Pop Culture
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The Things We (Actually) Loved to Watch in 2024 December 20, 2024
Looking back at what we’ve watched over the past 12 months, one thing is clear: Between keeping up with all the movies hitting theaters (and streaming services), the latest in TV, our daily For You page perusal, or actually going outside, the competi...
Can We Make Pop Culture Great Again? December 16, 2024
When “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” debuted together late last month, there was a painful attempt to call their shared box office success “Glicked” — a reference to the portmanteau of “Barbenheimer” that described the joint cultural triumph of “Barbie” ...
The Ringer’s 30 Best Albums of 2024 December 12, 2024
The problem with covering music as a pop culture outlet is the very fractured nature of listenership in the modern age. We don’t all tune in to the radio. MTV doesn’t exist like it used to. The music that’s fed to us on apps like Spotify (The Ringer’...
How the Irish Came to Rule Pop Culture November 19, 2024
When was the moment Ireland became cool? Was it in December 2018, when Derry Girls hit Netflix, introducing a global audience to Northern Ireland’s ’90s pop-culture ephemera? Or was it a few months later, when Sally Rooney’s Normal People arrived in ...
Among the Bros for the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson Fight November 19, 2024
Rooting for Mike Tyson has never been a simple proposition. This is someone raised in destitute conditions in Brownsville who then rose to the peak of boxing, sure, but also someone convicted of a violent sexual crime (that he has maintained his inno...
We Don’t Want New Music Anymore November 04, 2024
Recently my wife and I went to a performance by a band whose debut album came out in 1986. Every couple of years they produce yet another album of well-crafted, well-played, mid-tempo album of songs about life in all its mysteries and heartbreaks. Mo...
Tim Burton's Dark Nights November 01, 2024
Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns might be the perfect Halloween movies. They were big successes back in 1989 and 1992, grossing together more than a billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). They are fun popcorn movies, but also weird artistic ...
The Year of Snoop Dogg October 08, 2024
A couple of weeks ago, The Voice—you know, the prime-time reality singing competition, the showcase that gave us good ol’ Morgan Wallen—returned for its 26th season on NBC. I don’t follow the show, and I might not have otherwise cared to watch a seco...
The Ringmaster’s Final Bell September 30, 2024
Vince McMahon has long been pro wrestling's most compelling character, both on screen and off. Now, as the 78-year-old faces what may be his final reckoning, Netflix's documentary series Mr. McMahon offers an at-times intimate portrait of a strange, ...
The Better Angels of 'Bad Monkey' September 30, 2024
I started watching Bad Monkey, the latest Apple TV+ series, one of the funnier things on offer this year, for two reasons. First, I like Vince Vaughn a lot. He was clever in his 2000s persona in comedies with Will Ferrell and Owen Wilson: Old School ...
How Did Pop Culture Get So Gloomy? September 30, 2024
Why did pop culture go over to the dark side?You can actually measure it in Hollywood box office numbers. The happy genres—musicals, romantic date movies, screwball comedies—have mostly disappeared. But horror and dystopian sci-fi films are more popu...
The Sally Rooney Effect September 20, 2024
On Tuesday, Sally Rooney will publish her fourth novel, Intermezzo, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Each Rooney novel since her 2017 debut, Conversations with Friends, has caused a frenzy in the literary world. Normal People (2018) put her on the lit...
Barkan's Briefly Noted, Vol. 3 September 19, 2024
Let Me Try Again by Matthew Davis (Arcade Publishing)Alt-lit. Internet lit. Dimes Square lit. It is either about digital life or the consciousness consumed by it; it is disdainful, usually, of conventional narrative. It favors the deadpan, the pared ...
Living in the 80s July 16, 2024
I’ve lost count of how many 80s-themed events my young children have attended. Dropping them at the most recent neon-fringed disco, a few parents noted how weird it was that our children seem obsessed with an era they can barely imagine. When I was s...
The Limits of Liberation July 09, 2024
“Fantasy love,” claimed Andy Warhol, “is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting…Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets anyway.” He lamented that social and scientific progress led to b...
