To understand Silicon Valley, first examine the stories it tells about itself; just like, to understand the Victorian age, first read writers like Dickens and Dreiser.
Tag: Television
Tele-visionary Blackness
Black folks can call into being an alternative relationship to TV, one that prompts a shift in consciousness and just possibly alters the future.
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?
Public Picks 2020
Each year around this time we send our readers into summer with a thoughtfully curated list of the titles appearing over the past 12 months that dazzled, moved, and challenged us most.
Emily Dickinson, “The Greatest Freak of Them All”?
Does viewing Emily Dickinson as unusual actually help us understand the poet or her work better?
What “PEN15” Has Joined Let No Man Tear Asunder
While today’s female-friendship narratives celebrate the central bond, they are mainly about the art of breaking up.
Distant TV
If television is giving you something right now, what might it be telling you about what you need?
Watching the End Times from the Good Place
Television responded to our cultural—and planetary—existential crisis with The Good Place.
The Liberal Fantasy of “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Seven years before the Emancipation Proclamation, Margaret Garner found herself cornered by slave catchers and faced with a choice. She could either ...
What Did We See in Color TV?
For those seeking to break up with their phones, or just decrease their screen time, tech ethicist Tristan Harris recommends starting with a quick technological fix ...
Does Chernobyl Still Matter?
Since it first announced electricity “too cheap to meter,” in the 1950s, the nuclear industry has promised bountiful futures powered by a peaceful—and safe—atom ...
Does Chernobyl Still Matter?
Since it first announced electricity “too cheap to meter,” in the 1950s, the nuclear industry has promised bountiful futures powered by a peaceful—and safe—atom ...
TV’s Golden Age of Female Serial Killers
Female killers are all the rage in literature and television. My Sister, the Serial Killer, for example, has caused a stir in the literary world. Killing Eve boasts a large ...
Virtual Roundtable on “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”
As its name suggests, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a show about inappropriate attachments. The musical dramedy, which aired on the CW for four seasons until finale-ing this ...
White Men—and the Monsters Who Love Them
Even if you’ve never seen the CW’s long-running show Supernatural, you’ve seen Supernatural. Reaction GIFs of the lead actors screaming, crying, and hugging ...
“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 ...
What Were the Women of “Thrones”?
There’s something attractive about watching Game of Thrones’ labyrinthine drama unfold in a world where stone, wood, and steel reign supreme. Amid ...
Be Kind, Rewind
Biologists use the term endling to refer to the last remaining member of a particular species. As of May 2019, there is only one remaining Blockbuster video store left, located in Bend, Oregon ...
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 ...
