Required Reading

‣ In an essay for the Yale Review, inimitable Palestinian-British writer Isabella Hammad reflects on the work of painter and poet Etel Adnan, and what it's like to read her words in the middle of a genocide:

Adnan grew up with Turkish and Greek at home and French at school; her experience of Arabic was more of a visual relationship with the written script than an inhabiting of the tongue. When she started painting at the age of thirty-five after having long been a poet, she said that while she had been writing in French, she would now paint in Arabic. Her bright-hued landscapes, depicted in thick oils applied with a palette knife, often feature a sun over mountains or the sea, invoking Beirut as much as California. Given our unhealthy summer days of unprecedented global heat and increasingly dangerous dryness from Athens to Los Angeles, I think often of Etel’s suns, bald, unshackled by clouds. Source of life and of disaster.

‣ Namwali Serpell has theorized a "new literalism" in mainstream movies, which often feel the need to hit us over the head with The Point. I admittedly do watch reality TV that would certainly qualify as what she calls "pre-digested cultural comfort food," but her analysis points to a deeper issue in film. Read her take in the New Yorker:

I think something else is going on. The point is not to be lifelike or fact-based but familiar and formulaic—in a word, predictable. Artists and audiences sometimes defend this legibility as democratic, a way to reach everyone. It is, in fact, condescending. Forget the degradation of art into content. Content has been demoted to concept. And concept has become a banner ad.

Saying the quiet part out loud has given way to a general loudness. This is as true in our cultural life as it is in our political life, which feels like a badly written finale, so in your face are the Ponzi schemes, Nazi salutes, and tech-bro cant of our latest overlords. That sense of unmistakable catastrophe may be why we keep returning to predigested cultural comfort food.

The critic Anna Kornbluh, author of the 2024 book “Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism,” suggests that our era of “experiential intensity and crisis” has led to an aesthetics of “realness without representation,” which excises “anything that would require time to interpret instead of rapid uptake . . . any confusion or ambiguity.” Kornbluh’s examples from art and pop culture, such as the film “Uncut Gems” and auto-fictional novels, all betray this removal of mediation.

‣ Prying open a loosely related can of worms, Pitchfork’s Kieran Press-Reynolds dives into the strange rabbit hole of experimental ASMR, much of which seems to explicitly cater to our burnt-out brains:

In terms of pure spectacle, barely anyone can compete with ATMOSPHERE. She’s developed an entire “Atmosverse” of lore around Medieval and Gothic worlds, with a roster of fictional characters including us, the viewers, playing a protagonist called the Sleepwalker. The channel’s solo creator, Anastasia, told me she came to ASMR from a background studying cinematography, psychology, and stage production. She uses Adobe After Effects, Audacity, even Unreal Engine to sculpt intricate sets and constantly shifting background visuals. In “Ladies of the Twilight Theatre,” the 67th video of her ongoing series, you’re whisked around fog-filled courtyards and shadowy hallways, following women who make cryptic warnings about how we’re “burning.”

She speaks about her videos like they’re part of a grander conceptual vision, referencing the theatrical technique à part (when a character speaks directly to the audience, which she sees as analogous to ASMR roleplays) and how she’s fascinated by the divide between realism and symbolism. “The level of immersion that ASMR offers adds an even more personal touch for each viewer—as if they are journeying through this world alongside my characters,” she says. Her predictions about how ASMR will develop as a genre read like wall text for a post-internet exhibition: “I see it as the opening chords of a much larger symphony of the future. It’s only beginning to be explored, along with the science of mirror neurons.” This is ASMR as high art—and Anastasia might be the only director that actually wants you to fall asleep to her films. She believes the next vanguard of experimental ASMRtists will rewire the scene with VR.

‣ ICE's horrifying abduction of Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, a Green Card-holder, has once again exposed universities' capacity and willingness to abet fascism. Lawyer Dima Khalidi writes in the Nation about Columbia's failure to protect Khalil and the clear responsibility facing academic institutions:

Columbia knew Khalil was under threat; just a day before his abduction, Khalil himself had told the university that he feared that “ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home.”

But it’s not just Columbia that is failing its students so thoroughly. My organization, Palestine Legal, has received an avalanche of over 3,500 requests for legal support since October 2023, many from students facing censorship of events, and absurd accusations and sanctions for protests typical of student activism.

Among hundreds of examples, Pomona College’s president suspended our clients without evidence or due process for allegedly occupying a building. George Mason police and administrators subjected students to FBI-led raids of their home because of spray-painted graffiti. University of Chicago police evicted a student from campus housing after arresting them at a demonstration. New York University administrators suspended students simply for being in the library during a peaceful sit-in. Universities have similarly punished faculty through investigations, suspensions, and firings. The stories are endless and harrowing.

As Trump implements ever-harsher crackdowns on Palestine advocates and on higher education as we know it in the US, universities must see that capitulating to his threats will not release them from the administration’s crosshairs. (Columbia has learned that lesson 400 million times over.) Rather, they are surrendering a primary arena for critical inquiry, debate, and resistance to those whose primary agenda is to crush it. The question is: will they reverse course and fight for the rights and freedoms of the students and faculty who make them vibrant, diverse places to imagine and build a just and viable future?

