ArtiFact: Books, Art, Culture

The IDF is accused of bombing the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. As a result, both Israelis and Palestinians have staked their reputations on the responsible party. Yet this would already be the 35th hospital strike in Gaza since 2008, while fully half of Gaza’s medical infrastructure had been leveled in Cast Lead and again in Protective Edge. In this video, political commentators Alex Sheremet an...

Taking great influence from Martin Scorsese's "The King of Comedy", Frank Whaley's underrated character portrait, "The Jimmy Show", was attacked by critics and filmgoers upon release, and is mostly forgotten now. In ArtiFact 48, critics Jessica Schneider, Ethan Pinch, Alex Sheremet, and Ezekiel Yu break down the film’s strengths and weaknesses while putting it in the wider context of American come...

Two years after the creation of the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver’s prison writings were published as SOUL ON ICE. He became the party’s Minister of Information, but would soon have a falling out with Huey P. Newton over tactics and ideology. In ArtiFact #47, authors Alex Sheremet and Keith Jackewicz break down the text, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses, as Alex explains why it wa...

Ibram X Kendi (born Henry Rogers) is an "antiracist scholar" who is now under investigation by Boston University due to alleged mismanagement of the Center for Antiracist Research. In ArtiFact #46, Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein breaks down the allegations, as well as his responses to Ibram X. Kendi's scholarly writing in "Stamped from the Beginning" and "How to be an Antiracist". He conclud...

Universally heralded as an American classic, Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER (Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster) deserves its reputation for nuance and the subtle ways in which its thematic, cinematic, and psychological elements cohere. Paul Schrader’s script allows for everything from understated racial critique, to a realistic depiction of how entanglements are made and broken, to the role of loneliness...

In the last few decades, political correctness has divided Americans and reduced their ability to embark on a real political project. According to Holocaust and Israel/Palestine scholar Norman Finkelstein, Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi are representatives of race-based fraud, downplaying the role of class, culture, and more in order to sell books and corporate workshops. In ArtiFact #44, Norma...

According to Holocaust and Israel/Palestine scholar Norman Finkelstein, Barack Obama’s “neat trick” allowed voters to imbue whatever political values they wished on to a blank slate who seemingly came out of nowhere. This allowed Democrats to turn the 2008 and 2012 elections into a referendum not on the candidate, but the “goodness” and “morality” of the electorate. Finkelstein’s new book, “I’ll B...

According to the Left, Right, and Center, democracy is under attack. Donald Trump claimed election fraud in 2020, while both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton hinted at fascism with a Republican administration. In his 2023 book, “The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut”, Benjamin Studebaker argues that neither is the case, as the very popularity of democracy is being used to energize...

Art YouTube ranges from academic to street, high-brow to low-brow, natural, performative, good and bad. In ArtiFact #41, writers Alex Sheremet, Ezekiel Yu, and Dan Schneider tackle some of the more popular art YouTube channels, dissecting their arguments, assumptions, and presentation. Our questions include: how does YouTube incentivize poor artistic judgment and packaging? Does overly performativ...

In 1972, four scientists – Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William W. Behrens III – published a book called The Limits To Growth, about planetary limits based on a new computer model called World3. It was attacked by journalists, scientists, and economists who claimed it was making faulty predictions based on untested hypotheses, and was often rejected in highly emotional te...

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a large number of books defying systematization, creating a reputation for difficulty that is not altogether fair. For instance, “The Gay Science” (1882) captures the bulk of Nietzsche’s philosophy through great writing highlighting its own anti-obscurantism, which makes it the perfect book for introducing readers to his work. In ArtiFact #39, Alex Sheremet and Irish poet...

Although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caught many analysts off-guard, Ukrainian-born scholar Ivan Katchanovski (University of Ottawa) predicted the growth of tensions well before the Maidan. In some respects, the Ukraine War as well as Vladimir Putin and Putinism had their roots in the early 1990s. On the one hand, the West made contradictory promises to Ukraine about its security...

Junichiro Tanizaki (1886 – 1965) was a Japanese novelist born to a Tokyo merchant family. His work combined some of the best elements of modernism while tapping both Japanese and Western aesthetics. In ArtiFact #37, Alex Sheremet and Ruslan Gallopyn discuss Tanizaki’s “Some Prefer Nettles” (1929), a novel depicting a dysfunctional open marriage and impending divorce which nonetheless might be aver...

