marvel and DC books that arent Spider-Man or Batman is not Images own success but rather the failures of their competition. Vertigo, DC Entertainments mature readers imprint, previously occupied that space in the comics market with beloved titles like Neil Gaimans Sandman, but their cachet has stumbled massively in recent years since editor and founder Karen Berger left the imprint. Without her curatorial force, Vertigo has stumbled aimlessly through bad ideas and vanity projects, while Image developed a prestige television vibe that beckons new readers to their books.

The Image Comics that exists today is quite admirable in many regards. Their books are usually handsomely designed, (although the actual artistry on display may vary in its success) publications that might even gasp reach an actual audience. The work of editor David Brothers and others have pushed a greater creative diversity and diversity in creators Image publishes the Brandon Graham-curated anthology Island, which is among the most forward-thinking comics publications out there, period. And most importantly, creators own their work and receive fair compensation, still a shockingly alien concept for most publishers today.

And yet, a certain malaise seems to set in. Most of Images comics are boring, stiffly drawn art married to aggressively bland writing. Many of these titles are clearly written with multimedia potential in mind more than creative freedom, using decompressed storytelling as a pretense to spread the content of a television pilot over 6 months of single issues that cost four dollars each. Images top-selling titles are like little packages of nothing you follow them in anticipation of a morsel of something, 1000 pages from now, or in an adaptation, or perhaps a long form blog post by an adolescent youll never meet. This isnt creative freedom, this is comics dystopia.

Under the lens of late stage capitalism, the strengths and flaws of Image Comics from its inception in 1992 to today begin to make sense. Images publishing model offers an alternative to creators dissatisfied with the Big Twos system of ownership while stressing the commodification of product over celebration of artistry. There is no inherent protection under Images rules beyond what is stated in a contract, nor is a great deal of emphasis put on pursuing excellence. There is no comradery, only ambition for personal gain at the expense of fellow artists and eager readers alike. The conundrum of Image, the bad but good, the brilliant and crass, the artists in the mainstream, all of this boils down to a decision that financial capital and the rapid movement of product would be the best system to bring fair compensation to creators exploitation countered by self-exploitation. One wonders what the comics world might look like today if Images star founders had decided to unionize and demand new industry-wide standards instead of building a new comics factory.

Nathan Chazan is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at ndc39@cornell.edu.

We are an independent, student newspaper. Help keep us reporting with a tax-deductible donation to the Cornell Sun Alumni Association, a non-profit dedicated to aiding The Sun.

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CHAZAN | The Revolution Will Not Have Shoulderpads: Image Comics 25 Years Later - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

During the height of the violent protests by the anti-war movement in the late 60s, a cartoon circulated that reflected the shock parents experienced at their long-haired, profanity-spewing communist-flag waving children. In an attempt to soothe said parents the cartoon had one wife telling her husband, Dont worry about it, honey. Why, even Max Eastman ended up writing for Readers Digest.

This implication that Eastman, once nearly thrown in jail for supposedly violating the Espionage Act by opposing World War I on socialist grounds, had now embraced the establishment depends heavily on which establishment one is talking about.

It is certainly true that by the 1940s, the former proponent of the Bolshevik Revolution had veered rightward, abandoning even socialism and embracing the anticommunism of the Readers Digest where he worked.

But if one considers the intellectual zeitgeist as one feature of the establishment, then Eastman was never part of it; indeed, he spent a large part of his life as a minority of one.

While American crowds cheered Woodrow Wilsons declaration of war in 1917, Eastman denounced Americas entry into World War I as simply to make money for the upper classes. When he continued to oppose the war through his writings for the anti-war left-wing Masses magazine, Eastman was prosecuted by the government for supposedly violating the Espionage Act, which made it a federal crime to agitate against the war (Eastman won the case).

In the early 20s, he was a frequent visitor to Bolshevik Russia and was very much the premature anti-Stalinist while other leftists praised Stalin. Eastman, by turns, caught the thuggish nature of the then-Party member Stalin early and warned that the Soviet Union would slide into dictatorship should Stalin take power.

Sidney Hook, an anti-Stalinist Marxist who nonetheless was frequently at loggerheads with Eastman, praised Eastman as a lone voice warning against Stalin:

Of all the forms of intellectual independence Eastman displayed in his life, nothing matched the courage he had to summon up when he stood practically alone on his return from the Soviet Union in 1924. He had brought with him the first hard evidence of the Stalinization of the Bolshevik regime. In consequence, he became a rebel outcast in his own country and a pariah in the radical movement that had been central to his life.

This isolation would be even more accentuated in the 1930s when intellectuals became Stalinists. As a result, Eastmans books were largely ignored, and it reviewed by leftists were denounced as reactionary.

By the late 1930s, Eastman had abandoned even Leon Trotskys brand of Marxism and was a decided anticommunist.

When he brought these views with him into the World War II era when the Soviets and the United States were military partners, and even rock-ribbed Republicans like Henry Luce were praising Stalin, Eastman remained a voice in the wilderness.

By now regarded by even liberal anticommunists as a senile reactionary, Eastman bucked the intellectual tide even further by supporting Senator Joseph McCarthys anticommunist crusade in the 1950s. While liberals denounced McCarthy by the term of red-baiter, Eastman defended both the Senator and that term:

Red Baiting in the sense of reasoned, documented exposure of Communist and pro-Communist infiltration of government departments and private agencies of information and communication is absolutely necessary. We are not dealing with honest fanatics of a new idea, willing to give testimony for their faith straightforwardly, regardless of the cost. We are dealing with conspirators who try to sneak in the Moscow-inspired propaganda by stealth and double talk, who run for shelter to the Fifth Amendment when they are not only permitted but invited and urged by Congressional committee to state what they believe. I myself, after struggling for years to get this fact recognized, give McCarthy the major credit for implanting it in the mind of the whole nation.

Now writing for William F. Buckleys pro-McCarthy National Reviewhe was an original contributing editorEastman in 1955 completely repudiated the revolution he once so fervently championed:

Instead of liberating the mind of man, the Bolshevik revolution locked it into a states prison tighter than ever before. No flight of thought was conceivable, no poetic promenade even, to sneak through the doors or peep out of a window in this pre-Darwinian dungeon called Dialectic Materialism. No one in the western world has any idea of the degree to which Soviet minds are closed and sealed tight against any idea but the premises and conclusions of this antique system of wishful thinking. So far as concerns the advance of human understanding, the Soviet Union is a gigantic road-block, armed, fortified and defended by indoctrinated automatons made out of flesh, blood and brains in robot-factories they call schools.

As supportive of the Cold War as Buckley, Eastman typically parted company with conservatives on the magazine. Against Buckleys fervent Catholicism, Eastman remained an atheist (the magazines increasingly pro-Christian viewpoint would force Eastman to leave it in the 1960s). Always willing to entertain second thoughts, the free marketeer (Eastman helped publish the libertarian Frederich Von Hayek) now believed the conservative movement had been taken over by reactionary forces who confused the quest of social justice with Communist treason.

His final gesture of independence from the movement he was now part of occurred when he opposed the Vietnam War.

At first glance, Eastman would seem to be merely a knee-jerk rebel. But there is a consistent strain in his thinking that traced back to his days as a political leftist radical. The theme he lived by was provided in, of all places, The Masses magazine, when he wrote that the mission of the periodical was to be directed against rigidity and dogma wherever it is found.

And that was Eastmans creed, be it on the Right or the Left.

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Max Eastman: Curmodgeon - The Liberty Conservative

Kendrick Lamars 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly became a zeitgeist. It seemed to arrive right on time and embodied the spirit of American social consciousness amid the growth of a progressive fight for civil rights in the 21st century. Alright became the theme song for a movement, while Lamars visit with President Obama and his visceral Awards performance helped make TPAB a cultural a keystone of conversations about race in America (which is in part why the album is going to be preserved in Harvards archives). As arguably one of the most influential artists in music today, Lamars next album is more than highly anticipated.

Thundercat & Kendrick Lamar Stay In The Groove On Walk On By (Audio)

The Compton artist (Lamar himself identifies as a writer, not a rapper) has kept a generally tight lip around the details of his as-yet-unnamed follow-up project. However, he did unveil the conceptual framework and mindstate behind it in a recent interview with the New York Times T magazine. To Pimp a Butterfly was addressing the problem, he says. Im in a space now where Im not addressing the problem anymore. However, he does seem to feel theres an oversight that needs to be addressed. Were in a time where we exclude one major component out of this whole thing called life: God. Nobody speaks on it because its almost in conflict with whats going on in the world when you talk about politics and government and the system. This is what goes on in my mind as a writer.

Kendrick continues to describe the thought processes informing his approach to the new album, which include visualizations of the daughter he may have some day, and how being the father of a future woman is something he grapples with on a philosophical level. One day, I may have a little girl. Shes gonna grow up. Shes gonna be a child I adore, Im gonna always love her, but shes gonna reach that one point where shes gonna start experiencing things, he says. And shes gonna say things or do things that you may not condone, but its the reality of it and you know she was always gonna get to that place. And its disturbing. But you have to accept it.

R.A. Shows That Even Rugged Men Change With Fatherhood (Video)

Its then that he expounds upon not addressing the problem anymore. You have to accept it and you have to have your own solutions to figure out how to handle the action and take action for it. When I say the little girl, its the analogy of accepting the moment when she grows up. We love women, we enjoy their company. At one point in time I may have a little girl who grows up and tells me about her engagements with a male figure things that most men dont want to hear.

Learning to accept it, and not run away from it, thats how I want this album to feel, he says.

In a video package for the magazine, Lamar says he makes music because of its powers as a form of self-expression, but also because it allows him to be a voice for those that cant release their frustration on the mic, you know. They gotta do it on the streets. He adds, I wanna put my stories and their stories together for the world to hear.

There is no news yet about when Heads can expect a new Kendrick Lamar album, but from the words he speaks in this interview, its likely to be a powerful token of artistry and once again, it will be right on time. As he says, Its very urgent.

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Kendrick Lamar Gives A Glimpse Into His Mindset As He Approaches His New Album (Video) - Ambrosia For Heads

Approximately 50 protesters stage a die-in on a street outside of the Pentagon City Mall in Arlington, Virginia, on November 29, 2014, to show solidarity with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. (Photo: Joseph Gruber)

An Arizona bill that sought to prosecute protest organizers like racketeers is officially dead after widespread outcry forced state lawmakers to put that effort to rest, marking a victory for the national resistance movement currently facing a rash of legislation aimed at stifling dissent.

