More drab than the subject needs, but a cleareyed overview of the modern interaction of culture and politics.
A look at the intersection of politics and art during our most recent annus horribilis.
Two Republicans recently in office, Trump and Reagan, came to politics by way of show business, “not anomalies but products of a political mindset that saw entertainment as one of the levers that generated populist political power.” Democrats have been a touch more sanguine about the political uses of the entertainment industry, but as Goldberg notes, the industry has generally tilted their way. Still, culture often leads politics. The author takes as a prime example the way in which TV shows such as Will & Grace, Ellen, and Modern Family helped place LGBTQ+ issues in the mainstream and enhance public acceptance of gay marriage. Before Trump, he notes, only one TV entertainment program, the Jon Stewart–helmed Daily Show, centered on politics; with Trump, nearly every such show took up political discourse. Meanwhile, stars such as Taylor Swift, who had been carefully apolitical—and, Goldberg notes, had become an unwitting idol of the neo-Nazi movement—before, rose in opposition to Trump and his base. “For many artists, Trump’s victory reflected a broad and sinister authoritarian agenda,” writes the author, and the result was an outpouring of productions such as the series rendering of Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America. Trump bloviated via Twitter about the array of entertainers and culture influencers lined up against him—many, like Swift, inspired to take up rhetorical arms against his agenda thanks merely to his awfulness: Fran Drescher, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Legend, and numerous others all made a stand, even as Trump got worse and worse. Goldberg’s text often plods, more dutiful than rapt, as he enumerates those against Trump (and few pro, mostly has-beens like Scott Baio). One thing’s for sure: The One America News Network crew will be more sure than ever that Hollywood is a leftist cabal.
More drab than the subject needs, but a cleareyed overview of the modern interaction of culture and politics.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61775-979-6
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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