TV

Editor: Sarah Kessler

Past Editor: Liz Maynes-Aminzade

Democracy, More or Less

What future does democracy have? What future should it have? And, moreover, can the problems of democracy be solved within the framework of democratic politics?

Distant TV

If television is giving you something right now, what might it be telling you about what you need?

“Euphoric” Heroes

“I know your generation relied on flowers and fathers’ permission,” says Rue, the protagonist of HBO’s Euphoria, “but it’s 2019, and unless you’re Amish, nudes are the currency of love, so stop shaming ...

Marriage and Other Shams

In the early 1980s, an Indian guru homesteaded a tract of ranchland in rural Oregon, building a utopia equipped to withstand both HIV and American hypocrisy. Armed with free love and even freer ...

Bake, Britannia

Eighteen years ago, in Borneo, Kelly Wiglesworth told a camera crew that she didn’t come to make friends, she came to win. This iconic moment from Survivor defined much of the nearly two decades of reality TV that would follow ...

Dancing Queer Children

Fans of Dance Moms and of RuPaul’s Drag Race alike rejoiced when Netflix debuted Dancing Queen this past fall. As Abby Lee Miller—the Dance Moms teacher and queen of my heart—frequently and ...

Masculinity on the Mat

From Ready Player One to Roseanne, popular culture in 2018 might be looked back on as “problematic,” to use a polite academic term, in its attempts to bottle and sell 1980s nostalgia. Conservative in both form and content ...