"The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them." -- Michel Foucault (1971)
The latest issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is out and the special theme is "Destruction, Art, and the Doomsday Clock": November/December 2013; 69 (6)
Nicholas Rombes for Filmmaker "For 12 months, three times a week, he would scrutinize a single frame from David Lynch’s modern classic, looking both inside and outside of its aspect": The Blue Velvet Project. Scott Macauley provides the introduction to this ambitious project: "Now it’s Dark… The Blue Velvet Project"
tomfoolery \tahm-FOO-luh-ree\
noun: playful or foolish behavior
"Scott Ferber grew up one of three boys in a house with a strict mother who did not tolerate any tomfoolery." — From an article by Sarah Gantz in the Baltimore Business Journal, October 18, 2013
"People's success also signaled a shift in the overall tone of print journalism, away from the stentorian voice of Time, the literariness of The New Yorker, and the New Journalism tomfoolery of New York and Esquire, to something looser, more image-saturated, and obviously market-friendly." — From an article by Jim Windolf in Vanity Fair, October 16, 2013
In the Middle Ages, "Thome Fole" was a name assigned to those perceived to be of little intelligence. This eventually evolved into the spelling "tomfool," which, when capitalized, also referred to a professional clown or a buffoon in a play or pageant. The name "Tom" seems to have been chosen for its common-man quality, much like "Joe Blow" for an ordinary person or "Johnny Reb" for a soldier in the Confederate army, but "tomfoolery" need not apply strictly to actions by men. In Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), for example, Marilla Cuthbert complains of Anne: "She's gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never thinking once about the time or her duties."
“To the leaders of the cinema still to come, I can offer only a few words drawn from my modest experience. You must ceaselessly formulate and sharpen your critical views, both of others and of yourselves.” -- Nagisa Oshima
BBC Filmmaker/Journalist Adam Curtis on his website The Medium and the Message asks whether "maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs and don't know very much about the world": "Bugger"
Michael Dean Benton for Uprooting Criminology: "Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008): A Powerful Exploration of Political Resistance and Retributive Justice
PDF of Roland Barthes' classic 1977 book Image * Music * Text
PDF of Hannah Arendt's classic 1958 book The Origins of Totalitarianism
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