Portside

" Wouldn’t people have understood precisely who he was?  The answer is simple:  Yes, they understood who he was, and they did not care--until two things happened. First, he fell out of style. And second, the brutality of the man became undeniable."

Chicken soup as a therapy can be traced back to 60 A.D. army surgeon whose five-volume medical encyclopedia was consulted by early healers for more than a millennium. But the origins of chicken soup go back thousands of years to ancient China.

The creator of "Fargo" explains why every season of his crime drama is about money, Republicans and the “American woman’s experience”

Peter Carroll’s visit to Perry, Iowa gives no warning of sudden violence that occurred there this week, except for feelings of despair that might afflict a troubled young man with nowhere to go.

Reviewing the new book by Christopher Rufo, architect of the right’s crusade against “critical race theory.”

In the popular imagination, vegan school lunch may seem like the exclusive provenance of big cities like New York, but the tide appears to have shifted significantly in much of the country.

This approach to period pieces does not only erase historical racism and homophobia. It also erases our joy. Accurate historical representation and less trauma in stories about marginalized people are not opposing goals.

Chicago poet Carol Kanter offers a poem of peace, an alternative to “rage…offense…”

Reviewer Pele says author Mbembe defines “necropolitics” “as the political making of spaces and subjectivities in an in-between of life and death.” Necropolitical practices have their origins in colonialism and the slave plantation.

In Wonka, Timothée Chalamet dons the eccentric chocolatier’s purple jacket in yet another film adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This one is playful and harmless, but it can’t touch the 1971 original movie.