Media Diet

Monkey was recently wondering about my media diet, so I thought I'd share some recent media I've enjoyed or not enjoyed.

You Hurt My Feelings (2023), Grade D

You Hurt My Feelings (2023) | Rotten Tomatoes

Discover reviews, ratings, and trailers for You Hurt My Feelings (2023) on Rotten Tomatoes. Stay updated with critic and audience scores today!

Rotten Tomatoes

Incredible ratings from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but this movie friggin' sucks. It's a unfunny dramedy about the "little lies" we tell each other. It's in the heart two sizes too small vein of Seinfeld and I have no patience for this anymore. The characters understand nothing and learn nothing. I suppose that tracks.

Scenes from a Marriage (2021), Grade B+

Scenes From a Marriage | Rotten Tomatoes

Discover reviews, ratings, and trailers for Scenes From a Marriage on Rotten Tomatoes. Stay updated with critic and audience scores today!

Rotten Tomatoes

A 2021 remake of Ingmar Bergman's (reportedly bleak) domestic drama starring (real life Julliard classmates) Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. This is so much the kind of work that Ginnie and I love. A close, subtle and human examination of relationships that gives us lots to discuss. We're only partway through this.

The Fantastic Four (2025), Grade A-

The Fantastic Four: First Steps | Rotten Tomatoes

Discover reviews, ratings, and trailers for The Fantastic Four: First Steps on Rotten Tomatoes. Stay updated with critic and audience scores today!

Rotten Tomatoes

A lovely human and warm study of a family in crisis. The marriage and relationships here are maybe even more closely observed than in Scenes From a Marriage, but it's quite a bit shorter. Contains some action which may appeal to younger viewers. 🤣

Evicted; Poverty and Profit in the American City – Matthew Desmond, Grade A

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

The official website of Matthew Desmond, author of EVICTED: POVERTY AND PROFIT IN THE AMERICAN CITY.

We've recently had a brush with this subject, so I listened to this book. A bleak and really valuable look into housing security, race, gender and grinding poverty centered in Milwaukee in 2008. Ginnie and I will often call a self-inflicted wound, financial or otherwise, "stepping on a rake." For those in deep poverty, so often black women, the wounds are unavoidable and just keep coming. The world is littered with rakes. How can we pick them up?

Get the Picture – Bianca Bosker, Grade A-

GET THE PICTURE — Bianca Bosker

Bianca Bosker

I wanted to understand my Dad's art a little better and this is a great energetic tour of the New York Art Scene. We meet gallery owners, artists, collectors, conservators, and museum guards as Bianca tries to develop "the eye" that will allow her to see and judge modern art. Her point of view is passionate and frenetic and it left me wanting to see and look at more art.

Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study – Orlando Patterson, Grade TBD

Slavery and Social Death — Harvard University Press

Winner of the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award, American Sociological AssociationCo-Winner of the Ralph J. Bunche Award, American Political Science AssociationIn a work of prodigious scholarship and enormous breadth, which draws on the tribal, ancient, premodern, and modern worlds, Orlando Patterson discusses the internal dynamics of slavery in sixty-six societies over time. These include Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, China, Korea, the Islamic kingdoms, Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the American South.Praise for the previous edition:“Densely packed, closely argued, and highly controversial in its dissent from much of the scholarly conventional wisdom about the function and structure of slavery worldwide.”—Boston Globe“There can be no doubt that this rich and learned book will reinvigorate debates that have tended to become too empirical and specialized. Patterson has helped to set out the direction for the next decades of interdisciplinary scholarship.”—David Brion Davis, New York Review of Books“This is clearly a major and important work, one which will be widely discussed, cited, and used. I anticipate that it will be considered among the landmarks in the study of slavery, and will be read by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists—as well as many other scholars and students.”—Stanley Engerman

Harvard University PressOrlando Patterson

Just getting started on this, but this is an important book in the field of sociology/history. I got interested in this from this post.

Unfortunately as I reread that 👆 I see that I got the wrong book. No matter! This is important background material!

Slavery has existed in nearly all societies from pre-history through today. The common element of slavery is the use of symbols and power to disconnect personhood from a person. To make of a human an enemy within, an it, an other. I'm in the early stages, we'll see where this goes, then maybe I find the other "Social Death" that the commenter was referring to.

Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected on JSTOR

Winner of the 2013 John Hope Franklin Book Prize presented by the American Studies AssociationSocial Death tackles one of the core paradoxes of social justice s…