The Wild Reed

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

“One More Destruction of Our Collective Humanity”

The destruction of Gaza is the destruction of the whole world. The Israeli government, with the eager assistance of the United States, is laying the groundwork for for how we respond to genocide and atrocities in the 21st century.

The total and expanding devastation in Gaza is a result of Zionism – the racist colonial movement that led to the establishment of Israel, an apartheid state built on land stolen from massacred and forcibly exiled Palestinians. And just as the Nakba – the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 – set a precedent for the state of Israel to exist on Palestinian land at the expense of Palestinian lives, the destruction of Gaza has helped set the stage for what we as people and governments will continue to allow to be done to other human beings.

Nearly three years of genocide is not carried out in a vaccuum, nor is it inevitable. It is made possible through intentional choices by the U.S. and Israeli governments. And as we continue to struggle against Israeli genocide, we are witnessing the next predictable outcome of permitting this brazen violence – it expands and harms everyone.

The destruction of Gaza is one more destruction of our collective humanity. We are all connected. And we will continue to do everything we can to end this calamity. All of our lives depend on it.

– Jewish Voice for Peace
via social media
September 30, 2026

Tuesday, September 29, 2026

Nazia Kazi on Abdul El-Sayed and the “Unforgivable Rehabilitation” of Kamala Harris

Above: Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and former US Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Detroit -- September 22, 2026. (Photo: David Guralnick/Pool/Getty Images via AFP)

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Nazia Kazi for writing the following piece over at Middle East Eye. Like many people, I was profoundly disappointed and perplexed by Abdul El-Sayed’s decision to not only accept génocidaire Kamala Harris’s endorsement but to also invite her on the campaign trail with him. Kazi’s commentary on this unfortunate turn of events clearly lays out the reasons for why this is simply unacceptable.

Kazi is Professor of Anthropology at Stockton University. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights. Her first book, Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics, is now available in an updated second edition. She is working on her second book, which explores the role of the U.S security state’s involvement in progressive movements in Muslim-majority countries.

_________________

Abdul El-Sayed Helps Launch
the Unforgivable Rehabilitation
of Kamala Harris

By Nazia Kazi

Middle East Eye
September 24, 2026

The Michigan Senate hopeful who backed the 2024 “uncommitted” movement is campaigning with the failed presidential candidate who armed Israel’s genocide in Gaza

On Tuesday, Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed spent the day campaigning across Detroit with former Vice President Kamala Harris.

This decision was a gut-punch to anyone who remembers the role the Biden-Harris administration played in the Gaza genocide, continued seamlessly by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Harris’s trip was reportedly the opening stop of a midterm campaign tour as she weighs a third run at the presidency.

Under the Democrats’ new nominating calendar, Michigan is slated to vote among the first six states in the 2028 presidential primary. Harris, who lost both Michigan and the presidency in 2024, follows Detroit with campaign stops in Georgia and Nevada in the coming weeks. She told the Detroit crowd that “28 won’t matter if we don’t get through 26.”

The El-Sayed-Harris partnership was predictable. In August, immediately after winning his primary, El-Sayed proudly touted Harris’s endorsement on X, echoing her campaign message of lowering prices.

That very week, a mass funeral was held in Gaza for 112 members of two families, recovered from under the rubble. They were killed in 2023 by bombs provided by the Biden-Harris administration.

In 2024, when I attended a Philadelphia rally for Palestine and heard rival chants of “Kid Killer Kamala” and “Holocaust Harris,” you couldn’t have convinced me that a pro-Palestine political hopeful would express anything but scorn for the then-vice president.

Yet El-Sayed, who urged Michigan Democrats to vote uncommitted in 2024 and beat Congresswoman Haley Stevens in a primary that largely centred on U.S. military aid to Israel, is now helping to launch her rehabilitation tour.

Salt in the wound

El-Sayed, who has made clear his embrace of capitalism and condemnation of Palestinian resistance to settler colonialism, has always had the hallmarks of an establishment candidate.

Nevertheless, embracing Harris so soon after his win was, for many, salt in the wound. Harris, at the height of the genocide, told the Democratic National Convention: "I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself."