Arizona House Speaker J.D. Mesnard announced late Monday that the bill,SB 1142, would not move forward in the legislature.

"I haven't studied the issue or the bill itself, but the simple reality is that it created a lot of consternation about what the bill was trying to do," Mesnard, a Republican,toldthePhoenix New Times. "People believed it was going to infringe on really fundamental rights. The best way to deal with that was to put it to bed."

Indeed, the legislation, which would have expanded state racketeering laws to allow police to arrest and seize the assets of suspected protest organizers, made national headlines last week afterpassingthe GOP-led Senate.

However,according toTheArizona Republic, the bill's "fate was sealed over the weekend" as Mesnard "fielded phone calls from the public to complain about the bill. The House leader's personal cellphone number is listed on his personal website. As he listened to the callers, Mesnard realized their belief that the legislation was intended to curb free-speech rights outweighed any merits its supporters might put forward. He carefully read the legislation and by the time he returned Monday to his office, where there were more than 100 messages about the bill awaiting him, he decided he would kill the measure."

The so-called "Plan a Protest, Lose Your House Bill" was the most recent state-level attempt to crackdown on the growing protest movement and opponents celebrated its defeat.

"Thanks to everyone who spoke out against this terrible proposal!" the ACLU of Arizonawroteon Twitter. "Continue fighting for our civil liberties!"

Arecent analysisby theWashington Postfound that "Republican lawmakers in at least 18 states have introduced on voted on legislation to curb mass protests," which includes bills that would "increase punishmentsfor blocking highways,ban the use of masksduring protests, [and] indemnify drivers whostrike protesterswith their cars."

AsCommon Dreamshas previouslyobserved, most of these anti-protest bills have sprouted up in Republican-dominated states that have seen a flurry of demonstrations and civil disobedience.

In Minnesota, where people protested the police killings of Philando Castile and Jamar Clark by blocking roads, measures aimed at raising the penalties for obstructing traffic are gaining traction. Numerous bills wereapprovedby public safety committees in both the House and Senate last week, despite vocalopposition.

Running down some of the other pending legislative efforts,The Atlantic's Matt FordwroteTuesday:

Tennessee lawmakersintroducedtheir own civil-liability bill in February. [...]

Iowa'sSenate File 111would make blocking highways a felony offense with a possible five-year prison sentence.

In Washington, a version of the highway-protest bills came in response to environmentalist-led demonstrations that had targeted the oil industry. State Senator Doug Ericksen introducedSenate Bill 5009, also titled the Preventing Economic Disruption Act. It allows prosecutors to seek longer sentences against defendants who commit crimes that cause "economic disruption," which it defines as obstructing commercial vehicles or interfering with pipelines or oil-related facilities.

Meanwhile, public opposition has already defeated numerous other attempts, such asNorth Dakota's "civil liability" bill,aVirginia effortthat would have brought potential jail time for attending a protest, and now Arizona's SB 1142.

As Lee Rowland, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, explained to thePost, the new bills are "not about creating new rules that are necessary because of some gap in the law." Rather, Rowland said, the intent is to "increas[e] the penalties for protest-related activity to the point that it results in self-censorship among protesters who have every intention to obey the law."

The laws as well as the impulse to label protesters as "paid" or "professional" agitators are simply "standard operating procedure for movement opponents," according to Douglas McAdam, a Stanford sociology professor who studies protest movements.

"For instance, southern legislatures -- especially in the Deep South -- responded to the Montgomery Bus Boycott (and the Supreme Court's decision inBrown v. Board of Education) with dozens and dozens of new bills outlawing civil rights groups, limiting the rights of assembly, etc. all in an effort to make civil rights organizing more difficult," he wrote in an email to thePost. "Similarly, laws designed to limit or outlaw labor organizing or limit labor rights were common in the late 19th/early 20th century."

The Atlantic's Ford also concluded that "[t]he proposals as a whole point to a more enduring dynamic: As mass protests return to the political zeitgeist, so too will efforts to clamp down on them."

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Outcry Kills Anti-Protest Law in Arizona, but Troubling Trend Continues Nationwide - Truth-Out

Once again religion, faith and spirituality are front and center in The Simpsons, the worlds longest running animated sitcom. And it couldnt come at a better, if troubled time.

In the February 19 episode, The Cad and the Hat, bad boy Bart an unabashed Satanist needed a miracle to get out of a devilishly complicated, madcap plot conundrum of his own making. He had to lift a crushed car off the ground and into a swimming pool of acidic soda in order to retrieve his sister Lisas beloved summer straw hat. In an act of pure meanness, Bart had thrown the hat out the window of the family car, whereupon it ended up in a crashed vehicle on the way to the scrap yard.

It was a hopeless task, but Bart egged on by an outsized, ethereal guilty conscience did not hesitate to push his disbelief aside and call on a higher power for help. In this case he appealed to the pious young sons of Ned Flanders, the Simpsons evangelical next door neighbor. The two boys dropped to their knees and, with their fathers permission, asked Jesus twice to raise the 2,000-pound steel cube and lower it into the toxic soft drink just long enough to free Lisas hat. Which he did.

As I argue in my new ebook, The Gospel According to The Simpsons: A Newer Testament, since 2007 when the last edition was published, religion has become more prevalent, if not pervasive in the show, deeply woven into its narrative fabric. Despite its initial reputation for irreverence, characters in the show like many North Americans do not hesitate to appeal to the divine, although only when absolutely necessary.

When The Simpsons came on the scene in the late 1980s, in what now seems a simpler, more civil time, the show seemed to push the limits of discourse. In the coarser Trump era, old episodes are almost quaint. As the deep, polarizing divide in the American zeitgeist has sharpened, and the bitter culture wars have reignited, The Simpsons have moved in the opposite direction. And in so doing they may offer a model of healing and reconciliation. The most impressive gift of The Simpsons is the show's ability to change over time and still be loved for the consistency of its characters' charm and flaws.

There has in fact been a significant, if subtle evolution in the portrayal of the shows most stalwart believers: Mother Marge Simpson; evangelical next door neighbor Ned Flanders; and, to a lesser extent, Springfield Community Churchs Reverend Timothy Lovejoy. They are subjected to less broadly-based ridicule for their Christian devotion and piety.

At the same time, these characters seem to have mellowed. They have become more tolerant of those of lesser or different faiths, and of others liberal political and cultural views. As in their portrayal of other changes in the religious world, Simpsons writers have tracked moderating shifts within much of the American evangelical movement. In this sense at least, the 2016 election results may have been an anomaly.

Last Sunday nights Simpsons episode was Fox's highest rated show of the night, seen by 2.5 million people. Admittedly that is a far cry from the shows early years, when it was consistently in the top ten, especially with young adult viewers. While ratings for the Sunday night prime time series have declined over the past decade, The Simpsons remains a potent cultural force, earning an astonishing 32 Emmys and reaching a worldwide audience of more than 100 million in 100 countries.

As recently as 2015, congregations like the First Presbyterian Church of Farmington, Michigan, have been offering adult education series based on The Simpsons, with good reason. Notwithstanding my books title, The Simpsons isnt a show about religion. Rather it is a show about families like most in this country in which faith and religion play a role, often in the form of moral and ethical instruction. In the case of The Simpsons, this message is conveyed in a wacky, light-handed fashion. And we should pay attention. As Homer likes to say, Its funny cause its true.

(A version of this essay appeared in the Albany, N.Y., Times-Union)

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The Simpsons Gospel: A Newer Testament for Troubled Times? - Huffington Post

Bass discussed the initiatives the company is using to unlock good through mobile marketing initiatives at a Mobile World Congress session in Barcelona today.

She said: "We have a new vector around empathy and how we think about communities in the digital age. Empathy allows us to ignite a social movement for good.

"Whats interesting as we plug into the cultural zeitgeist, we have talked about Brexit and the election in the US, and we saw the Catalan protest outside.

"We are living in an age of anxiety and mistrust. And what was once at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs of safety and trust and shelter and sleep is now of the upmost importance at the top of the pyramid."

In order to address the issues of sleep Johnson & Johnson developed a "clinically proven routine" to help babies sleep better, which includes practices such as giving the baby a warm bath.

To go alongside it Johnson & Johnson created an app called Nod that allows parents to "care and personalise more delightful sleep experiences".

The app has been developed in partnership with analytics firm Mimo, which is helping create a data repository to "offer the next generation of technology enabled sleep solutions".

Nod is primarily being advertised through search and being pushed by clinical professionals when people ask about getting better sleep for themselves and babies.

Johnson & Johnsons other initiatives that use mobile to benefit society is an app for its Listerine brand that allows visually impaired people to realise when people are smiling at them.

The app uses the phones camera to detect the smile and then buzzes to notify the user of a smile.

Bass said: "That is a great example of going beyond than hawking bottles, jars, and tubes but leading with a greater sense of purpose and having mobile help people feel something."

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Johnson & Johnson pursues empathy in an age of 'anxiety and mistrust' - CampaignLive

DULUTH, Minn.- Throughout the years, many Iconic Figures have progressed the Civil Rights movement, and Sunday,images honoring some of those people lined the walls of the Zeitgeist arts building in Duluth, as part of a fundraiser for the local NAACP chapter.

UMD graphic design students created all of the art on the wall, and each one features a black activist and each of the designs were inspired by a black designer.

The images were sold at a silent auction, with half of the proceeds going to the NAACP.

To be able to give something to the NAACP in a way that I can contribute and use my art to do something like that is nice, said Rachel Koch, a Graphic Design Student at UMD.

Terresa Hardaway, Associate Professor of Graphic design at UMD believes teaching students to design for social change is crucial. And this project was a great way to teach them how to do just that.

Graphic design industry, 90 percent white. So when you get racist advertisements or racist commercials, its because people who are designing that and creating that are white, and theyre not open to other cultures, so what I want to teach my students is to make sure they understand what it means to be a designer for the people, said Hardaway.

NAACP members also read black slave narratives in the theatre as part of the event.

We really want to have a footprint in Duluth and let people know the African American culture is in American culture as well, said Stephan Witherspoon the president of the NAACP Duluth Chapter.

The purpose of the fundraiser wasnt just to raise money. Witherspoon says a major goal for the event was to bring the community together, and educate the public about Black history, that is often left out of history classes.

African American history is American history, said Witherspoon.

