He should have been jailed long ago. By all accounts, anyone with a track record like Silvio Berlusconi had no business holding a seat in Italy’s Senate. Still, after two decades of steering the country, if not from its highest office, through the strength of his political parties, the 77-year-old Milanese billionaire was finally expelled from the legislature, on the strength of a successful criminal conviction. (More…)
Sometimes, after a hard week, the smallest serendipities can do wonders. I was driving along, physically and emotionally spent, when I spied the sort of vehicle I photograph to use for this feature. Because it was a pick-up truck and because I was in a part of southern Arizona not noted for its liberalism, the “Jesus is coming” sticker I spotted first inspired dark thoughts. (More…)
People with direct experience of totalitarian regimes are understandably wary of iconography. When you’ve been exposed to stylized images of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and their ilk day after day, year after year, seeing anybody flattened into a stereotype is unsettling. And when that celebrity treatment has explicitly political implications, the anxiety mounts. (More…)
In The Theater and its Double, French playwright Antonin Artaud put forth a radical idea called “The Theater of Cruelty.” Describing mainstream theater as empty and apathetic to current events, Artaud sought to expose his audience to a whole new experience, in which stories and events challenged the false sense of “staged reality.” (More…)
We Are All Illegal Immigrants. (“Siamo Tutti Clandestini.”) A message of solidarity to illegal migrants, for anyone who has spent time in Italy, the slogan can be as common as the circle A that often accompanies it. Not that it is necessary to impose anarchist branding. So synonymous is this idea with the politics, the symbol risks overkill. (More…)
As I settled into one of the few remaining seats in the packed theater, I looked up to see Peter Travers, film critic for Rolling Stone, touting the virtues of this simultaneous screening. Only a few dozen audiences around the United States would have the privilege of watching this preview of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska along with Travers and its New York-area audience. (More…)
What’s the difference between racism and fascism? Nothing, if you take into account the fact that in democratic societies, racism seeks to limit the rights of minorities. Though they may have the ability to vote, and use public services, the privileges they receive, and their treatment, by the state, and by civil society, is not equal to what poor persons, who are members of ethnic majorities, often experience. (More…)
The turmoil in the United States surrounding the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare”, has baffled onlookers around the globe. Most Americans pay far more for their medical expenses than people in other countries. Yet a sizable percentage of them seem to equate this state of affairs with freedom. (More…)
Alfonso Cuarón is one of Hollywood’s most important filmmakers. With the release of Gravity, it’s not hard to understand why. Cuarón’s direction, and Emmanuel Lubezki‘s cinematography, are stunning. Indeed, Gravity is as much its own cultural moment as Cuarón’s past features, including Y Tu Mamá También, and Children of Men. (More…)
Their proximity is in the back of my mind, as I motor up Central, but, after decades of wanting desperately to see them, I am suddenly reluctant. The point of this drive is to search out what gets overlooked, left out of the story, not the one landmark that writers have returned to over and over. But then I see the small, green sign with an arrow pointed rightward and relent: “Watts Towers”. (More…)
From the looks of it, they were all members of the same family. Twenty-five, maybe thirty years old, max. Hebrew words were mixed in with their Arabic. I wondered where they were from. Nazareth? The Wadi Ara area? Something told me they were neighbors. Not just from the region, but the Arab towns nearby, close to where my parents live. (More…)
Did the Allies liberate Europe from Fascism? Many leftists would say no. In West Germany, for example, Nazi-era civil servants, judges and police officers remained in place for nearly three more decades. The same could be said of France, not to mention, of course, Italy. Why? For the Allies, quite often, due to pragmatism. How would they run these countries without them? (More…)