Section
TV
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“Heated Rivalry” Is the “Moby-Dick” of Canadian Gay Hockey Shows
The literary genre of contemporary MM romance realizes an imagined world that Melville was trying to write into being.
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Price-Tag TV and the Transformation of Television Prestige
Apple’s “Price-Tag TV,” to propose a new entrant to the TV name game, is expensive programming about folks who like expensive things, made for viewers who either can’t see or don’t care about the difference between good and expensive.
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Queer Joy Is Earned—and Requires Earnest Care
To view “I Kissed a Girl” as predominantly upbeat is to miss why it’s representation of bad feelings is important.
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Hijabs On the Small Screen Only, Please!
Why is hijabi representation divided between small-screen success and big-screen blunders?
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The Costs of Having It All: On Netflix’s “Dubai Bling”
“Dubai Bling” reveals contemporary shifts in public discourse on feminism and the patriarchal family unit.
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Pre-Recession Bliss, or Ignorance: “Laguna Beach” @ 20
There’s a connection between Laguna Beach’s lush close-ups of LC’s face and its recurrent, luxuriating shots of Orange County mansions.
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Addiction’s Bestiary: “BoJack Horseman” @10
BoJack’s alcohol and drug use are played for laughs as typical vices of a Hollywood has-been… at first.
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Payback: Korean Revenge Dramas Will Do It for You
South Korean media excels at the revenge plot. Here are seven shows you can stream right now to get your fix.
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Name Drop, No Exit
“The Other Two” and a spate of recent comedies claim to mock celebrities while juicing their star power for references and cameos.
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Reboot, Squared
TV can’t reboot its way out of its past errors, any more than an individual can fix their past trauma by reliving it, over and over again.
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And Just Like That… the Viewer Cringes
The show’s white, middle-age, upper-class liberals clumsily realizing their privilege are an accurate mirror of some of its viewers.
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Refreshing the Fresh Prince
The turn toward an aesthetic of Black excellence on TV reveals a mode of self-fashioning that celebrates neoliberal markers of merit and prestige.
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Fixing Nostalgia: “Star Trek” Boldly Goes to Less Utopian Futures
“Picard” is perhaps the least utopian of any “Star Trek” media. But’s that because its political pragmatism shows how to build a better reality.
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The Reboot Will Be Televised
“Star Trek: Picard,” “And Just Like That…,” “Bel-Air,” “Reboot”: even within our age of the reboot, old stories offer new insights.
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“Succession” & Prestige TV’s Fascism Problem
Prestige TV, which has a presumptively liberal audience, churns out a steady diet of illiberal fare. Shows like “Succession” force the viewer to ask why.
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In the Age of Artpocalypse: Beauty and Damage on TV
Whether destroying the Mona Lisa or whole museums, why does contemporary film and TV want us to watch the art world burn?
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Derry Girls and the Absurdity of Adulthood
A work of absurdist art that entertains, but also carries a surprisingly grown-up message about taking responsibility for the state of our politics.
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Long Cons: The Tragicomedy of Prestige TV
Shows like “The White Lotus” distract us with progressive politics, while stealing our eyeballs for the very people the shows lambaste.
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“Better Call Saul”: No Rise, Just Fall
The show explores the phenomenon Lauren Berlant called “cruel optimism,” where “objects you desire are obstacles to your flourishing.”
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Out of the Closet—and into the Coffin
Interview with the Vampire uses vampirism to reveal fantasies & fears of the social contagiousness of interracial & homosexual desires.
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How To Scuttle A Public Broadcaster
On the 100th anniversary of the founding of the BBC, national public broadcasters across the world are still subject to constant spurious attacks.
