How has the first week of March been treating you, my darlings?

Here’s what I have for you from the past week…

Ed Hightower, a comrade at the World Socialist Web Site, argued that On the Basis of Sex was made for bougie Democratic women on the 2nd:
“This writer suggests that the film should have ended with a scene of one of Ginsburg and Scalia’s many visits to the opera. But then, showing this icon as one who could comfortably cavort with an authoritarian bigot would make for a different film.”

On the 4th, Heather Schwedel analyzed the cultural impact of Luke Perry’s sideburns over at Slate:
“It’s technically true that the Civil War general Ambrose Everett Burnside invented, and lent his name to, sideburns. But it’s also true that the sideburn’s century-ish of history can be considered but a prelude to one fateful day in 1990 or thereabouts when Luke Perry’s barber, clippers in hand, reached the space in front of the actor’s ears … and paused. The clouds parted, the angels sang, and a few millimeters of growth later, lo it had been achieved: the pinnacle of the sideburn.”

Also on the 4th, Cedric Voets at Cracked discussed old man yelling at clouds Steven Spielberg’s demands that The Academy make films made for streaming platforms ineligible for Oscar nominations:
“Times change. What once was the only way to watch movies is now part of a wide spectrum. And the man who once was the greatest example of the future of film is now the dude who made Ready Player One and is trying to stop further progress.”

Another from the 4th, is Ruth Graham using the controversy over A Place for Wolves to explore how “callout culture” has began eating its own on Slate:
“Until recently, Kosoko Jackson was considered an expert in the trapdoors of identity-related rhetoric. Jackson worked as a ‘sensitivity reader’ for major publishers of YA fiction, a job that entails reading manuscripts and flagging them for problematic content. His own debut novel, A Place for Wolves, was promoted as an ‘#ownvoices’ book, a hashtag attached approvingly to books in which the author shares a particular marginalized identity with his subject. (Jackson is black and queer.) He believed that, for example, women shouldn’t ‘profit’ from writing gay men’s stories, as he tweeted last year. And he was part of a small and informal but intense online community that scolded writers who ran afoul of these values in their work or online. Now, Jackson has been demonized by the community he once helped police.”

On the 5th, Kieran Fisher at Film School Rejects made a case for physical media:
“The good thing about physical media is that it’s permanent. This means that we don’t have to rely on online services to see movies that we want to access at any given time. Streaming services and digital platforms tend to only host movies for a limited period anyway, which isn’t ideal for when you’re in the mood for something specific and can’t find it anywhere to watch on the internet.”

Finally, Rebecca Mills discussed why 2019 is “the year of true crime” for Hidden Remote on the 7th:
“As for when we’ll get our fill of true crime, likely never. True crime isn’t a new genre by any means but one that somehow never gets old. There is always going to be crime and thus people are going to profit off of it. TV and film aren’t the only one piece of media picking up on the trend, though. There are books, podcasts, Youtube videos and articles to keep people satisfied.”

Enjoy!