Worldchanging: Bright Green: Worldchanging Interview: Shana Dressler on Global Giving Circles
We change the world one person at a time, but start by changing ourselves. Live on less and share the toys, children!
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Reviewing Avatar: 'Let us pray, let us chant, let us holler, let them be'
Clyde Taylor's concept of a 'Master Text' (Screen, 1988) is as ever-present in Avatar as it was in Stars Wars cycle decades past. It seems all western European mythologies orbit around recurring plots of modernity vs. primitivism as discourses of power. Whether Disney or Cameron, "the indigenous" haunts Americas' sense of shame, re-exploiting the rubble of imperialism with the instant replay of the noble savage and his spiritual habitat-the wilderness that we desire ravish once again. That spiritual habitat-Pandora-is opened, entered, of course without permission, and plundered, in yet another phallic dream undeferred. We've read other critics referencing Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves and I do wonder why the 'white man' needs to keep rubbing this old wound? Coming so soon after a disappointing Copenhagen climate treaty talks, the billions spent to make this movie might have relieved the requirements of global warming provisions in several small countries. Will we continue to be mesmerized and conquered by the visual text-the seduction of technological visual effects-and lose no sleep over the colonial nightmare of indigenous conquest that continues into the 21st century in many countries of Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Middle East? I believe in the oneness of humanity. And I believe there are many more compelling stories to be told in the cinematic medium, one of the most significant wells in which science and art coalesces. Don't miss those other subtexts here-cloning, the military industrial complex, and the western superman going native with the native princess, thus disgracing her intended. Thus spake [Cameron].
'Something's rotten in Denmark', Cameron-of-the-dying-planet. Let the natives be. Let them be.
[*"Let us pray....let them be" from the poem Museums (2001-Robin M. Chandler); Collage entitled Taking Away the Medicine.]
Monday, December 7, 2009
samimi-extremie is boss.: Iranian B-Boys
Follow transcultural b-boying in Iran! The mobility, versatility, adaptability and energy of Black American culture makes us one
people. The Iranisn 'differently-abled' bro makes the case for the beauty of art to transform and inspire. This is from the early 1990's,
but it's a great meditation on why Iran needs to join the community of nations.
samimi-extremie is boss.: Iranian B-Boys
people. The Iranisn 'differently-abled' bro makes the case for the beauty of art to transform and inspire. This is from the early 1990's,
but it's a great meditation on why Iran needs to join the community of nations.
samimi-extremie is boss.: Iranian B-Boys
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" ..[I]t is incumbent upon the friends of God to exert such an effort and strive with such eagerness to promote divine knowledge, culture and the sciences, that erelong those who are school children today will become the most erudite of all the fraternity of the wise....that every child, according to his need, will receive his share of the sciences and arts-until not even a single peasant's child will be found who is completely devoid of schooling."
-'Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i Education: A Compilation:38-9