stillness is a lie, my dear
When the New York Times ran a lengthy feature on growth attenuation that included interviews with everyone but disabled people, it was a reminder that disabled voices are considered least important in discussions about bioethics, disability, and culture.
A meme briefly went around earlier this year featuring the head of Donald Trump pasted onto the body of Dolores Umbridge, evil incarnate. The intent, of course, was to get a laugh at the idea of uniting two figures of evil, but that laugh was also at a very specific expense: It wasn’t just that […]
Recently, a fairly large and well-known media outlet posted a lengthy piece of journalism on women and chronic pain. It was incredibly well-received, sparking discussion across the internet from a wide variety of people, and it was heavily circulated. At last, a piece really probing into the problem of women and chronic pain, and exposing the epidemic […]
Web series are the new black, as the media likes to remind us, with many publications taking to the web with spotlight features via video, and individuals as well as organisations using the web series as a fun educational tool. Meanwhile, television is embracing the web, with some creators skipping networks and cable companies altogether to […]
Alex Gino is a fat genderqueer glitter liberationist who attracted considerable media attention earlier this year with the release of their chapter book George, about a transgender fourth grader. The book joins the growing canon of books expanding trans representation in media and pop culture, but it also hits a critical age range, as children’s books with trans […]
gritty (adj.) 1590s, “resembling or containing sand or grit,” from grit (n.) + -y (2). In sense of “unpleasant” (of literature, etc.), from 1882, in reference to the sensation of eating gritty bread. Meaning “plucky, spirited, courageous and resolute” is from 1847. Related: Grittily; grittiness. The new hotness in adult pop culture right now is […]
I was reading a really interesting, well-written, compelling book the other day about a particularly dark time in history when a character’s pet entered the stage. I didn’t need to know what would happen next. It might happen in 50 pages or 150, but that pet was going to die, probably in some unpleasant way, […]
Chinatown (1974) is, unarguably, one of the greatest movies in 20th century US film, and it’s routinely listed as one of the finest examples of 20th century filmmaking worldwide. It’s a brilliantly executed, wonderfully realised, fantastic, complex, elegant film revealing a director, and a cast, at their pinnacle. Unsurprisingly, the film was nominated for, and won, a […]
Last year was a horrific year for young men of colour — as indeed is every year in the United States — as numerous cases of terrible police shootings made the headlines and confronted white people in the US with the reality of what it’s like to be Black in this country. Images of pain […]
I didn’t have television in childhood. We lived in places without electricity, without television service, and then in places where we had no interest in television (and couldn’t have afforded one even if we’d wanted television service). I was exposed to television occasionally in my teens at the homes of friends, where I watched in […]