Political Media Review

Letter to the President: The Streets Get Political, produced by Russell Simmons, directed by Thomas Gibson, composed by Quincy Jones, and narrated by Snoop Dogg, is a wake-up call to the world that hip-hop and rap does not mean money, ignorance, and violence, but a voice from a imprisoned, oppressed, and repressed community. This is an excellent film on the history of hip-hop and rap in the U.S. in relation to race, class, and sexism.

After reading No Logo, you may feel that Bill Hicks was understating things a little: by the end of the first chapter you’ll be en route to the nearest McDonalds with a crate of Molotov cocktails. No Logo is a book about brands, which means it’s a book about popular culture – Golden Arches, the Nike “swoosh”, Tommy Hilfiger jackets and Starbucks coffee. It’s about the television you watch and the newspapers you read, the theme parks you visit and the films you go to see. It’s about magazines and rock music, universities and the Internet. In short, it’s a book about everyday reality – or, rather, what lies behind it.

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.