She refused to condition the flow of U.S. weapons, and her campaign rejected calls for an arms embargo outright – reflecting her longstanding, self-proclaimed “unwavering” support for Israel. She has repeatedly appeared at AIPAC events and posed for photo ops with Israeli leaders.

At the time of the endorsement, Palestinian-American journalist Laila al-Arian questioned on X how one can “run against a genocide and then embrace one of the people who helped carry it out”

Abubaker Abed, a journalist from Gaza, wrote that El-Sayed’s statements since his primary win “have become more abysmal and disgraceful,” calling him “someone who chases power and self-interest” He added: “From garnering génocidaires’ support to writing off efficacious bills to end Israel’s occupation and political clout in the U.S., he is just another microcosm, maybe inferior, of Mamdani”

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for his part, received a call from Harris over the summer. When asked about it and their potential to collaborate, he said that halting U.S. military assistance to Israel is a baseline commitment, but that he “appreciated” Harris’s phone call, adding that those who protested Harris at the DNC need to be able to call the Democratic Party “their home.”

Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah added a pithy “Genocidaires out of politics,” and Talia Jane, who covered the Gaza student movement, responded: “You don’t need people who support and facilitate genocide. You’re just doing image rehab for them.” Professor Shabana Mir added: “She’s irrelevant and you’re trying to resuscitate her. Don’t.”

AIPAC’s millions

Public disruptions of pro-Israel figures have become a social media phenomenon in the U.S.

Harris was interrupted by pro-Palestine protesters at a Detroit campaign rally in August 2024 and infamously retorted, “I’m speaking,” shutting down the disruption. Journalist Sam Husseini, now a Green Party congressional candidate in Maryland, confronted Secretary of State Antony Blinken at his final Biden-era presser, only to be dragged out “like a potted plant” by security.

Senator Bernie Sanders was disrupted at an April 2025 event in Bakersfield, California, for his then-refusal to call Israel’s actions a genocide and for blaming the violence solely on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was in this climate that El-Sayed took to the campaign trail, calling Israel “pretty damn evil,” labelling Netanyahu a war criminal and demanding an end to the U.S.’s unconditional military aid to Israel.

Such views had also entered the mainstream among the Democrats he was courting. In June 2025, Mamdani won New York’s mayoral primary, in a race widely read as a referendum on Gaza, over former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo, the favoured candidate of pro-Israel donors, had joined Netanyahu’s legal defence against the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for war crimes. Polling found that 62 percent of Mamdani’s voters cited his advocacy for Palestinian rights as a reason for backing him.

By August 2025, 77 percent of Democratic voters said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, 75 percent opposed further U.S. military aid, and, for the first time in 24 years of Quinnipiac polling, more U.S. voters sympathised with Palestinians than with Israelis.

AIPAC-linked groups nevertheless spent tens of millions of dollars – more than $60m by El-Sayed’s own count – to defeat him in the primary.

Congresswoman Hillary Scholten said she would not campaign with him so long as he associated with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, a vocal critic of Israel’s genocide whose massive audience El-Sayed had courted throughout the primary. His Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, has openly appealed to Jewish voters over El-Sayed’s sharp criticism of Israel.

“Mature politic”

Since the primary, El-Sayed has made one concession after another, each a retreat from his criticism of Israel and its lobby.

At the state party’s convention in Lansing in late August, he vaguely referred to the money spent against him, but AIPAC, “one of his most frequent targets during the primary,” was “notably absent” from his remarks, CNN reported.

When asked about Piker, he answered: “I don’t want to have a conversation about a Twitch streamer in California. It’s just not a serious conversation”

To Jewish Democrats, he has promised that Michigan can “disagree agreeably on some of those issues having to do with what we do 6,000 miles away.” Ahead of the Harris visit, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who had spoken publicly of Jewish Democrats’ unease with his candidacy, endorsed him: “There is no choice.”

On Tuesday, he told reporters that his disagreements with Harris over Gaza are “clear” but that working together where they agree is “what a mature politics looks like.”

At the roundtable itself, Harris remarked, “I think we are at the point of our new relationship where I can call you Abdul.” El-Sayed replied, “Perfect. For me, it’s going to be Madame Vice President.” “Spineless” responded British-Iraqi rapper and journalist Lowkey.

