Dispatches From the Culture Wars – January 30, 2024
Portside
Oscar fever
Oscar fever
Oscar fever
Maren Morris Distancing Herself From Country Music Underscores Its Existential Crisis
Vox
Maren Morris, a progressive chart-topping country and pop singer known for hits like “The Middle” and “The Bones,” has announced she’s distancing herself from the genre of country music. “After the Trump years, people’s biases were on full display.”
books
The Writers Who Went Undercover To Show America Its Ugly Side
The Atlantic
In the 1940s, a series of books tried to use the conventions of detective fiction to expose the degree of prejudice in postwar America. Their books — along with Sinatra’s song and film; Richard Wright’s memoir, coincided with a surge of activism.
tv
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies Review: A Blast From the Past Through a Modern Lens
AV Club
Paramount Plus' 1950s-set series 'Grease: Rise Of The Pink Ladies' is filled with progressive Gen-Z values. Their struggles derive from not only the misogyny they come up against, but the discrimination they face thanks to their cultural identities.
tv
Velma, Its Backlash, and How South Asian Women Are Represented on TV
AV Club
A few recent series have notably nuanced depictions of brown teens. This is a promising development. (Those racist reactions? Not so much.)
film
Blonde Is Marilyn Monroe Abased All Over Again
Jacobin
Based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novel, Andrew Dominik’s film Blonde ignores the assertive and hardworking real-life Marilyn Monroe and instead gives us a lurid tale of perpetual victimization.
film
‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Is the Antidote to TikTokers’ Obsession With Being a Tradwife
Jezebel
The film premieres amid a growing social media trend that romanticizes tradwives. But in Don’t Worry Darling, being a 1950s housewife is anything but romantic.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Deal With the Devil
The Nation
The roots of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe go back 50 years, when zealots preaching a gospel of misogyny and homophobia—led by an accused sexual predator—took over America’s largest Protestant denomination.
Abortion: What a Complex Web They Weave
Portside
Not a single state banned abortion in our country's first century.
books
"The Right to Sex" Thinks Beyond the Parameters of Consent
New York Times
An essay collection centering on issues facing feminism today, the author calls on the movement to be “relentlessly truth-telling, not least about itself,” focusing on consent, intersectionality, misogyny, gendered violence, and other topics.
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