Appetite for Destruction
...is what best channels the substance of American culture, its mediated violence, into a single ritual. It systematizes technology, brute force, and drama into an event capable of creating beauty,...
Arguing the Web (3): Post-Text
...culture of self-centered, distracted readers who forgot the MLA guidelines for correct citation. The real interest lies in criticism about the growing culture of subjectivity that puts feelings before facts,...
No Accidents, Comrade
...increasingly crowd out the chance new discoveries will be made. Narratives using chance in American culture — the rags-to-riches story, or immigrant emigration story lines — are so prominent, they...
Kippers for Breakfast
...economic globalization, life within America was becoming ever more vertiginous, as American culture was situated at the vanishing point reflected in two mirrors pointed at each other. Growing up as...
Nerd Sex Symbol Redux
...in order to be seen as “one of us” by nerd culture at large. It’s not just McKellar’s math skills; it’s her specific brand of appeal that puts her in...
Sunday Reading
...associated with their gang moniker? It will be located within their cellular phones." Trayvon Martin, a victim in the NRA's culture war A Miracle in Colonel Sanders' Colon Jazz and...
The Madman's Interpreters
...culture. But maybe their particular power, a power that can be almost scary, comes from their inability or refusal to find or accept a niche, to fit in. Certainly artists...
The Devil You Know
...writers like Gaiman, Morrison, Moore, and Ellis. As comics culture has become more mainstream, the room for oppositional comics is restricted. Hellblazer now sells a third of what it did...
Beauty Blogosphere 5.18.12
...whose situation makes salon work the best job option for you—but you come from a culture that considers touching other people's feet a demeaning taboo? ...And Everything In Between: Red...
Instructions for Young Manhood
...1903, he opened Physical Culture City in a New Jersey suburb. Residents devoted themselves completely to being healthy. They didn’t smoke or drink. They wanted never to detach from the...
Vol. 19 Editors' Note: "Art"
...development in culture and society, posing new questions—or, let’s face it, the same old questions—as to where the work resides and how we should look at it. Parker Ito’s America...
The Myth of Cyberspace
...place shared by multiple disembodied minds. However, the very same phrase also aptly describes the role that the concept of cyberspace has now come to occupy in contemporary culture. What...
You Belong Here, Beloved Reader - An Interview with Diriye Osman
"I really wanted The Butterfly Jungle to have the energy of a super-fly Somali sheesha session"
My Soul to Keep
...is the utopian dream of a future predicated on abundance and ease. Erected in its stead is a nightmare vision of ruthless, zero-sum competition. Culture distinguishes itself from nature only...
Remains of the Day
...state that the face is a redundancy in Western capitalist culture. 14. Fame is said to have a price, but fame is all price. The cost of human cost. 15....
The Primitive Accumulation of Cool
...express our uniqueness through the material culture we assembled for ourselves. Without consumer goods, our true self would rest dormant within us, untouched by the desire that could vivify it....