A Ritual Sacrifice for PG&E: Charli XCX’s “Beg For You” Video
Directed by Nick Harwood, Charli XCX’s latest video to promote her upcoming fifth album, Crash, is nothing if not decidedly Californian (maybe even as much [Read More…]
Florence + the Machine’s “King” One-Ups “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” on the Feminist Anthem Front, But Is Still Hemmed In By the Limits of a Patriarchal Language
It’s been four years since Florence + the Machine came out with High As Hope, the band’s fourth record released over a nine-year period. If [Read More…]
“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” Presents a Woman’s Persistent “At War” Nature of Wanting to Be Taken Seriously Versus Wanting to Fuck Around
Because women’s “liberation,” as a rule, is really not all that “old” or “time-honored,” the gender, unlike the male one, has had to deal with [Read More…]
Anna Delvey: Another Bane for Millennial Representation That Reminds People How Much They Still Think Said Generation is “Worse” (Read: More Entitled) Than Gen Z
Because one of the most emblematic things of the millennial generation is pop culture-oriented retromania, it’s no wonder that the story of Anna Delvey, not [Read More…]
Nightmare Alley, “Girlboss’d” Edition: Inventing Anna
In an endless stream of the genre that ought to, at this point, be called “making sociopaths empathetic,” Shonda Rhimes’ latest hit, Inventing Anna, is [Read More…]
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Claim Regarding Red (Taylor’s Version) Sparks the Query: Is It Less Satisfying to Know the Ex You Targeted in Your Art Will Never “Receive” the Work?
In a new Esquire cover story, “Jake Gyllenhaal Reconsiders” or, in print format, “Jake Gyllenhaal Is Not the Man You Think He Is,” the eponymous [Read More…]
When Love Goes to Shit, So Does a Joint Biz, Or: Some Winos Aren’t Forever, Namely Angelina Jolie
As a key couple among the most tainted loves of twenty-first century pop culture, it’s only “right” (or rather, expected) that the drama between Angelina [Read More…]
Mondo Ironico #5: J. Lo Having a Song Called “Marry Me”
In a series called Mondo Ironico, let us discuss how fucking antithetical something in pop culture is. On the one hand, it might seem perfectly [Read More…]
Off-Limits Aesthetics: J. Lo Tries to Do Madonna’s Style of Performative Catholicism with “Church”
There are some pop culture moments that should be left off limits in terms of “borrowing” or “paying homage.” Not only because they’re sacrosanct, but [Read More…]
New York Causes a Spontaneous Mental Blackout: Italian Studies
The memory loss or “spontaneous amnesia” genre is nothing new in cinema. It arguably began in 1915, with The Garden of Lies and The Right [Read More…]
