Noah Berlatsky

Conservative fetishization of the past is myopic, simplistic, and mean-spirited—but progressives can be too quick to cede tradition.

Some love stories don't end happily. So why do so many romance novels insist they do?

Why should prostitution be illegal? And, more specifically why should male prostitution be illegal?

Iin a passionate Facebook thread last week, children's author Meg Rosoff rejected the idea that there are "too few books for marginalized young people," as librarian Edith Edi Campbell had suggested.

Genre boundaries are conscious of race—and, in the case of rock, conscious of gender too.

Banks' "Ice Princess" video shows that it's not only white people who can pick up someone else's culture.

Action movies don't usually bother much with romance. The trailer for The Transporter: Refueled certainly doesn't. The hero is cool — sexy women, plural, throw themselves at him, or at least stand near him and things blow up; there are fights and revenge and high production values. Romance is, at best, a secondary concern.

Bus ads comparing Muslims to Hitler have been replaced with images of a superhero. And not just any superhero.

It's hard to deny the appeal of the masculine ideal, especially when embodied in Jude Law. And yet, it's also a depressing vision.

Fans of Batgirl are fans of Batgirl. They buy her comic to see her being heroic, not to see her being a slasher movie victim.