stillness is a lie, my dear
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 […]
One of the great flaws with network television is that, because shows film in advance, sometimes an episode can be very off the mark and socially awkward. There’s no way to get around this problem – obviously, networks need time to write and develop scripts, actors need to rehearse, filming takes time, editing and remastering […]
Criticism, contrary to what many people seem to believe, is an art. It’s not something that people do because they fail at doing something (in fact, some of the most famous critics are also experts in the body of work being discussed as active participants in it — well-regarded authors, for example, routinely review books). […]
When you have two major yellow peril movies released in a year, it’s safe to say you have a significant problem. Variations on the yellow peril trope have always been swirling through US society, but it seems like they are about to be whipped up again, playing on fears about the economy, North Korea, and […]
My series with Anna at Bitch Magazine has started! You can read our intake interview here, where we discuss what the series is, and why we’re doing it, and all that other good stuff. Anna:…people are afraid of mental health conditions. They see things on TV and decide that that is what “crazy” is. This […]
I was recently having a conversation with Annaham about the role of very aggressive fans in pop culture, and in how people talk about and engage with the creators of pop culture. The fans I speak of are the ones who believe their creators can do no wrong. Who consume every piece of content from […]
It seems almost universal; everyone I talk to about television these days inevitably bemoans the state of the current television season, mercifully drawing to an end very, very soon. It’s bad. It’s really bad. Most of the new shows flopped, the old ones are losing their way, and the things people are flocking to are […]
Riddle me this, gentle readers: When a television show depicts, say, open heart surgery, or forensics, or tax accounting, it hires consultants. These people come in and meet with the producers and writers to talk about their jobs and provide suggestions on keeping the storyline at least reasonably realistic. They will shoot down things that […]
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about being crazy from pop culture, it’s that being crazy makes you all kinds of creative. Apparently the creativity gets handed out at the door or something, at least if we’re to judge from the depictions of mental illness we encounter everywhere from medical dramas to science fiction shows. […]
If there’s one thing you encounter right quick when you talk about rape, it’s the attitude that only certain kinds of rapes ‘count’ and that there’s a specific scenario you can identify as ‘rape,’ while anything else isn’t, really. It’s one of the things I push back on over and over, and it seems like […]