At the core of cultural stagnation is “entanglement,” writes Douthat—“meaning the way that the economic, demographic, intellectual, and cultural elements of our predicament are all connected, so that you can’t just pick out a single cause or driver of stagnation or repetition, or solve the problem with a narrow focus on one area or issue.” […]
Read MoreTag: Culture
The Age of Cultural Stagnation
At the core of cultural stagnation is “entanglement,” writes Douthat—“meaning the way that the economic, demographic, intellectual, and cultural elements of our predicament are all connected, so that you can’t just pick out a single cause or driver of stagnation or repetition, or solve the problem with a narrow focus on one area or issue.” […]
Read MoreThe Exvangelicals Searching for Political Change
In an evangelical upbringing, McCammon notes, there is an overwhelming emphasis on what a person truly believes. Of her sister’s infant dedication, she writes, “In our belief system, while my sister’s dedication was important, it was only a symbol. For us, the central question was what we believed in our hearts, not whether we’d participated […]
Read MoreThe Workplace Novel Comes to the Big Box Store
Before Help Wanted’s plot lurches into motion, Waldman lavishes attention on the details of warehouse work. The novel’s opening scene provides an immensely satisfying overview of the labor and machinery required to unload a truck containing close to two thousand boxes in a single hour (even a minute longer will trigger a “failure report”), as […]
Read MoreHow ‘Bad With Money’s’ Gabe Dunn Is Helping People Get Their Financial Act Together
So much of the financial advice we get from social media, television, and podcasts focuses on the instant gratification of wealth. Experts promise ways to get rich fast, proposing we cut spending on everyday items – those frilly Starbucks drinks and organic avocados … and eggs – in favor of putting an extra few dollars […]
Read MoreWom/n Worldwide Celebrates The Femmes Inventing The Future
The future is female — the future of science, fashion, and tech, specifically. As we celebrate Women’s History Month by honoring the women who paved a path to a better, more equal present, it’s also inspiring to look forward to a future designed and built by some of the brightest women working in their respective […]
Read MoreThe Oscars’ Spectacle of Seriousness
If there was a common theme to the films featured at this year’s Oscars, it was precisely this sort of psychic slippage, whether expressed through characters catching a glimpse of a broken world beyond their ostensible purview (Poor Things); ones ensnared within contentious cultural heritages (Past Lives, American Fiction); or else trying to reconcile their […]
Read MoreRamadan: How To Show Support For Muslims During Holy Islamic Month
Muslims perform the first ‘Tarawih’ prayer on the eve of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan at the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Cairo, Egypt, on March 10, 2024. | Source: Anadolu / Getty UPDATED: 9:30 a.m. ET, March 11, 2024 The observation of Ramadan in Islamic culture began on Sunday night and will […]
Read MorePercival Everett Is Messing With You
Everett’s revisionist approach begins with the thick dialect Twain used for his Black characters, which along with that damnable N-word has been an impediment to contemporary readers’ appreciation of Huckleberry Finn. It turns out, in Everett’s telling, that the minstrel-show patois (“I doan’ hanker for no mo’ un um,” Twain’s Jim says to Huck, which […]
Read MoreIn the Beginning, There Was Marilynne Robinson
The most frustrating parts of the book are places where Robinson is so committed to her version of Genesis that she cannot allow an iota of room for any other interpretation, no matter how urgently it is needed. This is especially evident in her reading of Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian woman who is impregnated by […]
Read MoreThe Feud: Capote vs. The Swans Perfectly Celebrates Older Actresses
Now and then, Capote vs. The Swans reveals itself to be a love story of sorts, and the love that it depicts is not romantic but the kind of all-consuming and platonic love that feels romantic anyway. If any show has the pedigree to fully mine these themes, it ought to be one in the […]
Read MoreJust Blaze And Paul Smith Talk About Their Iconic Austin Takeovers And Share Plans For 2024’s Event
If you aren’t feeling hyped for the chaos kicking off down in Austin this week, well… you’ve clearly never been to one of Just Blaze and Paul Smith’s famous takeovers. Simply put, Blaze and Smith are the uncrowned kings of this busy, bustling, wild melee of a month in Texas. And they’re coming back with […]
Read MoreFrantz Fanon’s Conflicted Vision for Decolonization
One of the more provocative elements of Shatz’s account is the suggestion that a residue of republican universalism, overlaid with existential and Marxist universalisms, left Fanon with a lasting “defiance of identity’s claims.” Fanon was, of course, well aware of the hypocrisies lurking within high-flown rhetoric of equality, and disdainful of naïvely color-blind ideologies that […]
Read MoreAmitav Ghosh’s Reckoning With Opium
Former poppy-growing areas “have had significantly worse long-term social and economic outcomes” than nearby districts. A comparison of these two opium economies forms the heart of the book’s compelling development thesis. Before the imposition of wide-scale opium production, the east was relatively prosperous, as evidenced by the nickname “Golden Bengal.” Following the infliction of opium, […]
Read MoreAn Immigration Journalist Makes the Case for Open Borders
For several months beginning late last year, Senate Democrats and Republicans came together to negotiate a bipartisan border bill that, if passed, would have represented an unprecedented crackdown on undocumented immigration. President Joe Biden championed the bill, vowing to wield the new authority it would give him to “shut down the border.” What happened next? […]
Read MoreWhy We Should Open U.S. Borders
For several months beginning late last year, Senate Democrats and Republicans came together to negotiate a bipartisan border bill that, if passed, would have represented an unprecedented crackdown on undocumented immigration. President Joe Biden championed the bill, vowing to wield the new authority it would give him to “shut down the border.” What happened next? […]
