"It's Worth Reconsidering"

"Some of these old standards will feel alien to zoomers and alphas. In his 2022 book The Nineties, the critic Chuck Klosterman explores the decade's hostility towards 'selling out,' which he calls “the single most nineties aspect of the nineties'. Selling out involved a respected artist deciding to make work that was more 'palatable' and therefore more commercially viable. By 2010, says Klosterman, 'it was hard to illustrate to a young person why this act was once seen as problematic; by 2020 it was difficult to explain what the term literally expressed'."

Rachel Aroesti at The Guardian calls for a return of "cultural snobbery."

"More Prolific Than Even the Hollywood Studios in Their Golden Age Peak"

"The strange paradox of the streaming era is that as the quest to personalise entertainment has continued, entertainment itself is becoming steadily more impersonal. The user, and the fantasy of unlimited choice, is king. The auteur, and singularity of perspective, are now subordinate–and the tsunami of AI threatens to wash them away completely."

Phil Hoad at The Guardian asks, "what has the Netflix algorithm done to our films?"

"America Has Amused Itself to Death"

"Rule by performers doesn't need to impose an autocrat's lies on the people; people do it to themselves through their entertainments. In 1984, George Orwell described doublethink as the kind of intellectual gymnastics demanded by a totalitarian society: 'To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.' Reality television and the WWE demand similar distortion-effect gymnastics; their audiences willingly suspend their disbelief and gladly accept events they know are artificial as real. The audiences come to political debate already prepared for the blurring of illusion and reality."

Stephen Marche at The Atlantic calls Donald Trump's government a "histriocracy."

"Many Influential Figures in the Conservative Media Ecosystem and the So-Called Manosphere Who Rose to Prominence in Reality TV, Daytime Talk Shows and Other Forms of Alternative Entertainment"

"Although it's too soon to know exactly what went wrong for Democrats in 2024, Rogan's lengthy interview with and subsequent endorsement of Trump in the final weeks of the campaign already feels like a watershed moment. Many liberals believe they need to find a progressive version of Joe Rogan in order to combat Trump 2.0. They might start looking outside the traditional party structure and turning to a medium that has become a breeding ground for influencers on the right: reality TV."

At the Los Angeles Times, Meredith Blake explores "the reality TV-to-MAGA pipeline."

Marconi Plays the Mamba

"The song says we built this city on live music, let's bring it back—but the music is computerized. It complains about techno pop, but it's a techno-pop song. It exemplifies the problem it's protesting."

In a 2016 GQ article, Rob Tannenbaum presents "An Oral History of 'We Built This City,' the Worst Song of All Time."

"The Passing of an Era"

"And yet he also came across as a man of genuinely good will, in a way that didn’t feel like an act—just as it didn't feel like an act when he told New Times editor Yevgenia Albats in 2016 that his creed was, 'No blood,' or that he was ultimately 'a man of freedom': 'Freedom of choice, freedom of religion, freedom of speech; freedom, freedom—let them shoot me but I’m not going to renounce that.' Or when he wrote a warm letter to Bonner on her 85th birthday, expressing the hope that their shared ideals—'a democratic Russia, the rule of law, a more just world'—would someday be realized."

Cathy Young at The Bulwark marks the death of Mikhail Gorbachev.

And in a 2019 Foreign Policy article, Paul Musgrave tells the story of Gorbachev's Pizza Hut commercial.

"Admitted That His Chief Foe Was a 30-Something Single Woman With a Post-Graduate Degree"

"Unlike Carlson's other phobias, I think this one is rooted in reality. Critical race theory remains an opaque legal philosophy and not an instruction manual for K-12 students; immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than those born here; and vaccine mandates save lives. But women with agency? We threaten his whole world."

Regarding Tucker Carlson, Ana Marie Cox at NBC News writes that "lately it's become clearer what his greatest source of terror is: women in power."

