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.
Tag: Gender
“Gestures of Refusal”: A Conversation with Sarah Bernstein and Daisy Lafarge
“Why do we want our characters to be innocent, as if we are innocent ourselves?”
“An Extraordinarily Metal Way to Be”: Authorship and Medieval Women
Maybe we have something to learn from their proclivity for the irreconcilable, unruly, and open-ended.
B-Sides: Daphne Du Maurier, “Monte Verità”
Few writers have been as beloved by readers and underrated by reviewers as Daphne du Maurier. What irked them?
“If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It”: Ander Monson on “Predator” and the Monster of American Masculinity
“I see actual male friendship, in a way that I don't in almost any other action movie from the 80s.”
We Have This-ness Y’all! Ocean Vuong and Amy E. Elkins
“If you’re going to write in a worthwhile way about something, you have to really understand why you care.”
Reading “Lote”
Shola von Reinhold’s novel is central to any reckoning with the politics of the archive, not to mention contemporary literature itself.
Queer Lives Are Not Side Quests
If you play a videogame and you avoided or never met a particular queer character, did they exist in the game for you?
Passion. Mess. Genius. Mother.
Pamela Adlon reveals the mundane project of motherhood to be vast, fluid, and fascinating in its own right.
“Love and Beauty Their Prison”: Talking with Carolyn Dever on Michael Field
“The diary has challenged every category of literary analysis for me.”
Trans Women and Children on TV
The family as we know it today functions to further isolate trans children from trans women and vice versa. Thank goodness for TV.
Unreal Realism: Chicago’s Avant-Garde Women
Chicago—for women artists of various backgrounds—demanded a new art to advance the struggle for freedom by imagining other possible worlds.
“Cheerfully Monstrous”: Dodie Bellamy on Writing and Grieving
“I didn’t pay much attention to what was being put in the archives… there are letters that, if I had been paying attention, wouldn’t be there.”
Toxic Masculinity, Spectral Homosexuality
The secret of the Western—as Jane Campion’s “Power of the Dog” shows—is that its mythology nurtures a queer fantasy, hiding in plain sight.
Ahmed’s Good Grief
Institutions separate complainers from one another and from their own support networks. But what if we complained as a collective?
“Everything Possible with Everything Given”
There are so many utopias. Could one be a small collective of nuns, performing their chores, far from the disasters of the 12th century?
Brilliant Together: On Feminist Memoirs
Collective feminist narratives can acknowledge, to differing degrees, the stories that are missing from them.
“Nomadland” Swerves from the Manly Road Movie
Repeatedly, the film shows this venturesome woman alone at all hours—yet never do we see her fearing or fending off assault.
To Suffer a Witch in “WandaVision”
Anyone who has been called a bitch-witch might have predicted the show’s big twist: there is absolutely no right way to wield your power.
Desire Can Pierce Politics: Amia Srinivasan on Sex, Consent, and Feminism
“Given the long, tainted history of sex under patriarchy, maybe we need reparative norms around sex.”