FlatPress My FlatPress blog FlatPress Admin 2022 2022-10-04T17:45:51+00:00 Admin ~/ Li Ziqi and Chinese Rural Utopia ~/?x=entry:entry220614-111227 2022-06-14T11:12:27+00:00 2022-06-14T11:12:27+00:00

By Martin Essemann

Li Ziqi and Chinese Rural Utopia.png

This video essay is an attempt to begin the conversation about how we might cultivate a desire for a new type of future in the face of climate change and environmental destruction. It is not meant to be a comprehensive criticism of the kind of content creation practices that Li has made so popular in recent years, but rather a discussion of the context in which it emerged. Any discussion of the ethicality of non-Western cultural phenomena in a Western context very easily ends up being heavily coloured by the centuries of continuing political propaganda, and even well-meaning efforts to promote certain practices might end up replicating the same colonial hierarchies. [Read More…]

 Class Exploitation in Stranger Things: The Continuity of the Reagan and Trump Administration ~/?x=entry:entry220614-103747 2022-06-14T10:37:47+00:00 2022-06-14T10:37:47+00:00

By Fleur Renkema

stranger things.jpeg

In 2016, Netflix released the series Stranger Things, written and directed by the Duffer Brothers. Critics wildly praised the show and it received thirty-one Emmy Award nominations. The setting of the science fiction horror series is a town called Hawkins, Indiana in the year 1983. [Read More…]

 The Significance of Writing: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Hybrid Identity in Unaccustomed Earth ~/?x=entry:entry220614-101900 2022-06-14T10:19:00+00:00 2022-06-14T10:19:00+00:00

By Sietse Hagen

Schermafbeelding 2022-06-14 om 11.16.45.png

‘In spite of the ocean that now separated her from her parents, she felt closer to them’ (Lahiri 144). In her book Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri examines the confrontation between second- and first-generation migrants. This clash of cultures between parent and child raises an issue of identity for the children as it is they who are in between the culture at home and the culture of the society in which they grow up. [Read More…]

 The person behind the face: The balance between Walter Benjamin’s exhibition value and cult value within two different forms of portraiture; photography and the tronie. ~/?x=entry:entry220318-171001 2022-03-18T17:10:01+00:00 2022-03-18T17:10:01+00:00

By Nathalie Schram

liefs-pappa-Nathalie-Schram-Liefs-pappa-nr-2.-2015.-512x691.jpg© Schram, Nathalie. Liefs Pappa. 2015. [Read More…]

 Silences, History, and The Fire Next Time: A Reading of Raoul Peck’s "Exterminate All The Brutes" ~/?x=entry:entry220311-115717 2022-03-11T11:57:17+00:00 2022-03-11T11:57:17+00:00

By Manar Ellethy

Optimized-1manar-1.png© Velvet Film/David Koskas/Courtesy HBO

“The fact that US slavery has both officially ended and yet continues in many complex forms of institutionalized racism, makes its representation particularly burdensome. […] As writer James Baldwin says, ‘there is scarcely any hope for the American dream because people who are denied participation in it, by their very presence will wreck it.’ The facts are staring us in the face.” — Raoul Peck [1]

It would not be an exaggeration to argue that Raoul Peck is one of the most prolific storytellers of our time. Through his ability to produce compelling socio-political commentaries in his works paired with striking visual imagery, dialogue, and experimentation, his contribution to black documentary filmmaking has been self-evident. [Read More…]