199 episodes

A podcast where politics, history, and culture are examined from perspectives you may not have considered before. Call it a parallax view.

Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael J.G.

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.5 • 4 Ratings

A podcast where politics, history, and culture are examined from perspectives you may not have considered before. Call it a parallax view.

    Jonathan Glazer's Oscar Speech, Its Parallels to Vanessa Redgrave's 1978 Oscar Speech, & the Meaning of THE ZONE OF INTEREST w/ Corey Atad

    Jonathan Glazer's Oscar Speech, Its Parallels to Vanessa Redgrave's 1978 Oscar Speech, & the Meaning of THE ZONE OF INTEREST w/ Corey Atad

    On this edition of Parallax Views, freelance writer Corey Atad, who has written in such publications as Esquire, Slate, Hazlitt, and The Baffler, joins the show to discuss his piece in Welcome to Hellworld on Jonathan Glazer's Oscar speech and the reaction to said speech. Glazer decided to bring up the Gaza War when accepting the award for his Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest. He was accused of saying he was "refuting his Jewishness and the memory of the Holocaust" even though the clip was taken out of context. What he said was actually a commentary on the hijacking of Jewish identity and Holocaust memory for political purposes (which is what he sought to refute), a warning/call to resistance against dehumanization. As Glazer explained, he felt that Zone of Interest was not just a film about the past, but also the present. In other words: we need to be aware of where dehumanization has led in the past and where it could lead in the present. Glazer also made reference to Israel's Occupation of Palestinian territories during this speech.
    This has all sparked backlash and the aforementioned distortion of Glazer's words. A letter signed by at least a thousand people in Hollywood (some, like Jennifer Jason Leigh, recognizable, but many not) denouncing Glazer. Other, such as playwright Tony Kushner and the Auschwitz Memorial director Piotr Cywiński, have come to Glazer's defense.
    Corey joins the show to give his take on the speech as well as to offer his commentary on The Zone of Interest and relaying the tale of actress Vanessa Redgrave's 1978 Oscar speech which cause a similar controversy when she called out the extremist Jewish Defense League (referring to them as "Zionist hoodlums). We'll also delve into The Zone of Interest from the perspective of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" concept, Corey's criticism of The Zone of Interest, and the themes of alienation at the heart of The Zone of Interest's story centered on Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig, and their family against the backdrop of the Third Reich's exterminatory horrors. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views.

    • 2 hrs 4 min
    Gaza War Update w/ Prof. James M. Dorsey

    Gaza War Update w/ Prof. James M. Dorsey

    On this edition of Parallax Views, Middle East scholar Prof. James Dorsey, the man behind The Turbulent World w/ James M. Dorsey blog and Substakc, returns for a Gaza War update. We discuss the clans in Gaza that may or may not end up collaborating with Israel against Hamas and their own unsavory nature, the bombing of Gaza and its infrastructure like hospitals, Israel's information war, Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden's vision for the Middle East and the political obstacles he faces, the 1948 war and what came after it, the two-state vs. one-state solution, and much, much more.
     
    NOTE: There's some audio crackle that couldn't be fixed in post on this episode. I hope you will find it listenable anyways.

    • 54 min
    Schaller & Waldman's "White Rural Rage" Thesis Misuses Data to Push an Unhelpful Narrative w/ Prof. Nicholas F. Jacobs

    Schaller & Waldman's "White Rural Rage" Thesis Misuses Data to Push an Unhelpful Narrative w/ Prof. Nicholas F. Jacobs

    On this edition of Parallax Views, Colby College's Prof. Nicholas F. Jacobs, co-author with Daniel M. Shea of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America, joins the show to discuss his piece in The Daily Yonder entitled "New Book on Rural America Started with a False Conclusion, Then Looked for Evidence". Jacobs offers a damning critique of the hot new book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Paul Waldman and Tom Schaller. Waldman and Schaller's book, which has garnered a lot of media coverage in outlets like MSNBC and The Washington Post, posits that the biggest threat facing democracy is the rage of white rural voters who they are more bigoted, xenophobic, prone to anti-government violence, believing in conspiracy theories like QAnon, and more than other portions of the population. Jacobs isn't in the business of giving a defense of rural America. That's not his interest as an academic. He is, however, perturbed by claims made in Waldman and Schaller's book because, he argues they misuse data and survey research in a way that is harmful to discourse about the current American political landscape, voter attitudes, and the urban-rural divide. Moreover, he argues that Waldman and Schaller's books fan the flames of right-wing talking points about Democrats and resentment against rural populations. But most of all he focuses on the issues with the data itself that's presented in the book. Get ready for a blow-by-blow breakdown of White Rural Rage on this edition of the program.

