Together Alone
American individualism and the western, from Fred Zinnemann and John Ford to Larry McMurtry and Taylor Sheridan.
Craig Clifford
· 8 min read
Television
A collection of 15 posts
Colbert and Cancellation
The #CancelColbert saga in 2014 established the paradigm for countless hashtag controversies that followed.
Kevin Mahnken
· 6 min read
The Many Faces of Tucker Carlson
Jason Zengerle’s new book about the degradation of a once-gifted writer and broadcaster also illustrates the downward trajectory of the entire news industry during the same period.
Graham Daseler
· 14 min read
Defaming the Dead
Is telling lies about someone after they die okay if that someone was a very bad person?
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 6 min read
Seasons in the Sun
Sex, money, murder, and the decline of Mike White’s wildly popular HBO series ‘The White Lotus.’
Charlotte Allen
· 29 min read
Rage Is Now the Machine
Angertainment capitalises on ordinary democratic conflict by selling it back to us as spectacle.
George Case
· 7 min read
The Zero-Sum Squid Game
What the Korean hit gets wrong about capitalism and right about government.
Ilya Levine
· 10 min read
Scandalous Monogamy and Faithful Infidelity
On eros and marriage.
Marilyn Simon
· 13 min read
The Great Unfinished Generational Epic
George R.R. Martin, the Strauss-Howe theory of history, and the failure of the Baby Boomers.
Jason Garshfield
· 26 min read
Less Than Half ‘A Man in Full’
One of US television’s most experienced and talented writers has made a mess of Tom Wolfe’s second novel.
Kevin Mims
· 24 min read
93 Years of Shatner
A tribute to an irrepressible TV star’s ability to live long and prosper.
Kevin Mims
· 21 min read
Strange New Sci Fi
If truth is the first casualty of war, then perhaps good fiction is the first casualty of culture war.
Johnny Schmidt
· 17 min read
What a Survivalist Reality TV Show Can Teach Us About the Human Condition
What makes 'Alone' endlessly fascinating and deeply moving is the mirror it holds up to our broken lives.
Jacob Howland
· 9 min read
Undiminished by Decadence
I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s and I’m happy to report that, for the most part, television and mainstream cinema today are orders of magnitude better than they were in my salad days.
Kevin Mims
· 15 min read
“Not Necessarily Nice Things” Uncomfortable Truths in Succession
We live in a world where the super-rich are often miserable. Part of the reason for this is that the heirs and heiresses to enormous fortunes amassed by their parents sometimes do very little with their own lives.
Scott Newman
· 8 min read