Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Masha Gessen @ NewYorker.com, July 15, 4:45 pm
On Sunday, in the fifty-second minute of the final game of the World Cup, four women dressed in Russian-police uniforms charged the field, briefly disrupting the match. They were members of the Russian protest-art group Pussy Riot.
Pussy Riot is often misidentified as a punk group, which is, in fact, only one of its many guises. The group, which was founded in 2011, is an open-membership collective that stages actions, documents them on video, and provides textual statements intended as clear and accessible explanations of their intentions and demands. [....]
Pussy Riot released a statement, on Twitter, that claimed responsibility for the World Cup action. It also cited the Russian poet, artist, and performer Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov. Tomorrow will mark eleven years since his death. One of Prigov’s iconic creations, present in his poetry and performances, was the image of an ideal policeman, a just and ultimate authority that Pussy Riot’s statement dubbed the Heavenly Policeman. In contrast to the Heavenly Policeman, the statement suggested, stands the earthly policeman. “The Heavenly Policeman will protect a baby in her sleep, while the earthly policeman persecutes political prisoners and jails people for sharing and liking posts on social media.” (I am providing my own translation from the Russian original.)
The message is not intended to be subtle. In Putin’s Russia, dozens of people are behind bars for political crimes—which do in fact include social-media behavior such as “liking” and “sharing.” Unlike the 2014 Olympics, in Sochi, where Pussy Riot also protested, the World Cup has occasioned little criticism or reflection from Western politicians or media. It has proceeded undisturbed [....]