Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the 2015 movie “McFarland, USA”
July 8th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
We all love a feel-good movie. And the Americans especially have made a sub-genre of a sporting feel-good film in which the underdog overcomes adversity and makes it big, whether the sport is boxing (the “Rocky” franchise) or football (“The Blind Side”) or baseball (“A League Of Their Own”) or – in the case of […]
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The world understands so little of the history of Persia and Iran
July 7th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I’ve very much enjoyed watching the three-part BBC Four documentary series “Art Of Persia” presented by Samira Ahmed. I learned so much. For instance, I knew nothing about the lost city of Merv where an estimated 700,000 were slaughted. However, I do know something about the history of Persia/Iran from my reading of a couple […]
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Word of the day: agnotology
July 6th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The word was coined over 10 years ago by Stanford University professor Robert N. Proctor, but has new resonance with the advent of Brexit in the UK and Trumpism in the USA. Proctor defines agnotology as: Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth. You can […]
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A review of the 2018 movie “Book Club”
June 28th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
In most films, the leading roles are given to men, so we should applaud this work in which the four main characters are female and played by talented women who are a joy to observe. Even more than a dominance of men, moviedom is dominated by young actors, even as the population ages, so it […]
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How I first learned about racism and how I am still on a journey
June 22nd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
On 21 June 1948, passengers disembarked from the liner “Empress Windrush” including some 800 from the Caribbean. Although there had been black people in Britain since the Romans, the arrival of this group of immigrants is widely regarded as the beginning of the history of multicultural Britain. Since 2018, 21 June has been known as […]
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Word of the day: Augean
June 16th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
This is an adjective describing a task which is both difficult and unpleasant. The origin of the word is a story from Greek mythology involving the king Augeas of Elis (in the western Peloponnesus) whose stables, filled with 3,000 immortal cattle, had not been cleaned for over 30 years. The cattle, moreover, were not only […]
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Word of the day: racism
June 13th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has resulted in protest movements, both in the United States and around the world, that have raised so many important issues and so many interesting ideas. We are seeing debates ranging from the urgent need for police reform to the long-postponed removal of offensive statues and memorials. Now […]
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A review of the 2013 film “Adore”
June 13th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I guess that many people would call this a woman’s movie. It is based on a short short by a woman (the novella “The Grandmothers” by Doris Lessing); it is directed by a woman (Anne Fontaine from Luxembourg); and the leading roles are taken by two women (Robin Wright and Naomi Watts as Australian best […]
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A review of the film “American Made”
June 5th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
This 2017 film reminds me of “Charlie Wilson’s War” (2007) and especially “Air America” (1990) since all three deal with true-life covert American involvement in foreign wars which were so bizarre that the movies in question are a mixture of drama and comedy and, in the cases of both “American Made” and “Air America”, daredevil […]
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Word of the day: exonym
June 2nd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I confess that I had to look this word up when I saw in used by a friend in a Facebook posting (he’s a bit of a medical buff). It means: a name used by foreigners for a place (such as as Florence for Firenze or Londres for London) or a name used by foreigners to refer to […]
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