Good Readings
“After all, you could not remake the movie Red Dawn after the Berlin Wall had fallen; you had to wait until after the fall of the Twin Towers and the rise of China and the ‘Axis of Evil’ made an attack on America thinkable again. Not plausible, of course, but Red Dawn was never actually plausible.” - Aaron Bady, ‘Zero Dark Geronimo’
“Baudelairean spleen - or disgust as a poetic channel - was always connected to an idea of modern beauty, was maybe even its preferred medium. Any channeling of beauty today would have to occur in relation to crisis and the sublime of viral insecurity.” - John Kelsey, ‘Next Level Spleen’
“Aside from the possibility of having better sex with one’s husband after he has assisted with household chores (work makes everything better, including sex!), Sandberg does not mention pleasure. Sandberg assumes instead that the feminist question is simply, how can I be a more succesful worker?” - Kate Losse, ’ Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins From Leaning In?’
”’If the question of the 19th century in the U.S. and in many places is the problem of the colour line, as DuBois writes, ‘what does it mean to be a problem?’ – the problem of contemporary austerity politics comes from the state saying that the public is itself a problem, too expensive to be borne by the state that represents it.” - Interview with Lauren Berlant
“Be it blacksites or other militarized spaces, mobile tracking units and helicopters, or even bin Laden’s compound, the West reaches any space where their familiar bodies exert control and identify otherness.” - Lindsay Jensen “It’s Biology,” Zero Dark Thirty and the Politics of the Body
White Boys Throwin’ Stones At My Parents’ House
Heems over Bigelow. Soup Boys over Zero Dark Thirty.
Update: If you are confused about why I’m just posting a music video when this site usually offers commentary, here you go.
I was going to justify that with an analysis of the video, but then I remembered #FuckIt and #FuckZeroDarkThirty
— Blair McClendon (@GoodbootsFilm) January 25, 2013
But seriously guys, that Heems Drones video just demolished every new media theorist.
— Blair McClendon (@GoodbootsFilm) January 25, 2013
“Soup Boys” - Heems #DroneGameMastersOfWar
— Blair McClendon (@GoodbootsFilm) January 25, 2013
Zero Dark Thirty Review [Double Exposure]
An uproar has sounded in the world of film criticism around Kathryn Bigelow’s new film. The problem is no one really knows what we are talking about when we talk about Zero Dark Thirty. It is being bashed on the one hand from activist writers like Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian and on the other Senator John McCain. At the same time, it’s sweeping awards. The basic question here, the source of the fundamental divide, seems to be: can a movie ever really be just a movie?