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NAACP Fundraiser Honors Black Leaders, Activists - FOX 21 Online

When Vanessa Redgrave unleashed hertirade against Zionist hoodlums at the 1978 Academy Awards, she became one of themost notorious examples of how things can go horribly wrong when celebrities talkpolitics on Hollywoods big night.

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The hoodlums were Jewish groups who protested the acclaimed British actressfor helping to make apro-Palestinian documentary.Her belligerent, self-righteous rant didnt go over well. After Redgrave left the stage, author and Network screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky came out and blastedRedgrave and other celebrities who thinkits OKto get political at the Academy Awards.

He said, Im sick and tired of people exploiting the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal propaganda.

The crowd broke intothundering applause. But dont expect that kind of affirmationthis year for anyone who saysstarsshouldnt make political speeches. Thats because somespeechesare likely to get political tonight very political.

And the tweets and headlines going viral will be less about red-carpet fashion disasters or surprising wins or snubs, but about which left-leaning celebrity delivered the most laceratingtakedown of President Donald Trump and his controversial policies.

This awards season has already been marked by viral political speech moments.At the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep drew enthusiasticapplause and a presidentialhate-tweet when she spoke out against Trumpsderogatory rhetoric against immigrants, people of color and people with disabilities.

Like our Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from the Bay Area and beyond.

And at the Screen Actors Guild awards, Oakland native and supporting actor nominee Mahershala Ali moved hearts with hissubtle but powerful speech about diversity and inclusion. He tied his characterin Moonlight, a man who takes in a neglected child bullied for his potential homosexuality, with his own experience of being different notably hisdecision 17 years ago to convert to Islam.

The speeches by Streep and Ali, as well as Redgraves historic misfire, show why politically-mindedcelebrities need to take care in how they delivertheir messages tonight. That is, if their goal isnt just to indulge their own sense of self-importance but to genuinelywin hearts and minds to the positionsthey care about.

Following are some of themost famous political speeches from Oscar history, as well as reasons that some were more likely than others to win support for the speakers causes. No surprises here, butstars who whined, spoke condescendingly of opponentsor cameoff as self-righteous and self-indulgent turned people off, while those who displayed grace, humility and genuine emotionwere more likely to win theday.

1972: Jane Fonda scores by shutting up about Vietnam

Producers of the 1972 Academy Awards no doubt worried about what outspoken Vietnam War opponent Jane Fonda wouldsay if she won that years best actress award for Klute. But three months before her infamous trip to Hanoi, Hanoi Jane kept her acceptance speech short and gracious. But that doesnt mean that what she left unsaid didnt speak volumes. She addressed the proverbial elephant in the room by beginning her speech with: Theres a great deal to say and Im not going to say it tonight. And then she offered sincere appreciation Iwould just like to really thank you very much and left the stage.

1973: Marlon Brandos surprising victory for Native Americans

When most people think of political speeches at the Oscars, Marlon Brandos stunt at the 1973 awards usually comes to mind. Looking back through the lens of Brandos declining years as an actor morbidly overweight and massively overpaid for any film he deigned to appear in its easy to dismiss this Oscars moment as the product of a movie star indulging in the worst form of self-aggrandizing. But there was a lot more to it, as some accounts have noted.

To go back, Brando was expected to win the leading actor award that year for The Godfather.But when his name was announced, there was no Brando. Instead, a woman in Native American dress took the stage. She identified herself as Sacheen Littlefeather, president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee.

She informed the crowd thatBrando was declining the honor to protest the stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans in film and television. She also referenced recent events at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where federal agents clashed with Native American protesters starting in February 1973.

While some in the audience booed Brando for daring to criticize the academy, and the academy thereafter banned winners from sending proxies to accept awards on their behalf, leaders of the American Indian Movement considered the speech to be a major victory for their cause.

According to accounts, Littlefeathers speech refocused media attention on the occupation at Wounded Knee. In turn, that attention may have stalled U.S. military against Indian protesters, and it possiblymadeAmericans more aware of longstanding injustices related to indigenous people in the United States.

1978: Vanessa Redgraves Zionist hoodlums bomb

As suggestedabove, Redgave didnt do hercause many favors with her speech, in which shealso was gratinglyself-referential in praising the academy forgivingher an award. She said, I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks youve stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic struggle against fascism and oppression.

Whether or not it was a direct result of her speech, or of Chayefskys rebuke, making political speeches at the Oscars became considered, well, bad form. This norm of polite Oscar behavior generally continuedthrough the next decade and a half.

1993: Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins hog the spotlight

This year marked the return of high-profile political speeches, but with mixed results.

It started with Richard Gere. The American Gigolo actorcame on stage to present the award for best art direction. But rather than pay tribute to the creative contributions of production designers and art directors, the actor, a high-profile friend of the Dalai Lama, condemnedChinas history of human rights violations in Tibet.

A little later on, former couple Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon kicked off their presentation of the best editing award by calling attention to Haitians being held in Guantanamo Bay, barred from entering the United States because they had tested positive for HIV. Sarandon asked for federal officials to admit that HIV is not a crime, and to admit these people into the United States.

In both cases, the audience applauded, probably because they found both causes to be noble.But Gil Cates, the producer that year, said it was distasteful and dishonest for presenters to use their time on stage to express political beliefs.

Hes got a point in the sense that Gere, Sarandon and Robbins essentially hijacked attention from the winners they were supposed to be honoring.

When it comes to Oscar speechifying, winners seem to have more leeway than presenters, the thinking goes. After all, winners haveearned their big moment on the Oscars stage, as well as some discretion in using that moment in away they see fit. But presenters should just do what they are asked to do: name the nominees and then announce the winner.

If nothing else, Gere, Sarandon and Robbins attention-grabbing maneuvers were disrespectful to the nominees and winners. Fortheir actions, the three stars were banned from presenting at future Oscars, though theyve been back since.

2002: Halle Berry squanders her historic moment

A fair number of lists of famous politically charged Oscarspeeches refer toHalle Berry andher emotional acceptance of the best actress award for Monsters Ball.

Yes, Berrys win made her the first black actress in Oscar history to win in the leading actress category. And for the occasion, she managed to say some memorable things:This moment is so much bigger than me.

She continued: This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. Its for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And its for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.

All this was moving, but these sentiments only came in the very first part of her speech, which, yes, was very emotional. As Berry continued to sob and try to catch her breath, things went downhill.

She went on for nearly four minutes an eternity in Oscar speech making and she used up the bulk of her timeto become famous for another reason: as one of the worstoffenders of aparticularly annoying Oscar speech habit. She ran through an exhausting list of various people to thank manager, lawyer, agent and other Hollywood types that the public would prefer not to hear about. So, Berry spent less time honoring Dandridge and Lena Horne than in thanking Lions Gate studios, CAA, Joel Silver and Warren Beatty.

And its probably not Berrys fault, but her win did little to open the doors of opportunity for African-American women in Hollywood, including for herself, as became clearas recentlyas2015 and #OscarsSoWhite 2016.

2003: Michael Moore proves prescient

After winning in the feature documentary category for Bowling for Columbine, provocateur documentarian Michael Moore wagged his fingerand chastised then-President George W. Bush for the Iraq War, which had started just days prior.

Moore called him a fictitious president who won in a fictitious election and who sent us to war for fictitious reasons. He ended his speech with a message to Bush:Shame on you!

The audience reaction was a loud mix of applause and boos.

Doubtless, there would have been far fewer boos if Moore had delivered that speech a couple years later when it became clear that he had been right about the fictitious reasons the U.S. went to war.

And imagine how such a speech would go over this year. Someone telling President Trump he should be ashamed of himself? Its easy to guess how that would go over in this Hollywood crowd

2006: George Clooney confirms the worst out-of-touch Hollywood stereotype

At the Cesar ceremony Friday night in Paris, George Clooney delivered a powerful takedown of Trump and his policies while accepting an honorary award from the French film community. He mixed humor and gravity in a speech designed as a call to action, saying, Ascitizens of the world, were gonna have to work harder and harder to not let hate win. He added, Love trumps hate. Courage trumps fear.

But George Clooney was far less inspirational 11 years earlier when he accepted his award for best supporting actor for Syriana. His started with humor, joking about his People Sexiest Man Alive cover and his disastrous turn playing Batman.

However, when political Clooney took over, the best he could do was offer lame criticism of theout-of-touch Hollywood stereotype; his criticism only confirmed the reason the stereotypeexists.

He said being out of touch was probably a good thing because it supposedly made filmmakers more courageous and visionary in tackling issues that society shies away from. Were the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasnt really popular, he said.

His points are highly arguable. Plenty of film and culturalhistorians would say that Hollywood has a pretty sketchy record on presenting noble stories with controversial subjects taking on importantissues too late or taking them on in the most non-confrontational way possible so as not to upset the sensibilities of mainstream audiences. Just one of many examples: the whitewashing tendency in the late 1940s and 1950s to cast white actresses in the roles of biracial heroines battling prejudice.

Clooney even went so far as to praiseHollywood for being brave in giving veteranblack actress Hattie McDaniel an Oscar for 1939s Gone with the Wind, when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters, he said.

In referencing McDaniel, Clooney missed a key point in the story that makes him sound out of touch. It is that the ceremony for the 1939 films took place at the Cocoanut Grove, a favorite nightclub for Hollywoods elite. The club had a strict no-blacks policy, which was in place until 1959.

That night, McDaniel couldnt sit at the table with the rest of the GWTW crew, including nominated co-stars Vivien Leigh, Clark Gableand Olivia DeHavilland. Instead, she had to sit at the back of the room, at a table next to a far wall.The only reason she was even allowed into the building was because producer David O. Selznick called in a special favor.

2009: Sean Penn, Dustin Lance Black give shout-outs to gay rights

Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black captured the progressive zeitgeist of the timeswhen they took their separate turns accepting their awards for, respectively, best actor and best original screenplay. They were being honored for their work in Milk, the biopic of pioneering San Francisco gay rights leader Harvey Milk.

While Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, the other news that yearwasnt so good for progressives or for CaliforniasLGBTQ community: Proposition 8 passed in the state, banning same-sex marriage.

Penn, who portrayed the slain activist, said those who voted for Proposition 8 shouldsit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildrens eyes if they continue that way of support. He added: Weve got to have equal rights for everyone.

