Category: Film, Art, Television, and Media

On Cultural Purity

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date November 1, 2017

If the Cultural Purity Police (CPP) had their way, they would brand British curry as theft, but every cuisine consists of an infinite number of borrowings and travels, sometimes stretching back millennia.

Feminism Film, Art, Television, and Media Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Joshua Marston’s Complete Unknown: Or, When Critics Respond To A Woman Who Lives Like A Man

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date February 8, 2017

Both Variety and the Times describe Weisz’s character as a “femme fatale,” even though there’s no hint that she enters her various lives by feminine wiles.

Film, Art, Television, and Media On Books and Publishing Politics

The New York Times Is The Daily Prophet

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date December 16, 2016

Film, Art, Television, and Media Updates

What’s This Movie Called?: Or, Snakes and Ladders, and the End of Stardom and Friendships

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date December 14, 2016

Film, Art, Television, and Media Politics Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Donald Trump Won Because Hillary Clinton Lost

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date December 8, 2016

Feminism Film, Art, Television, and Media Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Meryl Streep Is in Costume as Florence Foster Jenkins

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date September 1, 2016

Excerpt: Imagine the iconic figure of the young woman holding up a little black dog. Consider the impressionistic lushnesss of the image. Now imagine that someone has come along, cut out the woman, and replaced her with a photographic image of a woman with a dog.

Feminism Film, Art, Television, and Media Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Ghostbusters, Hillary Clinton, and Faux Feminism

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date August 6, 2016

We’re not obliged to prop up faux feminism: We can and should expect films that actually make strong feminist statements embedded in excellent writing and character development.

Film, Art, Television, and Media

Steven Spielberg’s The BFG and the AMM

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date July 7, 2016

It’s that “childlike enchantment” that has become a shopworn element in Spielberg’s work, and that damn trippy, skippy music by the ubiquitous and overplayed John Williams is an incessant accompaniment to a narrative that is equally clichéd.

Film, Art, Television, and Media Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Maurice Sendak on Tomi Ungerer, and The King’s Speech

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date May 2, 2016

“Like we give a shit whether he stuttered or not. And you know, that’s just dumb. That’s just so dumb.“

Capitalism, Class, Inequality Feminism Film, Art, Television, and Media Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Suey Park and the Afterlife of Twitter

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date April 4, 2016

Excerpt: Twitter is not merely a symptom of a public sphere but a platform that is bound up with the primary dictate of neoliberalism: Make yourself or die.