Celebrities act as a symbol of capitalism. When we question it, we question them too.
cultural criticism
Critics: Endgame
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
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
Golden Age antiheroes and the nasty women who humanized them.
The Paths of Rhythm
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
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
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?
Maybe Woody Allen’s romantic comedies weren’t terribly romantic after all.
Unlearning Woody Allen
An essay of cultural criticism in which David Klion breaks down Woody Allen’s influence on the culture, romantic comedies, and Klion himself, and realizes the premises and attitudes in movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan aren’t so romantic after all.
