Joining me on Within Our Gates is Animator and Scholar to Samantha Youssef to talk about the entertainment industry and how it uses often initially well meaning artists to uphold Hollywood's imperial messaging system. Samantha and I take a deep and personal dive into our experiences in the training grounds of arts/entertainment, we compare and contrast our similarities and differences but ultimately come to conclusions that all the methods point in the same pernicious direction.

Its a great talk and look forward to more with Samantha on these topics.

Here are some things to check out that feature Samantha speaking about her work and experiences.

Is Superman Pro-Watermelon?

True Hollywood Stories on the Military Industrial Complex

"We See the Audience as Marks!" the Psychology of Manipulation in Film

Encoding Empire: How Black Panther Manufactures Consent for Imperialism Among Oppressed Groups

Donald Duck Does D.E.I.

To get a jump on the shows a few days early, bonus video episodes every month, deeper dives into text and works with revolutionary content and political art study groups check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Additionally, check out my new colaboration The Imperial 80's, a series I co-hosted with Jared Ware of Millenials are Killing Capitalism. We take a dive into the wild world of 80's Hollywood and uncover what it has to say about this imperial project called The United States. You can find us on Patreon and make sure to follow the channel if you want to catch the livestreams

Tumes

Joining me for this episode is writer and political theorist Sudip Bhattacharya as we dig into Mira Nair's cult favorite film Mississippi Masala. We dig into its attempt to have commentary on the conundrums of cross cultural exchange and how the film fits into the trajectory of liberal diversity projects in American Cinema during the early 90's. We also fit this into work Sudip has done on the topic of culture from a socialist/Marxist perspective in order to deepen our convo on what was/is missing then and now in works like Masala and others.

We also have some great digressions talking about Domenico Losurdo's work, the conservative nature of Spike Lee, the Birth of a Nation level racism of Indiana Jones Temple of Doom and the grave problem of socialist groups like Platypus Affiliated Society. Its a top notch convo and the first of many to come with Sudip.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

The Hampton Reader

To get a jump on the shows a few days early, bonus video episodes every month, deeper dives into text and works with revolutionary content and political art study groups check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Currently we are hosting a asynchronous study group talking about Ariel Dorfman & Armand Mattelart's classic text How to Read Donald Duck. We will going for the rest of the month so join up now!

Also check out my new colaboration The Imperial 80's co-hosted series beginning with Jared Ware of Millenials are Killing Capitalism.

We will be posting the audio recordings of the episode here but make sure to follow the channel if you want to catch the livestreams

How are the arts in the vaunted "age of tech" affected? And how do we study these effects with a materialist approach? To answer these questions I have with me Dwayne Monroe who is a technologist with decades of experience in the US and Europe. He intimately knows how technologies the media describes as ethereal really work, where they come from, and how they are used in the multinational corporations and governments dominating our lives. He applies what he calls a Noir Marxist lens (stylistically informed by the work of Raymond Chandler, analytically informed by Marxian materialism) to dissecting the tech industry.

We have a fantastic conversation covering everything from so called Artificial Intelligence, how the creative class is a deployment zone for tech industry shenanigans, the sordid history of camera technology within the world atomic bomb testing and military projects and what radicals need to consider when integrating tech in their lives and organizations. Its really an important convo and one of the first of many I plan to have with Dwayne.

For some links to Dwayne's work check it here:

My main blog, 'Computational Impacts' -

https://monroelab.com

Verdigris (the literary journal I started with a few friends, I typed the wrong URL in the label I used for the show) -

https://vdgasjournal.com

The film podcast, Film Conversations (we talk about films and the industry overall from a grounded perspective) -

https://open.spotify.com/show/3E5dPk4of0pFAVdcTjGbzy

And here is a link to the film we discussed in the episode:

https://youtu.be/XdrVWeXYUog?si=Kvh9ApjSzo90hSaw

Also two of Dwayne's recent appearances on MAKC:
https://www.youtube.com/live/TLue-ZDo04Y?si=vvF7gKK3NOjwOASN

https://www.youtube.com/live/OxQ_EWinHtA?si=ns-6ZXUpyTKC2r-G

To get a jump on the shows a few days early, bonus video episodes every month, deeper dives into text and works with revolutionary content and political art study groups check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Currently we are hosting a asynchronous study group talking about Ariel Dorfman & Armand Mattelart's classic text How to Read Donald Duck. We will going for the rest of the month so join up now!

Also check out my new colaboration The Imperial 80's co-hosted series beginning with Jared Ware of Millenials are Killing Capitalism.

We will be posting the audio recordings of the episode here but make sure to follow the channel if you want to catch the livestreams