Bakan, Joel and Raj Patel. "The WEF is Actually Bad, but Not Like That." Darts and Letters (July 24, 2023) ["The WEF is yet another example of the scrambled ideologues of our moment. Conservatives condemn the WEF, and news organizations like Rebel cover it doggedly; at the same time, left-leaning NGOs speak there, and progressive news organizations say little. What’s going on? On this episode, we examine the shifting political discourse surrounding our global financial elites. How can the left operate in this ideologically confusing moment? First, we take it back to the heyday of the 90s global justice movement. Activist, author, and academic Raj Patel revisits the Battle in Seattle. Then too, there were some reactionary forces pushing an anti-globalization line against the WTO. However, the real politics there were different: it was built on global justice and global solidarity. Could we bring back the spirit of the 90s? Then, we go to Davos and look for left-leaning protesters organizing against the WEF. Each year, there is a planned “protest hike,” quite far from the actual WEF site, because Swiss authorities push demonstrates away. Yet, the WEF also invites individual activists in. Producer Marc Apollonio speaks with three Swiss organizers — from Strike WEF, the Young Socialists of Switzerland, and from Greenpeace — to learn about how they are pushed and pulled by the WEF. Finally, academic and documentarian Joel Bakan is well-known for his hit documentary The Corporation, which was released in 2003–not long after the Battle in Seattle. Today, he tells us the politics are completely different: corporate leaders, including those at WEF, tell us they’re actually the good guys. His new follow-up film The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel says that this new warm-and-fuzzy branding makes the corporation even more dangerous."]
Bordwell, David. "Asteroid City: Adrift in the Cosmos." Observations on Film Art (May 23, 2023) ["Anderson’s geometric framing and staging demand a stream of small details. Moment by moment we have to take in gorgeous Populuxe furnishings, rapid dialogue, enigmatic signage, non sequiturs, abbreviated gestures and glances, and flickers of facial expression. For a few seconds a cigarette lighter is casually refilled with a squirt of gasoline (a good example of Brecht’s gestus, the piece of performance that crystallizes a social attitude: we’ll have oil forever). Soon enough a gizmo pulled from Augie’s decrepit engine thrashes on its own: Is this the alien? Just the range of cultural references dazzles. Anderson’s love of theatre emerges in recollections of plays from Lost in the Stars to Bus Stop, by way of Wilder and Williams. And are all the variants on a nonexistent play text his contribution to multiverse storytelling?"]
Brown, Shane and Marc Jancovich. "'The Finest Examples of Motion Picture Art': Prestige, Stardom and Gender in the Critical Reception of Silent and Early Sound Horror." Monstrum 6.1 (June 2023) ["Although research on horror often presents the genre as a disreputable one, the following essay demonstrates that a very different picture is suggested if one examines the critical reception of horror films released during silent and early sound eras. Certainly, during the 1910s, the US film industry made a bid for respectability, so that it could appeal to affluent, middle class audiences; and those aspects of horror that were understood as lower class, melodramatic entertainment were a problem for this bid. However, by no means were all horror materials seen as a problem and, by the 1920s, the genre was primarily understood as “artistic” and one that demonstrated the potential of the new medium of cinema. Consequently, as we will demonstrate, the horror film not only attracted top directors and stars but was also associated with female audiences, audiences that were crucial to Hollywood’s bid for cultural respectability."]
Crimes of the Future (Canada/France/Greece: David Cronenberg, 2022) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive of Online Resources) ["As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. Accompanied by his partner, celebrity performance artist Saul Tenser showcases the metamorphosis of his organs. Meanwhile, a mysterious group tries to use Saul's notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution."]
DePillis, Lydia. "Understanding Greedflation." On the Media (July 14, 2023) ["In late 2021, Isabella Weber, an economist at University of Massachusetts, Amherst published a paper with a new idea. The theory, what she called "seller's inflation," sought to address the confounding fact that the economy was seeing rising high prices and skyrocketing corporate profits. The idea quickly moved from the halls of academia to the political arena. And quicker still, it was dismissed—at one point called a "conspiracy theory." But now, in 2023, "greedflation" is popping up across headlines. This week, OTM correspondent Micah Loewinger sits down with Lydia DePillis, a reporter on the business desk at The New York Times, to talk about her 2022 article dissecting the arguments for and against the impact of"greedflation" on the economy, and everything that's happened since."]
Dorian, MJ. "Carl Jung & Alchemy • Part I: Dreams, Art, & Synchronicity." Creative Codex #39 (June 9, 2023) ["What is alchemy? Where does it come from? When did it begin? What does Jung find in alchemy? What does it represent to him that is so important, so profound, that it causes him to abandon his inspired work of the Red Book? It’s time to find out."]
Fairie, Paul and Micah Loewinger. "Why Do We Argue About the Same Things Over and Over Again?" On the Media (June 9, 2023) ["OTM correspondent Micah Loewinger takes a look at some of the big media narratives that continue to animate online debates and panicked press coverage. He speaks with political scientist Paul Fairie, who has devoted his Twitter account to investigating refrains like "nobody wants to work anymore" and "people are losing their sense of humor" to show that seemingly modern moral panics have been repeated in the American press every decade for over a century. With the help of voice actors (see below), listen as Paul and Micah dive deep into the newspaper archives to demonstrate how little has changed in our political discourse."]
Gray, Martin. "Sacred Places." Sounds of Sand #44 (July 20, 2023) ["Martin Gray is a seasoned explorer, photographer and travel writer renowned for his profound insights into pilgrimage to sacred sites around the world. He created the World Pilgrimage Guide website in 1996, which has received more than 100 million visitors and shares lists of places, writings and photos of sacred sites in over 160 countries around the planet. In 2004 National Geographic published “The Geography of Religion” of his photos. In 2007 Sterling published Sacred Earth, a collection of 200 of photographs."]
Leland, Andrew. "The Country of the Blind." Open Source (July 27, 2023) ["In The Country of the Blind, where the writer Andrew Leland is guiding our tour, they do things differently. They have their own identity riddles, their network of heroes and not-so-heroes. They have their own senses of beauty and of sexual interest. They have their own sore spots when sighted people speak of their disability. They have their own Facebook pages and their own panic attacks—their own wacky humor, as well. They have their own Hall of Fame, back to Homer, among the ancients. They have a sense of their modern selves as strivers, even adventurers, more than victims. They argue fine points among themselves, like whether Lady Justice in front of the courthouse is, or ought to be, blind, and whether a male gaze persists among men who cannot see."]
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