Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated is one of the most exciting books of the year. I reviewed the volume for Bookforum, which can be found here. On the Inkstuds radio program, I engaged in an extended conversation on the book with Paul Stanwood, an English professor at the University of British Columbia. You can [...]
Archive for the ‘Popular culture’ Category
Talking about Crumb & God
Posted in Popular culture, tagged Robert Crumb on November 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Where the Wild Things Came From
Posted in Popular culture, tagged Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are on October 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The recently-released movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things are has been quite a hit. One happy result of the success of the movie is that many people are returning to the original book. A surprisingly cogent essay on Sendak was written in 1980 by Hilton Kramer, before his descent into terminal crankiness. Kramer reviewed [...]
Super Poems
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, History, Literature, Media, Popular culture on October 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In a plot line inspired by Robert Frost’s poem Road Not Taken, fictional character Archie Andrews has already proposed to Veronica and will propose to Betty next month. I wonder what it would be like if other comics were inspired by poems…(imagine dreamy music and blurry vision.)
On His Blindness—John Milton
Spiderman is blind, worries about his [...]
The plausible deniability of M.I.A.
Posted in Foreign affairs, Philosophy, Popular culture, tagged Gil Scott-Heron, M.I.A., Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, Midnight Oil on September 2, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Daughter of a Tamil revolutionary, witness to civil war, refugee, pioneer of “global ghetto funk”, outspoken creator of a politically-charged debut album and of an even more creative follow-up album that she recorded in locations around the world after being denied a visa to work in the U.S. — a rebel’s badge of honour if [...]
Felix the Cat & Blackface
Posted in Animal rights, Popular culture, tagged Art Spiegelman, blackface, John Updike, Niall Ferguson, racism on August 11, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Snorting has greeted Niall Ferguson’s new column, which begins like this:
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky.
But aside from derision, Ferguson’s comments deserve some analysis. There is a reason why Ferguson, when he [...]
Comics notebook
Posted in Media, Popular culture, tagged Brian Boyd, Herge, Nabokov, Robert Fulford, Seth on August 6, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The subset of Sans Everything readers who are interested in comics will want to read the following articles:
1. Patrick West on the politics of Herge (which West argues were Catholic conservative rather than fascist). A quote:
Posterity has not been kind to Hergé. In many ways, his life resembles that of P G Wodehouse. Both authors [...]
Global Citizenship Expert Reviews Japan’s Open Future
Posted in Asia, Foreign affairs, History, Japan, Philosophy, Popular culture, tagged book review, Global Asia, global citizenship, Hans Schattle, Japan, Japan's Open Future on July 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’d like to share a recent review of my book Japan’s Open Future: An Agenda for Global Citizenship by Dr. Hans Schattle, an expert on global citizenship and author of the 2007 book The Practices of Global Citizenship.
I have not yet had the chance to read Schattle’ s book, but according to the Amazon review, it “provides a detailed and [...]
The Uses of Nostalgia
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Media, Philosophy, Popular culture, tagged Bob Dylan, Chris Ware, Coen Brothers, Fredric Jameson, Robert Crumb, Seth, Walter Benjamin on June 28, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Robert Crumb’s nostalgia for that old time music.
Nostalgia is a suspect emotion, both psychologically and politically. Emotionally, nostalgia carries connotations of escapism, ignoring present realities while longing for a mythical past. Politically, nostalgia has often been used by conservative and Fascist leaders who have deployed images of the good old days in order to thwart [...]
