Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
These are posts on culture from the blog Base and Superstructure. Mostly the focus is on American culture. But there might be a few posts on broader, international issues.
There’s not much to do in Iowa City other than read – or make cloth masks – given the fact of coronavirus and COVID-19. As I said earlier, one of those recent books is The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. I dropped a hint in the earlier post that The Naked Sun is relevant to our current situation. How? By revealing the slow social disintegration of the planet Solaria.
Let’s think a bit more about that.
If you take a trip to your local Target or Walmart, you’ll find distressingly empty rows next to curiously overstocked ones. In the former, it’s toilet paper or hand sanitizer. And in the latter, it’s cosmetics or decorative pillows. I don’t need to remind you about the arbitrariness or silliness of the Toilet Paper Wars of March 2020. Their impact remains. Nor should I need to remind you how people hoard corporate, mass produced goods when they think their family is in danger. But I do hope to show that cloth masks are an important exception.
People behave strangely during times of crisis. Maybe the last few weeks left you scratching your head. Why did people hoard toilet paper before genuinely essential goods like food? Why buy a year’s supply of toilet paper when no clear-thinking person believes you need it?
What’s going on here?
It’s the two year anniversary of the Black Panther film, and much remains the same. If you talk to ten people about Erik Killmonger, the (alleged) villain, you’ll walk away with a dozen opinions. Killmonger elicits from us what we’re already thinking about identity, race, and society. He does so whether these views inhabit the surface or the depths of our thoughts. In other words, Killmonger is a Rorschach Test!
I’m assuming readers have already seen Black Panther. And I’ll note right away that I’m discussing only the film, not the comics or any associated stories or media. If you haven’t seen the film, go watch it! If you have seen it, read on.
It’s been a long campaign for the Democratic nomination. Very long. Too long. How many debates did they have? Lord.
News networks and pundits have to fill lots of air time and spill lots of ink to make these long cycles work. They’re on tight deadlines, and they seem allergic to any deeper analysis involving ideology or political methods and goals. The result? They publish a lot of junk! Here are the five silliest campaign stories and narratives I’ve found during the 2020 campaign.
John Steinbeck wrote about two thefts of the land in The Grapes of Wrath. As readers, we know Steinbeck as the classic author who wrote eloquently about the second theft, the banks’ theft of the dying Oklahoma countryside from its tenant farmers. But many of us know less than we should about the first theft.
Let’s take a look.
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