Jarrod Shanahan
Fast Food Workers Fight for $15 an Hour
If today's minimum wage had kept pace with the rise in worker productivity since 1968, it would be $21.72, three times the present minimum. That's why about 200 fast-food workers from all over New York City walked off the job Monday, risking their...
Terrence Malick’s Crisis of Faith
What Terrence Malick film would be complete without a dreamlike sequence of an ethereal woman running through a field, her limbs flailing unencumbered, her white clothing catching the wind and drinking in the sun? 'To the Wonder,' the existentialist...
Kimani Gray and Two Weeks of Struggle in Flatbush, Brooklyn
Daily demonstrations in Flatbush began two weeks ago, after 16-year-old Kimani Gray was gunned down by two plainclothes cops with lengthy histories of misconduct, who ambushed the young man on the street, jumping from a vehicle and discharging seven...
We Asked Dumpster Divers About a Plan to Sell Expired Food
If you've ever worked in a US supermarket you may be psychologically unable to comprehend the concept of a global hunger problem. Perfectly good food is thrown away constantly for silly reasons, like blemishes on fruits and vegetables, or...
We Asked Dumpster Divers About a Plan to Sell Expired Food
If you've ever worked in a US supermarket you may be psychologically unable to comprehend the concept of a global hunger problem. Perfectly good food is thrown away constantly for silly reasons, like blemishes on fruits and vegetables, or arbitrary and...
Let’s Apocalypse! A Discussion with the Anti-Banality Union
The ABU edits countless Hollywood popcorn films together, forming orgies of death and destruction at the hands of our society’s hopeless antagonisms. Drawing clips from such box office hits as 'Independence Day' and 'The Dark Knight,' they reveal the...
What I Leave Out: Confessions of a Resume Liar
I have two resumes. One of them states that I graduated from high school and learned how to drive a truck, work dispatch for deliveries, lead a work crew, and show up places on time. The other reveals that I am a published scholar with a Master’s...
Michael Haneke’s Everyday Horror
In Haneke’s world, horror isn't something that attacks us from the outside. It hasn’t been living in the house we moved into. It hasn’t just shown up. The brutality that we find in Haneke’s films is what we brought into the theater with us.
I'll Read You When You're Dead
The dead author is simply a better companion. They are great listeners. Eternally silent, they bequeath their laboriously crafted work to us across the abyss of time. Their work acquires the knowing muteness of great holy texts.
I Punched My Boss in the Face
At first the feeling was euphoric. After years of taking crap from a bunch of losers because they were my bosses, I thought I had no other choice. This time I felt like I had finally stood up for myself in a meaningful way. But even before my knuckles...
Imagining Justin Bieber’s Horrifying Future Parties
If Justin Bieber truly parties like it's 3012, as he sings in his new single, "Beauty and a Beat," then we fear the kind of blood-drenched revelry the boy king of pop might be getting into. Because the world in 3012 is going to be barbaric.
Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game
In a nation that looks to professional sports for everything that it is missing—heroism, greatness, collective triumph—the spate of labor disputes that continue to rock pro leagues offers some sobering lessons.