Sublime
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Emma Stamm • Who Can It Be Now — Real Life
The death of the public intellectual
substack.com
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Analyzing sexism through female celebrities is a catnip pedagogical method: it takes a beloved cultural pastime (calculating the exact worth of a woman) and lends it progressive political import.
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
(It’s arguable that we could understand the institution of celebrity itself as similarly suspicious: despite the prevailing liberalism of Hollywood, the values of celebrity—visibility, performance, aspiration, extreme physical beauty—promote an approach to womanhood that relies on individual exceptionalism in an inherently conservative way.)
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Recently, I watched the Grammys and learned more about Lana Del Rey. I had no idea she was friendly with Taylor Swift, or that she and Taylor shared the same producer. These women have been pop stars for over a decade: Taylor the establishment good girl; Lana, the anti-establishment shock and awe... See more
Katherine Boyle • Tweet
While there are notable differences in the complexity, nuance, allusion, artistic innovation and experimentation found in mass, mid, and high culture, the argument that one is intrinsically more valuable than the others is, of course, fundamentally elitist. It’s no accident that this sort of cultural work—by Macdonald and others—is often the pet
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