To do the latter, universities must make some fundamental shifts.

‣ A group of Arizona artists collaborated on a mural honoring Emily Pike (San Carlos Apache Tribe), a 14-year-old Native girl whose murder earlier this year sparked outrage and renewed fervor for the ongoing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis. Ashley Holden of ABC15 reports:

Larson, two fellow artists, and the community came together to create the mural.

"I think it overwhelmed me with emotion, anger, sadness," said Larson. "And just me being an artist, I have only one outlet to express that, and that's through art."

Without a plan, Larson dove into the mural while learning about Emily and her tribe. He and his partners worked 16-18 hours to finish the mural.

Hundreds of people stopped by to place their red painted handprints on the tower. Pike’s family also visited the mural.

"Out of the other projects I've done, this is the most powerful one," said Larson. "It showed me, though, that this mural wasn't just a painting. It was a part like medicine, and people there needed that."

‣ Longtime reporter John Harwood writes in Zeteo about the importance of journalists calling Trump what he is:

Donald Trump’s corrupt, chaotic presidency has propelled a long-running journalistic debate: how to accurately characterize the threat he poses to America.

Indeed, my opening paragraph itself provides grist for that debate. Can a fair-minded reporter flatly describe the president as corrupt and a threat to America itself? Are those facts?

Many colleagues I respect would answer “no.” When I interviewed the great newspaper editor Marty Baron a couple of weeks ago, he cautioned that such descriptions allow Trump to discredit journalists as partisans and are best left to opinion pages.

But I say, “Yes.” Calling Trump corrupt and a threat to America are not opinions. They are objective statements of fact.

‣ It's hard not to turn to swearing in a world like this, and studies show it has tangible health benefits. (Sorry, Mom, but it’s true!) Sam Jones explains for the Washington Post:

That association between swearing and increased pain tolerance is not specific to the English language. In 2017, Robertson and Stephens published a study investigating the cross-cultural effect of swearing on pain, comparing Japanese and English speakers. In Japan, Robertson said, swearing is not socially ingrained the way it is in Britain, so she doubted that it would have the same effect.

While doing the cold presser task, native English speakers repeated either the swear “f---” or a control word — “cup” — and native Japanese speakers repeated a Japanese word that means s--- or a control word “kappu,” meaning cup. Regardless of language, swearing was linked with greater pain tolerance. “Which I wasn’t expecting at all, because I was expecting to see that social effect,” Robertson said.

In addition to pain tolerance, swearing has been linked to bolstered social bonds, improved memory, and even an alleviation of the social pain of exclusion or rejection. “Neurologically, the pathways for physical pain and emotional pain are the same,” Robertson said. “So when you have heartbreak, it’s the same neural structures. It’s the same biological blueprint, and that’s why it feels so visceral, because it literally is.”

More recently, swearing has been shown to be linked with an increase in strength. Looking at the impact of swearing on strength was a logical progression, Stephens said, because he and others had shown that swearing while in pain often was associated with increased heart rate, similar to what happens during a “fight or flight” stress response, where your body releases a surge of adrenaline and blood is diverted to your muscles to prepare for action.

‣ Do we actually understand our dogs, or only think we do? Emily Anthes writes for the New York Times about a study investigating this very question:

“When it comes to just perceiving dog emotions, we think we know what’s happening, but we’re actually subconsciously relying on a lot of other factors,” said Holly Molinaro, who is a doctoral student at Arizona State University and the first author of the new paper, which was published on Monday in the journal Anthrozoös.

That bias could mislead owners about their dogs’ well-being, Ms. Molinaro said. People who want to be attentive to their dog’s experiences and emotions need to “take a second or two to actually focus on the dog rather than everything else that’s going on,” she said.

‣ And for the cat lovers among us, some news for you, too — a petition proposing the legalization of those beloved bodega mascots is gaining traction. James Ford reports for PIX11:

Marshmallow, like most other bodega cats, attracts attention, but propels pests. That’s one reason that the city government has largely turned a blind eye to the corner store felines. They’re officially not allowed in businesses that have food on the premises.

That’s where the Bodega Cats of New York petition comes in. It calls for a citywide certification for cats in businesses, and also calls for a $30,000 fund to ensure that cat owners are trained to care for the pets in their businesses.

Back at First on First Deli, Marshmallow’s many fans said that while she’s well taken care of by them, and the owner, Ali, the proposal in the petition makes sense to them.

“I love that,” said Alex Martinesi, a deli customer. “I would sign the petition.”

That petition, however, is not necessarily a guarantee of change. The New York City Council would have to take up this measure, and so far, there are no sponsors. The petition calls on City Council members Tiffany Cabán, Shekar Krishnan, and Julie Menin to introduce legislation, but there’s no indication yet that they will.

‣ Wild that animation is only now figuring out how to render 4c hair:

https://www.tiktok.com/@popculturebrain/video/7480550959064599851

‣ Lions and tigers and performatively reading men in their natural habitat, oh my!:

https://www.tiktok.com/@salamisammy/video/7479895868921924895

Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

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