Read MoreThe Suburbs Made the War on Drugs in Their Own Image
Even as Prohibition failed, President Herbert Hoover stubbornly applied the same approach to the trade in narcotics, which soon became a robust source of income for organized crime, as bootlegging had been. In June 1930, Hoover appointed former railroad detective and Prohibition agent Harry Anslinger commissioner of a new Federal Bureau of Narcotics. This as […]
Read MoreJacqueline Novak and Jenny Slate Are Not Okay
What makes “Stage Fright” such a unique film is its commitment to an autobiographical, documentary frame. Slate and Robespierre filmed interviews with Slate’s parents, her sisters, and both of her surviving grandmothers, as well as meandering shots of the hallways and rooms of her childhood home. Those scenes—which are long enough to not merely be […]
Read MoreJacqueline Novak and Jenny Slate Are Not OK
What makes “Stage Fright” such a unique film is its commitment to an autobiographical, documentary frame. Slate and Robespierre filmed interviews with Slate’s parents, her sisters, and both of her surviving grandmothers, as well as meandering shots of the hallways and rooms of her childhood home. Those scenes—which are long enough to not merely be […]
Read MoreHarriet Tubman and the Most Important, Understudied Battle of the Civil War
To tell this story, Fields-Black relies on an underutilized archive. The pension files of former Union soldiers, housed at the National Archives, contain, Fields-Black tell us, thousands of pages of testimony from the dependents of Black Civil War veterans, of which there were 186,000, 75 percent of whom were formerly enslaved. Because dependents had to […]
Read MoreHarriet Tubman and the Most Important, Understudied Battle of the Civil War
To tell this story, Fields-Black relies on an underutilized archive. The pension files of former Union soldiers, housed at the National Archives, contain, Fields-Black tell us, thousands of pages of testimony from the dependents of Black Civil War veterans, of which there were 186,000, 75 percent of whom were formerly enslaved. Because dependents had to […]
Read MoreMeet Darrell Booker, The Tech Expert Helping Black Communities Achieve Generational Wealth
What would the world be like if the Black community had access to financial health and wellness tools that not only lead to economic mobility, but generational wealth? In ABC’s Our America: In the Black, Microsoft Philanthropies specialist Darrell Booker seeks to find the answer to that question, exploring how three individuals at different stages […]
Read MoreDune: Part Two Is a Masterwork of Complexity
Villeneuve is for the most part scrupulously faithful to the source material, which makes his most significant departures interesting and worth lingering on. The biggest is to compress the story chronologically so that Paul’s sister Alia, conceived weeks before the end of Part One, remains in utero at the end of Part Two (Herbert and […]
Read MoreDune: Part Two Unleashes the Terrible Power of Paul
Villeneuve is for the most part scrupulously faithful to the source material, which makes his most significant departures interesting and worth lingering on. The biggest is to compress the story chronologically so that Paul’s sister Alia, conceived weeks before the end of Part One, remains in utero at the end of Part Two (Herbert and […]
Read MoreTry To Keep Up With Ed Park’s Conspiracy-Laced Epic
The second chapter leaves behind the high-concept science fiction of the first, and we enter an entirely different story stylistically, set in another world and time and with another set of fonts. The man who will turn out to be the novel’s main character, Soon Sheen, is Park’s most likely alter ego in the sort […]
Read MoreEd Park’s Korean-American Epic Blends Conspiracy and History
The second chapter leaves behind the high-concept science fiction of the first, and we enter an entirely different story stylistically, set in another world and time and with another set of fonts. The man who will turn out to be the novel’s main character, Soon Sheen, is Park’s most likely alter ego in the sort […]
Read MoreThe Taste of Things Is More Than an Ode to Pleasure
Dodin’s buddies, with their high-flown allusions to politics, art, and literature—i.e., the fact that baked Alaska was invented by a Frenchman named Balzac of no relation to the novelist—are good company, for him and for us, and The Taste of Things has a gently rollicking comic tone whenever they’re around: They’re like professional appreciators (as […]
Read MoreJake Tapper Talks About ‘United States Of Scandal’ And The Jon Stewart Effect On News
Do you remember when politics first broke your heart? The first scandal that turned you from an idealist into a cynic? Maybe it hasn’t happened yet, maybe it never will, but to others it can be a real touch-the-stove moment that lessens their enthusiasm when it comes time to vote. If they vote at all. […]
Read MoreHigh Fashion Meets High Crimes in The New Look
We meet her at the moment when her association with her German neighbors goes from casual to official, from ambient to active. Her beloved nephew is captured fighting for the French army, and Chanel takes on a debt of service to the Nazis—particularly SS spymaster Walter Schellenberg—in order to help him. By the end of […]
Read MoreA Weed Writer Shares Her Five Favorite Strains For A Sexy Valentine’s Day
Happy Valentine’s Day! You’re prepping for sex — so time is of the essence! Do you want the good news or the bad? The bad news is that no particular weed strain is categorically superior for sex. The good? All weed strains can be great for sex! Whether a cultivar is suited for sex (or […]
Read MoreDemocrats and the Phantom Menace of Woke Politics
The story starts promisingly enough, with an argument reminiscent of Judis’s recent work on populism: Neoliberal economic policy has been a disaster for working-class America, and the weakening of institutions like organized labor that once tied working-class people closely to the Democrats has left the party scrambling to find ways to appeal to voters, when […]
Read More