But not just fictions—or maybe, fictions in the most expansive sense, including music, television, film, art, etc. Write here if: something is happening in the popular landscape that tells a story to you.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that writers often use LGBT characters to make well-worn storylines feel contemporary. So it should not be much of a spoiler that there is a transgender narrative at the center of the bestselling novel, Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s cheeky summer update of Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen has been adapted…
Perhaps you don’t realize it, but the world of Richard Linklater fans divides into two stark categories: the Delpyites (as in Julie) and the Jensonians (after Sasha Jenson, more on him in a bit). The kind of fan you are has something to say about the kinds of pleasures you take in his films and…
The good news about Tina Fey’s Afghanistan movie is that it didn’t make me want to die. In fact, despite myself, I found parts of it hilarious. The film, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, based on a memoir, is about a journalist named Kim Barker who, because of her childlessness and marital singlehood, is offered a war…
Like any good origin story, I’ve told this one a thousand times: The first comic book I ever read was X-Men #80, the 35th Anniversary issue of America’s most popular comic book series, which, for over three decades, had narrated the lives, loves, and losses of a band of mutant outcasts gifted with extraordinary abilities…
In the second or third grade, a girl in my class took me aside one day while we both washed our hands to give one of my arms a thorough inspection. I was confused, but submitted anyways. That was my way, back then, when things happened to me that I didn’t quite grasp. I’d smile…
Few pleasures are as intoxicating as arguing with the people you love. I’m not talking about fighting–not about conflict nor heartbreak nor even genuine friction. I’m talking about spirited disagreement. I’m talking about dropping something you adore at the feet of someone you also adore and then watching them kick it. Yet, miraculously, instead of…
Driven from the house by mid-summer boredom and a rattling air conditioner, my children and I went to the movies, seeing Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep, and Minions (twice!). Although I teach a course on childhood in cinema and ought to have been taking notes, instead I found myself watching my kids, wondering what they…
“Or perhaps as some non-carbon-based life-form, entirely sprung from the smooth and iconic brow of its founder, Hubertus Bigend, a nominal Belgian who looks like Tom Cruise on a diet of virgins’ blood and truffled chocolates.” — William Gibson “It’s the actor Tom Cruise, who lives in the penthouse, and as a courtesy, without…