Culture Is Ordinary.
All of the articles we have published under the tag Culture Is Ordinary, beginning with the most recent.
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“We Need Them More than They Need Us”
Three years on from the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United, the promised investment in the city has failed to materialise. How was this allowed to happen?
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Affirmations: If I Should Fall from Grace with God
Beneath the veneer of boozy masculinity, beyond the jokes and the sentiment, the Pogues are a strange and haunted band, irreducibly wild and uncategorisable.
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We’ll Be Alright
In Weathering With You, Makoto Shinkai asks: in the context of climate catastrophe, what happens when choosing life conflicts with preserving the kind of world which sustains life?
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Communists in Space
The story of Horley's only Communist councillor shows how even the most ostensibly middle-class places can benefit from socialism – and that it’s worth making that case, however lonely or absurd it can seem.
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More than Meets the Eye
“The excitement I feel looking at the 1960s architecture of Kenzo Tange is rooted in the excitement I felt as a six-year-old boy looking at the animated Autobot City.”
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Public Toilets and Public Luxury
In Britain, toilets have always been a flashpoint for debates about who ‘belongs’ in public space. The Tōkyō Toilet Project shows us how toilets can instead transform and expand public space.
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The Anti-Utopia of an Epoch without Utopia
New Order - a socio-political art thriller from Mexican director Michel Franco, fêted with the Grand Jury Prize at 2020’s Venice Film Festival - is much less radical than it thinks it is.
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Arts and the Logics of Survival
Arts funding in Britain places institutions in a constant position of precarity, with survival never guaranteed. This has particularly grim impacts on workers in the sector from musicians to office staff.
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Allegorical Fragments: The Legacy of Víctor Jara on James Dean Bradfield’s ‘Even in Exile’
James Dean Bradfield's embrace of allegory in 'Even in Exile' represents the violence of the destruction of Chilean socialism, whilst also fanning a spark of hope.
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‘Children of the Revolution’: Glam Rock and the 70s
Glam, in all its queer, communal, proletarian glory, is the soundtrack to a militant 70s that we must reclaim for the left.
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Looking Back on Culture for Labour
If the last year and a half has shown us anything, it’s that conditions of artistic production are shaped by politics. It is only by remaining involved with politics that we, as artists, can hope to change them.
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The Cleaner as Critic
Have you heard the one about the cleaner who destroyed a work of art? How do these jokes relate to the "improving" function of museums, and to anxieties about the materiality of art?
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The Cultural Logic of the 'Money Saving Expert'
Martin Lewis offers sometimes useful advice—but his interpellation of viewers as consumers, vulnerable to exploitation through a lack of knowledge, dissipates potential for collective action.
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Affirmations: Les Misérables
The musical Les Mis often serves as a shorthand for suburban ghastliness and conservatism, yet its most obvious signifiers relate to a doomed popular uprising. How to reconcile this?
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Matthew Le Tissier and the Cosmic Right
The former Southampton number seven has repeatedly disgraced himself with a series of public pronouncements. How does this connect with the way he played football?
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Call of Duty: Psy Ops
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War ideologically attempts to present "the unholy trinity" of violent repression carried out by the US in Central America as both exciting and necessary.
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The Culture Is Ordinary Interview: Billy Lunn
Jude Wanga discusses class, growing up in Hertfordshire, Petrarch, breaking America, Britney and more with the lead singer of the Subways.
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Don't Blame Footballers for the Government's Failures
The macro failings of the state, the shortcomings of institutional society and the bigotries of the populace crystallise in the way footballers have been treated during the pandemic.
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Black Lives Matter and Football's Racism Problem
Pressure from Black footballers as workers forced a significant symbolic shift in the acknowledgment of racism. However, there remains much to do in a wider context that is becoming ever more embittered.
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How Tearing Down Art Built Britain
Iconoclasm has played a crucial role British history (and in the struggle against the British and its history). Colston is only the latest instance.
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Other People's Songs: Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour, and evolution through derivation
The Coronavirus outbreak may have sidelined Dylan as a touring musician, but it has also seen the release of his first new work as a songwriter since 2012, “Murder Most Foul”.
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A23 Travelogue, Part One: Roger Parsnip
Searching for homo-authenticus, discussing immigration, Orwell, and gentrification.