Content with terrible themes is often defended as a ‘product of its time,’ but this argument holds no water with me.
No more ‘product of its time,’ please
Category: pop culture
Do we really need to see graphic violence to ‘understand’?
Creators sometimes justify graphic, troubling scenes with the claim that we need to see to ‘understand.’ Well, do we?
Pop v. reality: Journalism
I’ve been having a lot of conversations in the last year about the public distrust and sometimes active hatred of the media — at the same time that the New York Times is raking in subscription dollars and every media outlet has an annoying popup nagging me to defend the future of journalism, I keep getting sidelong […]
Will we ever shake the manic pixie dream girl?
Why is the manic pixie dreamgirl such a mainstay in youth adult literature, and what does that say about our attitudes on mental health and young women?
In storytelling, context matters
Criticising representations and challenging embedded attitudes in text is common, but what happens with authorial context is introduced?
Pop culture and parental exploitation narratives
Can we get a moratorium on parents exploiting their children for kudos and profit in the world of pop culture?
Don’t put authors on pedestals — it ends badly for everyone
The danger in hero worship is that when authors fall, they fall hard, and it makes a mess that could have been avoided by admitting that authors are human.
Diverse experiences are about more than hardship
With an increase in diverse fiction, can we finally get some representations that are about something other than hardship?
Sometimes pop culture awareness is worse than doing nothing
Very Special Episodes are bad enough, but pop culture’s occasional sly nods of ‘awareness’ are just as bad, and sometimes more damaging.
Even in pop culture, the oppressed can become the oppressor
It’s time to bust the myth that it’s impossible to depict a marginalised group poorly when you’re a member of that group or understand marginalisation from a different perspective.