Although ekphrastic poetry (‘poetry about art’) has been around for a long time, the majority of ekphrastic writing does little more than recapitulate and describe a painting. In ArtiFact #36, Alex Sheremet is joined by Jessica Schneider to discuss her recent book of ekphrastic poetry, “Ekphrasm”, and how her approach is different. From the use of recurring characters, to combining observations on...

Bruce Ario (1955 – 2022) was a great Minneapolis poet with a fascinating backstory. Although he did not have much interest in writing in the start of his adult life, a car accident and traumatic brain injury (possibly) led to mental illness, homelessness, drug addiction, a religious conversion, and, most importantly, a lifetime of poetry and prose. Author of the novel “Cityboy”, he is also creator...

After embarking on a two-decade terrorist campaign of mail bombs, Ted Kaczynski forced the Washington Post to publish “Industrial Society And Its Future”, or, the Unabomber Manifesto, in 1995. This was an infamous tract on climate change as well as on the philosophical and pragmatic ramifications of accelerating technology. In ArtiFact #34, Alex Sheremet is joined by radical climate activist Arnol...

Although Israelis view the events of 1948 as liberation, to Palestinians, this was “Nakba”, or “disaster”. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the events of those first few years were tantamount to “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, a fact that neither Israel nor the international community have been able to properly deal with. How to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugee...

James Cameron's "Terminator" film series combines the best of Hollywood while remaining unburdened by its convention and cliche. In “Terminator” (1984), Cameron casts an apparently reluctant Arnold Schwarzenegger into the role of T800. From the opening shots of a nude, physically unfamiliar, almost biblical figure surveying Los Angeles, to the slow, complex, yet satisfying buildup of drama/plot ma...

Although Ryusuke Hamaguchi has been a well-known Japanese film director for some time, it was only with 2021’s Drive My Car that his name entered the West. In ArtiFact #31, Alex Sheremet and Ezekiel Yu dissect Hamaguchi’s two best-known films: 2018’s Asako I & II, a romantic drama with strong anime overtones, and Hamaguchi’s breakthrough film, Drive My Car. Neither Alex nor Zeke are impressed with...

Elon Musk is a South African entrepreneur who has recently entered America’s cultural (and political) wars. Celebrated by Joe Rogan and Sam Harris, Elon Musk has carved out a level of celebrity most CEOs don’t get to enjoy, amassing 100 million Twitter followers, marrying his brand to his own persona, and encouraging a cult-like audience which publicly defends Musk against bad publicity. Long deri...

Roe v. Wade was overturned June 2022 by way of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a decision that was decades in the making, yet little prepared-for. At Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing, she insisted that abortion is best viewed under the Equal Protection Clause rather than that of strict privacy, while in other contexts called Roe v. Wade a poorly argued decision bound to wit...

American filmmaker Richard Linklater occupies the space between Hollywood and the indie film scene, combining some of Hollywood’s refinements with unexpected inversions and sleights of hand. Perhaps best known for “Boyhood” (2014) and the Before Trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight), these latter films defined some of Richard Linklater’s chief concerns: the passage of time, the...

Published just a few years after Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”, Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” uses many of Vonnegut’s postmodern literary techniques: serpentine plots, anchoring phrases/themes, implicit and explicit political commentary without over-moralizing, humor (or attempts at humor), pastiche, and more. Yet the two books are wildly different in accomplishment. What accounts f...

In Herman Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”, we get a dense text which draws on various philosophical traditions in service of richly characterizing its protagonist, Harry Haller. What does Haller think and why? Are his flights of fancy a mere defense mechanism, or is there genuine depth behind his observations? How do the book’s less obvious (but no less important) moving parts all cohere? How can modern aut...

In ArtiFact #20, Joel Parrish and Alex Sheremet went through the history of photography from Louis Daguerre (the creator of the daguerreotype) to contemporary photographers. In ArtiFact #25, there are fewer technicals to address and more emphasis on ‘forgotten’ and misunderstood photographers, with more connections to the art world as a whole. Among the questions asked: how can artists understand...