20: Public/Performance/Etc.

Introduction: Knowing Your Public

Charlie Bertsch, Ana Marie Cox
A critical approach to everyday life that is attentive to irony can sharpen our critical thinking.

Art 'R' Us

America, being the land of images -- home to Hollywood and Madison Avenue, the beacon of freedom that illuminated the world, the source of homogenizing culture -- doesn't seem a likely candidate for iconoclasm, but looks are deceiving.

Christian Kissing for an Emotionally Constipated Nation

Pucker up America! It is, after all, the Christian thing to do.

Diction Against Contradiction

Language is a major source of fragmentation. Language difference is one of the essential elements of many national and ethnic conflicts. It is the vehicle of racism.

Eradicating the Stain: Graffitti and Advertising In Our Public Spaces

When we are in an urban environment, our spaces are largely defined by walls, whether they are the inside walls of our private dwellings or the outside walls that delimit and divide our public space. Before they are painted on by grafitti artists or claimed by commercial advertising, these walls are blank canvasses...

Pulp Fictions: Some Recently-Deceased Straw Men

One of the exciting things about Pulp Fiction is how it succeeds in breaking down a lot of barriers that the Spielberg era put up. In its perverse and casual violence, brutal but attractive language, free playwith narrative structure, and above all its focus on crime as lifestyle, it feels as if it is being honest about things we all know are there...

Speed and Politics

Matt Wray
The other night a friend and I rented the movie Speed. We began to talk about how the movie worked and didn't work for us.

Staging the Slut: Hyper-Sexuality in Performance

Kim Nicolini
Is there a place for a sexualized female with integrity, strength, and respect in American culture?

Voices from the Collective

The last month on the Bad List has witnessed a long and often heated debate about multiculturalism.