Noah Berlatsky

Sex and bodies don't clarify gender; they confuse the issue.

Art without politics actually results in a sweeping Puritanism. For art to have power, it needs to engage with power, with politics.

english lit academic. wish fulfiller. thwarted world-changer.

Their sexuality traps and destroys male innocence, as they grad hold, by the penis- the better to lead him to castration. Make no mistake that castration is greeted with fear, terror, and disgust—but also with glee. Women as super villains allow their characters to be super powerful; a force for evil is at least a force. In a media landscape where women are often rendered secondary, invisible, and passive, the femme fatale, in her icy violence, seizes female agency along with the phallus that she so efficiently cuts off.

Talking about race can get you into a lot of trouble . . . especially if you don't have a lot of class power or status.

Writing can be hard and uncomfortable and precarious—but it's hard and uncomfortable and precarious in the way that any job can be.

Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf: they're all still practically household names.

C.S. Lewis' classic book presents an unlikely challenge to the patriarchy in the form of its true hero, Lucy.

Katniss is the voice of conscience and morality in the film, and in The Hunger Games series as a whole. In the just released last film in the series, she tries repeatedly to avoid unnecessary deaths. She insists that refugees from an attacked base be given an escape route, for example, and exposes herself in an effort to help them.

With the death of Leonard Nimoy, it's a good moment to pay tribute to (and question) his most famous character.