Progressive culture since 1954
The pandemic feels increasingly like a historic inflection point and Coronation may, over time, come to be seen as the first film of a new era. Conveyed through the lens of a dissident, its sense of destiny about China’s rise – a common theme in state propaganda – is a vision that offers no triumphalism or comfort.
It seems right now, owing to the fatigue of ongoing isolation and the relentless catastrophic news, an act of doing feels more achievable than an act of thinking. We want evidence of connection, of achievement, something solid to show we have done something. If we are fortunate, we make things, we donate money but we struggle to write. Who wants to sit down, alone, with our thoughts right now? Isolated, starved of new experience and of touch – what we require is commune.
Unmasking the Racial Contract is a significant archive into the lived experience of workplace racism and demands reading. First Nations people will find respite in the collective affirmation that structural racism is violent even when it’s rendered invisible under the facade of reconciliation plans and diversity agendas.
Throughout Tenet a verbal code, ‘we live in a twilight world’, is refrained. Narratively it propels the plot forward. Thematically it operates as Nolan’s driving idea: that the late-stage capitalism displayed throughout the film leads directly to extinction. Sator’s plan is Christopher Nolan’s portrayal of where an unregulated billionaire-class leads.
Rachel, a girl in my class, lives on our side of Montpelier Street, The Big Hill. She walks home every afternoon and said I should walk with her. I told Rachel I asked for permission but my mother said no. We’re in grade seven, she said, it’s no big deal. Why’d you even ask? But I hadn’t asked at all. There’d have been no point and the question would only have gotten me into trouble.