And when a reporter asked at a Detroit press conference whether campaigning with Harris, after his own support for the uncommitted movement, might backfire with Arab American voters, El-Sayed turned on the questioner:

Is Vice President Harris the same as President Biden? Was Vice President Harris running for president at the time we were uncommitted? Answer the question. . . . You’re asking a question based on false premises, so I’m just getting you to clarify your premise. . . . Thank you. Next question.

Harris herself has answered his question. Asked on the U.S. talk show The View in October 2024 what she would have done differently from Biden, she said: “There is not a thing that comes to mind. . . . I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”

After President Joe Biden dropped out, the uncommitted movement took its demand for an arms embargo directly to Harris as the party’s nominee. She never granted it.

El-Sayed’s response drew swift backlash on social media, with critics deriding the uncommitted movement as a scam and condemning his arrogant dismissal of the contradiction the reporter had raised.

Lesser evils

Americans, taught since grade school that voting enacts change, are desperate to cast a ballot for someone – anyone - on the right side of history. To many, El-Sayed’s stance was invigorating.

Yet one wonders, were his positions ever genuine? Or were they part of a wider trend of politicians of colour running for office to mollify outrage, as Palestinian surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah argued in March:

These reformist characters that come along when the empire needs them to prevent the potential for real revolutionary change will betray you. That’s their job. Because they accept the empire in its widest. And even more dangerous, they will tell you, “We are the boundary of opposition. . . . If you go beyond me, you’ll fall off the edge of the earth.” So, this new generation of reformist . . . politicians of color are now offering the empire to sap up, like blotting paper, the consequences of the genocide and prevent real change.

By allying with Harris, El-Sayed shows contempt for his supporters, many of whom backed him because they viewed him as a counterweight to Zionist influence in politics.

Pro-Palestine voters have experienced this betrayal before. In the 1990s, Barack Obama, then a rising Chicago politician, dined with Edward Said and Ali Abunimah, giants in the American landscape of Palestine advocacy, only to become a stalwart defender of Israeli settler colonialism.

In 2018, then-congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Israel’s shooting of Palestinian protesters in Gaza “a massacre” and declared that “Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.” Three years later, as fellow “Squad” members voted against $1bn in Iron Dome funding for Israel, she voted "present" and wept on the House floor, then apologised for the vote.

By July 2025, deep into a genocide she had for months refused to name, she was voting against an amendment to cut $500m in Iron Dome funding.

More recently, Colorado’s Melat Kiros, who won her primary on a pro-Palestine platform, said in a high-visibility interview that her “greatest concern . . . is that the state of Israel is losing support across the political spectrum” – the implication being that the image of an ethnostate is worth preserving. (After an outcry, she scrambled to walk the remark back.)

Less than two months after his primary win, El-Sayed is already on this path.

His supporters will say that he is still a lesser evil and, though imperfect, vastly superior to his opponents – Stevens in the primary, Rogers in the upcoming general election.

El-Sayed made the same case for Harris. On Morning Joe the Friday before her visit, he recalled endorsing her the moment Biden dropped out in 2024 “because I understood that whether you saw this race from the eyes of a child in Detroit . . . or the eyes of a child in Gaza, that Donald Trump was going to be worse.”

In Detroit, Harris assured voters that it’s “okay to not be in love with a candidate. It’s okay to vote and ask everybody else to vote because this choice is better than that one.”

Yet his fans hardly regard him as a lesser evil. They put El-Sayed in celebratory Instagram reels and poster art, handsome and haloed - hardly a regrettable but necessary alternative to something worse. If lesser-evilists believed their claim, wouldn’t they be reluctant, even grudging, in their support?

These are recycled claims from defenders of an electoral system that Lara Sheehi has called a form of counterinsurgency. Critics like Abed, Al-Arian or Abu Sittah are accused of being “allergic to power,” perhaps, or engaged in “purity politics” – arguments that might be worth considering had they not been trotted out and disproven time and again in prior cycles.

Islamophobic attacks

El-Sayed’s victory has been met with racist attacks. Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, for instance, said that “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic.”

El-Sayed has been dubbed a radical Islamist and a terrorist, and President Trump has taken to calling him by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, reminiscent of the emphasis on President Obama’s Muslim middle name, Hussein - a transparent attempt to Islamicise and, thereby, demonise him.

