The Blues Brothers Is a Wild Ride Through 1970s Chicago
The Blues Brothers is still a rollicking good time more than 40 years later, offering an exuberant look at 1970s Chicago in all its rough, working-class charm.
10 Articles by: Leonard Pierce
Leonard Pierce is a Chicago-based writer and editor. He is an organizer with the Democratic Socialists of America and studies the intersection of working-class politics and twentieth-century American culture.
While You Were Sleeping Is a Delightful Holiday Rom-Com About a Union Transit Worker
The 1995 Christmas rom-com While You Were Sleeping stars Sandra Bullock as a union transit worker in Chicago. Over 25 years later, it’s still a delightful working-class holiday watch.
Harold Washington’s Legacy Still Hangs Over Chicago
A new documentary shows how Mayor Harold Washington upended politics as usual in 1980s Chicago. What goes unsaid is how quickly Washington’s legacy was undone after his untimely death.
The Killing Floor Is a Crucial Work of Art About American Labor
Few films capture the difficulties of interracial working-class organizing as well as the 1984 movie The Killing Floor, a drama about black slaughterhouse workers attempting to build a union with white ethnic coworkers in Chicago’s World War I–era stockyards.
Capitalists Are Bad at Weed Legalization
Capitalist society can only ever legalize cannabis in a way that benefits the already wealthy. Why not put the newly legal weed industry in the hands of the public and away from the profit motive?
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America Stands the Test of Time
Looking for something other than sappy Christmas movies to watch over the holidays? There is no greater and more prescient skewering of the absurdity of the American national security state than Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.
Dungeons & Dragons Is a Case Study in How Capitalism Kills Art
The story of Dungeons & Dragons isn’t just about nerds creating a wildly popular game and then losing control of it. It’s also about how the dictates of the free market inevitably end up stripping even our leisure activities of joy.
Candyman Wrings Terror Out of the Horror of Gentrification
At a time of widespread urban gentrification, Candyman suggests that the ghosts of the displaced won’t disappear so easily.
We Need a Shark Tank Without the Sharks
The entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank is saturated with the absurdity of twenty-first-century capitalism. But watching it, you can’t help but think about how its basic premise — helping ordinary people with extraordinary ideas implement them on a wide scale — could be carried out under socialism.
The Working-Class Cinematic Legacy of Film Noir
In the stiflingly reactionary cultural atmosphere of postwar America, most filmmakers didn’t talk much about class. But there was one significant exception: film noir was the most class-conscious genre of motion picture America has ever produced.