Week 1

Read:

Sean Gilman articulates my ambivalence toward Tsui Hark's JOURNEY TO THE WEST film better than I ever could.

This country should not exist. (But what's with that one unattributed N-word the author chose to include?)

Netflix meets Nollywood. Looking to learn more about it myself.

Numbers on the decline of HK film. No action being taken yet, unfortunately.

UN rights chief condemns China's treatment of Uighur Muslims. What interests me about this story is that it builds on a rhetorical sleight of hand. Ajit Singh notes that the original report referenced in the above article was not from the UN as a whole, but rather a few questionable 'experts.'

Well, can we? Most financial analysis goes over my head, but it interests me, and I hope that reading it will improve my understanding. At any rate, the following passage is crystal clear:

Same issue from another angle. This article cites Mehrsa Baradaran, who visited Baltimore to discuss a book she'd written on race and finance. I was very impressed; her book's high on my reading list.

Water shortages as potential organizing issue for multiracial cross-class coalitions.

I may be visiting Malaysia next year, but even if I weren't, Malaysian politics has been plenty attention-grabbing. From afar, Mathahir's anti-corruption measures do seem like his greatest achievement. Being interviewed by Xinhua would also suggest that, despite whispered concerns, he has no ill will toward China.

And on that subject: with all that goes on there (and all the debates about whether it's a Communist or capitalist country), China is never far from my mind. Here's Fidel Castro on China's economic miracle, and here's a close look at some Belt & Road Projects that China's initiated. Venezuela is also a diplomatic beneficiary. Lastly, a primer to electronic music in China.

Hun Sen wins again.

I find this quite endearing.

More and more, it seems as if THE HELP will become the 2010s DRIVING MISS DAISY. Not only does Viola Davis regret her involvement, but so too does Ava DuVernay. The latter tweeted a link to this article and said THE HELP made her quit PR. Without their career adjustments, this decade in cinema would look quite different.

Bilge Ebiri is good at describing his favorite directors.

I've come to rely heavily on Patrick Blanchfield to featherdust cobwebs off the US American psyche. Also nice to know I don't need to genuflect before boomer hero Bob Woodward.

And finally: I'm going to lodge a strong objection to the way Nick Pinkerton characterizes left-leaning art criticism. While that mode of writing doesn't lack for "pale-minded liberals," it's intellectually dishonest to cite Amanda Hess as the tendency's standard-bearer. We are not receiving marching orders from a cryptoconservative NYC media institution. We are drawing on the pain of our own lives, choking our way through private miseries with little hope of change or redress.

Nick Pinkerton was perhaps the first critic I learned to identify by style in the Reverse Shot collective; I've cherished his writing for nearly a decade now. But, while much of this essay series is magisterial, his conflation of milky liberalism and socially-conscious arts writing doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It's a strawman whose only purpose is to support the profoundly-misguided assertion -- shared as hard truth, via proxy Eric Bentley -- that misogynists have deeper, truer insight than the 'morally upright.'

I feel ungenerous criticizing Pinkerton so directly, but if he's not going to engage with the left coalition pushing back against white phallocentrism in art, then I don't owe him any courtesies either. I'd also rather address this directly, as opposed subtweeting about how 'certain people' are constructing a fortress against much-needed critical realignment. Gotta name names! But with all that said, I'd never write so much about Pinkerton if I rejected his critical point-of-view altogether. I ignore artists/critics whose sensibilities I don't share; it's because I read him regularly that I feel compelled to comment now.