For Black, the issue was more personal, and he spoke movingly of how Milks story gave him hope when he was a teenager, letting him believe he would one day be able to live openly as who he truly was and even get married. If Milk had not been killed, Black said, I think hed want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight, who have been told they are less-than by their churches, or by their government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value.

2015: John Legend, Common and Patricia Arquette hit the right notes

The emotional highlights of the Oscars this year included John Legend and Common celebrating their win for best song for Glory from Ava DuVernays film Selma and supporting actress winner Patricia Arquettemaking a powerfulplea for wage equality and equal rights for women.

These moments touched on long-simmering issues in Hollywood: the dearth ofopportunities for people of color and for women. And the speeches showed how celebrities can use their platform to speak out on issues in personal, heartfelt ways that resonate with audiences.

The speech by Legend and Common followed their stirring performance of the song Glory, with its message of inclusion and diversity. Their speech was especially relevant that yeargiven the outcry over Selma director DuVernay not being nominated for best director and for actor David Oyelowo not scoring a nomination for his portrayal of the films hero, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In his speech, Common said: Recently John and I got to go to Selma and perform Glory on the same bridge that Dr. King and the people of the civil rights movement marched on 50 years ago. This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation. Now its a symbol of change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social status.

Legend added this call toaction. We wrote this song for a film that was based on events that were 50 years ago. But we say thatSelmais now, because the struggle for justice is right now. We know that the Voting Rights Act that they fought for 50 years ago is being compromised right now.

As for Arquette, after winning for her performance in Boyhood, she first ran through the traditional list of Hollywood thank yous, then spoke forcefully on behalf of womens rights.

To every woman that gave birth, to every taxpayer in this nation, [women] have fought for everybody elses equal rights, Arquette said. Its our time to have wage equality, once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.

Originally posted here:

When Oscars speeches get political: the best, worst and most annoying in Academy Award history - The Mercury News

The greatest weapon the colonial powers have used in the past against our people has always been his ability to divide and conquer. If I take my hand and slap you, it might sting you because these digits are separated. But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together. Malcom X

In mid 17th century Virginia, long before civil rights or even abolition, poor whites and black slaves came together to demand justice from the ruling class. The rebellion failed but not without a valuable lesson for the elites: a unified citizenry is dangerous.

The ruling class managed to divide and conquer the poor whites and the slaves by changing the social hierarchy. The indentured whites were given more rights and privileges, ensuring that no matter how marginalized they were, theyd still believe themselves above the slaves.

Future alliances were a long time coming as attitudes would have to change amongst more of the white population, but they did come. Each time, different groups, divided by race and/or social class, converge to achieve a greater human goal. Usually restoring some sort of balance before the hegemony divides and conquers again.

As the Civil Rights movement wound down in the late 1960s, the people were less divided by overt Jim Crow racism, but still divided by race. America declared a victory for equality even as whites ran from cities to the protection of middle-class suburbs, where poorer minorities couldnt follow.

The once secular communist boogeyman has becomea symbol of the conservative movement and made nationalism popular again.

During this time, racist ideologies evolved and the language became more subtle. The new post-racial narrative was devoid of racial overtures yet still played off white fears. Politicians effectively used this white fear to make policy, strengthen their base, and stay in power.

At the start of Nixons drug war in 1971 (the drug war has been around in one form or another since before prohibition), the post-racial zeitgeist introduced law and order, a phrase that treads carefully around race. It became a rallying cry all across America, starting in white suburbs where fear of spreading inner city crime was strongest. Though, by the mid-1990s law and order policies had garnered some wary support in the black community.

[White] America quickly focused on its new enemies: drugs and crime.

Politicians of the day did their part, painting bleak pictures of inner cities without having to resort to racially charged rhetoric, while white TV screens were inundated with images of the dangerous black criminals.

To absolve itself, white America pointed to its black friends and colleagues as evidence of being post-racial, and brushed off the hypocrisy. They also kept their hypocritical and irrational fear of the black man passing them in the street quietly to themselves.

Today, the post-racial narrative sports Internet memes of white cops playing withblack kids, black and brown faces on mainstream television, and prominent black conservatives claiming that racism is a thing of the past. The period at the end of this post-racial story is a popular two-term black president. Problem solved.

See more here:

The Old Divisions, They Do Divide Us - The Good Men Project (blog)

Janette Beckman, "The Rivera Bad Girls, East L.A. 1983," 1983. | Photo: Courtesy of the artist

In partnership with theVincent Price Art Museum:The mission of the Vincent Price Art Museum is to serve as a unique educational resource through the exhibition, interpretation, collection, and preservation of works in all media.

"Tastemakers & Earthshakers: Notes from Los Angeles Youth Culture, 1943 2016" is a multimedia exhibition that traverses eight decades of style, art, and music, and presents vignettes that consider youth culture as a social class, distinct issues associated with young people, principles of social organization, and the emergence of subcultural groups. Citing the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots as a seminal moment in the history of Los Angeles, the exhibition emphasizes a recirculation of shared experiences across time, reflecting recurrent and ongoing struggles and triumphs.

Through a series of articles, Artbound is digging deeper into the figures and themes explored in "Tastemakers & Earthshakers." The show is on view at the Vincent Price Art Museum through February 25, 2017.

[Left] "View of Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles just before dusk on September 9, 1979, where the cruisers were out as usual. A section of the street was closed at 9:30 p.m. to prevent gang violence." | Photo: Anne Knudsen, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library || [Right] "Night view of Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, where a section of the street has been closed at 9:30 p.m. to prevent gang violence." September 9, 1979. | Photo: Anne Knudsen, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

Prominent cities are often characterized by their streets. Whether its the iconic passage known as Sunset Boulevard on the west side of Alamedaor Cesar Chavez Avenue to the east, boulevards have the practical function of ordering commerce and traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular. But they are also curated displays of a citys identity simultaneously, destinations, as well as, transitory spaces where culture, in its flow, is publicly shaped and performed.

In Southern California, car culture became both a symbol of transcendence over socio-economic and racial boundaries, and played a significant role in shaping the identity of West Coast art. Artists, such as Frank Romero and Ruben Ortiz-Torres, have made cars the subject and object of their work. For Chicanos and Mexican Americans, constructing and riding a tricked-out car became a way to turn vehicles into a cultura, which in its specific insularity could turn its back on a mainstream society thatdenied them. Cultura, as many barrio sages know, is a way to keep your head up, to smile now and leave the crying for later when the rancheras and beer in the company of your most trusted homies split you too wide.

Gusmano Cesaretti, "Mosca, 1974 East L.A.," 1974, archival pigment print. | Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Cruising, a prominent pastime of Chicano culture, elevates riding a car to a performance a public ritual of the street. For Eastside communities, boulevards have been a destination for car cruising and low-riding. To highlight its movement and flashy materiality, low-riding drops everything to a lower wavelength. It slows its speed to crawling, reduces its height to nearly scraping. Even the bass drops in sound systems to revel in its sonorous depths. To cruise is to ride a vibration at its heaviest. The car itself is a crown, often laden with precious urban metals, chrome and steel, and crafted with gem-toned fiberglass. The work of Ortiz-Torrez highlights the low-rider and its aesthetics by reconstructing them and re-engineering its hydraulic mechanisms to emphasize its cultural vernacular.

As a transitory public space, boulevards are also locations in which rites of passage are exhibited. On barrio streets, a quinceaera will take the gravity of a queen. In the act of cruising in her limo or decked out ranfla, she presents herself to the streets she had walked most of her life, as a rubber-soled kid, skipping down the gum-stained sidewalk to buy a bag of chips or walking alongside her mother to church on a given Sunday. On her 15th birthday, she navigates on her own terms, cruising down the boulevard. While in church she received the blessings of a priest before the eyes of God and her family, now on the streets, she becomes her own priestess evoking power through the broken asphalt with the wheels of her slow-riding limo. If she is inclined, she may ascend through the sunroof to reveal herself and see the world from these new heights.

And though rites of passage, such as quinceaeras, affirm our location within a social order, in some cases, the act of solely asserting the presence of marginalized bodies of color in public space is an act of political resistance. Over the decades, boulevards have also been used to enact social and political subversion.

Rafael Cardenas, "Quinceaera Limo Swag," 2014, digital archival print. | Photo: Courtesy of the artist

The 1968 student walkouts and the Chicano Moratorium in 1970 were two key moments that asserted the presence and power of Chicanos in history, culture and politics and established East Los Angeles as a symbolic cultural homeland for Chicanos in the Southwest. The blowouts captured the zeitgeist of a rising Chicano movement and represented a political initiation for young Chicano activists who experienced their first taste of political empowerment and would, in the following years, grow to become significant figures in policy, education and art.

Some young participants of the walkouts would also come of age as artists using the streets once again as a platform for their politics and aesthetics. ASCO, the East L.A.-based Chicano arts group that mainly consisted of Patssi Valdez, Gronk, Harry Gamboa and Willie Herrn, initiated their public performances on Whittier Boulevard with The Stations on Christmas Eve of 1971. Much of their work took place in public spaces, most notably Whittier Boulevard, including Walking Mural (1972), Instant Mural (1974) and Decoy Gang War Victim (1974), which eventually landed on the cover of Art Forum magazine in 2011.

[Left] Two young men hold a banner which reads, "National Chicano Moratorium, East Los Angeles, August 29." | Photo: Sal Castro, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library || [Right] A newly wedded couple march in the National Chicano Moratorium which took place in East Los Angeles, August 29, 1970. | Photo: Sal Castro, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

The Chicano movement reached a momentous yet entropic climax during the Chicano Moratorium in 1970. By then, many teenagers that had walked out of high schools had become politicized college students and rising professionals that were fully self-aware of their political strength. Planned by seasoned activists, the moratorium was a highly organized protest, however, this event erupted into chaos and violence as police shot tear gas canisters to disband the unlawful gathering. Students and protesters ran, taking refuge in nearby homes. According to numerous testimonies, police entered homes and private businesses in search of protesters. Most notably, police officers and riot police entered the Silver Dollar Bar where they fired three canisters, striking and killing prominent Mexican American journalist Ruben Salazar.

The unraveling of these events is useful in understanding a crucial function of the boulevard and the gridiron layout of the city to conduct police and military enforced discipline. In fact, critics of the grid or gridiron layout have noted that its design intentionally prevents and helps control uprisings. In the mid-19th century, Paris reconstructed its city after a brutal French revolution with a new urban layout that employed the modern boulevard as its centerpiece. The controversial author of this layout, Georges- Eugne Haussmann, noted the military value of his design as it prevented the outbreak of riots that had previously plagued Paris and revived not-too-distant memories of the bloody revolution.

In addition to political dissent, the mere presence of brown bodies in a public space has been criminalized in Los Angeles. Loitering laws have been known to target young people and people of color, preventing them from gathering in public spaces. More pernicious gang injunctions make the public gathering of people of color illegal, particularly in historically Latino neighborhoods such as Echo Park that are experiencing aggressive gentrification.

Another function of L.A.s predominant urban layout, as it is exemplified in the unraveling of the Chicano Moratorium, is its swift disciplinarian reach that could extendfrom public to private spheres.

Ricardo Valverde, "Boulevard Night," 1979/1991, hand-colored photograph. Collection of Esperanza Valverde and Christopher J. Valverde.

In a city known for being largely comprised of countless distinct suburbs, private spaces become increasingly important as subversive arenas for cultural production, transformation and resistance. When authoritarian powers clamp down on public spaces and privatized cities relinquish public space to strip malls and corporate plazas homes, backyards and even small businesses become necessary social platforms.

Punk culture has survived and thrived in a network of backyard gigs and homespun venues with the lifespan of a flower, not only in East L.A. but perhaps most notably in the conservative hinterlands of San Bernardino and Orange County. Underground electronic music scenes throughout greater L.A. have mushroomed from fog machine-enhanced house parties to a sophisticated economy of warehouse raves connected to an international electronica scene. Even modest family baptism celebrations in cleared-out garages or quinceaera parties in decked-out backyards or church halls serve as intergenerational, inter-genre mix spots. Its where many poor and working-class kids learn to dance cumbias and norteas with their tas and later find ways to mix these with new, more diverse styles that reflect an increasingly cosmopolitan lifestyle, even in the suburbs.

Social media collapses both private and public spheres to create yet another space for alternate cultural narratives. Artist Guadalupe Rosales Veteranas y Rucas Twitter project documents party culture of the 1990s using social media as a widely accessible public forum. As such, social media like Southern Californias boulevards will continue to be useful in organizing critical mass movements in the physical world, and, in some capacity, serve the function of public squares, where communities have gathered to celebrate one another.

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Excerpt from:

Cruising Down SoCal's Boulevards: Streets as Spaces for Celebration and Cultural Resistance - KCET

The latest wave of populism is alarming because contemporary world politics is experiencing resurrection of majoritarian identity politics intertwined with populist zeitgeist

Donald Trump is amongst the many who personify populist zeitgeist in the West.

More than a decade back, Dutch political scientist, Cas Mudde argued today populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of Western democracies. Indeed, one can even speak of a populist Zeitgeist. In linguistics, the term zeitgeist means spirit of the times, however in combination with populism the term has a specific meaning: it connotes an ideology that values politics of identity based on ethno-cultural and religious superiority. The observation made by Mudde has proven prophetic; for now, the grand theatre of world politics justifies the claim.

Populism, as the name suggest, focuses on the people. However, populists have a very exclusive definition of the people that precludes certain identities being labeled as others. This rationale us versus them fuels populism. Furthermore, within the ideology there are two camps: far-right and far-left.

Populists on the political right tend to view the people sharing a common religious-ethno-cultural background. As in the case of contemporary world politics the people refer only to the white European and of Anglo-Saxon origins. Thus, all those who do not share these particular social, cultural, physiological traits are not considered the people.

On the other hand, the far-left populist discourse excludes a certain class of those elites who favour liberal values of freedom, equality and liberty for all, irrespective of class, gender, age, colour, religion and culture. It does not matter if the excluded elite have the same social, cultural, physiological attributes as the people they are disqualified because they belong to different economic class and have liberal attitudes.

Far-right or far-left, in populist way of thinking the people are fundamentally monolithic, a single entity devoid of any divisions across social, cultural, physiological, economic and religious lines. Populists argue liberal and multi-culturalist elite denigrate communitys values and promotes inflow of immigrants from hostile cultures. Furthermore, they contend liberal representative democracy has undervalued the monolithic cultural and social identity of the people.

Ironically, they are the majority but are now forgotten. Since political institutions in liberal democracy necessitate procedures in which plurality of views is included; such procedures however neutralise the people. Populists strongly believe liberal democratic arrangements devalue vox populi: political institutions, therefore must proceed based on the identity of the majority.

This year when citizens in Netherlands, France, and Germany vote for their prime minister, president and chancellor respectively; the citizens choice in these countries will have an unprecedented effect on world politics.

Though, politics of identity certainly has legitimate space in any functional democracy, however, if identity derives its strength from within the democratic framework. The advocates for politics of identity ought to frame their concerns within the democratic principles such as political equality, liberty and freedom for all. But if adherents contrive to supersede and subsume democratic principles it is death knell for the prized pluralism in liberal democracy.

This latest wave of populism is alarming because its adherents believe it is their existence that shall rein in unruly liberalism. The populist idea that the good, homogeneous people are betrayed by evil minorities and corrupted elites is potentially very attractive to voters. For example, rise of the alternative-right (Alt-Right) movement in US is one such example the movement is led by so-called white nationalists who believe in nativism and demand creation of separate, racially exclusive homelands for white people. Furthermore, what makes the recent wave exceptional is its semblance to fascism.

It seems, contemporary world politics is experiencing resurrection of majoritarian identity politics intertwined with populist zeitgeist. By reviewing the election manifestos of the populist political parties, such as Front National in France, British National Party in UK, Party for Freedom in Netherlands, and Germanys Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD) through them we can ascertain the extent of nativist zeal in this latest populist zeitgeist in the West.

With this long prelude, let us look at what is happening the worldover.

The episode of Brexit was the first episode that signaled majoritarian version of the politics of identity. Surprisingly, long before Brexit we witnessed the Scottish Referendum. The result of the referendum (though) was positive in a sense that the British Isle remained a unified political entity. The result of the Brexit referendum, however, was negative in its effect. And, the result further stoked populist zeitgeist in Western democracies.

Traditionally, identity politics was considered to be the politics of marginal groups. However, contemporary rejuvenated politics of identity can be conceptualised as majoritarian version of identity politics. In the West, the majority among the people claim to be the new minority.

For example, a recent book The new minority: white working class politics in an age of immigration and inequality by a US-based political scientist Justin Gest looks into white populists distrust towards their political elite and liberal institutions. His findings are indicative of the rise of populism in a sense that all his interviewees (white working class in US and UK) strongly believe their political institutions have betrayed the majority natives (i.e., white population). They fault political correctness of the institutions, and democracys inclusive framework.

Gest contends political entrepreneurs thrive on this purported betrayal by fanning fear amongst the white working class. What more? This populist wave thrives on narratives constructed by conservative zealots that demonise the dynamics of free speech in democracy: terms like Islamisation, mass immigration, and leftist agendas serve to frame hysterical narrative and is endorsed by an exclusive the people just look at what right-wing Breitbart News website produces on regular basis. According to a US-based civil-rights think-tank Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the number of anti-Muslim groups in US has increased from 34 in 2015 to 100 in 2016.

The undeniable fact of contemporary world politics is that Donald Trump is amongst the many who personify populist zeitgeist in the West. Others like him are unified in their abrasive demeanour and disregard for democratic institutions. Trump is not the only in Western democracy to spearhead the course against immigrants; the others in Europe are in pursuit to emulate him.

This year when citizens in Netherlands, France, and Germany vote for their prime minister, president and chancellor respectively; the citizens choice in these countries will have an unprecedented effect on world politics.

Netherlands witness elections next month, and there are pre-electoral surveys that put populist leader Geert Wilders in carving a comfortable position for his far-right Party for Freedom in the Parliament. In France, the political party Front National, led by Marine Le Pen, rides on the populist wave. Experts believe she will make to the second round of presidential elections (a feat that was never achieved by her father).

Germany is a rather an interesting case for there are signs that incumbent Merkels Christian Democratic Union of Germany (the center-right, conservative party) might be ousted by the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany. Though the two parties seem to have favourable policy towards refugee influx and on the EU, how will they campaign on these issues will only be unfolded in due course. A lot now hangs on several European elections this year. Wait and see what unfolds in the upcoming elections in Netherlands, France and Germany.

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The age of the people - The News on Sunday

Every once in a while an art exhibition seems to so perfectly tap into the nations zeitgeist that it takes on a kind of urgency. Occupancies, the ambitious new show currently on view at three BU galleries, is such a show.

Displaying the work of 22 emerging and mid-career artists, the show, at the 808 Gallery, the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery, and the Annex, explores the ways individual and collective bodies create, negotiate, and inhabit space. The physical body takes on a kind of heightened political weight here, as the artists use it to express ideas about visibilityor the lack of visibility. The politically and sexually charged exhibition packs a wallop.

The very titleOccupanciesconnotes images of direct action and nonviolent resistance: think the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, the recent Black Lives Matter protests, this years womens marches in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, and the countless rallies protesting the Trump immigration ban.

Occupy can mean many different things, says Lynne Cooney, (GRS10,16), artistic director of the Boston University Art Galleries, who curated the show with Kimber Chewning (GRS17). We were interested in the different real and symbolic dimensions of the term. The exhibition is not really about protest movements, but alludes to acts of protest in some of the works.

Cooney says the exhibition, which includes painting, photography, sculpture, video, and mixed media, asks whether certain individuals have different kinds of access to public and private spaces than others and the various ways bodies read in different spaces. From these questions, the exhibition considers how creating and inhabiting space or making oneself visible is in itself a form of resistance, she says.

Occupancies is notable for being the first exhibition to be held concurrently in both the 808 and the Stone Galleries, as well as the Annex. We wanted the show to feel as full as possible, taking up all of our gallery spaces and presenting a multitude of different bodies and mediums, Cooney says. There are so many mediums and methods artists are working in, and we wanted to represent them as best as possible.

Not the Nightmare, Not the Scream, Just the Loving Human Dreamof Peace, the Ever-flowing Stream, Bring the Message Home, gouache and graphite on tea-stained paper, by Ellen Lesperance. Courtesy of Isabella Hutchinson. On view at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery.

The show abounds with images of resistance that are by turns personal, poignant, and urgent. At the Stone Gallery, the viewer encounters artists who engage with the absent body. For example, a series of drawings by Ellen Lesperance was inspired by sweaters worn by female activists who committed their lives to fight for womens rights. Her geometric works on paper, which straddle figuration and abstraction, address the invisibility of female protesters.

