Writer, Academic, Activist, Commentator

Category: Film, Art, Television, and Media

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.

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

Suey Park: Images

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date April 3, 2016

This document is a collection of images referenced in “Suey Park and the Afterlife of Twitter.” It will be constantly updated with more as the series progresses.

All images are screencaps from public Instagram and Twitter accounts.

Film, Art, Television, and Media

Patty Duke and the Reservoir of Invented Memory

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 30, 2016

For me, there’s a link between the brute reality of Tamas (as I recall it, and there is some irony in that) and the sugary puffiness of Patty Duke: the connective tissue between what we imagine, what we know, what we wish we knew, and what we would like to imagine.

Film, Art, Television, and Media

Hail, The Coens!

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 19, 2016

It was vivid in its recreation of period interiors, and yet those were what felt distracting: there was too much attention paid to giving attention to detail.