Such racism draws on a much older American Islamophobia. Muslim Americans are still reeling from the shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego in May, which killed three worshippers, and several mosques have been on the receiving end of threats and vandalism.

This should not interfere with a clear-eyed assessment of ascendant politicians’ positions.

President Obama, for his part, was the victim of extreme anti-Black racism, yet reigned supreme in an era of Black faces in high places. Even right-wingers like Vivek Ramaswamy or Condoleezza Rice have been on the receiving end of racist animosity, which hardly makes them worthy of our support.

One of the dangers of identity politics stripped down, decontextualised, is that anyone who is targeted on the basis of their identity can command a cult of personality.

To be clear: American anti-Muslim racism is fuelled and legitimised by the kind of foreign policy practices that receive full-throated support from the likes of Harris – a fact no amount of hijab-clad Harris staffers or interfaith programming can reverse.

If democracy were ever to mean anything, historian Howard Zinn wrote, it “would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizens’ movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.”

Given the groundswell of “progressive” support for candidates like El-Sayed, one would expect some deference to this principle. Somehow, it is lost on his supporters.

So, what’s next? Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken invited to speak at Students for Justice in Palestine events? His press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wearing a keffiyeh to a mosque fundraiser? Such scenarios may seem beyond the pale, but should they come to pass, one thing is certain: there will be many who defend them in the name of strategy and pragmatism.

Recently, I encountered former Senator Joe Manchin at the Amtrak station. I shouted after him about his support for the elimination of entire bloodlines in Gaza. He walked along as if he hadn’t heard me, and as I lost sight of him, I found myself wishing it had been someone else – Senator Cory Booker, perhaps, or AOC. Manchin, after all, was nothing if not consistent about his positions.

It is much more costly, and revelatory, to direct one’s agitation at the cynics who wish to have it both ways and, increasingly, the amnesiacs who allow them to.

– Nazia Kazi
Middle East Eye
September 24, 2026

_______________________

For the record, I did not support the Uncommitted movement. Instead, in the 2024 presidential race I supported (up until the August “coronation” of Kamala Harris) the “ceasefire (Democratic) candidate,” Marianne Williamson, after which I supported the Green Party ticket of Jill Stein and Butch Ware.

As I noted in May 2024:

It’s important to remember that the sending of “uncommitted” delegates to the convention is dependent on state and party thresholds. In other words, the party still gets to call the shots when it comes to the impact of any kind of write-in campaign.

More significantly, it’s been reported that a DNC spokesperson has said that “any 'uncommitted’ delegate that does get sent to the convention must vote for a candidate that is eligible for the nomination otherwise their vote will count as 'present’.”

In short, an “uncommitted” vote is a vote taken from the sole potentially-eligible “cease fire” candidate, Marianne Williamson.

Monday, September 28, 2026

Summer Gatherings and Outings

It’s in a spirit of deep gratitude that I remember this past summer of 2026 – the summer I became a U.S. citizen – and the many gatherings and outings I shared during it with friends, comrades, and colleagues! . . . Oh, and I didn’t realize until I put this post together, just how much boating I did this summer – thanks to my friends Dave and Deb.

Sunday, September 27, 2026

Hasan Piker Is Taking the Corporatist Democratic Establishment to Task . . . And Its Media Mouthpieces Are Not Happy

Mike Figueredo (right) begins his September 18 Humanist Report segment with the following:

After months of obsessive coverage of Twitch streamer Hasan Piker [above], some [corporate] mainstream news outlets finally decided to invite him on to talk to him directly. The problem, however, is that these interviews were obviously bad faith attempts to bait him into saying something “controversial” to delegitimize the left – and Abdul El-Sayed, specifically. In this video we’ll talk about Hasan’s interviews with Axios and MS NOW and why they were so bad.

Figueredo’s timely and insightful 26-minute video commentary can be viewed in its entirety below. It's followed by an excerpt from an article published earlier today by The New Arab which speaks to Piker's support of non-corporatist Democrats, such as Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed.

Hasan Piker’s following has been large enough that he’s been able to mobilise support for outsider candidates in the Democratic Party. For instance, he’s widely considered to have played a crucial role in Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign.

