Review: NBC’s Awake
Awake (NBC Thursdays) plunges Detective Mark Britten (Jason Isaacs) into two dueling realities in the aftermath of a devastating car accident. In one, his wife has survived, while in the other, his...
The Homophobia Diversion in Corrupt Uganda
It is curious that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni cited the protection of children when asked about the newly revived Anti-Homosexuality Bill in his country’s parliament. After all, this is a...
Review: Sex and Disability
Sex and Disability (ed. Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow), Duke University Press, 2012. Sex and Disability is a fascinating collection of essays bringing together two taboo topics, discussed from a...
Watching Them Watching Us: Surveillance on TV
INT. POLICE STATION – AFTERNOON OUR HERO leans into his computer screen, reviewing surveillance footage. THE BAD GUY appears, and OUR HERO freezes and zooms. Widespread surveillance is becoming...
Networks of racist hatred, the hidden side of the European Union
Beate Zschäpe had two cats. Originally named Heidi and Lily, they are now only known by number identifiers in the German shelter that has been tasked with feeding them and procuring for their well...
Khader Adnan: Dying To Live
Khader Adnan is a 33 year-old Palestinian baker and master’s candidate in economics at Birzeit University. He lives in Arrabeh—a small village in the Occupied West Bank, just outside of Jenin...
Selling Sex at 70: An Interview with “Meet the Fokkens” directors
As the world’s largest doc fest the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam is jam-packed with nonfiction gems from around the globe. Yet one of my most delightful and surprising finds at...
The Blue Butterfly: Castle goes noir
Last week, the networks dredged up their usual parade of dreck in advance of Valentine’s Day, apparently under the belief that viewers needed Very Special Love-Saturated Episodes to prepare...
What Love Looks Like: Seeing Valentine’s Day Anew
Who likes to show Valentine's Day a bit of love? Show of hands. I, for one, never have, because it has seemed to me that squishing expressions of love into one day of socially-approved...
Genre trouble: Re-reading Stella Gibbon’s Starlight
Stella Gibbons is best known for 1932’s Cold Comfort Farm, a sublimely comic novel that satirised the grim, rural works of writers like Mary Webb and Sheila Kaye-Smith. Cold Comfort Farm is...