june's media garden
Happy almost July! As the month winds down, I realized I haven’t done a media garden in a while. So I thought I would revisit my humble beginnings on here and share some of the media I’ve been reading, watching, and thinking about recently. I despise the heat, but it’s given me the perfect excuse to stay inside and catch up on all the articles, films, and video essays I’ve been meaning to get to!
“She knows that those two people, perhaps briefly alive in the sky, have died, that Israel is bombing an already annihilated place, and that eventually those bombs may come for them all.”
I know we can assume the kind of horrors that have unfolded in Palestine since October 7th. But seeing them all systematically laid out, with exact dates and victims victims, is nothing I could have imagined. I feel with recent escalations between Iran, Israel, and the U.S., the world has turned its attention away from Gaza. But Israel’s assault on Palestine has not stopped. Some of the deadliest attacks I’ve read in the news recently were reported at aid distribution sites. These are locations where people gather in desperation to food and water to feed their families, only to be gunned down. I can’t think of anything more inhumane than using the promise of aid as a trap for execution.
This is not and has never been a conflict between Jews and Muslims. This is a battle of humanity and something far more evil. I don’t use the word ‘evil’ lightly, but the actions occurring in Gaza can be described as nothing less. I urge you to read this report to truly understand the scope of the genocide that has been carried out.
“Charlie flipped off the amiable switch. ‘If you just want happy talk, that’s fine.’ Erika smiled politely to the crowd.”
There is truly an entire world out there that so many of us do not even realize exists. Again, we can make assumptions about the kinds of things they might talk about in these conservative, right-wing spaces. But I never realized just how much power these people have over young women. I had seen the clip of Charlie Kirk telling a 14-year-old girl that she should give up her dream of pursuing political journalism and aim for a ‘MRS degree’ instead. But Madeline Peltz adds new depth to the moment by actually talking to the young women in these spaces about what they feel. The girls in the crowd seemed genuinely sweet and curious, while the events speakers acted like bullies desperate to suppress them and their individuality.
“To be constantly looking for inspiration everywhere, to look beyond your own medium, or place and time, to never lose your hunger for new ideas.”
I few months ago, I read a New Yorker article on a copyright lawsuit between a romantasy series author, Tracy Wolff, and an unpublished writer, Lynne Freeman. Freeman claimed that her agent, which she shares with Wolff, gave Wolff access to her unpublished novel’s manuscript to use as inspiration for her own series. But it was difficult for Freeman to confidently prove that the basic romantasy “tropes” used in both novels were copied. Both authors were using brooding vampires, magical academies and fated mates. If Wolff had stolen those ideas, then Freeman would have also been implicated for “stealing” them from the endless canon of romantasy that came before her.
Originality, I think, is less about owning an idea and more about where you look for them. Instead of drawing inspiration from writers who are doing the same as you, trace their inspirations, and the ones before that. Bowie didn’t get sued for borrowing from glam rock or drag, because he transformed those influences into his own. There’s still space for inspiration in our world today, we just have to approach it with more intention.
![😭] Where's the Love for The Shrouds (2024)? : r/cineplex](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!svCu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F020cc361-4232-41dd-b1f9-3a1834b7595f_4624x2604.jpeg "😭] Where's the Love for The Shrouds (2024)? : r/cineplex")
“When they lowered my wife into the coffin, I had an intense urge to get into the box with her.”
My first dip into the Cronenberg pond was Videodrome a few years ago. I had become used to Lynchian strangeness, but Cronenberg brand of weird was something else entirely. His clinical, bodily approach to film has set the bar high for me whenever he writes or directs. Which is why The Shrouds was a bit hard to place for me.
The film follows a widower who invents a high-tech burial shroud that lets mourners view the decaying bodies of their loved ones. It’s a sleek, eerie meditation on death and memory as strange (and hard to follow) conspiracies unfold.
I will say: this isn’t Cronenberg’s best. The dialogue feels stilted and overly theatrical at times, delivered with lack of emotion that seems he was trying too hard to make it philosophical. The portrayal of the widower’s dead wife verges on exploitative, treating her as more of a vessel for male grief than a character in her own right. Yet, The Shrouds is one of Cronenberg’s most conceptually unique films in years. It’s a flawed film, even a frustrating one at times, but you can’t help but keep thinking about it after it’s done.
“States were slowly suffocating prisoners to death, and they didn’t have a clue.”
I had no idea that, in the modern year of 2025, firing squads were still an option for executions in the U.S. Like many people, I assumed lethal injection had long replaced the more archaic and brutal methods. We’ve been taught to believe that lethal injection was the most “humane” way for states to murder people.
But it is that exact framing that’s the issue. The problem isn’t only that lethal injection can fail or be excruciatingly painful for the victim, but that its failure is built into the system and then obscured by it. Focusing on how we kill, rather than whether we should even be kill ing at all, creates a dangerous justification. If machinery ran smoother or if the drugs were made cleaner, then the killing might become acceptable. It forgets that the death penalty in the U.S. has always functioned as a tool of racial domination and institutional vengeance. When we separate the method from the motive, we risk sanitizing violence and allowing brutality in the name of regulation.
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