The Political Underpinnings of Film Noir
by Randy Shaw‚
Mar. 11‚ 2010
Since film noir was rediscovered in the 1960’s, there have been many books analyzing the genre. One could understandably ask what Dennis Broe’s new work, Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood could possibly add to the subject. The answer is: quite a bit. Broe brings a political and class analysis to film noirs that contextualizes them by the political environment in which they were made. From 1940-44, the films focused on someone investigating a crime that gets in conflict with the law over the investigation (e.g. The Maltese Falcon). This trend continued from 1945-50, where films depicted working class fugitives and others outside the law, and are critical of American institutions. The films of 1950-55 showed a shift consistent with management attacks on unions, and the rise of anti-communism and the Cold War. Now working class fugitives were portrayed not as sympathetic victims of an unfair system, but as dangerous outcasts. Police departments and the legal system were now portrayed as vital protectors of the broader society. This pro-authority shift was finally weakened by Roy Huggins’ television series, The Fugitive, whose lead character lives in a world where justice is irrelevant and an arbitrary and often unjust legal system controls.
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New Book Challenges Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top”
by Robert Ovetz, Ph.D.‚
Feb. 25‚ 2010
Charter schools. The destruction of New Orleans. The Asian tsunami. Gentification. No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Race to the Top (RttT). The invasion and occupation of Iraq. What do these all have in common? For Kenneth Saltman, they are each illustrations of the latest phase of the neoliberal assault on the hard won gains of people to expand the role of government to ensuring public education, housing and public ownership over natural resources among other vital social services.
Saltman’s new book Capitalizing on Disaster, inspired by both Naomi Klein’s recent book Shock Doctrine (2007) and David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), explores these interconnections in the struggle over public education and should give pause to those wondering what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s “Race to the Top” project is all about.
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Searching for Authenticity in Urban Neighborhoods
by Randy Shaw‚
Feb. 11‚ 2010
Since the late 1970s, communities that once housed the blue-collar working class, industrial or maritime uses, and/or the small retail businesses trumpeted in Jane Jacobs’ classic Death and Life of Great American Cities, have been transformed. In New York City’s Lower Manhattan or San Francisco’s South of Market, government wrecking balls displaced existing residents and businesses so that the communities could be repopulated by upscale people and uses. In most cases, and in those Sharon Zukin describes in her fascinating new book, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places (the allusion to Jacobs is intentional), the process of reviving old neighborhoods follows a different path. It begins with the arrival of artists and hipsters attracted by low rents, who then cultivate the “grittiness” and “authenticity” that attracts well-heeled professionals. Their arrival raises rents, and forces the pioneer artists to seek new affordable communities, where the process is repeated. Zukin sees this gentrification process as a search for “authenticity,” using various New York City neighborhoods as case studies for what she sees as a national pattern. Zukin offers an extremely perceptive analysis of how once low-income communities become “destination” neighborhoods, and also raises important questions about privatization of public spaces and the gentrification process itself.
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Americans and the European Way
by Randy Shaw‚
Jan. 28‚ 2010
Michael Moore’s Sicko shows the director in France talking to American expats about the French health care system. They describe the great benefits that French residents take for granted, expressing dismay that no such benefits are legally mandated in the United States. Moore then asks why Americans so dislike the French, and posits it may be out of envy for a state that provides a superior quality of life for the average person.
Steven Hill’s Europe’s Promise expands Moore’s analysis to show how the social and economic policies of the “European Way” are superior to the United States in virtually every area. This includes health care, democracy, worker rights, energy efficiency, education and, most compellingly, the social safety net of child care, mandatory vacations, and parental and sick leave. Hill has essentially written a “Case Closed” for European capitalism’s superior ability to distribute benefits to a broader stretch of the population. Yet Americans may not be interested in this message.
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Paris Like You’ve Never Seen it Before
by Randy Shaw‚
Jan. 14‚ 2010
In 1907, France alone produced 300 million postcards, and over seven billion were sold worldwide. Germany was producing a billion a year, England over 600 million, and the United States nearly 800 million. Yet despite this passionate devotion to the mailing and collecting of postcards, their remarkable insight into both the present and past has only recently gained wider appreciation. An exhibit of Walker Evans’s historic postcard collection was a big hit at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum in 2009, and my March 2009 review of Glenn Koch’s wonderful San Francisco Golden Age of Postcards got a tremendous response. Now Leonard Pitt, author of the classic, Walks Through Lost Paris, has produced a beautiful book appropriately titled, Paris Postcards: The Golden Age. Pitt combines the beautiful artwork of Paris postcard scenes from the pre-1920’s era with the text written on the cards, enabling him to really bring Parisian history to life. Pitt has produced an essential book for those who have already seen Paris’ major tourist sites, and are now looking for a guide to its historic small streets, cafes, and buildings.
