“A Peculiar State of Poise”: Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Lathe of Heaven’
Le Guin was always ambivalent about revolution, and especially about revolutionary violence…
Hell Is for Children: The Revolutionary Politics of ‘The Omen’
The Omen is generally considered a bleak film because the devil wins. But it’s even bleaker as a picture of who the devil is supposed to be, and what kind of measures are needed to defeat him…
Sister Lovers: The Curse of Queerness in ‘Ginger Snaps’
The tragedy of Ginger Snaps, in fact, is that patriarchy makes queerness unspeakable and unthinkable. As a result, the film can imagine no future for women in patriarchy other than death…
Millennials Are the Greatest Generation: Ira Levin’s ‘A Kiss Before Dying’
Tom Brokaw popularized the term “The Greatest Generation” in 1998 to describe the Americans—and especially the American men—who survived the Depression and fought against Nazism in World War II. Brokaw saw this cohort in valedictory, heroic terms…
“No Bars Between Us”: Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones, and the Feminist Utopia
Gwyneth Jones’s new critical biography of Joanna Russ for the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series (called simply Joanna Russ) seems less like an academic reconsideration than a continuation of its subject’s oeuvre…
The Opposite of Camp Is Tragedy: Anna Biller’s ‘The Love Witch’
“Men are like children; they’re very easy to please as long as we give them what they want,” declares sultry young witch Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson) to her friend Trish (Laura Waddell) in Anna Biller’s 2016 film The Love Witch…
“A Matter of Good Breeding”: The Shape-Shifting Elite in Brian Yuzna’s ‘Society’
The elite is an amorphous clotted blob of parasitic greed and hate. Its tendrils extend with slimy stealth into every orifice of society—which makes its precise outlines difficult to see. Are the elite contemptuous coastal liberals and academics? Are they hedge fund managers and tech billionaires? Are they infiltrating globalists or capitalist pigs? Are they your bosses? Or are they your neighbors sneering at your MCU films and your fast food diet?
Make Cinema Great Again: Martin Scorsese, Marvel, and the Hollywood Monoculture
Some people like MCU films; some people like Scorsese and Coppola films. I’m not really a fan of any of them. But what individuals may like or dislike isn’t really the issue in this discussion. The issue is what is considered to be quality, serious art, what is not, and why…
Knocking Over Idols: Gods and Women in ‘The Magus’ and ‘Black Silk’
Fowles wants to destroy master narratives, but he’s too fascinated with mastery to do it…
The Genocide of the Doppelgangers: Identity and Conquest in ‘Counterpart’
Colonialism is often framed as an encounter with the other. The colonizer journeys abroad and finds a different world, different people, and difference itself. Yet, that difference often has a very familiar look. No matter where they travel, it sometimes seems, colonialists discover no one but themselves…
