Inventing the Child

To use the type of language that quickly becomes familiar to a reader of this book:

The dominant culture reproduces itself by telling itself stories about itself. These stories tell of the rightness of obedience to authority, of the natural order of hierarchy, of power, of the obvious right of the strong to use violence and force to coerce the weak, of the need of the subjugated to be controlled. Children learn these stories, which reinforce the realities that they themselves experience and that they see around them.

By telling these stories about children (or stand-ins for children, as...   more »

Here's a post-apocalyptic road movie created straight from the heart. The score is terrific -- an ideological and artistic mash-up of 50's rock and Sputnik-era Soviet optimism. Mad Max meets Shane meets Viva Las Vegas.

Even addresses the modern-era martial-arts-movie question of "Why doesn't somebody just shoot him?"

Clearly a labor of love for everyone involved.

Enjoy.
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The other day Teletubbies aired a film clip about a girl, about 5, making a whimsical face out of a pumpkin. She was in what was apparently the basement of a home. All the craft supplies had been laid out for her, presumably, by some unnamed adult. There were muffin tins of glitter and dry beans, piles of colorful dry leaves and felt, and so forth.

"I'm going to make a pumpkin head," says the girl, and she comments on what she's doing as she glues on leaf ears, straw hair, bean eyes. mouth and nose made of something crafty. ...   more »