Access America

White Robes, Silver Screens: An Interview with Tom Rice

By Maria Moss

Tom Rice is Senior Lec­tur­er in Film Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St Andrews and the author of White Robes, Sil­ver Screens: Movies and the Mak­ing of the Ku Klux Klan (2015). In this book, he exam­ines the inte­gral role of cin­e­ma in the for­ma­tion, devel­op­ment, and demise of the Ku Klux Klan between 1915 and 1944. Through a range of sources – includ­ing Klan news­pa­pers, cen­sor­ship files, and per­son­al papers – the book explores the ways in which the Klan used, pro­duced, and protest­ed against the film indus­try in order to recruit mem­bers, gen­er­ate pub­lic­i­ty, and define itself as a tra­di­tion­al Protes­tant Amer­i­can organization.

The fol­low­ing inter­view took place in Decem­ber 2016 (note the Advent wreath).

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3AGHIHGtM&feature=youtu.be

 

Tune in next week for part 2!

 

Best Books & Fabulous Films

Do you really want to live Forever?

By Kai-Arne Zimny

Pho­to cred­it: Dis­ney / ABC Tele­vi­sion Group

Dr. Hen­ry Mor­gan (Ioan Gruffudd) is British, works as a med­ical exam­in­er for the New York Police Depart­ment, and likes scarves and clas­si­cal music. Oh, he is also immor­tal and utter­ly clue­less why.

Fear not, this is not a spoil­er to the show and not even to its pilot as the first episode begins with Morgan’s words about his “first death” two cen­turies ago. Since then he hasn’t aged a day, main­tain­ing the look of a man in his mid to late thir­ties and has nev­er died. Well, actu­al­ly he has died many times but always came back to life with­in sec­onds and with­out a scratch. Hav­ing pre­sent­ed that brief state­ment about his “con­di­tion” – as he calls it – Dr. Mor­gan assures us that we know as much about it as he him­self does. What fol­lows is the unrav­el­ing of the first clues about a mys­te­ri­ous­ly emerg­ing oppo­nent – dan­ger­ous and unpredictable.

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Best Books & Fabulous Films

The Arrival of the Aliens

By Lynette Kirschner

The lim­its of my language
mean the limits
of my world.

- Lud­wig Wittgenstein

 

Does time only flow in a con­tin­u­um? Does a sen­tence have to con­tain a verb? The answer to the first ques­tion hasn’t been defin­i­tive­ly answered. The answer to the sec­ond one is def­i­nite­ly no. Both play a role in the sci­ence fic­tion movie Arrival, direct­ed by Denis Villeneuve.

For once, the U.S. gov­ern­ment doesn’t bomb first and ask ques­tions lat­er. When aliens arrive, they send the lin­guist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to try to solve the mys­tery of their lan­guage so that peace­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion can take place. This is where my lit­tle geeky lan­guage heart starts to beat faster. Con­cepts such as the Sapir-Whorf hypoth­e­sis (the cor­re­la­tion between lan­guage and world­view), logograms (sym­bols stand­ing for words and not a sin­gle sound), and palin­dromes (words read­ing the same back­wards and for­wards) are used. The movie does an excel­lent job explain­ing these con­cepts so that non-lin­guists under­stand and lin­guists don’t get bored.

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Access America

Don Don’t Take No Mess: Don Cornelius and His Very Own Soul Train Mission

By Sophie Schleimer

 

Pho­to cred­it: Daniel X. O’Neil Soul Train Pho­to Exhi­bi­tion at Expo 72: Don Cornelius

Brown:        Broth­er, who’s backin’ you                       on this?

Cor­nelius:   James, it’s just me.

Brown:        Broth­er, who’re you with on this?

Cor­nelius:   James, it’s just me.

Brown:        Broth­er, who’s real­ly behind                     this?

Cor­nelius:   James, it’s just me.

 

August 1970, late after­noon: Some­thing leg­endary is unfold­ing right before the eyes of just about every black house­hold in Chica­go: “This is Soul Train, the hippest trip in Amer­i­ca, 60 non-stop min­utes over the tracks of your mind into the excit­ing world of Soul!” is heard for the very first time on local tele­vi­sion. The show’s own­er, pro­duc­er, and hippest host in his­to­ry, Mr. Don Cor­nelius, steps on stage and starts a new era in African Amer­i­can his­to­ry. He has no idea his train is head­ing for tele­vi­sion heaven.

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Access America

Voting Rights: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

By Sabrina Völz

Pho­to cred­it: There­sa Thompson

After yet anoth­er elec­tion sea­son with a num­ber of glitch­es, the prob­lems with America’s vot­ing sys­tem have been all over the news once again. Will the fuss die down after a few months like it has in past elec­tions? Some­how I don’t think it will. In recent months, it has become increas­ing­ly evi­dent that some of the same rights that were fought for and won dur­ing the Civ­il Rights Move­ment of the 1950s and ‘60s have come under fire. The move­ment, once con­sid­ered a done deal, has recent­ly gained new urgency.

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Access America

From Ronald to Donald: The Inaugural Speeches of Reagan and Trump

By Jan Gudlowski

By Ronald Rea­gan pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, 1980

“Make Amer­i­ca Great Again.” Again. Despite what the media cov­er­age lead us to fear, the world did not end with the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump as the 45th Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. No can­di­date in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign was as omnipresent in the pub­lic per­cep­tion as Trump. It has been said that the speech Trump gave on Jan­u­ary 20 did not fore­shad­ow a good pres­i­den­cy; it was aggres­sive, sim­ple, and pop­ulist. But is that real­ly some­thing new?

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