The Pop Culture Philosopher

“We All Try”: Philosophical Music

May 16, 2019May 16, 2019 Chris SunamiChristian Existential Humanism

Repost from 2015 Hip-hop singer Frank Ocean is well-known to march to the beat of a different drummer, and nowhere is that more apparent than in We All Try, a lovely and plaintive existential humanist[…]

"Called A Home" by Dr. Kyo Koike

Wokepedia – Seattle Camera Club

May 2, 2019 Chris SunamiArt

This week’s Wokepedia project was near and dear to my heart. The Seattle Camera Club was a groundbreaking, interracial, gender-inclusive group of mostly Japanese-American photographers pioneering photography as fine art around the start of the[…]

ConnectArt in Cuba

April 25, 2019April 20, 2019 Chris SunamiArt

Last week I was blessed to have an amazing opportunity I had never even dreamt of –to travel to Cuba. My wife was being featured as a part of a group of Columbus area artists[…]

Image: "Swamp Patrol" by Roger Blum

A Statistic of One

April 18, 2019March 30, 2019 Chris SunamiPoetry

This is a repost of a powerful poem by my late uncle John Gilmore, who was a US Marine in Vietnam, a substance-abuse counselor in civilian life, and a gifted poet in both realms. A[…]

Image by Janet McKenzie

Christian Humanism – Is it a Contradiction?

April 11, 2019March 30, 2019 Chris SunamiChristianity

This is the text of an address I delivered in 2007 to The Ohio State University “Students for Freethought” student organization on the topic “Christian Humanism: Is it a Contradiction?” Good evening. I am here[…]

Long Division

April 4, 2019March 30, 2019 Chris SunamiLiterature

I first encountered author Kiese Laymon when I read his essay “You are the Second Person,” an unapologetically bridge-burning reckoning of his encounter with a assimilationist editor who tried to deracinate his work. What stuck[…]

Image by Nishant Goswami

Pirates of the Caribbean II: Dead Man’s Chest

March 28, 2019March 29, 2019 Chris SunamiCompetition

The second Pirates movie was an entertaining romp, with some great action sequences, featuring the always-compelling Johnny Depp. However, the film also featured a disturbing racial subtext.   Most blatantly, the film trafficked in broad racial[…]

Little Miss Sunshine

March 21, 2019March 13, 2019 Chris SunamiUncategorized

It is less accurate to say that this laugh-out-loud indie hit advanced a recognizable philosophical thesis of its own than to say that it delivered a big, fat, much-needed slap in the face to the[…]

Image by Nthinila "Conz" Phumaphi

The Incredibles

March 14, 2019March 13, 2019 Chris SunamiAnimation

In honor of the recent release of Incredibles 2, a repost of my look at the philosophical implications of the original movie. While I found it impossible not to like and enjoy Brad Bird’s animated[…]