A Photographer Confronts His World
Just fabulous – had seen it many months ago and just plain forgotten to share it with you all. Enjoy it, its fabulous. Sound track is, in case you are curious, by Masaladosa, and Todd Michaelsen amongst others. A full list of musicians is here.
Sita Sings The Blues (Click On Image To Go To Movie)
Thanks to Amitava Kumar
For those who are concerned – the ad has been pulled!
But the question remains: how, against the best efforts of so many, did a war once perceived as a nearly genocidal slaughter to perpetuate American neo-colonialism come to be viewed as an American tragedy? And to what extent have cultural and in particular literary representations of the war helped in that transformation? It could be argued that Vietnam War novels and memoirs have contributed significantly to this process, since they reach an important readership – the editors, publishers, writers, pundits, and professors who make up America’s intellectual class. By promoting a literature that favors individual lives over historical contingency, and textual sophistication over social analysis, this class has helped reproduce, not merely in the small audience of serious fiction writers but in the general public as well, a simple and ideologically unthreatening view of the war
Jim Nielson, Warring Fictions: Cultural Politics and The Vietnam War Narrative
From Ammiel Alcalay’s Scrapmetal
Today many novels and memoirs, and I will add, certain photojournalism projects continue this practice i.e. of transforming a near genocidal act of war into stories of individual suffering. Details »
There is talk that many…[war]…films are anti-war, that the message is war is inhumane…but actualy,…war films are all pro-war, no matter what the supposed message, what Kubrick or Coppola or Stone intended. Mr and Mrs. Johnson in Omaha or San Francisco or Manhattan will watch the films and weep…but Corporal Johnson at Camp Pendleton…and Lance Corporal Swofford at 29 Palms Marine Corps Base watch the same films and are excited by them, because the magic brutality of the films celebrates the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills. Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, ticking his balls with a pink feather of history, getting him ready for his real First Fuck. It doesn’t matter how many Mr. and Mrs Johnsons are antiwar – the actual killers who know how to use the weapons are not.
From Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead
I would argue that so-called anti-war photography has failed as well. Of course we would not know that from the frequency with which it is celebrated, exhibited, awarded and worshipped. But as Swofford so brilliantly points out, those who celebrate it, or claim to be anti-war, are not doing the constant, endless, seemingly infinite killing. A killing that now consumes trillions of dollars of tax-payer’s money, and that seems to be the only thing in this devastating economic downturn that does not seem to be on the downturn. Details »
Genuine Negro Jig - The Carolina Chocolate Drops
I wrote about the Carolina Chocolate drops some months back in a post called Yes, Your Taste In Music Sucks Or What MTV Erases and linked to incredible live performance of one of best songs called ‘Hit ‘Em Up Style’. Lead singer Rhiannon Giddens not only has an amazing voice, but she is one hell of a fantastic dancer. Check out this performance:
And of course this fantastic live performance of ‘Hit ‘Em Up Style’ where Giddens is probably at her best.
Now they have a new album. Its time to rush out and get it.
Though some prefer the piano version
Bad Behavior has blocked 1115 access attempts in the last 7 days.