Stop, Look, and Listen #8
A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past week.
If you want to support my work, please consider becoming a free or a paid subscriber to the newsletter. A paid subscription is, at time of writing, available at a standard rate of just £3.50 per month, or £35 for a full year. Paid subscribers receive additional posts in regular series, and are vital to me being able to continue producing and expanding this newsletter.
This post is part of the newsletter’s ‘Stop, Look, and Listen’ series, a digest of articles and podcasts (and occasionally programmes and films) that I’ve found engaging and insightful over the past week. I also maintain a regular record of all these via Substack’s ‘Notes’ feature; you can also read these via the Notes section of my site.
This week’s recommended reading and listening are on the areas of:
Mid-1990s cinema.
Premodern religious foundations of Western politics.
Sport, politics, and harm.
Urban histories.
Right-wing economics and democracy.
Mid-1990s cinema
How La Haine (1995), GoldenEye (1995), and Broken Arrow (1996) captured some of the ideological zeitgeists of their era, including challenges to racism and sexism, and the geopolitics of the post-Cold War era.
Recommendations:
For the BBC World Service’s Witness History programme, Matthieu Kassowitz reflects upon the making of his 1995 film La Haine, including its rootedness in contemporary French ethnic minority youth cultures and experiences of discrimination and violence, its cultural and political impact in the 1990s, and its legacy three decades on.
This instalment of ’s Review Roulette considers GoldenEye from a genre perspective, examining how it sought to question some of the dominant tropes of the James Bond film (including its sexism) from the perspective of the post-Cold War era.
and discuss John Woo’s 1996 film Broken Arrow on this episode of the Unclear and Present Danger podcast. They cover Woo’s hallmark of operatic stylised violence, the 1990s motifs of stolen nuclear weapons (rather than Cold War-era nuclear confrontation) and of the post-ideological villain motivated by greed and ennui, and the reasons why the decade’s seemingly unremarkable qualities make it such an object of contemporary nostalgia.
Premodern religious foundations of Western politics
On the ways in which, between late antiquity and the early modern period, the Church in all its own diversity provided intellectual and administrative precedents for developments in areas such as citizenship, statehood, and law.
Recommendations:
Alex Kanavos and Benjamin Studebaker discuss Mateusz Fafinski’s and Jakob Riemenschneider’s book Monasticism and the City in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages on the Political Theory 101 podcast. They cover the parallels between monastic life and urban life during this period, and the ways in which the monastery was considered as a more virtuous version of civic life.
Piotr H. Kosicki interviews Anna M. Grzymała-Busse about her book Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State on ’s ‘Religious Studies’ channel. They explore the complexity of both the Medieval Church and the flexibility of its approach to involvement in politics, the distinctions between its approach to theological and temporal matters, and its encouragement of more localised state formation as a bulwark against the Holy Roman Empire.
Miranda Melcher interviews D. L. d'Avray about his book The Power of Protocol Diplomatics and the Dynamics of Papal Government, c. 400 – c.1600 on ’s ‘Medieval History’ channel. They discuss how the Papacy was able to sustain its authority from late antiquity to the early modern period, in the absence of large-scale bureaucracy and despite financial constraints, through responsiveness, delegation, and symbolism.
Sport, politics, and harm
Sport as a vehicle for extremism and abuse in Ireland, Canada, and beyond – and what to do about it.
Recommendations:
Writing for his Sports Politika newsletter, explains how Conor McGregor’s role in stoking riots in Dublin has earned him condemnation from Irish politicians, but also idolisation from the broader global far right…
…and on this episode of his Sports Politika podcast, addresses the wider question of why so many MMA fighters seem to have embraced far right politics, including the networks of patronage and mutual aggrandisement that connect UFC with Donald Trump, the role and motivations of individual fighters in spreading conspiracy theories, and the shared countercultural appeal of both mixed martial arts and far-right politics.
reflects back on the judicial inquiry that followed Ben Johnson being stripped of the men’s 100m sprint gold medal at the 1988 Olympics, on the End of Sport podcast, and what it revealed about the role of competition and a focus on victory at all costs in fostering usage of banned substances. He argues that this same culture remains endemic in Canadian sport and has facilitated and encouraged the abuse of vulnerable athletes, and calls for a new judicial inquiry into the issue as part of a wider systemic change.
Urban histories
How relations between different ethnic and racial groups have shaped the political and cultural histories of Split, Dublin, and Chicago.
Recommendations:
Travel writer Paul Bloomfield talks to author Marcus Tanner about Split on the History’s Greatest Cities podcast. They cover the heavy Latinate cultural legacy of its Roman period; its incorporation into the Croatian Kingdom and later the Venetian empire and the root of the tensions between its Croatian and Italian communities; its incorporation into the new state of Yugoslavia in the 20th century and its expansion under communism; and the relatively recent nationalisation of the city’s culture and divide between its Croatian and Serbian populations during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
- takes us on a walk through Dublin in this post for his Archive Rats newsletter, to demonstrate the longstanding and significant presence of migrants in the city, their involvement in Ireland’s cultural and political life, and the frequently conditional nature of the welcome they received there.
This episode of Slate’s One Year: 1990 podcast series, written by Josh Levin, looks at the case of Henry Brown aka ‘Mandrake the Magician’: a middle-aged Black Chicagoan who undertook a one-man vigilante campaign against aggressive billboard advertising of tobacco and alcohol products in African-American neighbourhoods.
Right-wing economics and democracy
The ways in which monetary institutions and theorists have often pursued their goals with substantial, and often detrimental, political impacts.
Recommendations
In this post for her System Change newsletter, examines the role of unaccountable central banking systems in fuelling the rise of the populist right around the world, and the long unsavoury history of central banks undermining democracy over the past century.
On the Know Your Enemy podcast, and discuss Milton Friedman with historian Jennifer Burns, author of a new biography of the economist. They cover the idealistic underpinnings of his free market economics and his ability to reconcile this with his pragmatism in influencing policymaking and public opinion in the US and elsewhere, as well as his his oversights when it came to issues such as civil rights and the Pinochet regime in Chile.
If you want to support my work, please consider becoming a free or a paid subscriber to the newsletter. A paid subscription is, at time of writing, available at a standard rate of just £3.50 per month, or £35 for a full year. Paid subscribers receive additional posts in regular series, and are vital to me being able to continue producing and expanding this newsletter.
If you’ve enjoyed this post, you can also show your appreciation by sharing it more widely, recommending the newsletter to a friend, and if you’d like, by buying me a coffee.
I am available for freelance writing jobs, and other academic, research, and media work; if you would be interested in commissioning me, you can find out more here.