London Calling: Paul Gilroy, Dick Hebdige, and British Multiculturalism

Black man gotta lot a problems But they don't mind throwing a brick White people go to school Where they teach you how to be thick White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own - “White Riot” by the Clash The winds of imperialism blow two ways. While we often focus on the impact of the colonizer on the colonized, in recent years, more and more writers have begun to also consider what colonialism has meant for imperialists on the domestic front.   Few places provide a window into this reciprocity than 1970s London.  Postwar immigration from former colonies to Britain resulted in an increasingly diverse …

Iron Waspy Ladies: What Annette Funicello, Lilly Pulitzer, and Margaret Thatcher Tell Us about the Cold War

For me, what makes the Cold War an interesting time is not necessarily the existential conflict itself, though we all seem to agree by now that it really was not so existential as we were led to believe. Proxy wars and diplomatic brinkmanship are important to understand and exciting to contemplate, but the role that mass culture plays in shaping the world is what most interests me. It is through culture that our worlds are ordered and made meaningful. In an illustrative example of the old “celebrities die in threes” mythology, three women who show us the changing nature of the Cold War died within days of each other earlier this month. The deaths of Annette Funicello, Lilly Pulitzer, and …

American Basketball, American Democracy: The Meaning of March Madness

The Elite Eight is upon us, and the Final Four will be decided in a few short days. After several rounds of competition, March Madness has produced all of the excitement, enthusiasm, and sheer naked adrenaline that it is known for. Last second shots have powered schools to thrilling victories, more than once for Ohio State University. Schools like Florida Gulf Coast and Wichita State, which few had heard of prior to the last few weeks, are now the talk of the country as they continue their Cinderella runs deep into the NCAA tournament. The nation’s love affair with March Madness is a bit of an oddity given the public’s general lack of interest in college basketball. Eleven months out of …

The Suburb and the Sword: Wartime Housing, Integration, and Suburbanization in Alexandria, VA, 1942-1968

For much of the post-WWII period, the tendency to describe housing as the provision of the private sector and as an inherent example of the value of free, unregulated markets  has proven pervasive. Writers like David Freund have compellingly deconstructed such arguments noting that in reality state and federal governments intervened into housing regularly.  “Postwar development politics helped convince a generation of whites that homeownership and neighborhood control rose above issues of class or party affiliation or even personal preference,” reflects Freund. Indeed in an era of “metropolitan fragmentation, restrictive zoning, and federal credit policy” that resegregated …

Angry and Privileged?: The 1980s, Class, and Southern California Hardcore

The final installment in ToM's 1980s hardcore punk retrospective.   In our earlier pieces, ToM discussed San Pedro's The Minutemen, D.C.'s Ian Svenonius, and in late 2012, we examined the "politics" of hardcore and thrash metal in the era of Paul Ryan and the Tea Party. ''My friend Mike used to say it wasn't a good show unless he got kicked in the teeth, because he had braces,'' said Win Vitkowsky in an attempt to convey the intensity of the 2001 Connecticut hardcore scene to the New York Times. “Despite its reputation as a boring but happy place of white-glove politics and private beaches,” Times journalist Paul Zielbauer wrote, “Connecticut has long been fertile ground for an …

Why We Have to Stop Talking about Nature

At the heart of the ethical food industry lies a strong desire for the “natural.” We want natural ingredients, grown organically, lacking chemicals, with no preservatives or artificial additives. This past Thanksgiving, for instance, Trader Joe’s had on offer an “all natural turkey,” a “minimally processed” bird with “NO artificial ingredients.” Worried about the cooking process? These roasts stay juicy through healthy brining in a “natural” salt solution. Earlier this month, the New York Times’ “how to go vegan” advice column suggests using nutritional yeast—a “natural food with a roasted, nutty, cheeselike flavor.” Products marked as “natural” command …

Frankie Fitzgibbons, the Coen Brothers, and the Free Market

Some of them want to use you Some them want to get used by you Some of them want to abuse you Some of them want to be abused The Eurythmics’ synth-pop anthem seemed to speak for something about the 1980s—a cold, cool attitude that if you wanted it, you could find it on the free market (no matter how self-destructive it was).  Yet Annie Lennox’s lyrics also evoked a classical kind of of sexual supply and demand.  The whole system would approach equilibrium between those who wanted to abuse and those who wanted to be abused, and ultimately the market would align everyone’s interests, resulting in a kind of kinky harmony—the greatest good for the greatest number. Other …

Economic Hardcore: Remembering the Minutemen Nearly 30 Years Later

In 1984, British-born director Alex Cox released the now cult classic Repo Man.  The movie, influenced by punk rock and hardcore, filtered the sensibilities of those musical forms through film, illustrating a stark contrast with the commercialism of early 1980s Reaganite America.  White suburban punk Otto (Emilio Estevez) moves through the city as a newly minted repo man, repossessing vehicles his fellow Angelenos have failed to pay for.  While the movie takes aim at rampant consumerism and pokes fun at the aesthetics and tenets of punk and hardcore, it also left many critics impressed with its fearlessness, as evidenced by Roger Ebert who praised the movie for its unconventional form and …

Visions of FDR

On visiting my old hometown last week, I had the good fortune to meet an old teacher of mine.  She was at the hospital for the birth of her granddaughter, accompanied by her own mother, a spirited nonagenarian.  A discussion of our delight at the serendipitous meeting -- I had probably not seen this retired teacher and librarian in 15 years -- suddenly and unexpectedly turned to the sorry state of the world, the incipient rise of socialism, and the unfortunate career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  As a youth, my teacher had plumped for Goldwater in the 1960s, and her venerable mother recalled her own father railing against the "dictator" Roosevelt back in the 1930s.  The world was going …

What’s Really at Stake in the Teacher Strike

In the last week Chicago's teacher strike has galvanized debate nationwide about schools, labor, and the so-called "education reforms" championed by both the right and liberals in the Obama administration.  These reforms include tying teacher pay not to seniority but to various metrics (primarily standardized test scores) and privatization schemes such as semi-public charter schools and vouchers.  Besides the immediate issues of pedagogy and policy, the Chicago strike is occurring in a political context in which Republican governors across the country, most notably Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich, have worked assiduously to strip public workers of their bargaining rights …