Stripped of Ideology
Sergei Loznitsa’s cycle of violence, rethinking the American Revolution, seeking a queer night out in NYC, and more
July 28, 2022
In this week’s issue of Public Seminar, Aabid Firdausi and Nandita Shivakumar take on the garment industry, Arlene Stein and Phil Zuckerman chart the Supreme Court’s assault on the First Amendment, and more.
Rewriting History
Celebrated Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s new documentary The Natural History of Destruction examines the European bombing campaigns of WWII with provocative disregard for convention, writes Altair Brandon-Salmon. “Loznitsa plunders the historical record for his own purposes. The immaculate black and white imagery, supported by a soundscape of background chatter, engine drones, and the crackle of fire, forces us to equate the suffering of British and German civilians. In profoundly disturbing footage, we see corpses pulled from the wreckage of crumbled buildings, human beings stripped to bone and flesh. For a moment, we might think that they are English victims, until we see that the survivors who clumsily handle the remains wear swastika armbands.” (July 27, 2022)
“Every generation of Americans has defined the Revolution to suit their ideologies, sensibilities, and mores. Every generation has done that. The specific narrative that many Americans, especially conservatives, think of as the narrative, is actually a product of the Cold War.” Michael D. Hattem addresses the foundations of national memory and the importance of rethinking the past, in a conversation with Max Pierce. (July 25, 2022)
Sustainability
The global garment industry needs a makeover—one that amounts to more than greenwashing, write Aabid Firdausi and Nandita Shivakumar. “The sustainability discourse in its current form focuses primarily on recycling commodities, even as the production model relies on the disposable bodies of women. Women workers often work for a few years in the industry for extremely low wages, experience various forms of gender-based violence, and are so depleted of their physical and mental strength that they are unable to gainful employment after they leave the garment production circuit.” (July 26, 2022)
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Watching Politics
“When the Supreme Court ruled last month that a football coach at a public high school had the right to pray at the 50-yard line with his team, it opened the way for public school employees across the nation to lead their students in prayer. Kennedy v. Bremerton gives sports coaches, drama directors, speech and debate leaders, and teachers the right to engage in public expressions of personal religious belief in secular, tax-payer funded, spaces.” Arlene Stein and Phil Zuckerman track SCOTUS’s push to enshrine Christianity as the national religion. (July 27, 2022)
Micah L. Sifry reviews Daniel Laurison’s new book, Producing Politics: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Privileged Few Shape Politics for All of Us, and finds in it a “delightfully damning” assessment of conventional campaign wisdom. (July 27, 2022)
“Where Were All the Queers?”
With only four lesbian bars left in New York City, Radhika Rajkumar looks to music as a queer haven. “Music is essential to the histories of queer space. Most of our havens have been bars where music and alcohol align to lubricate anxieties, dancing, and cruising. Queer nightlife is rooted in movement, sexual liberation, peacocking—expressions that are often still too risky for heteronormative spaces—and music is its scaffolding.” (July 26, 2022)