Everything old is new again in the retro cartoon revival
Torn between nostalgia and the constant acceleration of everything, two Netflix animations show where entertainment is heading.
Reality TV’s Strange Randian Reality
Shows like Love Island, Selling Sunset and Keeping Up with The Kardashians promote conservative ideals that are impossible to achieve.
Rousseau’s Pick
How the Academy Awards are searching the general will on Twitter.
Do you (still) like scary movies? The horror of legacy sequels
Following a trend in the production of horror movies, Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre-sequel wants to claim the classic’s legacy and speak to the present moment. But why does it feel so goddamn hollow?
The vital, human histories of Arthur Bressan Jr.
The director’s two films Gay USA and Buddies captured the instinctive solidarity and idealism of the early queer liberation movement through a cinema of individual empathy. What makes his movies so powerful?
The Big Game: Learning About Our Cultural Moment Through the Super Bowl
Drifting between empty nostalgia and techno-futuristic escapism, the Super Bowl ads are a strange seismograph of our age’s collective vibes.
The Baroque Premiership of Boris Johnson
In current British politics, the theatre of simulated government is everything.
The idea of Tom Brady and the end of an era
As the NFL superstar leaves the field forever, writer Sam Moore ask how Brady has shaped his sport, as well as America’s cultural imagination during the course of his career.
“Why not speak?”: Mass shootings on film and the search for meaning
Two recent films seek to understand the meaning behind mass shootings, but end up grappling with the unsettling question: What if there isn’t any?
Selling the dream: Reality TV at the edge of reality
The film critic Siegfried Kracauer once argued that ‘stupid and unreal film fantasies are the daydreams of society, in which its actual reality comes to the fore and its otherwise repressed wishes take form.’ Netflix’s Selling-franchise once again proves the point.