“Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story”
Celebrate Martin Luther King Day with a 1958 comic about him and the Civil Rights Movement that inspired John Lewis. Read “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story” here.
Banned in the District: New Bad Brains
Local news in Washington, D. C. has a story about newly uncovered music from seminal punk band, Bad Brains. The story includes brief interviews and footage of Bad Brains performing. Watch here.
“Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to be Racist”
Adam Serwer has shared a gift link to his fantastic piece on the history of Dungeons & Dragons, the history of “fantasy racism,” and the interplay between fantasy racism and “scientific racism.” “D&D was the original role-playing game, a structure that has influenced every kind of genre fiction […]
Sabine Baring-Gould’s Book of Were-Wolves (1865)
The Public Domain Review considers Sabine Baring-Gould’s 1865 Book of Were-Wolves. “Lycanthropes go by many names, writes Sabine Baring-Gould in his ‘account of a terrible superstition,’ and ‘half the world believes, or believed, in were-wolves.’ In France’s Périgord, those born out of wedlock are known to transform into […]
American Hysteria: “Bloody Mary”
On American Hysteria Podcast. Chelsey Weber-Smith considers the history of “Bloody Mary.” “Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…For our Halloween special, we are going to trace the history of the slumber party ritual known as Bloody Mary in which a young summoner stands in the dark in front of a […]
Exhuma: Demons of the Past
The past is very present in writer/director Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma (South Korea, 2024). There is familial and imperial history reaching back to World War II and even further. And if there are not precisely demons in the film, well, there are things that are close enough.
The Cultural Gutter 