After twenty years, Buffy the Vampire Slayer retains its iconic cult status, and says a lot about creating enduring art.
Buffy at 20
Category: pop culture
What is age-appropriate fiction, really?
Debates over ‘age appropriate’ literature tend to talk down to children, underestimate young readers, and put value judgements on creative work.
Stop hiding behind ‘quality’ to avoid conversations about diversity
The ‘quality’ arguments surrounding diverse books are bogus red herrings designed to cover up for systematic representational problems.
On Donald Trump and the pop politics of suffering
The myth that suffering induces creativity endures, and it’s back with a vengeance for 2017.
What to expect when you’re expecting a dystopia
On post-apocalyptic media, dystopia, and why we don’t spend enough time examining the liminal space between society and collapse — the protodystopia.
On gender essentialism and magic in western canon
In western canon, magic falls out along very familiar lines, and they are deeply gender essentialist in nature. Who does magic, why, and how is often dictated by perceived gender.
On rereading Marion Zimmer Bradley
While rereading classic fantasy texts to explore the subject of gender essentialism in fantasy, I had to take on the Marion Zimmer Bradley problem.
Pop culture in the time of Trump
In the Trump era, how will we express our anxieties through pop culture?
Now we REALLY need diversity in literature
The only way to fight an administration determined to eradicate difference is to aggressively celebrate it.
Stranger Things, Good Girls, and failures of pop culture nostalgia
Stranger Things was nostalgia incarnate, and it worked. Another made-for-streaming show, Good Girls Revolt, was a disaster. What happened?