American Transmedia and Entertainment Catholicism

In October 2015, following the passage of an anti-communism law in Ukraine, a Vladimir Lenin statue turned into Star Wars’ Darth Vader overnight. De-communist measures have long been synonymous with America’s pop culture missionary work. This image was a reminder that the aggressive-style political realism practiced by the Putins of the world has been outstripped…

The Curses and Blessings of Privileged Observers

On January ninth, influential sociologist-philosopher Zygmunt Bauman passed away at the age of ninety-one. A central theme Bauman taught over the decades is that we should work hard to resist the tenets and dogmas of seclusion, loneliness, or independence of modern selves. Our Individual personal worth is, Bauman contended, so much more complex, interdependent, and…

Monstrous Moderns Without an Alibi

Scientists announced on January 26th, the first successful human-animal hybrid. It is yet another confirmation that modern monstrousness has been unleashed. We are well into the epoch of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. To be modern increasingly means to live within the blurred lines of the acceptable and unacceptable. Revealed in the new sapiens-pig species is that…