"Eternal Exposure Is the Price of Enlightenment"

"And then there's the ever-present question conveniently ignored by anti-free-speech academics: Who is on the committee that decides what new speech restrictions to impose and how to define them? Do we trust the same Republican state legislatures or local school boards that are already banning books and prohibiting the teaching of The 1619 Project and critical race theory? It's one thing to write law review articles and books urging new limitations on offensive and hateful speech. It's a far different matter to empower government authorities at federal, state, and local levels, with civil, criminal, and administrative enforcement powers, or college administrators (with or without faculty input) with the power to grant, deny, or revoke tenure, to decide what ideas can be spoken, written, or taught."

Stephen Rohde at the Los Angeles Review of Books reviews Robert Corn-Revere's The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder.

"Reassuringly Solid in a Way That Digital Files Are Not"

"Too many streaming platforms offer a surfeit of content. Their films, stripped of context, saddled with iffy sound and picture quality, feel like all-you-can-eat buffets. Titles can disappear without warning when licensing deals expire. And your internet goes down? Well, tough."

Sukhdev Sandhu at Prospect praises the DVD.

"The Implications That the Footage Didn't Appear for Racist Reasons Does Bother Him"

"The producers' statement goes against the film's own subtitle which is, '…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised.' It was not only televised in the abovementioned markets, but in at least 15 major markets across the United States, both the first and the second weekends. Lauro verifies this with copies of articles, interviews, reviews and previews from established newspapers in those states."

Lily Moayeri at Book & Film Globe clarifies the backstory of Summer of Soul.

"An Issue Is Not Necessarily Completely Invalid Just Because Fox News Mentions It"

"Democrats would be well-advised to focus instead on an inclusive nationalism that emphasizes what Americans have in common and their right not just to economic prosperity but to public safety, secure borders and a world-class but non-ideological education for their children. That's much more likely to work than simply denying a lot of these issues are problems."

Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot warns Democrats of the "Fox News Fallacy."

"There's an Enormous Dignity Gap in the Culture"

"Longtime Democratic consultant Joe Trippi muses that prominent liberal politicians would face a penalty from voters if they skipped straight from government office to goofy reality shows. 'I think a lot of Democrats would think it lacked seriousness,' he says. '"With all the things that you could be doing with the experience you built up, that's what you decided to do with it?"'"

Joanna Weiss at Politico discusses the rise of reality-television Republicans.

No Laughing Matter

"Consider Dave Chappelle's Niggar Family sketch on Chappelle's Show. The sketch used a 1950s black-and-white family sitcom aesthetic like that of Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963). It centered around a white, middle class family with the last name 'Niggar.' Everyone in it is white except 'Clifton the Colored Milkman' (played by Chappelle) and his wife. The novelty of the sketch was the prevalence of the n-word and its attachment of Black stereotypes to this white family because of their name. The sketch ends with Chappelle's character trying to get a table at a local restaurant when the host calls for 'Niggar, party of two.' Is he being called the n-word? No: he realizes that the teenage son of the Niggar family is there with a date. The Black couple laughs at the momentary confusion and Chappelle's character says, 'Oo-wee, this racism is killing me inside.' Chappelle's character recognizes the levity of the situation, but the sketch is haunting for how it fatalistically portrays the persistence of racism."

Brandon J. Manning at Post45 writes that "[f]or today's Millennial Black satirists, fatalism is not enough."

"But the Paying Audience Loves the Show and That's All That Matters"

"The current GOP is less interested in the messy business of governing than it is in performative indignation and the memes that play well in social media and on cable television. Memes, it shouldn't need to be said, are not ideas and don't require a consistent set of principles. The result is a kind of free-floating nihilism, as the GOP chases narratives that stir outrage, generate clicks, shake loose grassroots contributions, and play well on Newsmax and Fox."

At Politico, Charles Sykes shows how "Republicans' attacks on Big Business are as fake as their phony working-class act."

But Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, interviewed by Zack Stanton, contends that "[w]hat the GOP cares about and what major businesses care about are, increasingly incompatible."

"What You Can't Accomplish in Life, You Repeatedly Do in Symbolism, Until It Becomes a Neurosis"

"Why have we settled for this strange cultural compromise—lowbrow genres, done with middlebrow earnestness, in revolt against a thoroughly defunded highbrow regime? Perhaps it is because we have accepted the idea of the democratization of culture—we have accepted, rightly, that, say, opera is not inherently worthier than jazz, that superhero comics are not inherently dumber than Greek mythology, that ancient epic poetry is not automatically loftier than rap (with which, indeed, it shares some features)—without accomplishing democracy. I mean this in a dully straightforward way: We are not all equally in control of our lives, and we are afraid of what becoming so would entail, of the costs of democracy, of the mess of it. We are divided by class, race, and gender, and united only in being the objects of a ceaseless corporate effort to accomplish our complete commodification. Having lost the economic battle to economic and political elites, we celebrate, again and again, our victory over the mostly-imaginary cultural elite that would scorn us for watching 90 Day Fiancé."

Phil Christman at The Hedgehog Review discusses the "Strange Undeath of Middlebrow."

"A Kind of Patchouli-Scented Version of Florence During the Renaissance"

"But this book is more interested in how politics and Hollywood ricocheted off each other. One chapter considers Jane Fonda and her left-wing political awakening during her marriage to the activist Tom Hayden. The earthquake they wanted to set off in Washington never came, while in the cultural realm, as Brownstein chronicles, America convulsed with change. More permissive attitudes about sex and drugs, a perception that the American dream was not only unattainable but rotten at the core—this new sensibility charged up the films, music and television that Los Angeles exported to the rest of the country, and the world."

Madeleine Brand at The New York Times reviews Ronald Brownstein's Rock Me on the Water: 1974 The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics.

"How Clean Is Clean Enough?"

"In the coronavirus era, though, time moves slowly and civic norms erode quickly. November is now a long time ago. So no longer can we rely on intense criticism from the art world, lettered organizations, critics at major media outlets, and loud voices on the cultural left to defend artistic and intellectual expression against institutional suppression. That's dead. Kaput. The new social norm is that we must sanitize the world and the culture around us."

Nicholas Clairmont at Arc criticizes "Sanitary Culture." 

"A Key Element in the Development of the Highly Partisan Journalism and Other Media That Envelop Us Today"

"Almost overnight, the media landscape was transformed. The driving force was talk radio. In 1960, there were only two all-talk radio stations in America; by 1995, there were 1,130. While television news on the old networks and the cable upstart CNN still adhered to the standard of objectivity, radio emerged as a wide-open landscape."

Al Tompkins at Poynter explains how the end of the Fairness Doctrine led to the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

"The First Goth"

"When Niemi learned of her aunt's death in 2008, she hurried to Los Angeles on 'limited funds' and signed the death certificate. Then she discovered dozens of pages of an unfinished autobiography stashed around Nurmi's apartment—crumpled in the pockets of old shirts, taped to the backs of pictures and calendars. Slowly, she pieced the story together, even though she had never written anything before and felt 'riddled with self-doubt.' But she persisted—and for this, lovers of bad movies, macabre jokes and old Hollywood should be grateful."

Scott Bradfield at the Los Angeles Times reviews Sandra Niemi's Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi.

"Don't Prosecute Gotham's Supervillains for Their Latest Scheme"

"I'm aware that I may not be the best person to deliver this message, given my absurd appearance, my reputation as a supervillain, my incessant giggling, and my deep and well-documented involvement in planning and executing the very criminal scheme I am now urging the city to ignore. As an expert in comedy, however, I can assure the people of Gotham that this is not a joke. Ask yourself one question: What's the downside for humoring me?" 

At Slate, the Joker makes his case.