Month: February 2013

The Problem with Quentin Tarantino’s Racial Revenge Fantasies

Culture / By

For the second time in his career, Quentin Tarantino has won an Oscar for best original screenplay.  And with this, we must acknowledge that the triumph of form over content is fully complete in American popular culture. After all, fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on us. In many ways Tarantino is truly an excellent writer.  But it’s quite a stretch to classify his scripts as great literature.  Why?  Simply put, he has nothing to say.  There are no weighty ideas, no grave insights into the human condition, and no emotional depth.  Instead, there is merely a wholesale devotion to the lurid, the snappy, and the shocking.  And at that, he is very, very  good. In his endless quest for cool, Tarntino has mastered the craft of writing hip, catchy dialog.  And the fact that he often has those lines delivered by excellent actors helps immensely.  But while Tarantino’s scripts can be highly entertaining, they are almost invariably superficial.  And so, what his films actually say is largely irrelevant; rather, the full weight of their impact is derived from how they say it. Thus, to repeatedly acknowledge his writing as “the best” is to elevate a relatively artless technician (I’m speaking here of his writing, not his film making) over actual artists, including many who also possess formidable technical prowess.  To give Tarantino multiple Oscars for authorship is to celebrate cheap thrills and hedonistic pleasures at the expense of striving and love and wisdom and everything else that makes the human endeavor truly worthwhile. But there’s more to it that that.

The Problem with Quentin Tarantino’s Racial Revenge Fantasies Read More »

Never on a Saturday

History, Politics / By

Originally created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775, almost a year to the day before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the new United States Post Office was deemed so important to the fledgling nation that none other than Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first Post Master General. When the Constitution re-designed the national government in 1789, one of the first orders of business was empowering Congress to establish a new federal post office (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7). The Post Office was the preeminent government service and the nation’s communications infrastructure.  Timely delivery of mails was vital to commerce and enabled national expansion.  And in an era of smaller government, the Post Office accounted for upwards of half of all federal employees during parts of the 19th century. But beyond its economic importance, the United States Post Office has also played a role in the nation’s cultural life.  In many small towns throughout rural America, it was not uncommon once upon a time for the only structures on many a Main Street to be the local church and the local post office.  No wonder then that American culture abounds with references to the post office, ranging from the trope of carriers being plagued by overprotective dogs, to the office’s unofficial but iconic pledge that: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. This phrase, engraved at the James A. Farley Post Office building at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street in New York City, is a translation of Herodotus describing the Persian postal carriers from 2,500 years ago.

Never on a Saturday Read More »

Marco Rubio Walks into a Bar . . . And REALLY Needs a Drink

Politics / By

The inevitable skit about Marco Rubio on this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live practically writes itself.  It will undoubtedly go something like this: The freshman Republican Senator from Florida, charged with responding on behalf of his party to President Barack Obama’s state of the union address, is really nervous before the cameras go on. Once the hot lights pop and the cameras start rolling, he gets thirstier and thirstier.  This results in a slapstick pastiche of increasingly bizarre nervous ticks and dry mouth antics.  A series of escalating water grabs follow: the awkward reach for an off-camera bottle of water; pouring said bottle of water down his gullet; pouring another bottle or two over his head; dunking his head in a bucket of water; perhaps finishing his speech from a shower stall, greedily gulping all the water he can as he gurgles to the audience, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Or something like that.  Because Rubio’s “meltdown” on national television last night was instantly iconic. His incessant cotton mouthing behavior, culminating in his desperate off-camera grab for a bottle of water, followed by a heaving gulp of H2O, is already remembered far more than anything he said during his response to President Obama? Is that fair?  Is that right? Well, it depends on how you look at these things.

Marco Rubio Walks into a Bar . . . And REALLY Needs a Drink Read More »

Baltimore Euphoric

Culture, Politics / By

Last week, I wrote a piece about why I was putting aside my usual hatred for the Baltimore Ravens and rooting for them against the San Francisco 49ers in yesterday’s Super Bowl. In addition to loathing 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh, who on the national stage last night lived down to my description of him as a spoiled bully-brat, I discussed my affection for the city of Baltimore, where I’ve lived since 2001. My love of Baltimore is of the warts-and-all variety.  And that was certainly the tone of my piece.  In part, I embrace Baltimore precisely because it is not the shining, glimmering city on the hill; because it is not the place that people from around the world want to take romantic trips to in springtime or find a magical experience during the holidays. Baltimore is very, very far from perfect.  Yet in many ways large and small, it often overcomes its drawbacks and deficits.  Living here can be frustrating, stupefying, needlessly expensive, and even sometimes dangerous.  But I also find it to be deeply satisfying.  I’m genuinely very happy to call Baltimore my home. The article got a lot of traction, at least for the standards of this site, receiving close to a thousand page views in just a few days.  And from what I can tell, most readers enjoyed it.  Just the fact that it caught fire indicates as much, and the Facebook clicker at the bottom of the page tallied more than 200 “Likes” at last count. However, it didn’t sit well with everyone. While Baltimoreans don’t put on any airs about their city being something it’s not, which is one of the things I really love about this place, they can also be a little defensive at times.  Understandably so, there’s a bit of an inferiority complex in the air, and even a touch of paranoia.

Baltimore Euphoric Read More »

In Memoriam: Edward I. Koch

Culture, Politics / By

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch passed away early this morning at the ripe old age of 88. For many New Yorkers of my generation, the name Ed Koch was once synonymous with the word Mayor.  The 105th man to hold the office, his three terms began during my last year of elementary school at P.S. 24 and concluded during my last year of college. For my cohort then, Koch’s seeming omnipresence did not lead to intimate familiarity with his political policies; many of us were never old enough to even vote for him.  Rather, he was a popular culture icon.  He was an openly Jewish “character” whose quick wit, catch phrases, and brash persona established him within the bounds of  a sympathetic cultural trope: the mensch. And Koch certainly cultivated that image for his political gain.  However, I’ve also met many, many New Yorkers 10+ years older than me who really reviled  Koch.  He was beloved by many, but also quite divisive.  I never went back and studied the Koch administration, so in the end (or at least for now) I’ll leave that assessment to others. After his political career was over, however, the inveterate New Yorker remained a fixture in the city where he lived his entire life.  For example, his brusque yet jocular persona was well suited for his turn as a TV court judge.  He also hosted a talk radio show.  He even made recorded cameos at New York Rangers hockey games and in yellow taxi cabs. In all of these ways, Koch continued to cement his image as a quintessential post-WWII New Yorker.  He was pushy, humorous, and unabashedly “ethnic.” But as a cultural figure, he remained locked in the 20th century in one very important way.  Until his dying day, Ed Koch never came out of the closet.

In Memoriam: Edward I. Koch Read More »

The Public Professor

Scroll to Top