When I was a kid, I read a spoof in a nickelodeon about what it was like to watch a World War Two film with a German Shepherd. The punchline was that the dog always rooted for the wrong side. Viewing Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 sci-fi novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, I couldn’t help but to think of all the viewers who were sharing a sofa with friends, family, and lovers, who, openly or not, may view Gilead, the theocratic, dystopic, man-scape setting for the story, with a palate falling well short of the distaste intended by the filmmakers.
Read moreMore Than a Riot: An Interview With Michelle Cruz Gonzales
Michelle Cruz Gonzales (then known as Todd) played drums and wrote lyrics in Spitboy, one of the most important hardcore bands of the 1990s. Along with bands such as Grimple, Econochrist, and Paxton Quigley they were part of an explicitly political corner of the East Bay punk scene. With an all woman line-up Spitboy’s performances defied expectations of what “women and rock” and “feminism” were supposed to mean at the time. Gonzales’ new book Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band (PM Press) defies expectations once again. People of Color have been part of the punk scene from the beginning. Gonzales is part of a lineage that includes Detroit’s Death, The Bags (Los Angeles), Poly Styrene and Pat Smear. Spitboy Rule makes the invisible visible. It is both a walk down counter culture’s memory lane as well as a serious exploration of identity, gender and race.
Read moreCamp Camp, Bang Bang
Trenton Doyle Hancock, Cave Scape #3, 2010, ink on paper, 6 ¼ x 10 in., (James Cohan Gallery, New York)
Enter Donita Van Pop. She sits down on a swing set that is located on the left side of the stage. The stage lighting is a mixture of bright pink and purple. She sits on the swing, and the scenery behind her switches from a blank wall to a dreadful park background. It is of trees, bushes, and a few flowers and looks like the picture you drew in kindergarten that your poor parents were obligated to place on the fridge. Such a shame. You really made the kitchen ugly for almost a year.
Donita Van Pop: The world is mad. (Puffs her cigarette) But when you have great tits like me, it’s a little less. (Ms. Pop readjusts her bra strap that peeks out of her black and white polka dot dress. She takes another puff of her cigarette)
Read moreAn Announcement From Red Wedge
Red Wedge was founded in the wake of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. Despite any number of heroic struggles, most notably (in the U.S.) Black Lives Matter (BLM), things are far grimmer today. The weakness of the workers’ movement the radical left is mirrored in the weakness of the artistic and cultural avant-garde. This two-sided problem, of course, has a major impact on Red Wedge, rooted in our belief both in the independence of art and the possibility of a revolutionary socialist project.
A defeated and marginalized left bears little fruit. A false dichotomy between theory and activism pervades the left. There are the academics who look down on concrete activism. Then there are the oddly anti-intellectual activists who have internalized diminished horizons. The latter are those who might say the “workers don’t want to read/think/look” at that...
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