Several other Democrats from the “democratic socialist” wing of the parties have appeared on his stream in the last year, or have benefited from his fundraising efforts. The most prominent has been Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the Michigan Senate election, who has even had Piker speak at his rallies.

[. . .] A couple of months ago I thought the liberal hysteria at the spectre of Hasan Piker had reached its peak when the U.K. banned him from entering the country due to the “risk [he] may pose to U.K. society.” But since then, the Democratic Party-aligned press in particular seems to have become somewhat obsessed with him.

It’s no exaggeration to say his name is being mentioned practically daily in mainstream coverage, as though he were a major player in U.S. politics.

In the last few weeks, Piker has been condemned as “dangerous, malicious and antisemitic” by Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in Congress. Other Democratic Congress members have chimed in, with one saying Piker has a history of “hateful ideas and antisemitic remarks”, or claiming his rhetoric is “right out of the Nazi playbook.”

This all seems a bit much for a man who’s given lengthy speeches opposing antisemitism, or who recently squeamishly replied, “I’m a little too woke for this,” when Norman Finkelstein said on his stream that he “doesn’t talk to Israelis” after the Gaza genocide.

But of course, we have to directly address the issue here. Although his other leftist opinions may be controversial, the real sticking point against Hasan Piker is his principled and well-articulated opposition to the state of Israel. That’s the central thrust behind all of the attacks on him.

Underlying all of this is the severe anxiety that support for Israel in the United States is deteriorating across the board, but especially with Democratic voters, where it is now a ‘fringe position’. The number of Democratic voters who say they have a positive view of Israel is now 13%, which is lower than the percentage who support banning all abortions.

So how can the party leadership rationalise being so diehard in support of a position the vast majority of their members oppose? Right now, Hasan Piker has become their scapegoat. Similar to how a lot of Americans vastly exaggerate the amount of influence Vladimir Putin has in domestic U.S. politics to avoid dealing with the uncomfortable fact that MAGA is homegrown, the Democratic establishment has convinced themselves that their members’ sharp turn against Israel is not because they’ve had to watch them commit a live-streamed genocide for almost three years; it’s because a witty Twitch streamer bamboozled them into it.

– Daniel Lindley
Excerpted from "Why Hasan Piker Has
Become a Target for U.S. Democrats
The New Arab
September 27, 2026

In conclusion, here is Sabrina (“Sabby”) Salvati’s insightful take on MS NOW’s September 17 interview with Hasan Piker.

Related Off-site Links:
This Is Why the Democratic Establishment Hates Hasan Piker – U.S. Democratic Socialists (September 17, 2026).
That Hasan MS NOW Interview Was Exhausting – Francesca Fiorentini (The Bitchuation Room, September 19, 2026).
Here’s Why MS NOW’s Trainwreck Hasan Piker Interview Was So Bad – Touré (Touré, September 23, 2026).
This Was Embarrassing – FD Streams (September 19, 2026).
Hasan Piker Made Symone Sanders Look Completely Clueless – Why I Hate Politics (September 20, 2026).
Hasan Piker Humiliates Symone Sanders After She Picks the Wrong Fight on Her Own Podcast – My Brother’s Ballot (September 20, 2026).
Hasan Piker Makes Symone Sanders Look Ridiculous – BadHasbara (September 24, 2026).
Van Lathan Calls Out Symone Sanders’ BS in the Hasan Piker Interview – Why I Hate Politics (September 23, 2026).
Hasan Just Cooked These Fools – Vaush (September 19, 2026).
How to Clock Black Liberals – Bunnii Online (September 21, 2026).
MS NOW Hosts Get Clocked by Hasan Piker – Eb&Flow (September 18, 2026).
Black Liberals Only Talk to White leftists for a Reason – FD Streams (September 22, 2026).
Democratic Party Consultants Hate You – CORPOLOBO (September 17, 2026).
Hasan Responds to MS NOW Interview Backlash – HasanAbi Searches (September 21, 2026).
Yes, The U.S. Is the World’s Biggest Terrorist – Kyle Kulinski (Current Affairs, September 22, 2026).
Republicans Try to Shame Hasan Piker with a Near-Naked Pic During Messy Midterm Convention – Kelby Vera (The Huffington Post, September 9, 2026). Hasan Piker Spits Fire on Axios and Clock It After RNC Photo – Not Suitable for Democracy (September 17, 2026).
Hasan Piker Is Upbeat About Abdul El-Sayed – and the Trajectory of the Left-wing Movement – Adam Wren (Politico, August 4, 2026).
Why Is Hasan Piker “Not Conducive to the Public Good”? Because on Gaza, We Punish the Witness, Not the Crime – Arwa Mahdawi (The Guardian, June 4, 2026).

