Syl Johnson was an American singer known for compositions such as “Is It Because I’m Black” (1969), a musical composition performed and co-written by Johnson.
Tag Archives: United States
RIP George Crumb (1929 – 2022)
George Crumb was an American composer known for such compositions as Black Angels (1971). Black Angels is featured in “Confessions of a Vinyl Junkie” (2003), a list of records by David Bowie published in Vanity Fair.
RIP Peter Bogdanovich (1939 – 2022)
Peter Bogdanovich was an American director and general film person.
To me, he is an integral part of the Roger Corman phenomenenon.
Of all his films, I have the fondest memories of Paper Moon, I remember the beginning of that film vividly.
Above, a documentary by a certain Adam Hulin.
Happy new year from us.
RIP Donald Rumsfeld (1932 – 2021)
Donald Rumsfeld was an American politician.
Normally, I do not cover politics but Rumsfeld, by saying there are “unknown unknowns”, entered the field of philosophy.
And by becoming the subject of the documentary The Unknown Known (2013), he makes a good entry point to the documentaries of Errol Morris.
Donald Rumsfeld famously saying “there are unknown unknowns”.
RIP Larry Flynt (1942 – 2021)
Larry Flynt was the publisher of American pornographic magazine Hustler, founded in 1974 in the slipstream of the sexual revolution.
I show you an interview from 2014.
In the opening splash you see — at the right hand side — the controversial cover of a woman who is fed to a meat grinder.
Flynt was a rebel. Many pornographers were. That’s what used to make pornography so interesting during the early modern period up until the sexual revolution.
RIP Shere Hite (1942 – 2020)
Shere Hite (1942 – 2020) was a American-born German sex educator and feminist. Her sexological work focused primarily on female sexuality.
She is best-known for her book The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976) which is in several ways a successor to Masters and Johnson’s Human Sexual Response (1966) and Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
In this book, she permanently devaluated the coitus in favour of more attention for the clitoris.
She is the last great feminist. Perhaps only equalled by Camille Paglia (born 1947). Nancy Friday (1933 – 2017) is another famous feminist of that generation.