Culture

I have a lot of time in my life in combination with very few things to do. So what else can I do than indulge in culture. This is a summary of the last months consumption.

DVD

Deadwood Season 1-3

I admit that I have become an HBO junkie. The recent trend for TV series is that the stories has become more grey scaled, suspect characters get the lead roles and there classical black and white narration with heroes and crooks isn't so common any more. Deadwood is no exception from this trend. The story starts off in the mud hole town of Deadwood during an initial phase of gold rush. Through the 36 episodes you can follow the city development from religious, economical and political perspectives. It has been said to be a miniature of wests (or at least US) modern history and development. And indeed it is. This is an excellent drama that on top of the narration also tell us a bit of american history. Some sequences are just brilliant, like the deterioration of the priest in season 1 and climax of episode 12 in season 2. Anyone who want to buy or rent this series should be prepared for extremely coarse language, violence (contain one of the rawest fighting scenes I have ever seen) and don't expect happy endings and justice to be done all the time.

Rome Season 1

This is also a great HBO series and even though I studied political science I was amazed of the many similarities the Romans political system had with our contemporary system. Of course there is dramatized parts mixed with real persons and historical events. I already know that graffiti existed in Rome but I wonder if they really had sponsors for the public announcements?




Band of Brothers

HBO again. I already wrote about this series. Sometimes it just feels god to see some heroes. Good against evil (at least in theory). But also this series make a note that many German soldiers were victims of circumstances and politics. Anyhow, it is a story about classical values of high moral, sacrifice for friends and belief in the good and righteous. Uplifting in some way.

Books

The castle in the forest

Norman mailer has made an attempt to write a novel about how Adolf Hitler become the one he become. Its a highly speculative novel and im not sure where prose and reality mix. He uses the metaphors of God and the devil and humans as something in between who wants to govern the destiny but easily fall prey for power, influence, experimental ideas and so on. I would recommend The naked and the dead by Mailer instead of this one.



The dice man

A cult classic, recommended by Erik W, during the time in Lund, thats who I came across it. Anyhow I happened to run into it during my vacation in Philippines and I just read at the beach. Its a story about a psychiatrist who slowly let the dices govern his life in more an more random ways. I guess, when it was written during the 70's, it was also a comment or critique of psychiatry of a similar type as the one in "One flew over cocos nest" (Gokboet in swedish). Anyhow, a quiet funny book



The collapse of globalism

I have been an advocate for globalism for some time but this book made me rethink a lot of earlier assumptions. It has at least enlightened me about the far stretched agenda of neo-liberal politics. To me, naively enough, it was something that took off after the fall of communism. This, it seem, is quite wrong and there has been an intense lobbying already from the 60's until today. One might also feel skeptic about the fact that neo-liberal forces has contributed enormous amounts to "free market research". This resulted in extreme imbalance between different schools of thought in economics and if you wanted to advance your academical career and have fundings this was the stream you should join. Anyhow, I don't agree with everything in this book, I still believe (or at least hope for) a global community. But looking at the politics of today an the rise of China as an economical superpower besides US I kind of feel less prone to believe there will be more democracy and strengthened bonds between nations.

Comics

DMZ

A series about a future US in civil war where NYC is in between war zones, the journalist Matty end up there and is pulled into different adventures and dramas. Its a good comic but tends to be uber trendy in between, most of the main characters are young vegans-alternative-lifestyle-people that sometimes border to cliche. None the less, NYT and other reviewers celebrate this comic as the best for a very long time. Check it out for yourself if you like.



Hope you are all doing well back home. Time to go home. Hans