What a cruel hoax: the middle class suburban lifestyle, a proud achievement of postwar America and the envy of peoples throughout the world (in no small part due to Mad Men glamorization), contains the very seeds of our demise. If demise is where this is heading.
Climate Change
August Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Rock Album Review: Joyce Manor’s “40 oz. to Fresno” — Songs for a Burning Planet
The album isn’t a dull listen because it hammers home the high anxiety that many are feeling, particularly in California, land of the forever drought and endless forest fires.
Theater Review: “Sea Sick” — How Damned Is the Ocean?
Personable but bracing, Sea Sick delivers an essential message: not only about the damage that is being done to the oceans, but the horrors that are coming down the pike.
Book Review: “Harrow” — The Relentless Dystopia to Come
The world of Harrow is a Mad Max dystopia for intellectuals. It’s Bladerunner without the tech.
Book Review: “Literature for a Changing Planet” — A Crash Course
Martin Puchner is stumped because what is called for is a genuinely radical rethink about what role literature and literary studies should play in avoiding the global meltdown to come.
Book Review: “The New Climate War” — Enough of the Doomsayers!
This incisive volume will assist the creation of a much-needed collective effort, helping to frame a unified approach to waging combat on those who are destroying the environment for the sake of short term profit.
Theater Commentary: Who’s Agitating for a “Green New Theatre”?
The arrival of Groundwater Arts suggests the birth of efforts to organize artists and others to press cultural organizations to take meaningful action on the climate crisis.
Book Review: “Under a White Sky” — Saving Ourselves and Nature
Can we correct some of the mistakes we’ve made and engineer our way out of a deadly climate crisis of our own making?
Film Review: “I Am Greta” — A Superb Love Song to a Teenager Fighting to Save the Planet
As Greta Thunberg travels the world, invited to speak to government bodies everywhere, she doesn’t every mince her words or try to build bridges. “You have messed up the environment!” is her shrill, righteous message.