Political Media Review

AAARRRGGGGHHHH, Matey! I was one of the kids who grew up thinking that pirates were, well, cool as shit. Swashbucklers had evil-looking flags and tattoos, they wore eyepatches, they were fearless bandits, hedonistic drunks, and nationless nomads.

The plot of Disgrace is driven by the personal metamorphosis of David Lurie, an arrogant, libidinous professor, brilliantly played by John Malkovich. A poetry lecturer at Cape Town University, David’s descent into disgrace is provoked by an affair he is having with a mixed-race student thirty years his junior.

Ballerina’s with wrenches, a stubborn Miss Muffet and high heel cloning projects are just 3 of the 27 gender bending scenarios in Jacinta Bunnell and Julie Novak’s Girl’s are not Chick’s coloring book. A yellow front and back cover is filled with multi-colored stars, the front featuring an upside down chick and on the flip side, a broken shell with the following definition

Although overshadowed these days in mainstream media by drug cartel violence, Cuidad Juarez has come to capture the minds of many people concerned about social justice, and for good reason. In no other city in Latin America do controversies such as globalization, economic collapse, institutionalized violence against women, history, immigration, resistance, North American exceptionalism and the much lauded Eduardo Galleano-esque mythology so crisply cut paths.

In reading Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality and the Politics of the Natural, one cannot help but be reminded of historical blind spots regarding the nature of profit — a spot progressive idealists miss regularly.

One need look no further than something like progressive advocacy of drug legalization as an example of collective amnesia about North American economics.

Though you might not know it judging from the tenor of “post-feminist” discourse, young women’s positive conceptions of themselves and their futures are the result of the first- to third-wave feminist movements. Such is the blessing and curse of many a successful campaign — gains are so positive, people can take them and the organizing, fearlessness and sacrifice that got us here for granted.