A Children’s Song for Our Times

Santa came riding a tank
Riding a tank came he
With cannon guns and beating drums
With soldiers, jeeps and marching feet
Santa came riding a tank
Riding a tank came he
Who brings gifts on a tank?
What gifts do tanks bring?
Ask the children  of Iraq
They know
And now so do we


Jyotsna Kapur teaches in the department of Cinema and Photography, Southern Illinois University. Her book Coining Capital: Movies, Marketing, and the Transformation of Childhood was published by Rutgers University Press this year. Her research and teaching interests are documentary and ethnographic film, the Japanese and German New Wave, postmodernity and globalization of media industry, and critical theory based on Marxism, socialist-feminism, and race.

Mike Covell, a filmmaker, teaches film production in the Department of Cinema and Photography, Southern Illinois University. His most recent work includes several Newsreels on the contemporary political situation that have been aired on Free Speech Television.