Culture
Double Rainbow: Snow Cake
Snow Cake is a 2006 independent drama starring Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver. Shortly after Rickman’s character picks up a young hitch-hiker, he is in a sudden, brutal accident and the girl is killed. Paralyzed by guilt, he tries to reconcile with the girl’s mother,... Read more »
Adventures in Feministory: Juliette Gordon Low, Founder of Girl Scouts, Disabled Activist
In honor of the recent wave of support for transgender inclusion in the Girl Scouts, let’s delve into the history of Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low. You might know her for leading a life... Read more »
Bechdel Test Canon: Illusions
Writer-director Julie Dash returns to the Bechdel Test Canon with her 1982 short film Illusions, which asks some mighty big questions about the racial and... Read more »
The 99%: "Finding North"
This is the second of three posts on films from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival addressing inequality, poverty, and... Read more »
Double Rainbow: A Quick Look at the Savant
In popular fiction, savant skills and autism are almost synonymous. Portraying a character as a savant has become a way of driving home the fact that the character is autistic. The savant archetype is glaringly problematic because of the cultural baggage associated with idea of the “savant,”... Read more »
Douchebag Decree: Stephen "Republicans and Democrats Sitting Together is Like Date Rape" Moore
In the frenzy of cable news chatter that followed Tuesday’s State of the Union address, one pundit stood out in the crowd, a beacon on a douchebag hill. The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore out-... Read more »
Double Rainbow: Mattie Ross
Mattie Ross, the young protagonist of the Coen brothers’ acclaimed 2010 film True Grit, is so compelling and memorable because she is so odd. Her eccentricities are characterized by what I would call “autistic difference” but, given the nature of the film, my aim is not read... Read more »
The 99%: "The Queen of Versailles"
Lauren Greenfield’s film The Queen of Versailles is both an infuriating and humanizing portrait of the economic collapse from the perspective of one of the country’s richest families.
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Douchebag Decree: Tucson Public School Officials Ban Ethnic Studies Program and Shelve Books
Straight from the “people still do this?” department, the Governing Board of the Tucson Unified School District responded to pressure from creepy Arizona Tea Party officials by dismantling the district’s Mexican-American Studies program, and... Read more »
Adventures in Feministory: Assia Djebar
In the midst of her university years, Djebar published her first two novels, La Soif and Les Impatients (she also took on her pen name, fearing that her father wouldn’t approve of her writing). The novels were much less politicized than her later writing and received... Read more »
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