Reviews Archives - Page 13 of 17

Feature

Homesteading the Lower East Side

A Review of Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose

June 7, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City (University of Chicago Press, 2016) The Lower East Side has long been an object of fascination for those who study New York. It has been a location for bohemia, from the early 20th century to the Beats and ...

Feature

Hanged at Sunrise

The Impossible Ethics of the “Homeland”

May 31, 2017 • by Lisa Aslanian

Nicholas Brody, one of the central characters of the popular and critically acclaimed drama Homeland, is a third generation United States Marine. Called Brody by his friends, Brody’s entire character is created around and through the interrelated issues of drones, torture and jihad. As the drama unfolds, Brody becomes a ...

Education

Fame, Truth, and Justice

A Review of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro

May 17, 2017 • by Simone Lewis

“…The general reaction to famous people who hold difficult opinions is that they can’t really mean it. It’s considered, generally, to be merely an astute way of attracting public attention, a way of making oneself interesting...”- James Baldwin, No Name in The Street James Baldwin was more than a writer and ...

Reviews

Uncovering Freakonomics Radio

A Review

April 19, 2017 • by Tracy Varites

Freakonomics Radio, a podcast produced by WNYC Studios, explores the “hidden side of everything.” Inspired by the book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economics Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, written in 2005 by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist, Stephen J. Dubner, it touches on a range of topics from crime ...

Reviews

Solidarity, and the Rise and Fall of the Public Sphere

A Review of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz’s Media Events

April 18, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Twenty-five years after its publication, Dayan and Katz’s classic study of ceremonial television, Media Events, has continued relevance for understanding the politics of media. With the proliferation of cable television and digital media explosion, television is no longer the hegemonic media form it once was, and the media events they ...

Solidarity, and the Rise and Fall of the Public Sphere

Feature

Get Out & The Horror of White Pleasure

An Examination of Jordan Peele’s 2017 Film

April 12, 2017 • by Ella Myers

The terrific film Get Out -- which writer and director Jordan Peele aptly dubs a “social thriller” -- is a smash hit and critics’ favorite. Many glowing reviews converge on a key claim: the film is a gripping exposé of “white liberal hypocrisy.” And it is. But it is also, and ...

Race

America As It Really Was

The Black Power Mixtape: 1967 – 1975

April 7, 2017 • by Ryan Ross

The Black Power Mixtape: 1967 – 1975 (2011; Producer: Annika Rogell; Director: Göran Olsson) is a collection of largely unseen and unused footage captured by Swedish photojournalists during the Black Power movement. Their aim, as stated in the beginning of the documentary, was “to understand and portray America – ...

Feature

Review of Jodi Dean’s Crowds and Party

On Collectives, Communicative Capitalism, and Suspension of the Individual Ego

March 23, 2017 • by Luke Mergner

Nowhere was this sense more palatable than in Zucotti Park, where the #OccupyWallStreet protesters set up camp. It was a moment when, especially for the Left, the world paused as if the railroad switch of history might suddenly direct the country on a new, more equitable track. Six years later, even ...

Reviews

Why I Wish To Thank Fareed Zakaria

(Even if I don’t always agree with him)

March 10, 2017 • by Roshni Majumdar

I first read his essay, “The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?” in Newsweek several years after he wrote it in October 2001. In the essay, he explained that political stagnation in the Arab World, where he remarked that many Gulf countries had even fewer freedoms than they ...

Reviews

Queer History on Stage

A Review of The View UpStairs by Max Vernon

March 1, 2017 • by Lina Landstroem

No, it is not, they responded. We do not call the LGBTQ community ‘family’ because we don’t need to. We no longer live in a world where we need to call each other family and create homes in public spaces. However, we have already forgotten that it wasn’t always this ...

Feature

Fighting Over and On the Streets of New York

A Review of the ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’ Exhibition

January 17, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

“Whose Streets” features the work of thirty-eight independent photojournalists who documented -- and participated in -- protests in New York from 1980-2000. The issues ranged from housing, abortion rights, housing, queer activism, AIDS, education and labor, police brutality, race relations, the war and environment -- there were a lot, and ...

Education

Simianization in the Film “Sing”

Glaring caricature and stereotype provides teachable moment about racial bias

January 9, 2017 • by Jill Corson Lake

The animated film “Sing,” which opened on December 21, features a lazy, tone-deaf, and hurtful character choice by writer and director Garth Jennings. Whether conscious or unconscious, Jennings’ script perpetuates systemic racism and the history of simianization and oppression of black people by depicting them as gorillas, monkeys, and apes. “Sing” ...