Quarantine Brain: How ‘the Internet Became More Internet’ in 2020 By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Nothing made sense in 2020 — unless you were on the internet.
Longreads Best of 2020: Arts and Culture By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Feature Our top editors’ picks in arts and culture writing this year.
Lindy West is Preaching to the Choir By Sara Fredman Feature Sara Fredman talks to author Lindy West on women and likability, the evolution of pop culture, and navigating conversations in a complex, messy world.
Searching for The Sundays By David Obuchowski Feature When music writers are also music fans, they can walk a line between appreciative and intrusive.
Falling Stars: On Taking Down Our Celebrity Icons By Soraya Roberts Feature Celebrities act as a symbol of capitalism. When we question it, we question them too.
Critics: Endgame By Soraya Roberts Feature If there’s no earth, there’s no art. How do you engage in cultural criticism at the end of the world?
On Flooding: Drowning the Culture in Sameness By Soraya Roberts Feature Flooding (v.): Unleashing a mass torrent of the same stories by the same storytellers at the same time, making it almost impossible for anyone but the same select few to rise to the surface.
The Blaming of the Shrew By Sara Fredman Feature Golden Age antiheroes and the nasty women who humanized them.
The Paths of Rhythm By Longreads Feature A Tribe Called Quest’s pioneering music is one of many filaments that connects Americans of color with each other now and back through time.
‘It Happened to My Father the Way It Happened’: The Truth About Green Book By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight At Vanity Fair, film critic K. Austin Collins explores the shaky “true story” of Green Book, the film by Peter Farrelly starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.
How Black Panther Asks Us to Examine Who We Are To One Another By Rahawa Haile Feature Rahawa Haile considers how, by sliding between the real and unreal, Black Panther frees us to imagine the possibilities — and the limitations — of an Africa that does not yet exist.
Lurve You? Or Loathe You? By Sari Botton Highlight Maybe Woody Allen’s romantic comedies weren’t terribly romantic after all.
