This Week's Writing 11/4/22
Elon Musk and free speech, Star Trek Halloween, Antisemitism and economic anxiety, and more
Hello! I’m going to post a round up of my writing every week for you all, as I’ve been doing for some time on my Patreon. If you like my writing and want there to be more of it, subscribing to my Patreon is helpful! (I may monetize substack at some point and have subscriber only posts here…we’ll see how it goes!)
Okay, first! I won an Honorable Mention for formal poetry in the Poetry and Patron contest for Chicago area poets. I'm reading my poem there tomorrow at 2 central if you want to Zoom in. Meeting ID: 277 874 5750 Passcode: kBnan6
On to this week's writing:
The Pelosi assassination attempt shows the right has embraced violence as a political tactic and an ideological good. (Public Notice)
Elon Musk isn't fighting for free speech. He's buying a media outlet because he disagreed with its editorial stance. (Public Notice)
Complaints about the unoriginality of film are unoriginal. (Document Journal)
No, antisemitism isn't the result of economic anxiety. (Alternet)
Every Jewish role doesn't need to be played by a Jewish actor, but Hollywood needs to do better in avoiding Jewish stereotypes. (Jewish Chronicle)
The teenage diarist who proves writing isn't a meritocracy. (Substack)
The Romance of Philip Larkin. (Substack)
Chris Whiteley's brilliant, bleak blues on Dirt Floor. (Splice Today)
The film I'm Totally Fine is a small, quirky SF film about grief. (WoG)
Star Trek, the original series episode "Catspaw" celebrates Halloween...but isn't very good, unfortunately. (WoG)
Congratulations on the poetry accolades!
I finally finished Peaky Blinders Season 6. Anti-semitism has been an ongoing theme—the gypsy Peaky Blinders are often allied with a most memorable Jewish bootlegger—but this season was truly chilling. The rise of fascism in Britain and the U.S., closely allied with Hitler, made me more nauseous than all the gangster razor-blade blinding and burning of bodies of the previous five seasons combined.
The American mythology is that we fought the fascists and won. Fiction has a way to dispel that idea in a beautiful way. It's easy to see through a few characters that anti-semitism is irrational and downright sociopathic. The gangsters instead usually have a logic to their use of violence, for power or for vengeance.
I'm curious if you've seen this season and what your perspective is on it.