Similarly, in Jonah Groeneboers multichannel sound installation Double Mouth Feedback, 2015,a circle of six speakers mounted on scaffolds serves as a stand-in for corporeal bodies. The artist recorded the voices of 37 people providing vocal responses to a series of prompts, like Make a genderless sound, or Make the sound of your gender yesterday. The varying frequencies and pitches have been woven together to collectively imagine a new language freed from current rigid biases about genderand the sound produced is haunting.

If the Stone Gallery focuses on the absent body, the works on display at the 808 Gallery more specifically addresses the performative body and the archival body and historical memory. Ramiro Gomezs Laborers at Lunch, 2015, is a tribute to the workforcelargely Hispanicof the more affluent Los Angeles neighborhoods, people too often rendered invisible. Gomez presents the laborers as cardboard cutouts, surrounded by objects from the real worldcoolers, thermoses, Tupperware containers, a lone paint can. Their faces are nearly featurelessparticularly their eyesunderscoring the way society ignores these laborers. Similarly, the arresting painting Blue Evening, 2015, borrows heavily from David Hockneys famous California pool paintings. Like Hockneys work, Gomezs painting features heavily saturated color. But here, Hockneys affluent Caucasian swimmers and homeowners have been replaced by a dark-complexioned pool cleaner, again presented as nearly featureless to stress how certain segments of the population are ignored.

Laborers at Lunch, 2015, mixed media installation, by Ramiro Gomez. Courtesy of the artist and Charlie James Gallery. On view at the 808 Gallery.

Also at the 808 Gallery are self-portraits by a number of artists using their naked bodies to make a political statement. Internationally acclaimed artist Shen Wei, based in Shanghai and New York, says his photographs allow him to explore his sense of security through understanding the tension between freedom and boundaries, each image at once a moment of introspection and rebellion. By capturing the juxtaposition of his body to his environment, he explores questions of confidence and sensualitycharacteristics, the show notes, that are often not attributed to Asian males.

Photographer Nona Faustine uses her body as a conduit to the past. In a triptych of self-portraits shot outside the Lefferts House in Brooklyn, N.Y.a site that has deep associations with the slave tradethe African American artists half-naked torso becomes an act of solidarity with women who were objectified and commodified through slavery.

Ann Hirschs mixed media installation horneylilfeminist, 2015, a series of 14 videos shown on simultaneous monitors, centers around female desire. While many of the videos focus on self-pleasure, mimicking the how-to format popularized by YouTube, others reflect the artists ambivalence about participating in the kind of submissive female roles promoted by pornography. (A sign warns viewers that the videos contain adult content.)

Sideline, 2017, mixed media installation (paint, tape), by Marlon Forrester. Courtesy of the artist. On view at the 808 Gallery.

Other works in the 808 Gallery consider the body in more abstract terms. For example, Indira Allegras digital installation Blackout weaves testimonials from the families of victims of police violence with twill, the fabric used to manufacture police uniforms, to examine the ways certain narratives are obscured while others arent. And then theres Marlon Forresters Sideline, 2017, a mixed media installation that uses the conceptual and geometric frameworks of a basketball court to examine ideas about race. The work evolves over time, with visitors invited to add a mark, shape, or some kind of form that, the accompanying text notes, responds to boundaries or constraints, real or imagined, that impose or inform racist stereotypes. A stack of rolls of masking tape, along with scissors and a ruler, are stacked on a table. Visitors are asked to construct some artistic symbol that addresses the question: What does resistance and community mean when your body is a tool?

Cooney acknowledges that the showwhich she and Chewning began planning more than a year agohas taken on a heightened meaning with todays changing political climate. In the wake of recent political events in the United States, we feel it is more important than ever to provide space for underrepresented individuals to assert themselves, she says. Making art is a way for underrepresented people to be seen and acknowledged, and our hope is viewers will come away from the show considering their own positions and with a desire to make room for others.

A special symposium tied to the exhibition, Making Room: Practicing Feminisms Today, will be held tomorrow at the 808 Gallery from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., free and open to the public (RSVP below). It will consist of a roundtable on gender and equity in higher education, and two panels, The Archival Body and the Feminist Voice, and Intersectional Feminisms.

Occupancies is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Commonwealth Ave., and at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery and Annex, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through March 26. Gallery hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., Thursday, noon to 8 p.m., closed Monday. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

The symposium Making Room: Practicing Feminisms Today is tomorrow, Saturday, February 28, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the 808 Gallery. Find more information about the three panels here. The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, so please RSVP in advance here. The panels will be followed by a community lunch and a group discussion.

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Occupancies Explores the World of Our Bodies - BU Today

Less than three months ago, after a pair of articles about the rise in Anti-Semitism appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the nation learned that during Twitters internal investigation the organization found that 2.6 million anti-Semitic messages were posted from August 2015 to July 2016, 19,253 of which were directed at journalists. Readers also learned that anti Jewish rhetoric, and incidents of anti-Semitism had risen markedly, and that Jewish journalists, many of whom seemed not to be voting for a particular candidate, were receiving hate mail at a rate not seen in recent history. When one such writer announced the birth of his second child on Twitter, he received this reply: Into the gas chamber with all four of you. More recently, there have been reports of bomb threats, nearly seventy in all, called into Jewish Community Centers across the nation. And this week, at least 170 headstones were knocked over at an historical Jewish cemetery in suburban Saint Louis, Missouri.

One has to be careful to choose ones words carefully, and to be circumspect about whom to blame. After all it would be easy to paint the 45th president with the broad brush of anti-Semitism, (may I just call it Jew-Hatred from here on?) That would be wrong, I dont believe he hates Jews. I do believe that in taking his support from any quarter, no matter how insidious, as hed done during his presidential campaign, his refusal to disavow strident voices of Jew hatred (along with hatred of other minority groups) seems to have stirred up a long simmering cauldron of malevolence. Having been brought up in Minnesota, a former home to the National Socialist American Workers Freedom Movement, I believe I know at least three things that motivate Jew-Haters.

1. Sloth. The slothful Jew-Hater has a perpetual sense of being ripped off. Youll hear things like: Hey, why are they getting ahead so fast? and Look at those cheaters, howd they do that? I was born in a place called Saint Louis Park. Because there were approximately six percent Jews there, and because those Jews in my home town were astoundingly creative and productivewell beyond their numbers, as is often the case with Jews in generalbe they Nobel prize winners, artists, writers or even the founders of the State of Israel, there is always an attendant animus that crops up among those that are less so. The slothful JewHaters of my youth called my city by the wildly un-clever pejorative: Saint Jewish Park, as if that six percent were far too many Jews to bear. The advice Id share with this type of Jew-Hater is: spend less time grousing about the accomplishments of others, get up off your ass and accomplish something yourself, something other than self-pity and rage.

2. Jealousy. Sloth and jealousy go hand in hand dont they? One can either be impressed or depressed with the success of others, there arent a lot of options, and to choose jealousy is to always choose the latter. Unfortunately, as we all know, depression is not a much admired way to move through the world, and often a depressed person will use anger to compensate for his or her deficiencies. Anger, after all, has long been a more socially acceptable substitute for sadness. And who better to take ones anger out on than the Jews?

History has shown us that path. And it seems easy enough. Without fear of reprisal, (at least not a physical reprisal), the jealous Jew-Haters feel safe meting out their anger on minorities, particularly those who like the Jews are not known for a propensity towards violence. The Jews therefore, make an excellent target for the jealous Jew-Hater.

3. Fanaticism. Fanaticism has within it, the qualities of both sloth and jealousy, but it also brings with it another, more troubling one: myopia. By seeing complex issues in only their most narrow framework, its easy to draw hasty conclusions. And while those conclusions will often be simple, they are almost never accurate. Although with fanaticism of any sort, accuracy and truth are thought to be superfluous at any rate, and therefore safely dispensable as weve seen of late.

The fanatical Jew-Hater believes in all the discredited cabals; the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (that great old Russian canard), and in the Blood Libel, (the falsehood promulgated in Europe and elsewhere, that the Jews murdered Christian babies to use their blood in Passover matzos), along with Anti-Zionist conspiracy theories about things as wide ranging as 911 and the AIDS epidemic. As absurd as these stories are, they nonetheless, slide down the gullets of fanatics like gruel, warming their bellies and nourishing hatred for generations.

As Ive said, I dont believe our 45th president is a Jew-Hater in any real sense, but he often seems so dead set on self aggrandizement that for example, during his campaign at least, he had no compunctions whatsoever about turning over stones to garner votes and attention, stones, which hid all sorts of horrible ideas. By not immediately repudiating those ideas (as a leader must) he allowed them to fester, to take root, and to ripen. Once seeds of hatred are permitted to grow into poisonous weeds they possess a life of their own, a dark power, which in turn invites other such fanatical ideas to flourish.

One may prefer one party, over another, one set of values perhaps one is more liberal or more conservative, more religious or less so but what has been released into the American zeitgeist is something altogether different. America is confronting a Pandoras box of pure madness that hasnt been seen in this measure for decades, at least.

Dont be fooled, power doesnt exist only in intelligence, creativity, and compromise. It exists as well, in intolerance, hatred and fanaticism. We humans have an animal instinct, a powerful visceral nature that left unchecked, gravitates to power for powers sake. When unleashed it hungers for it power to fight, power to consume, power to terrorize. To prevail over these dark forces we must see this tendency, first, in our selves, and only then can we discourage it in others.

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Turning Over Stones (What The Election Set Free) - Huffington Post

Like the US and Europe, Japan developed an experimental documentary movement in the 1960s and 70s that reflected and influenced the social, cultural, and political changes of the time. The Harvard Film Archive program Three Radical Japanese Filmmakers presents a trio of the more significant artists.

Motoharu Jonouchi, who was at the organizational forefront of the movement, is represented by Gewaltopia Trailer (1969) and Shinjuku Station (1974). Both are part of the so-called Gewaltopia series in which shots of spaces, objects, and clips from old movies including a political demonstration, an eyelid inscribed with calligraphy, a nuclear blast, and the 1920 silent movie The Golem are assembled into metaphorical statements.

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Masanori Oe and Marvin Fishmans Great Society (2016) presents a collage of images of events from the Lyndon Johnson era, such as the Vietnam War, antiwar demonstrations, the counterculture, and the civil rights movement as well as the inevitable nuclear bomb blast.