    • 57 min
    Europe Must Look Beyond the U.S. for Its Future in a Changing World + Biden, Netanyahu, and the Gaza War w/ Amb. Patrick Theros

    Europe Must Look Beyond the U.S. for Its Future in a Changing World + Biden, Netanyahu, and the Gaza War w/ Amb. Patrick Theros

    On this edition of Parallax Views, Amb. Patrick Theros of the Gulf International Forum returns to discuss his The National Herald op-ed "Europe Must Take Charge of Europe". Amb. Theros argues that a combination of U.S. public attitudes on foreign policy (particularly amongst, but not limited to Republicans; namely, what Theros sees as the return of isolationist attitudes of the 1930s) and the U.S. foreign policy spreading itself too thin means that Europe must take charge of its own future going forward rather than relying on U.S. assistance. This gets into a discussion of NATO, the specter of another Trump Presidency in the U.S., France's President Emmanuel Macron and his vision for Europe, the Ukraine-Russia war, and much, much more. We'll also talk a bit about the war in Gaza, President Biden, and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the latter half of the program. And we'll discuss isolationism vs. pro-restraint views in foreign policy, the issue of the U.S. not using diplomacy as a tool in its arsenal nearly enough, the disaster of Libya, and more.NOTE: Messed up on the Producer's Credits on this one and put an older version of it in. This has been rectified with the correct Producer's Credits.

    • 55 min
    The Death of Film Criticism and the Infantilization of Cinema (+ Oscar Talk) w/ Jim DiEugenio

    The Death of Film Criticism and the Infantilization of Cinema (+ Oscar Talk) w/ Jim DiEugenio

    On this edition of Parallax Views, Jim DiEugenio, writer of Oliver Stone's JFK Revisited and co-author of The JFK Assassination Chokeholds: That Prove There Was a Conspiracy, returns to discuss the death of film criticism as well as the rise of Marvel/DC superhero movies and what he judges to be their negative impact on the movie landscape. Although he's known to most as a JFK assassination researcher, Jim has also for many years been a film critic and has an insight into the golden era of film critics that included such names as Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Dwight MacDonald, and John Simon among others. In the course of our conversation we talk about such classic films as Lawrence of Arabia, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Michael Antonioni's Blow-Up, and Bonnie and Clyde among many others. We'll discuss the Golden Era of New Hollywood from the mid-60s to the mid-70s and why Jim mourns the loss of this era of film and film criticism. Additionally, Jim will give his take on the latest Oscar-nominated movies like Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, the Emma Stone vehicle Poor Things, and Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. And he'll explain why he thinks the film critics Ebert and Siskel, with their show At the Movies, hurt film criticism. All that and much more!

    • 1 hr 53 min
    The Islamophobia Network and the Israel-Palestine Discourse w/ Sahar Aziz and Mitchell Plitnick

    The Islamophobia Network and the Israel-Palestine Discourse w/ Sahar Aziz and Mitchell Plitnick

    On this edition of Parallax Views, ReThinking Foreign Policy's Mitchell Plitnick and Sahar Aziz of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights join the show to discuss their recent report Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse. Sahar Aziz is the author of the book The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom and has done extensive work on the issue of Islamophobia. Together with Mitchell Plitnick, known for his work on U.S. foreign policy related to Israel/Palestine, they are taking on the connection between Islamophobia and the silencing of Arab voices on the issue of the Israel-Palestine conflict. This has an impact on the Israel-Palestine discourse. We'll also delve into the forces at play in promoting Islamophobia and, more specifically, what is often referred to as the Islamophobia network in the U.S. In relation to all of this we will discuss the terrorist trope, Orientalism, President Joe Biden's approach to the Gaza War, and more.

    • 1 hr 5 min

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