UPDATES: Hasan Piker Rallies Socialist Support at Sage Chapel and Garners National Attention – Mary Caitlin Cronin and Giselle Redmond (The Cornell Daily Sun, September 28, 2026).
Hasan Piker’s University of Texas Visit Causes Chaos as School Tries to Distance Itself from Event – David Zimmermann (Washington Examiner, September 28, 2026).
Why Are These People So Obsessed With Hasan Piker? – The Majority Report (September 28, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Four Political Commentaries Worth Viewing
• Hasan Piker on Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• Hasan Piker in Conversation with Marianne Williamson

Saturday, September 26, 2026

Prairie Grass Ballet

Image: Michael J. Bayly (“Prairie Grass Ballet” (detail) by Owen William Fritts – Hansen Arts Park in Jamestown, North Dakota, 9/26/26).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Ascension
• Photo of the Day – April 17, 2025
• Photo of the Day – July 23, 2024
• Photo of the Day – March 13, 2023
• “Can You See the Lark Ascending?”

Friday, September 25, 2026

Wait Quietly in My Presence

A spiritual resource that many of my Christian patients find particularly meaningful is Sarah Young’s devotional, Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence. It’s a collection of daily reflections written as if Jesus himself is speaking directly to us. They are words of encouragement, comfort, and reassurance based on Jesus’ own words of hope, guidance, and peace found in Scripture.

I share this evening a favorite reading of mine from Jesus Calling, one that is inspired by Colossians 1:16, 1 Kings 19:12, and Psalm 5:3.

__________________

Wait quietly in my Presence while My thoughts form silently in the depths of your being. Do not try to rush this process, because hurry keeps your heart earthbound. I am the Creator of the entire universe, yet I choose to make My humble home in your heart. It is there where you know Me most intimately; it is there where I speak to you in holy whispers. Ask My Spirit to quiet your mind so that you can hear My still small voice within you. I am speaking to you continually: words of Life . . . Peace . . . Love. Tune your heart to receive these messages of abundant blessing. Lay your requests before Me, and wait in expectation.

Thursday, September 24, 2026

Celebrating the Cinematic Callas

Last Wednesday, September 16, was the 49th anniversary of the death of American-born Greek opera singer Maria Callas (1923-1977).

Here at The Wild Reed I commemorate Callas and her artistic legacy with a number of items relating to her brief but memorable foray into the cinematic world via Pier Pablo Pasolini’s 1969 film, Medea.

On my (archived) website Callas as Medea, I describe Pasolini’s film as “a hypnotic cinematic experience and a powerful ideological tale of the clash of two cultures.”

But before we get more into this doozy of a film, here’s a short Opera Wire article by Francisco Salazar about how Callas’ artistry continues to inspire not only those in the world of music but also film, including actress Anne Hathaway.

Anne Hathaway [left] is revealing that for her acclaimed performance in The Odyssey, she took inspiration from Maria Callas.

During the premiere of the film, the actress said, “I thought a lot about Greece and I was thinking about somebody who’s mythic to me in my own life is Maria Callas, and I was just thinking like okay if this film were an opera, Maria Callas would 100 percent play Penelope. How would she play her? And then I just let myself imagine towering emotions and the way Maria Callas could do much with intimate moments, the way she could stand there so still inside of herself and produce the most beautiful sound but then turn around and be so full of fury. So Maria Callas was a huge inspiration for me.”

Hathway portrays Penelope in the new adaptation of The Odyssey and is garnering Oscar buzz for her turn in the film.

Callas was recently portrayed by Angelina Jolie in a biopic titled Maria, for which she received Golden Globe and Oscar nominations.

The famed soprano was of Greek descent and was famously cast as Medea in the 1969 film of the same name by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It marked her only film role.

