(VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP!!!)
3rdWorldImagineer is back today with another instalment of ‘why language matters’. For the record, I am not a PC fascist, but I do think it’s critical to examine how we talk about certain subjects, particularly ones gaining steam in the media. Hence, my semi-annual beef with the AP Stylebook.
For the uninitiated, the AP [...]
THE NANO IS HERE!
Back in the day when I used to read Adbusters, I remember they had a video that depicted the United States as a pig trying to squirm its way out of the map. It was supposed to represent how North America uses 25% of the world’s resources despite having only 4% of [...]
We spout off a lot about human voices and narratives and shit, but I’d rather read a bunch of solid numbers behind a single, strong argument than see another Maya/Fatima/Yelena, etc propped up in front of a camera and poked with a stick until she spills her unimaginably brutal survival story for another wannabe foreign correspondent’s lede. Human beings are the ONLY way to tell a story, especially a foreign story, but only if you treat them like humans instead of units of commoditized suffering. Anything else is just prostitution, and nobody likes a fucking pimp.
I’m already several chapters past this, but it felt like a good time to share. Cuz I FELT LIKE IT, motherfuckers
CHAPTER 11: SEPT. 7TH, 2008—THE CONEY ISLAND APOCALYPSE:
Look up.
There in the sky, ten thousand feet straight up from here, a four-and-a-half year old refugee with thick plastic glasses will see his first American seagull. He [...]
The fact that it takes an emphatically pregnant young rapper who samples Bollywood and AK47s, writes songs about Bird Flu and does Day-Glo animal-print schizophrenia as an ethos rapping with Jay-Z on her due date to make us stand up and take notice of a conflict an order of magnitude more deadly than the one in Gaza should say something about us, not her.
Well, I finally saw it. And read the book. And reviewed the soundtrack (what did you do?).
And for the first time in years, I have to say that the movie was a HUGE improvement on Vikas Swarup’s ambitious but flawed novel about the first winner of India’s Millionaire, fictionalized to W3B. With its recurrent filmi [...]
Today’s post is inspired in part by the SAJA-coordinated lecture series “Understanding the Mumbai Attacks”, moderated by Rome Hartman, with Mira Kamdar, Mr. Rushdie, and one of this 3rdworldimagineer’s favorite journalists, Mr. Suketu Mehta.
The lecture was notable for many things, but what struck me most was the blatant emotionalism that charged the speakers and audience [...]
If you’ve been following the Slumdog Millionare phenomenon, you may already know that venerable Indian composer and Bollywood kingmaker A.R. Rahman has collaborated with Sri Lankan grime-goddess M.I.A. on an original song called O…SAYA for a the Slumdog Millionare (aka indiawonderkindfilm) soundtrack, marking yet another thing that makes this work AMAZING, UNBELIEVABLE, AND OSCAR SHOE-IN. [...]
B”H
Dear Friends,
Our hearts are shattered at the news from Mumbai where Rabbi Gabi and Rivka Holtzberg, [...]
A tiny piece of the Mumbai mess that might be interesting to readers of the tribe. Rabbi Shmotkin of Chabad and his host Ari Goldman are speaking on blogtalk radio with Dean Sree about the Chabad house still under siege in Mumbai. Yes, we are everywhere, native Benai Israel Mumbai Jews as well as the [...]
3rdworldimagineer