Category: media

How This Woman Became (Arguably) The Most Successful Sitcom Star In History

“There have been other television revolutionaries — Lorne Michaels, Carol Burnett, David Letterman — but, as she films the seventh and final season of HBO’s Veep, [Julia] Louis-Dreyfus’s success is unprecedented. From Seinfeld to The New Adventures of Old Christine to her remarkable portrayal of Vice President Selina Meyer, Louis-Dreyfus has earned 11 Emmys, including six in a row.” Says Veep‘s showrunner, “When people tell me that they wish Selina was president, that’s not what they mean. They wish Julia Louis-Dreyfus was president.”

Why We All Like Oscar The Grouch Better Than Big Bird

“Oscar the Grouch, thank you for helping me learn as a small child that one can get in bad moods, and it’s not the end of the world,” wrote one New York Times reader in response to the news that the puppeteer behind Oscar and Big Bird is retiring after 50 years. One child psychologist “said that Oscar personified the jumble of strong feelings that children experience and must learn to sort out.”

American TV Was On Its Way To Being Diverse Back In The 1940s. Here’s Why We Got ‘Leave It To Beaver’ Instead

“At the start of the Cold War, a prominent group of women, who had worked their way up in broadcast media in the 1930s and ’40s, were poised to use the new medium of television to create the kind of inclusive, intersectional content that is only today finding traction. Then, the blacklist, a vicious, hearsay-riddled manifest of Hollywood talent with ties to Communism, silenced their creative output. It effectively turned back on the dial of progressive representations on TV by decades.”

What’s Working On Netflix? Romantic Comedies

Eighty million subscribers watched Netflix romcoms this summer. Netflix released a series original movies as part of its “Summer of Love” over the past few months, including “Set It Up,” “The Kissing Booth,” “Like Father,” “Sierra Burgess Is a Loser” and the aforementioned “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.” The company said Tuesday that it was already in production of “the next set of original rom-coms” for its members.

‘Dallas’ At 40: How The Trashiest, Campiest Show On Television Revolutionized Pop Culture, Rebooted Texas’s Reputation, And (Maybe) Helped Bring Down The Ceaușescus

“It’s hard, from the vantage point of our Peak TV era, to grasp why Dallas caused such a global ruckus. In 1980, the show was arguably the hottest pop culture entity in existence; about as many Americans tuned in to find out who shot J. R. as voted for president. … After more than 35 hours of interviews, we learned that the stories behind Dallas are nearly as over-the-top as the stories on the screen.”

Hit Film Inspires Hundreds Of Survivors Of Abuse By Polish Priests To Come Forward

“Based on real events, Kler (The Clergy), by the director Wojciech Smarzowski, which includes testimonies of survivors, features an alcoholic priest who encourages his lover to have an abortion, a priest accused of abusing a young boy, a senior cleric engaged in corruption and blackmail, and a grotesque, foul-mouthed archbishop cutting deals with politicians and mobsters, all operating with impunity.” Despite denunciations by conservative laypeople and churchmen, the film is breaking box office records and encouraged many victims to speak out.

How Children’s TV Has Become Globalized

The new children’s media look nothing like what we adults would have expected. They are exuberant, cheap, weird, and multicultural. YouTube’s content for young kids—what I think of as Toddler YouTube—is a mishmash, a bricolage, a trash fire, an explosion of creativity. It’s a largely unregulated, data-driven grab for toddlers’ attention, and, as we’ve seen with the rest of social media, its ramifications may be deeper and wider than you’d initially think.