– Francisco Salazar
“Anne Hathaway Inspired by
Maria Callas for The Odyssey”
Opera Wire
July 23, 2026

As I’ve already mentioned, years ago I created a website, Callas as Medea, dedicated to the “hypnotic cinematic experience” that is Pasolini’s Medea. My tribute contains a number of insightful writings on the film (including Myth and Marx by Peter Bondanella, Medea: Myth and Reason by Stephen Snyder, and Medea: Tropism of a Transplanted Race by Molly Haskell.

I wish I could say that Medea was the beginning of a robust and celebrated film career for Callas. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.

At the time of its release, critical response to Medea was divided, with most reactions focusing on its unconventional narrative structure, visual style, and Callas’s performance in what was to be her only film role. Vincent Canby’s 1971 New York Times’ review noted Callas’s “fascinating” presence in the title role and highlighted the film’s stylized approach to the Euripidean play, while acknowledging its highly symbolic and unconventional treatment of narrative. Retrospective criticism has generally been more favourable, with, for example, The Guardian’s Philip French describing the film as a “Freudian-Marxist-Christian take on the myth” [of Medea, Jason, and the Golden Fleece] and praising its cinematic ambition as “visually astonishing” and calling Callas a “commanding presence.” Writing for the British Film Institute, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas praised Callas’s “diva-esque regality,” and observes that “Medea’s final act of revenge feels less like the fury of a woman scorned, and more like the primal howl of a goddess facing obliteration.”

Following is a mesmerizing video montage of images and music from Medea. It’s followed by a Medea-focused excerpt from my 2016 review of Naomi Greene’s book, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy.

Pasolini lamented the vanishing of humanity’s sense of the epic, the sacred, mediated through “luminous” nature and a deep sense of human experience. It was a vanishing he attributed to the rise of capitalistic culture. Nowhere is this explored and expressed more powerfully then in his 1969 film Medea – wherein the inhabitants of ancient Colchis, including the High Priestess Medea (played by Maria Callas), are depicted as perceiving and responding to the presence of the sacred in their land. The marauding Jason and his companions, however, show no respect for either the land or others’ connection to it. Jason represents Pasolini’s view of the secularized First World – one dominated by logic and wherein acknowledgement of the sacred, of mystery, has no part.

The corruption of Medea, manifested in her willingness to assist Jason in his theft of the sacred relic of the Golden Fleece, symbolizes for Pasolini the all too common fate of indigenous cultures exposed to the conquering, consumerist mentality of the secularized nations of the West. As enticing as the First World nations may appear, Pasolini’s Medea shows that a fatal price is paid for aligning with them. The fate of Medea symbolizes and personalizes this price – “The poor soul has had a reverse conversion,” notes Jason’s mentor, “and [she] has never recovered from it” The people of Colchis have an ominous premonition of this “reverse conversion,” and they accurately connect their sense of dread with the arrival of Jason:

The sky was the boundary of our kingdom
But Jason will come and he will pierce the sky
And bring an end to our kingdom
He will laugh while we cry
For the name of blasphemy is on his lips
And where he passes, all will turn barren
He will bring an end to our kingdom
And the blood shed because of him
Will erase forever the sacred blood of God.
We know the vineyard but not the sea
We know fields of peas and garlic but not the sea
And Jason comes from the sea
He comes from the sea.
We will fall like dead upon the ground
And when we open our eyes again
We will see things forever abandoned by God.

By betraying and abandoning her land and her people, Medea is shown to lose touch with her religious beliefs and thus her connection to the land (“Speak to me Earth! I no longer hear you! Earth, where is your meaning? I touch the earth with my feet but do not recognize it!”). Living in exile as an “archaic woman” in Greece – in “a world that doesn’t believe in anything in which she always believed” – Medea is feared as a foreigner and treated as an outcast. In time – driven to desperation and rage – she commits a horrific act of vengeance.

Greene perceptively reads the character of Medea as a symbol of early religious sensibilities abruptly exposed to, and immersed in, a predominately secular and profane world. Jason represents this “new” world – enticing yet devoid of depth, of the mythic, the epic, the sacred. The film’s ultimate and tragic outcome is a clear indictment of not only the industrialized/secularized First World’s exploitation and oppressive violence of so-called Third World countries, but the responsive violence from those being exploited and oppressed.

