The campy 90s classic reevaluated for modern times
When I was a teenager, I had a habit of rewatching movies over and over again on my bulky Dell Laptop. These movies were often awful. I obsessed over Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever (1995) or the slap schtick shenanigans of Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, and Diane Keaton in The First Wives Club (1996). I didn’t realize at the time that all of these movies were campy and often had a gay or queer subtext.
Of all the movies I watched, no film was I obsessed with more than Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). The Robin William’s comedy about a man cross-dressing as…
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Our belief that voting is hopeless, as seen on tv
I remember casting my ballot for the first time as a newly-minted 18-year-old growing up in Northern New Jersey. I was a senior in High School who was filled with so much enthusiasm for the process of voting. I had binged several episodes of the show The West Wing the night before, and I incessantly couldn’t stop quoting lines from the sequel to Legally Blonde — Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Blonde.
As Elle Woods would say, “I was there to speak up!” I had researched all the positions beforehand, and I knew exactly who and what I would…
The hateful comics of StoneToss, Hedgewik, MadebyJimBob, and more.
For the longest time, the Internet has been a place for comic book artists to get their start. Comics such as xkcd and Homestuck inspired cult followings and fandoms. Artists such as Alex Woolfson of The Young Protectors fame proved that indie creators with marginalized identities could successfully express themselves — free of the barriers that plagued more intensive media such as TV shows, movies, and video games.
And yet, the Internet has always had a dark underbelly, where creators use their platforms to spread hatred and misinformation. While increased moderation…
Copyright moderation has become a tool of revenge, exploitation, and extortion
In the summer of 2019, YouTuber Koolers Mobile uploaded a video about a threatening email they had received. It was from the company AppLike, which wanted the creator to take several videos down.
“We reserve the right to take legal action if the named videos remain online…We expect the answer to the request within the next four weeks… Otherwise, we will take necessary steps to enforce our claim.”
The videos in question were reviews of their app — a fairly standard practice on the Internet. …
A breakdown of the LGBTQIA’s community love of young, adult media
Years ago, I was in a gay bar for a screening of Steven Universe: The Movie (2019). It was being emceed by a local drag queen (shoutout to Vagenesis) who would pause the film so that local performers could lipsync their favorite Steven Universe characters. I loved every moment of it: the costumes, the singing, the emotionally intelligent cartoon show about intergalactic space rocks.
I remember looking around the room and seeing smiling, queer faces all around me. There were a lot of LGBTQIA+ adults who loved this show, and not just Steven Universe. I saw people with Adventure Time…
A story of logistics and anticipation.
The Dayton Funeral parlor, founded by Michael Dayton Jr., sat on the very top of Elmwood Ave for over forty-eight years, and for most of its existence, it had been dreadful in both appearance and character. Daisy J. McAllen would know because she had been attending it periodically her entire life for her extended family’s various funerals.
Even then, as a child running about the halls to play games of hide & seek and tag, she remembered how cheap it looked, how utterly imperfect it was. The interior was lined with disgusting brown plywood…
A quick rundown of the most popular articles from April 18th to April 23rd, 2021.
As a Medium writer, I spend a lot of time tracking what I do. When the Trending on Medium section debuted several months ago, I tried finding a site that actively archived this information. The best I found was the Internet Archive, but I could not locate an archived page for every day (note — if you know of an alternative, please let me know).
And so, I started cataloging the information myself. Below is the information I gathered from Sunday, April 18 to Friday…
We need to talk about how conservatives love to be persecuted
The debate over “Cancel Culture” has been a big discussion in recent years. At a glance, canceling is the practice of using public shame to diminish the social or material capital of someone who says or does something problematic. A classic example of this is film producer Harvey Weinstein. He is now serving prison time after many women came forward about the sexual harassment and assaults he committed against them.
There is no unified consensus on the efficacy of Cancel Culture. Some people think it’s a morally correct form of justice in the face of a system that refuses to…
The “both sides” rhetoric can be used as a tool of oppression.
If you have followed the political discourse for the last couple of decades, you’ll have noticed an unending conversation around how you need to get your news from both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum. “Democrats must get out of their bubble,” writes Arlie Hochschild in the Berkeley Blog. “To Beat Trump, Democrats May Need to Break Out of the ‘Whole Foods’ Bubble,” David Wasserman laments in The New York Times. …
A guide to some of the best video games escapes this side of the multiverse.
Video games allow us to escape to fantastical new worlds. We are permitted to play people and do things that would not normally be accessible to us. This fact makes them a perfect vehicle for travel. You are not just going to far-off countries, but realms that defy everything but the human imagination.
And like any vacation, you need a guide. We are going to rate these games based on how great of a vacation spot they are. …
Alex Mell-Taylor
I write about pop culture and politics. Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/opinionsalexhas Write for me: https://medium.com/after-the-storm