Perhaps the most significant film in the program and certainly the one with the most portentous title is Rikuro Miyais Phenomenology of Zeitgeist (1967), which records a happening in front of a bookstore in the city of Shinjuku. It is projected on multiple screens.

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Three Radical Japanese Filmmakers screens Friday at 7 p.m. at the Harvard Film Archive. The films will be introduced by researcher and curator Go Hirasawa.

For more information go to hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2017marmay/radical.html.

One of my favorite documentaries of 2016, Tickled started out as a short, lighthearted feature about competitive endurance tickling. The gripping end result, by New Zealands David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, is a descent into an alternative universe of paranoia, power, and sociopathy. Its like a graphic novel by Thomas Pynchon.

Tickled airs Monday at 10 p.m. on HBO.

For more information go to http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/tickled.

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The blues dont get much more authentic than the music of Fred McDowell (1906-72), a Mississippi sharecropper who was discovered by the legendary Alan Lomax in 1959. McDowell toured with the Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s, was a guiding light for Bonnie Raitt, and influenced the music of Taj Mahal. Joe Yorks Shake Em On Down: The Blues According to Fred McDowell compiles interviews and never-before-seen performance footage of McDowell to tell the story of this giant of American music.

Shake Em On Down can be seen Sunday at 9 p.m. as part of the Reel South series on PBSs World Channel. It will stream online the day after broadcast at WORLDChannel.org.

For more information go to http://www.scetv.org/reelsouth.

A documentary that Ive been hearing a lot about and am looking forward to seeing is Mr. Gaga by Israeli filmmaker Tomer Heymann. Its about Ohad Naharin, a choreographer and the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv. It won the audience award at last years South by Southwest Film Festival and was nominated for a European Film Award. A critic friend tells me, I dont want to give too much away, but there are narrative developments from the you-cant-make-that-up realm. Sounds like my kind of picture.

Mr. Gaga can be seen March 5 at 5 p.m. at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport.

For more information go to http://www.firehouse.org/see-a-show/116-mr-gaga.

Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey (the latter less intimidating than he sounds like a more hirsute version of Will Ferrell in Elf) had a dream to perfect their act a kind of low-tech, burlesque Cirque du Soleil and become stars. In her film aptly titled Us, Naked: Trixie and Monkey, documentarian Kirsten DAndrea Hollander follows their sometimes tempestuous, sometimes triumphant progress for seven years, including a stint at the New England Institute for Circus Arts in Brattleboro, Vt. If you dream it, you can be it, especially if youre willing to wear funny fake ears.

Us, Naked: Trixie and Monkey debuts Tuesday on DVD, VOD, and Digital.

For more information go to usnakedthefilm.com.

What better place to analyze how capitalist organizations work in a conspicuous consumption economy than in a Dallas Neiman-Marcus department store in the 1980s? Thats where auteur Frederick Wiseman sets up shop for The Store (1983), a surprisingly funny and fully engrossing documentary that covers every department in this department store from cashier to corporate office, from chi-chi customers to smile exercises for salespeople showing how it all works, and sometimes doesnt.

The Store screens as part of the Frederick Wiseman: For the Record series on March 5 at 12:30 p.m. and March 8 at 7:30 p.m. at Museum of Fine Arts.

For more information go to http://www.mfa.org/programs/series/frederick-wiseman-for-the-record.

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Looking forward to a rad week for nonfiction film - The Boston Globe

Every writer hopes his prose will persist, but James Baldwin made an especially solid bet: As long as the disease of American racism, resentment of homosexuals, and the nations strange relationship with social class and capitalism lasted, his work, he knew, would matter.

But when Baldwin died 30 years ago, it would have been hard to predict that books such as The Fire Next Time written as a letter to his nephew on the 100th anniversary of black emancipation or Giovannis Room a slender, once-obscure novel about a purportedly straight American and an Italian bartender who fall in love in Paris would half a century later sit at the center of the zeitgeist. Baldwin is back, says Harvard literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates. Bigger and badder than ever.

The African American author feels as central as he has since he landed on the cover of Time magazine in 1963, amid turmoil in Birmingham, Ala., for the poignancy and abrasiveness he brought to the nations dark realities. Some of this is because the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement recalls Baldwins own, and because the rising visibility of homosexuality over the last few decades made a resurgence likely if not inevitable.

But part of it is because Baldwin has stirred artists and writers in ways that no scribe of any color has done lately. Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates whos become ubiquitous over the last two years based his award-winning book, Between the World and Me, explicitly on Baldwins Fire.

The years best reviewed film, Moonlight, is not simply about characters alienated gay black men who resemble Baldwins heroes. It also has some of the writers sensibility. The film, like much of Baldwins work, feels as European as it does American: Its dark, oblique lyricism seems to come straight out of MichelangeloAntonioni or Ingmar Bergman.

But the debt to Baldwin is direct. I describe Moonlight as sort of the child of Giovannis Room and The Fire Next Time, says Barry Jenkins, the films director. What I love about what Baldwin does is that the plot is important, but the emotions are much more what hes about. Thats the way Moonlight works too.

The last few months have seen an explosion of work that either deliberately or subtly riffs on Baldwins life and work. In December, the eclectic and questing musician Meshell Ndegeocello brought her church-themed piece Can I Get a Witness?, based on Fire, to Harlem Stage. About a week later, Stew and the Negro Problem performed Notes of a Native Song what the singer/ songwriter calls just a bunch of songs with banter in between at REDCAT. (The show has played in a handful of other cities, including New York, where Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison attended.)

Most directly is I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Pecks Oscar-nominated documentary about both the writer and a project he never completed on the deaths of Malcolm X, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and civil rights activist Medgar Evers. We hear Baldwins words, spoken by Samuel L. Jackson, over footage of the Rodney King beating, over protests in Ferguson, Mo., and shots of young black men in prison.

So Baldwin is not just a writer for the ages, but a scribe whose work as squarely as George Orwells speaks directly to ours.

For a long time, the Harlem-born, France-dwelling Baldwin was an august figure in the literary world, but not one whose books were especially well read. (Ironically, Baldwins books, notably The Fire Next Time and the companion book of I Am Not Your Negroare both Amazon bestsellers.)

He was a kind of little brother in the holy trinity that also includes Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, both half a generation older. None of those figures was simple, but among them, Baldwin was the most idiosyncratic and, in part because he was openly gay and a European exile, one who seemed furthest from the center of the black arts movement and the larger struggle. The militant black writer Eldridge Cleaver, in his influential Soul on Ice, called Baldwins homosexuality a sickness and described him as a self-hating black man for his interest in white literary models.

Baldwin was hard for the liberal consensus or black establishment to embrace: He dismissed the Kennedys civil rights efforts, attacked the narrowness of mainstream black Christian culture, and sharply criticized Wrights work. In Native Song Stew compares it to an aspiring young rapper put on the map by Kanye West suddenly turning on his mentor.

Baldwin admired many artists who werent African American, which did not endear him to the Black Panthers. He penned an insightful profile of Bergman (The Northern Protestant) for Esquire in the early 60s, and later wrote about his friendship with Norman Mailer. When Gates, as a young man, visited Baldwin in the South of France in the early 70s, he was amazed to see a whole shelf of books by or about Henry James. His prose was Jamesian, the scholar says. Henry James and the King James Bible. Id just write down his sentences because I liked the sound of them.

Often, though, he was buried by respectful neglect. It would have been easy to earn a robust literary or historical education in the 1980s or 90s and not read a single work of Baldwins. Partly, it was because his greatest achievements were with essays rather than novels, and because his irony and nuance could be difficult to hear over the straightforward rage of Wrights Black Boy and Native Son, or the sheer brilliance of Ellisons Invisible Man. Baldwin was, for a long time, out of fashion.

Moonlight director Jenkins studied black literature at Florida State University without reading Baldwin at all, and found The Fire Next Time only because a friend mentioned his work. Giovannis Room, he says, was the first queer novel I ever read, and one of the first black novels as well. It was like two doors being kicked down at once.

But between Coates and an anthology from August called The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, which includes pieces by Claudia Rankine and Isabel Wilkerson, its been hard to miss his reemergence.

Any time someone uses the term Baldwinesque I think of shockingly articulate and flamboyant, says Stew, whose band the Negro Problem once a highlight of L.A.s indie rock scene took its name from a phrase Baldwin used ironically in Notes of a Native Son.

We speak his language today, Stew says. We use his ideas to navigate the contemporary terrain. A guy can't get any more relevant than that.

calendar@latimes.com

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30 years after his death, James Baldwin is having a new pop culture moment - Los Angeles Times

Break out your flower crowns and your crochet crop tops: The Summer of Love returns to San Francisco this year for a 50th anniversary celebration.

As part of a series of celebrations leading up to this summer, the San Francisco Arts Commission asked three local artists to examine the historic season of revolution through a contemporary lens for its popular Art on Market Street Poster Series. The first in the series, The Zeitgeist by Deborah Aschheim, highlights some of the people and events that defined 1967 through highly detailed pen and ink drawings.

From now through May 12, 2017, pedestrians along Market Street will see scenes that recall the 1967 Spring Mobilization, the Vietnam War, and the Human Be-In, alongside portraits of individuals including City Lights Books founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Each image is contextualized by a caption: A drawing of a Black Panther woman is accompanied by a quote from famous Panther member Kathleen Cleaver.

"Deborah Aschheim's beautifully rendered posters capture the spirit of the ideas and radical expression that made the San Francisco Bay Area the epicenter of the counterculture movement," said Director of Cultural Affairs Tom DeCaigny. "The 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love is an opportunity to reconnect with its important legacy of political activism, inclusiveness and, above all, love."

To prepare for the series, Aschheim rigorously researched the archives at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, unearthing the stories of people who participated in the Diggers, an anarchist art troupe that was a fixture of the Haight-Ashbury; the Vanguard, an early LGBT rights group based in the Tenderloin; and a number of other significant political activists from the late 1960s.

"My project explores the intersection of political and social utopian ideas that drew people to San Francisco, from the Free Speech movement at Berkeley to the art, music, and lifestyle scene," says Aschheim. "I hope that entrepreneurs and billionaires have not replaced revolutionaries and poets as our heroes. I want to re-animate an authentic vision of 1967 that still has the power to inspire us to disrupt society in creative ways."

// The Zeitgeist can be seen in Muni bus kiosks on Market Street between Embarcadero and Eighth Street through May 12. Subsequent series will feature new work by Sarah Hotchkiss and Kate Haug.

