No matter how “beloved” Apu may be, it’s time for him to go. While I appreciate The Simpsons’ place as iconic in the canons of American pop culture, I have never been a fan. My long list of complaints about The Simpsons includes its sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, extreme violence, child abuse and more. But one...
Author: Sezin Koehler (Sezín Koehler)
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“Stranger Things 2” is a Working Example of Allyship
In spite of this being a terrifying monster story and a cautionary tale about messing with the very fabric of our time and space, Stranger Things 2 was far more life-affirming and by the end worlds less bleak than its predecessor. When Stranger Things was the breakout Netflix hit of 2016 it was with a...
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The Anti-Indigenous and Anti-Black Roots of the Second Amendment
The Second Amendment is fundamental to the roots of white settler violence in their genocide project against Native populations, as well as to control, and ultimately eliminate freed Black people in America. With every new mass shooting in America, the resounding question of why this keeps happening gets louder but never resolved. People abroad cannot...
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How Environmental Racism Affects Indigenous Communities in the USA
Environmental racism in the case of Indigenous Americans must be acknowledged as an insidious form of genocide. Environmental racism is a term that first began its use in the environmental justice movements of the 1970s and 1980s, primarily to address concerns about black communities being negatively affected by the US government’s social policies. As the...
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The Sexism and Whitewashing in ‘IT’ is More Disturbing Than Pennywise
We can add IT to the growing list of 2017’s massive creative let-downs. [Spoiler alerts for the new IT adaptation.] The long-anticipated and much-hyped adaptation of Stephen King’s monster opus IT opened yesterday with a lucky September 7 at 7 showing. Since my corner of Florida is in Hurricane Irma’s devastating path and the other...
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The Unavoidable Whiteness of the New ‘Twin Peaks’
I could no longer ignore a glaring fact about Lynch’s new Twin Peaks: It is fueled by troubling cultural appropriation. I’ve been a serious and passionate Twin Peaks fan since the 1990s. I’ve written a weekly column on a popular fan site since before The Return. I founded my own Facebook Bookhouse of old-timers that...
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A Primer on the Prison Industrial Complex in America
The prison industrial complex is indeed modern-day American slavery. And under Trump, it is only getting worse. At the confluence of capitalism, racism, and mass-scale sadism we find what is known as the prison industrial complex, a complicated socio-cultural system that keeps America’s prisons full and predominantly with inmates of color. The term prison industrial...
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We Need To Talk About Racism In The Tattoo Industry
Tattoos were invented by brown and Black people centuries—even millennia—before white supremacy became the dominant global paradigm. You’ve taken the time, done your research, and decided on your tattoo. You’ve saved up money and investigated tattoo shops for the perfect artist to mark your design. You’re excited, nervous, and eager to get started. But the...
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What Would Impeaching Trump Look Like?
Impeaching Trump could actually set off a stream of unmanageable events. Every single day we find ourselves ever deeper down the white nationalist rabbit hole represented by Donald Trump’s regime. I thought that the deadly Nazi rally in Charlottesville would have been the upturn point where we began digging ourselves out of the shit, instead...
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“The Dark Tower” is the Perfect Movie for Our Current Times
The Dark Tower is easily the largest step I’ve ever seen in a fantasy sci-fi film towards equitable representation on screen — other than the new Star Wars installments. *This is a spoiler-free review.* The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. Based on Stephen King’s epic spaghetti-western-inspired fantasy series about...