The Popular Front: An “Alternative Year in Review” of 2016 Pop Culture
Photo by Geoffrey Gallaway 2016 was quite the year. As the calendar winds down, some people are talking about 2016 as one of the worst years in human history, or…
Sean Carleton
Clear the Way for the Prophets of Rage
When a friend first told me that members of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, and Cypress Hill were joining forces to “Make America Rage Again” with a musical “super…
Decolonizing Cottage Country: Anishinaabe Art Intervenes in Canada’s Wild Rice War
Photo by Sean Carleton A battle is raging between cottagers and Mississauga Anishinaabe over the harvesting of wild rice (minomiin, manomin, or manoomin) on Pigeon Lake. The conflict, which started…
Conflict, Coercion, and Settler Colonialism in Western Canada
Still from The Pass System The Pass System Alex Williams 2015 Starting in the 1880s, the federal government implemented an illegal pass system to restrict Indigenous peoples in Western Canada…
A is for Activist: Igniting children’s radical imaginations
Image from A is for Activist by Innosanto Nagara, Seven Stories Press (2013) Like probably many other CD readers, I recall growing up with relatively apolitical children’s books. I remember…
Changing the world with comedy
Ryan McMahon In Me Funny, Anishinaabe author and playwright Drew Hayden Taylor argues that humour has always been an integral aspect of indigenous cultures. Moreover, he suggests that in colonial…
The Bloody History of Accumulation by Dispossession
The Revenant Alejandro González Iñárritu 2015 “You all have stolen everything from us. Everything!” – Elk Dog Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant offers an aesthetically exquisite and beautifu...
The Popular Front: An “Alternative Year in Review” of 2015 Pop Culture
Photo by Dennis Hill Most “Year in Review” lists are pretty predictable. Such lists are usually jammed pack with consensus contenders for big industry awards such as the Oscars and…
Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Highway of Tears Matthew Smiley 2014 Sean Carleton is a member of the CD collective and writes The Popular Front column on pop culture. Highway of Tears is an excellent…
Gaming for Equality: Komma Lika Finds a Friendly Way to Raise Awareness at Home
Photo from kommalika.se. Everybody wants the revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes … or the laundry … or the grocery shopping … or take out the trash. Specifically,…
There is Power in a Union: Pride
Directed by Matthew Warchus 2014 Warning: This review contains spoilers. Pride, a film about class struggle and the importance of solidarity set against the backdrop of the 1984-85 British miners’…
The Popular Front: An Alternative “Year in Review” of Pop Culture
Photo by TampAGS Most “Year in Review” lists of popular culture are pretty predictable. Such lists are jam-packed with consensus contenders for big industry awards such as the Oscars and…
On violence and vengeance: Rhymes for Young Ghouls and the horrific history of Canada’s Indian
Rhymes for Young Ghouls Written and directed by Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, Rhymes for Young Ghouls offers an unflinching fictional account of Indigenous agency in the face of the horrors…
Derailing the Status Quo: Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer Written and directed by Joon-ho Bong 2013 Following in the footsteps of recent allegorical and dystopian films such as The Hunger Games and Elysium, Bong Joon-Ho’s summer blockbuster Snowpiercer…
An alternative reading of The Orenda
Amidst much criticism and controversy, Joseph Boyden’s newest novel, The Orenda, was recently crowned winner of the 2014 Canada Reads competition. Boyden’s book, which explores French colonialism and its role…
If I Had a Hammer: David Rovics’ songs of social significance
This column originally appeared in the March-April issue of Canadian Dimension magazine. View this issue here. The Popular Front is a regular column by Sean Carleton, bringing politics to arts…
Evaluating Elysium
Science fiction is frequently at the cutting edge of social commentary. From Ursula Le Guin’s 1974 novel The Dispossessed to Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 film District 9, science fiction writers commonly…
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s…Another Capitalist Superhero
We are currently witnessing a new golden age of the superhero genre. Since the early 2000s Hollywood has produced over fifty high-profile superhero films that have generated billions at the…
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s…Another Capitalist Superhero
We are currently witnessing a new golden age of the superhero genre. Since the early 2000s Hollywood has produced over fifty high-profile superhero films that have generated billions at the…
Stompin’ Tom Connors: An Alternative Appreciation
“Because I believe in my country and because I write and sing about it, many people consider me a hero to Canadians and especially to the working class, but to…