Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture

In the past decade, America cinema has shown a change towards producing more women-centered movies, depicting independent unmarried women who seek out their own empowerment and gradually changing society’s view of single women. The women of Sex and the City, for instance, celebrate their singledom, showing it not to be the pitiable state it was once thought to be. While these women possess many feminist qualities, they also have attributes that separate them from the traditional ideals of feminism, a perspective which media studies scholar Hilary Radner labels neo-feminist in her current work, Neo-Feminist Cinema.

Made in Pakistan

These days, political analysts on both sides of the aisle are calling Pakistan a failed state. While the “most dangerous place in the world” does face profound political and social turmoil, such sweeping commentary fails to capture the more personal intricacies of the lives of ordinary people living inside the country’s borders. Pakistan is more than the Taliban fighters implementing Sharia law in the Swat Valley, and it’s more than the frequent bombings of embassies and hotels from Islamabad to Karachi.

Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture

Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture is an anthology of articles (plus some new material) from ‘90s ad-busting zine Stay Free!. Since I write a zine that deconstructs feminine hygiene advertising, I couldn’t have represented more of their target demographic if I’d tried.

Where Underpants Come From: From Checkout to Cotton Field: Travels Through the New China and Into the New Global Economy

It’s absolutely astonishing to realize how much junk people in North America consume only to throw away. Most of it is from China. When I started to read Where Underpants Come From, I picked up various objects in my office—from the mechanical pencil I write with to my iPod—and I discovered that yes, everything had been made in China.

Death by Leisure: A Cautionary Tale

Maybe the current economic meltdown the world-over has got me down, but I found Chris Ayres’ Death by Leisure: A Cautionary Tale a hard pill to swallow. Could it be that the time for cautionary tales has long passed? Every other fiction new release, it seems, touches upon environmental disaster, or endless war, or the disaster wrought by people living en masse beyond their means; this book touches upon all three.

Sex and the City: The Movie

Far as I can tell, there’s never been a consensus on Sex and the City’s feminist appeal. It shows intimate female relationships, but it’s heteronormative, white, and the characters often talk past each other. The women live (mostly) sexually liberated lives, but they’re nevertheless forever in search of the perfect man to fulfill their emotional needs.

Live Earth (7/7/2007)

Live Earth, Al Gore’s spectacular series of concerts for the environment Earth, has been a magnet for mainstream media cynics, who point to amplifiers, lights and garbage as evidence that the whole thing was one big festival of hypocrisy. But for a member of the throng at Giants Stadium, at least, the atmosphere felt as political and optimistic as any show in memory.