We often discover new media fascinations in roundabout ways. In February of 2022, when filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki emailed me to ask if I’d seen Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s “Forensickness” (2022), I had only the vaguest sense of what had come to be called the “video essay.” I...
Commentary
The Heritage of Language: Antisemitism and Islamophobia are Western Words
As the world watches the dystopian horror movie in Gaza unfolding on social and traditional media, U.S. news networks are giving more attention this week to the Hollywood awards season. As South Africa makes the case against Israel’s genocide at the International...
Elitism and the Rest of Us as the New Semester Begins
This week, most college and university campuses will open across the country. The ghastly war in Gaza continues and the U.S. has become more involved as it bombs Yemen. So, I am thinking about how unsettled the surround is as higher education institutions begin a new...
War Rape and the Question of Hamas
Israeli Zionist women have been speaking out these last few days to bring attention to the horrific rape of Jewish women, and the lack of outcry of feminists, for them, to this plight. They demand an indictment of Hamas and its sexual treachery towards women on...
The 10 Freeway Has Been Reopened but L.A.’s Transit Problem Remains
During the early hours of November 11, a fire erupted in a storage yard underneath the I-10 freeway near downtown Los Angeles, structurally compromising a large section of the road and resulting in, what was at the time, claimed to be an indefinite closure of the...
From My Body to Yours, and Gaza to the World
A Meditation on Death, Killing, and Possibility I knew my body was healing from the surgery when I found myself ready to engage with the world and posted on Facebook: I am always anti-zionist. And never an antisemite. And always an anti-racist feminist against...
Why Republican Lawmakers Should Ban “The Federalist Papers” from America’s Classrooms
As everyone now knows, since 2021, Republican legislators in several dozen states have banned or attempted to ban consideration of so-called “divisive concepts” regarding race and gender within public university classrooms. Foes of what Pen America rightly labels...
On the Tragic Inevitability of Stacking Corpses
War. Genocide. Pandemics. Heat. Famine. Racism. Misogyny. Hunger. Violence. There are so many ways for mortal beings to die, especially the most vulnerable, and too often these deaths are state sponsored, sped by capitalism, and/or preventable. We — humans and...
“Barbie”: An Anti-Racist Socialist Feminist Meditation
I started writing this the day “Barbie” was opening in the theatres. I had not seen it yet, because I am writing less about the film and more about the cultural and political moment we inhabit as it opens. I went as soon as I finished an early draft, exactly one week...
Supreme Court Ruling in Stalking Case Hurts Victims
Stalking is a social and public health emergency. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Counterman v. Colorado makes things easier for abusers and harder for victims. A form of gender-based violence, stalking affects more than 13 million people annually in the...