‘Lessons in Chemistry’ Reminds We Can’t Have Everything
Lessons in Chemistry shows that our complicated, muddled lives are burdensome, and we must endure and subvert if we are to evolve and find our foothold.
Television
Features, reviews, interviews, and lists about television, covering the latest as well historical topics.
‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Delivers a Fatal Dose of Poe
Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher delivers a fatal potion of Poe-haunted, nightmarish doom that brings us to our knees before the conqueror worm.
Biopic of Argentine Musician Fito Páez Immerses Viewers
Biopic Fito Páez: El Amor Después Del Amor (Love After Music) is, among other things, a gateway into Argentina’s most celebrated rock star’s songbook.
‘Frasier’ Is Back, But Are We Still Listening?
America is a more polarized political and social landscape since the original Frasier aired. Since it was never a socially conscious comedy like many of today’s sitcoms, who is this reboot for?
The Stars in ‘And the Band Played On’ Almost Outshine Its Message
The starry cast in Aaron Spelling’s adaptation of Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On makes this message film a Hollywood spectacle as much as a work of activist pop art.
Comedy Series ‘The Afterparty’ Is Among the Last of Its Kind
The second season of Apple TV’s funny, inventive, and self-indulgent comedy whodunnit The Afterparty is utterly unnecessary in the best way.
Lenny Bruce vs. Lenny Bruce: The Real and the Imagined
There are two Lenny Bruces: 1. the real-life subject of thoughtful documentaries and biographies, and 2. the TV/movie hip mentor and accidental deity.
Communitas and Comfort Television
Through the glow of comfort television, we experience communitas – that feeling of “the lost heaven” of the collective – and, for a time, we are relieved of our existential alienation.
Pee-wee Herman: The Existentialist at Play
Pee-wee Herman forever lives in a cosmos without a supernatural giver of laws. In such an existentialist world, Nietzsche says, we must be like children and invent a world of meaning, lest we be consumed by the great void.
Drama, Desire, and Diplomacy: The Rise of Turkish Television in India
Netflix represents an opportunity to internationalize and escape the pressures of a volatile domestic market in Turkish television. It has forced Turkish producers to tell Turkish stories in a globally compelling way.
Does Representation Really Matter?
I don’t need to see my likeness reflected in the world because I am already both “represented” by and reflected in the richness of humanity, and more importantly, I actively “represent” a potential for others too.
What ‘The White Lotus’ Conveys About the Fraudulence of Perception
Through its storytelling method of glances, we see The White Lotus‘ critique of our tendency to extrapolate that which we do not understand, and to fill gaps in our knowledge with ideologies, mythologies, learned stereotypes, and meme-logic.