Tag
Television
-
You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Supply Chains!
“Logistics,” warns Susan Zieger, “reveals how the illicit economy is the legitimate economy: the nature of free trade prevents the two from ever being separated.”
-
Chicago Law
Baltimore has The Wire, Newark, The Sopranos, and for seven seasons Chicago has had The Good Wife. The city with North America’s highest number of annual civilian deaths by cop and its very own Guantanamo-aspirant black-site detention facility, Homan Square, the city that has perfected machine politics, election fraud, felony embezzlement, and the pork that…
-
From Berlusconismo to Trumpismo
With America’s national neuroses thrust into collective view by the ongoing election season, the lure of long-form TV is more powerful than ever. Fortunately for the soul that abhors primary numbers, there is another way to experience the libidinal thrill of the current political climate, for buried deep in Netflix’s catalog is an Italian series…
-
Perestroika Blues
Now nearing the end of its fourth season, The Americans is a confounding success. It’s hard to figure out which of its triumphs is the most unlikely: that it has millions of Americans rooting for KGB agents to outsmart our country every week, or that the FX network has produced a critical darling that is…
-
15 Great Book-to-TV Adaptations to Watch This Summer
It’s a good time to be a novelist if you dream of seeing your work on the small screen. So far this year, Showtime has picked up Ben Stiller’s adaptation of Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, Amazon Studios ordered a pilot from Jill Soloway based on Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick, and Europe’s…
-
Antiheroic Feminism: An Interview with “UnREAL” Co-creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro
Sarah Gertrude Shapiro is a difficult person to pin down. With the second season premiere of UnREAL—the Peabody-award-winning series for which she not only writes and produces, but now also directs—on the horizon, Shapiro has made a reluctant entry into the limelight on awards show red carpets, Paley Center panels, and other events for the…
-
Jamie Hector of “The Wire” on Acting and Activism
Back in April, Public Books co-sponsored a conference organized by The Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University about the legacy of The Wire. The critically revered HBO series feels just as relevant eight years after it ended its run. On one panel, Jamie Hector—who gave an unforgettable performance as rising drug kingpin Marlo…
-
“The People v. O. J. Simpson” as Historical Fiction
The location is wrong. The white Bronco is clearly weaving through traffic on the 710 South as it approaches its intersection with the 10, on the eastern border of El Sereno, just by the Cal State LA campus. In June 1994, O. J. Simpson and Al Cowlings would have had no reason to venture that…
-
Chick Lit Meets the Avant-Garde
Ask the average critic, professor, or reader to name an experimental novelist and they will more likely name a man—Pynchon, DeLillo, Foster Wallace—than a woman—Tillman, Winterson, Lessing. Ask them to name the protagonist of an experimental novel and they will probably do the same. Though female authors write experimental novels about women—like Renata Adler’s Speedboat…
-
Making “Room”: An Interview with Novelist and Screenwriter Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel Room is the story of a 5-year-old boy who lives in a single room with his mother and has never seen the outside world. Donoghue recently adapted her novel into a screenplay, and the resulting film, starring Brie Larson, has been sweeping up accolades. It’s nominated for four Academy Awards on…
-
A Fantasy of Whiteness
“We could desperately use a clear-eyed assessment of the messy, complicated country that ruled much of the world not so long ago.”
-
Wolves at the Door?
In the past month we’ve seen two different versions of the same phobic imaginative scenario. In it, a precious and vulnerable space, a space that must be protected, is invaded by an imposter, one in disguise, one who takes advantage of liberal sentimentality to enter under false pretenses and do terrible harm. According to the…
-
Virtual Roundtable on “Empire”
After it debuted last January on Fox, Empire quickly became one of the most talked-about shows on television. Its Shakespearean portrayal of family life, its stylized window onto the hip-hop industry, and its Timbaland-produced soundtrack helped it earn millions of passionate fans (and more than a few critics). To celebrate the premiere of season 2—which…
-
Status Updates
How do we read Tumblr pages, Facebook updates, and Instagram feeds for plot? What sorts of narrators do social media enable and promote? The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty by Amanda Filipacchi and The First Bad Man by Miranda July both feature narrators who continually reflect on how they externalize their inner selves. Their worlds function like Tumblr: selfhood becomes…
-
#Normporn
In the penultimate season of 30 Rock (2006–13), the sitcom’s resident kinkmeisters and genderqueer lovers, Jenna and Paul, are faced with a profound sexual crisis: after chatting about their day …
-
Virtual Roundtable on “Transparent”
Jill Soloway’s original program Transparent abounds with firsts: the first TV series to feature a transgender character as its protagonist; the first transgender-themed series to win Golden Globe …
-
McDreamy Is Dead
It’s been a fatal few seasons to be the primary love interest to an ambitious woman on television. Last year, The Good Wife killed Will Gardner, and the Internet refused to stop talking about it for weeks. The death of Derek Shepherd on Grey’s Anatomy, by contrast, has barely been mentioned in the critical-recapping genre…
-
Why “Looking” Bothered Me
In March, after the end of its second season and a few days of intense speculation, the death knell was sounded for HBO’s Looking, the only recent series on American television with a central cast composed mainly of gay characters. Controversial since its debut, the news of its cancellation has only sparked further debate about…
-
It’s the Real Thing
Let me start at the finish, and, like one of my favorite episodes of Mad Men, with a kind of montage. Don on a hilltop that takes us back to “The Mountain King” in Season 2. Peggy, well on her way to becoming the woman people will brag they have worked with. Pete learning—as Duck…
-
Respect
“You don’t have character—you’re just handsome.” When Mathis lobbed this home truth at Don Draper a couple of weeks ago, he could have been talking about the show itself. Does Mad Men have characters, or does it just look good? Until last night, the last half of the show’s final season had left many dedicated…
-
Overtime and Afterlife
This is all so unnecessary. By “unnecessary,” I don’t mean pointless, or a waste of time (or life). Rather, I mean untethered from an obligation to do anything, or to arrive anywhere, in particular. That has always been the secret ingredient of Mad Men, perhaps the signal distinction from many of its 21st-century peers—its privileging…