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Summer of Love 50th Anniversary Posters Wake up Market Street - 7x7

Congressman Dave Brat (R-Va.) faced a raucous group of detractors and supporters at a town hall meeting in tiny Blackstone, Va. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

President Trump and the Obama administration share a stance toward protests at town halls: Meh.

Here's Trump on Tuesday evening in response to flare-ups at GOP town halls in recent days.

And here's White House press secretary Robert Gibbs back in August 2009, when the tea party was starting to raise hell in town halls about the Affordable Care Act:

Q: Are you concerned at what appears to be well-orchestrated protesting of health care reform at town halls as derailing your message?

GIBBS: No. I get asked every day about the myriad of things that could be derailing our message. I would point out that I don't know what all those guys were doing, what were they called, the Brooks Brothers Brigade in Florida in 2000, appear to have rented a similar bus and are appearing together at town hall meetings throughout the country.

Gibbs added: I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the astroturf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying This is manufactured anger.

Gibbs, it turns out, wasn't really right. We'll see whether Trump is.

Astroturfing, for those unfamiliar, is the political practice of making something appear organic as though it's coming from the grass roots. The implication is that the protesters aren't really regular-Joe citizens, but political activists sometimes appearing at multiple town halls to cause a scene and make the movement appear bigger than it is.

Update: Now Sean Spicer, echoing Trump, says, "It is a loud group, small group of people disrupting something, in many cases, for media attention." Spicer, though, is actually more charitable to the protesters than the Obama White Huse was, saying they are a "hybrid" of activists and astroturfing.

The problem with town hall protests is that they are, by nature, defined by anecdotes and the viral nature of a limited number of heated exchanges. It's nearly impossible to know how representative this is of broader unhappiness with the president (or anything else). It's too difficult to quantify anger, where it's coming from and how representative it is of the broader populations.

Scott Jennings, a former aide to President George W. Bush who has also worked forSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), made what I think is a valuable point about all of this:

Whether Tuesday'sprotesters in Anderson County, Ky.,who told McConnell to do your job wereactually out-of-town malcontents" -- the same allegation Gibbs made in 2009 is kind of beside the point. Even if these people lived in Anderson County, or anyplace in Kentucky, do their chants really represent the broader population in their county or their state? Just because a small group of people is making good TV, does that mean McConnell should really be concerned? And has there been an appreciable change in voter sentiments less than four months since the election?

Polling suggests we're in pretty much at the same position. Trump was elected as an unpopular candidate, and he's nowan unpopular president. The opposition to him was extremely vocal during the campaign calling him a racist, sexist, misogynist and Islamophobe and it remains extremely vocal today.

But the comparison between today and 2009 is an instructive one. It's entirely possible that those protests more than sevenyears ago were being organized and weren't totally organic, as Gibbs alleged. But it's also clear that any such organizing was successful precisely because actual opposition to the Affordable Care Actwas a strong motivator for people to turn out to the town halls. And opposition to Obama's health-care planbecame such a rallying cry on the right that it spurred the Republican takeover of the House in 2010 and then helped them take the Senate in 2014. It was certainly more substantial than Gibbs professed to believe at the time; it amounted to the canary in the coal mine for Democrats in Congress.

That said, it's just so difficult to know where to draw the line between flashy protests at town halls and legitimate, game-changing shifts in the political zeitgeist. It's not that we shouldn't cover these protestsand try to understand them. And it's not that these burgeoning town hall eventscouldn't become a sign of something bigger; they certainly could, and opposition to Trump has majority status in the United States. But we should always be aware that anecdotes can also be just that anecdotes.

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Sean Spicer blames chaotic town halls on 'professional protesters.' So did Obama's team. - Washington Post

NT BUZZ Gallery Gitanjali is hosting the second session of Fontainhas Exchange, Is, Interrupted, a performance by Astri Ghosh in collaboration with Pushpanjali Sharma and Gautam Nima through poetry, movement, music and text developed in response to and in conversation with the artworks of Praveen Naiks solo exhibition at Gallery Gitanjali, Notes From The Zeitgeist. Using the gallery as a stage, poet Astri Ghosh and performing artists Pushpanjali Sharma and Gautam Nima will come together to peel through interruptions in identity, intimacy and intention. Astri Ghosh is a poet and writer. After working as a journalist for many years she turned to translation and has published 12 books in Norwegian, English and Hindi. Her translations have been included in four anthologies. She grew up in Delhi and Mussoorie, and moved to Norway to study at the University of Oslo. Astri is currently translating twelve contemporary plays of Henrik Ibsen, four of which were published in 2015. Pushpanjali Sharma and Gautam Nima are interdisciplinary performing artists based in Goa. They are engaged in developing performances and pedagogies that serve experiential knowing through embodiment, movement and dance and somatic and mind-body practices. They believe experiential learning, embodied knowing and interdisciplinary education is the way to bring about change, and this can successfully happen through non-dual practices. They use movement arts towards self-knowing, personal transformation and healing, and teach the same through their workshops. As dancers they are interested in opening dance beyond the realm of entertainment and fitness, encouraging individuals to embark on a journey of self knowing through the lived body and movement as experience. Their performance works are contemplative and philosophical in nature, exposing the unseen, unheard and unvoiced. Through their performances they work towards reducing the gap between the audience and artist and enhancing their experience by inviting them to be a part of their work through interaction and their own creative contribution.

(The performance of Is, Interrupted will be held at Gallery Gitanjali on February 22 at 6 p.m. The event is open to all).

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Interruptions with fluid movements - The Navhind Times

In this Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017 photo, people react as U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz speaks during a town hall meeting at Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Some attendees of the contentious town hall hosted by Chaffetz have sent the congressman fake invoices after he claimed some people there were paid protesters. Rick BowmerAP

Ideas

Ferguson was Deputy National Press Secretary and Senior Spokesperson for Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign for President.

On August 25, 2009, Democratic Congressman Bart Gordon held a town hall meeting in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A local news report called it a discussion about the nation's health care that led to loud boos and heckling from the crowd. On February 9, 2017, Republican Congresswoman Diane Black elected to Gordons seat in the fall of 2010 held a town hall meeting in the same city. A local news report headline proclaimed, Diane Black, GOP lawmakers faced defenders of Obamacare at lively town hall . Sounds similar, right?

The zeitgeist is quickly setting in: Republicans right now face a backlash akin to what Democrats faced from the Tea Party in 2009 and 2010. Some have gone so far as to call this resistance the Democratic Tea Party. Its a convenient comparison: Democrats like it because the Republican Tea Party was successful in 2010, and the media appreciates it as a simple and straightforward story. I've been guilty of leaning on it myself.

But the Democratic resistance and the Tea Party actually differ in a number of important ways, each of which tells a different story about where our country is and where our politics may be headed.

For starters, the Tea Party was forged as an opposition to a societal reality in our country, while todays resistance is opposed to a political reality. The Tea Party began before the election of President Obama, as a reaction to President Bush and the bank bailouts of 2008. Tea Partiers believed that society and the economy had all left them behind. The movements anger was stoked by the realization that the country had changed to the extent that it would elect someone like Barack Obama and support his liberal policies like the Economic Recovery Act (the so-called stimulus) and the Affordable Care Act (scornfully dubbed Obamacare). These members wanted the entire country to revert to a set of values that more closely resembled what they saw on Leave It to Beaver .

On the other hand, the current resistance isn't based on a belief that our country has gone astray from some former golden age. It's a political backlash, borne out of Donald Trumps policies and his presidency. Its participants arent rejecting the social structures of American society. They are embracing and defending our evolving structures of diversity and inclusiveness. The people stepping forward to resist the Trump Administration are standing against an Administration that doesnt respect the core values that this nation holds: that we are all equal and that we can all achieve our own dreams.

Second, these movements were forged in entirely different political situations. Members of the Tea Party believed they had been marginalized and had to fight back against this new oppression. They represented a minority, losing the 2008 elections by almost 200 electoral votes and 10 million people, while Democrats gained a more significant majority in the House and a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. Headlines announced a permanent progressive majority. The Tea Party disapproved of their country going in this new direction, which bred their movements anger.

Todays resistance is almost the complete opposite. While Trump is indeed president winning the Electoral College by approximately 75 votes he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million. While Republicans maintained their control of the House and the Senate, they lost seats in both. The current resistance isnt reacting to its lost status as the majority in American politics, as the Tea Party was. It is speaking out for the majority of Americans who feel inadequately represented in Washington. This resistance is giving political voice to those the political system has deprived of a voice. They are speaking for the silenced majority.

The third major difference is in how these movements act. There are certainly some tactical similarities both use rallies and town hall meetings to attract attention to their causes but the undercurrents are very different. The Tea Party was truly a movement of anger at the system, at the country and at the movements members declining station in life. This best manifested in their slogan, from the American Revolutions Gadsen flag, Dont Tread on Me demanding that people and government just leave them alone to their familiar ways.

While todays resistance certainly has some anger, the basic emotions fueling it are alarm and fear. We are alarmed by what the current political system, and its leadership, will do to us, our friends and our country. We are fearful that our family and neighbors might be barred from entering the U.S. by a Muslim ban or might lose their access to health care if the Affordable Care Act is recklessly repealed. We are worried that the political system now serves corporate interests and the Presidents far-flung (but undisclosed) business interests, not the interests of the people or their nation. We are alarmed that people we know and love wont be treated equally or fairly under the new Administration. The Tea Party consisted of people angry about their own perceived situation; the resistance is people alarmed and fearful about what might happen to others.

The best distinction between the two movements, though, is the one that is most important to our President: crowd size. The largest Tea Party rallies reported were between 150,000 and 250,000 people, depending on the source. The Womens March last month irrefutably included over 4 million people nationwide a 16-fold difference. Washington, D.C., alone likely doubled the largest Tea Party totals.

While it would be easy and convenient to pronounce that 2017 is merely 2009 redux, the simplicity of that comparison belies the underlying and important reality. The Tea Party sought to fix our country and align it with Tea Party politics; the democratic resistance seeks to fix our politics and align them with our countrys values. The movements may share some tactics, but the spirit that drives them are, and the consequences of them will be, very different.

Ferguson was Deputy National Press Secretary and Senior Spokesperson for Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign for President; before, he was Executive Director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Independent Expenditure.

Originally posted here:

Resistance Against Donald Trump Is Not a New Tea Party | Time.com - TIME