Read the brilliant @storti.bsky.social on S03 of White Lotus @publicbooks.bsky.social immediately www.publicbooks.org/could-i-be-a...

New at PB: Anna Storti (@storti.bsky.social) revisits “The White Lotus,” and in particular season 3's headline-making scene where Frank, played by Sam Rockwell, delivers a five-minute-long monologue where he asks, "Could I be an Asian girl?"

What is the function of satire, @storti.bsky.social asks, in the representation of racist fantasy?

New at PB: @storti.bsky.social publishes a reflection of racist fantasy in HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Storti’s book, “Torn: Asian/white Life and the Intimacy of Violence”, is out today with @dukepress.bsky.social !

“Portraying the fall of the mighty is easy money, low-hanging fruit. Eat the rich! What’s riskier and harder to swallow are the moments when the viewer comes into contact with the white elite’s racist fantasies.”

“If satire mobilizes critique through emotion, to what extent does the genre fail when the subject is racist fantasy?” New at PB: @storti.bsky.social revisits the reactions to Frank’s (Sam Rockwell) season 3 monologue about sexual desire in “The White Lotus.”

Wrote a piece for LIMN about working for certain people at a certain art museum in New York in my 20s - can you guess which one? limn.press/article/conf...

The bubble of prestige TV has burst. Netflix serves up good and bad shows, and its algorithm doesn’t editorialize. In recent years, AppleTV+ has emerged as “the new HBO.” But take a closer look, and you see it as a platform for advertising Apple products.

“Apple’s ‘Price-Tag TV,’ to propose a new entrant to the TV name game, is expensive programming about folks who like expensive things, made for viewers who either can’t see or don’t care about the difference between good and expensive.”

New at PB: Michael Szalay considers how AppleTV+, dubbed the new HBO, actually isn't. Rather, its expensively produced offerings prop up Apple’s prestige play, lazy watches for the affluent and self-satisfied.

Check out I Kissed a Girl on BBC and read Tori McCandless’s excellent essay thereon in @publicbooks.bsky.social!

New at PB, Tori McCandless reviews BBC’s reality show “I Kissed a Girl,” where the “most heartwarming moments correspond to the girls being vulnerable with one another and sharing difficult life experiences underwritten by homophobia, external or internalized.”

Witnessing the happiness of “I Kissed a Girl’s contestants is possible, Tori McCandless writes, because we also witness their successful navigation of a world that is unwelcoming of difference––which includes navigating a lot of big, often bad feelings.

Though similar in premise to “Love Island,” BBC’s “I Kissed a Girl” has more wholesome “teachable moments” that aim to present and explore some aspect of queer culture.

To view “I Kissed a Girl” as predominantly upbeat, Tori McCandless argues, is to miss why it’s important how the show represents bad feelings. It misses how such bad feelings necessarily correspond to any joy the show represents.

“What makes ‘I Kissed a Girl’ so great is that it foregrounds queers who openly relay their traumas. And they do so, crucially, without being consumed by such traumas, or erasing the essential differences they reveal.”

“The good feelings are contingent on a history of listening to her body and realizing that her embodied experience of racism and homophobia offers evidence of what is wrong with the world.”

“I Kissed a Girl” is full of chaotic gay energy, sex jokes, and campy moments. But it also beautifully honors the ways in which queer joy is earned.

Fantastic piece by Jannat Suleiman out today in @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/hijabs-on-th...

“Despite the persistent modern dilemma around the diversity and inclusion of Muslim women and hijabi women as a right-wing red herring, it’s the streaming platforms—not the Hollywood executives—that have consistently taken a chance on such characters.”

New at PB: Jannat Suleman (@theamateurstake.bsky.social) tracks the differences in hijabi representation on TV and in films. Hollywood studios, she concludes, rarely portray hijabi women, and when they do, there’s often much that’s misrepresented.

New at PB: Jannat Suleman (@theamateurstake.bsky.social) asks: Why is hijabi representation divided between small-screen success and big-screen blunders?

The notion that dissent should be peaceful is liberal brainwashing at best but I was doing supply runs at the action in DTLA yesterday & it was as usual the cops & the national guard inciting violence against people justifiably angry about being terrorized & deported by ICE.

We are mourning the loss of Jonathan Sterne: author, editor, contributor, mentor, and friend. buff.ly/HcoVX9x

Rest well Jonathan Sterne, a truly wonderful human in addition to being a brilliant intellect. When I met him he told me he didn’t go to any conference or invited gig unless it promised to be a good time & every time I saw him after that was indeed a good time. Lots of love to all who loved him. 💖

“By these actions, by their willingness to scapegoat and vilify the pro-Palestine student movement, these institutions have invited their enemies in, becoming testing grounds for the authoritarianism that threatens our nation.” truthout.org/articles/as-...

All out to free Mahmoud Khalil in Federal Plaza today! 🔥

A crowd has gathered for the NYC protest against the illegal ICE arrest of Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil. Protesters are chanting and calling for his immediate release. Multiple helicopters overhead.

re the previous repost: if they can disappear permanent residents they can disappear citizens

Want efficiency? Get rid of the cops.

Sometimes being in an English department is so fucking wild

Serbia: opposition leaders throw grenades in solidarity with student protestors US: opposition leaders grumble in their seats

Did that piece of shit just throw gum at his wife

Universities love to engage in union-busting, it's like their hobby

I think I speak for many of us when I say I’m going to have to start serving cunt really hard to make it through the rest of 2025

Yesterday marked a month since we lost our darling boy, Corky. He was a truly magical being, and this awful world feels even more awful without him. #CorkyForever cc: @moveablejaw.bsky.social

I had so much fun writing this piece on Dubai Bling - thank you to @publicbooks.bsky.social for giving it a home!

New at PB, Tazeen M Ali examines the gendered politics of womanhood, wealth, and power on Netflix’s “Dubai Bling”:

Here are some nice mushrooms

“[N]ine times out of ten, common sense is *wrong*” — Stuart Hall

Exposing hypocrisy ceases to be a viable strategy when the hypocrites in question don’t give a fuck, just saying

I have never given less of a fuck about academia as I do currently and that’s saying something because I already gave negative fucks

Pets displaced by the L.A. Wildfires: Meet 6-month-old littermate girls, Wyatt & June. Wyatt is “tiny and curious with a big heart.” June is “super contemplative and seems a bit more sensitive.” Please message me if you can provide a stable and loving home for them together.

I feel like I’ve been choking back a sob for the past five years

Academics: maybe be a little bit more thoughtful when reaching out to L.A. folks right now instead of creating a sense of urgency around things (blurbs, peer review, forms, abstracts, etc) that do not take precedence over fleeing fire & toxic air. I also DGAF about MLA & the shenanigans there.

If you’re emailing someone who lives in LA about work, some advice: don’t send the fucking email

I’m in shock for like the twentieth time since 2025 started. I’d better get better at being in shock and still functioning highly.

Guess it’s really time for my book to come out. I visited Vent Haven 10 years ago…

Joe Biden's legacy will be the facilitation of genocide in Gaza.