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Local Activists Document Movement to Repeal Prop 8
by Paul Hogarth‚
Jan. 07‚ 2010
I’ve attended my share of marriage equality rallies and protests in the past year, after the passage of Proposition 8 galvanized a new generation of activists. And at almost every event, I have run into Geoff King snapping black-and-white pictures with his camera. Now, Geoff has teamed up with activist Sunny Angulo to publish Such a Bittersweet Day – a handsome coffee table book that chronicles the local gay marriage fight since November 2008. Self-published through blurb.com, Geoff’s photos capture the raw passion that we’ve seen at these events – while Sunny conducted 16 oral histories of activists and gay couples who have played a vital role in the movement. City Attorney Dennis Herrera – who led the successful and unsuccessful efforts at the state Supreme Court on this issue – wrote the preface that provides historical context. All of the book’s proceeds go to organizations fighting for civil rights and healthy communities, starting with the Transgender Law Center and Health Legal Services.
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The Creative Brilliance of the Latino / New York City Connection
by Randy Shaw‚
Dec. 17‚ 2009
I have reviewed many fine books in 2009, and if I had to select a single book that interested readers must buy rather than get from a library or borrow from a friend it is the newly released, Nexus New York: Latin American Artists in the Modern Metropolis. Edited by Deborah Cullen, director of curatorial programs at New York City’s El Museo del Barrio, this book accompanied the exhibit of the same name that marked the museum’s reopening this fall after a major renovation. I saw the exhibit and found it to be artistically, culturally and politically powerful.
The book is a monumental achievement in its own right. It shows how the cross-fertilization of Latin-American and New York City artists shaped the home terrains of both, particularly impacting the era’s cultural politics. While it includes well known artists like Alice Neel and Diego Rivera, it also exposes the historic importance of figures like Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Miguel Covarrubias, the latter of whom came to shape the imagery of Harlem. From the only photos of Rivera’s destroyed Rockefeller Center mural to photos of David Alfaro Siqueiros teaching students in his Experimental Workshop, this book offers an impressive range of rare treasures.
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ACORN and the Power of Community Organizing
by Randy Shaw‚
Dec. 10‚ 2009
After Barack Obama stated during his primary campaign that he had once been a community organizer, it soon became clear that many Americans had no idea what this job entails. Sarah Palin ridiculed the community organizer’s job as lacking any responsibilities, and the Republican Party seemed to equate the organizing of low-income people to improve their lives as a Marxist-Leninist approach. Ironically, while the media failed to clearly explain community organizing last fall, former Tenderloin organizer and now Rutgers Professor Heidi Swarts released a book that detailed how organizers for both secular and faith-based organizations operate, and what they accomplish. Swarts’s Organizing Urban America was overlooked then, and remained ignored while the media subjected ACORN to enough unfair attacks to put the group’s future in jeopardy. Swarts provides clear evidence of ACORN organizers’ extraordinary commitment toward improving the lives of low-income Americans, and shows how they and faith-based organizers achieve progressive change.
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A Cultural History of the New York City Subway
by Randy Shaw‚
Nov. 24‚ 2009
During the recent Bay Bridge closure, there was much talk about how San Francisco Bay Area residents needed to become less car-dependent. Overlooked was the fact that the region’s many transportation systems collectively provide neither the 24-hour coverage nor geographic breadth to enable people to give up cars. In other words, the Bay Area’s public transit system is not in the same league as New York City’s legendary subway system, whose cultural and artistic significance is the subject of Tracy Fitzpatrick’s recent book, Art and the Subway: New York Underground. Fitzpatrick traces the subway from its opening in 1904 to the present, revealing how artists, writers, photographers and other cultural workers took advantage of the subway’s public and democratic milieu to forge their visions of society. She uncovers many surprising facts, such as the long history of subway graffiti, the use of guards to cram people into packed trains, and the ways in which artists captured the racial contradictions among a subway ridership that confounded traditional assumptions about the Melting Pot.
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“People Power” in San Francisco’s Mission District
by Randy Shaw‚
Nov. 12‚ 2009
March 18, 2010