– Michael J. Bayly
“The Impossible Desire of Pier Paolo Pasolini”
The Wild Reed
August 15, 2016

Finally, here’s newsreel footage of Callas being interviewed on the set of Medea in 1969. It’s accompanied by an excerpt from Arianna Huffington’s book, Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend.

Before they started shooting, [Pasolini] made some notes and showed them to Maria: “Medea watches Jason, enchanted, lost in him. It is a true and complete love; in this moment it is Jason’s virility that prevails. Medea has lost her dazed manner, like a disoriented animal. Suddenly she finds in love which humanizes her, a substitute for her lost religious sense. In the sensual experience she finds the lost rapport, the sacred identification with reality. So the world, the future, her well-being, the meaning of things, all take shape again suddenly for her. It is with gratitude, like one who feels reborn, that she lets Jason possess her, she in turn possessing in him the regeneration of life.”

Maria recognized the parallels, and through Medea she could relive her own story: the love [she had for Aristotle Onassis] that made her tap into the woman in her and in some sense humanized her, the sensual experience of oneness, the new meaning, the new vitality like a rebirth. And in reliving her story through Medea’s, she could exorcise some of her bitterness [over Onassis’ betrayal]; she could see that it was not, after all, as it had seemed in the dark months that had passed, “nine years of meaningless sacrifice.”

At the beginning of June 1969 this mystic Marxist [Pasolini] and Maria found themselves working together on Medea in a forgotten wild corner of Asia Minor. Göreme, in Turkey, with its rocks carved into weird shapes, was exactly the place Pasolini wanted - a place where it was at times hard to distinguish between myth and reality.

During her last month in Paris [Maria] could hardly get up before midday; in Goreme she was up at dawn. She arrived on the set to be dressed and made up before anyone expected her . . . She was full of humility about her new venture, constantly seeking advice, confirmation, reassurance. “Tell me, is this gesture too grand? Too operatic?”

From Göreme, they went to Aleppo in Syria, and then to Italy, to Pisa, to the lagoons and islands of Grado, to Tor Caldara and Tor Calbona near Rome. And wherever they went, out of rocks and deserts, blanched dunes and beaches, Pasolini re-created a strange, lost world of mystery and magic, a world where ritual, violence and the the supernatural were part of everyday life.

[Maria] was almost obsessively involved with Medea. In one scene, she was being taken in long shot, and had to run frantically barefoot on a dry riverbed. She was wearing a heavy gown with huge ropes of pagan jewels, the sun was beating down and she was running, running until she fainted and collapsed on the mud. Pasolini and the entire crew ran toward her, and as she came back to consciousness her first words were, “Please forgive me! I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t have done that. It’s cost everyone so much time and money.” Maria the professional could not bear to be the one slowing things down.

For the final moments of the film, [Maria] refused the stand-in who was available: “Here,” remembers [costume designer] Piero Tosi, “Maria reached the apex of her performance. Medea must build a great fire, and holding the bodies of her dead sons, perish in the flames while defying their faithless father. It was very dangerous, because she had to stand on a high wooden platform with flames soaring before her.

It was a sacred ritual and Maria, blind as she was, had to hurl herself into the holocaust, or at least seem to do so for the camera’s eye. Three times she acted out the scene, and during the last take she nearly fell right into the inferno. For Maria, it could have been done no other way.

“Didn’t you find it exhausting to have to shoot the same scene many times?” Maria was asked at the end of July, when the shooting had moved to Italy. “No, it’s futility that exhausts me, not work . . . There will be a great void when it’s all over.”

There was a void, but something had happened during these two months of living with Medea and Pasolini that nobody could take away from her. She had reached a deeper understanding of what the last nine years [with Onassis] had meant and a quieter acceptance of the way they had ended.

She had always called herself a fatalist, and often her fatalism implied resignation, a self-destructive giving up on life. But for the moment, the fatalism was of a different kind: an accepting trust that the patterns, large and small, of every aspect of her life, had some definite, however obscure, meaning. Her relationship with Pasolini, who, through both his poetry and his films, had always sought the meaning and connections beneath the surface, encouraged this trust.