After spending five years in a maximum-security prison outside Havana, Cuban dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has been released and sent into exile in Miami. He is free now, but there is little reason for celebration. The US continues to squeeze the island, pushing its people deeper into despair, while justice remains in short supply on both sides.
At the same time, Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of The Odyssey is drawing plenty of attention, so we asked a certified Homerist to weigh in. Joel P. Christensen of CUNY Graduate Center is not entirely convinced by what he saw. “As a spectacle, the movie is a fantastic success,” he writes. “As a reflection of us, it fails.”
We then turn to a more sensitive matter: the late David Hockney’s iPad paintings. The tablet did allow him to keep making art in his later years, but does that mean we are obliged to praise the results if they do not move us? Our London critic Olivia McEwan says no.
Also in this issue: the political meaning behind a giant wiener in Times Square, the short-spined raccoon that won over misfits everywhere, and the fierce backlash surrounding a Hollywood star’s earrings. Thanks for reading. I think I’ll go see The Odyssey this weekend.
—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief
