F

Flavorwire

Media

Theatre

The Critic Who Smashed a Theatergoer’s Cell Phone Is No Hero

By Tyler Coates on

How do you teach a rude stranger about etiquette and manners? There’s an easy answer: you don’t.

Perhaps you’ve seen the story of National Review writer Kevin Williamson, who achieved Internet hero status this week after grabbing a theater patron’s cell phone during a performance of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 and throwing it across the room. It struck a nerve with many people: those who attend live theater performances and see movies and who have experienced Williamson’s frustration at the sight (and sounds) of a audience member’s distracting cell phone use. But while many of us have wanted to take physical action in response to our cell phone-induced anger, most of us don’t. The reason is because it would make us as bad — if not worse — than the person using his or her phone so cavalierly during a performance or film. … Read More

Media

What Bret Easton Ellis’ GLAAD Rant Gets Right (And What It Gets Wrong)

By Tyler Coates on

Out has published a long rant from novelist and occasional Internet provocateur Bret Easton Ellis that covers at length the following subjects: Jason Collins, the former NBA player who came out as gay two weeks ago with a controversial Sports Illustrated cover story, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the organization’s annual media awards, openly gay actor Matt Bomer, a defense of AIDS jokes, and the phenomenon he calls “the Gay Man as the Magical Elf.” Strap in folks, because there’s a lot to parse in this nearly 3,500-word screed in which Ellis places himself at the heart of a great debate about the nature of today’s gay man — a topic on which the writer seems to play both sides. … Read More

Media

The Worst Time Magazine Covers of All Time

By Alison Herman on

By now, the average person’s read a thousand tweets and a dozen think pieces rightfully criticizing Joel Stein’s Time cover story on kids these days and how they’re ruining America with their self-absorption, unemployment, and student debt. But in nearly a century of circulation, Time has missed the bar several times before. It’s probably inevitable when a major national publication attempts to constantly keep its finger on the zeitgeist (see every New York Times article ever written about Williamsburg), but more than a few Time cover stories — not to mention the covers themselves — have been laughably out of touch or just plain wrong. Click through for a look at some of Time‘s most extreme misses, from the inane to the outrageous to the outright offensive.
 … Read More

Media

Why Time’s Millennials Cover Story Says More About Joel Stein Than It Does About Millennials

By Tom Hawking on

As you’ve probably read, Joel Stein’s professionally trollish Time cover story about the millennial generation is already the source of an almighty controversy, largely because it’s… well, it’s unmitigated horseshit, basically. Since you can’t actually read the article unless you shell out $5 for a copy of what used to be a pretty decent news magazine back before the millennials were born, we thought we’d save you the trouble and point out exactly why Stein’s arguments are horrible. … Read More

Media

In Defense of Mandy Stadtmiller: Why Internet Oversharing Isn’t Just xoJane’s Problem

By Tyler Coates on

As long as there are blogs, people will overshare. The term that came into popularity in the late aughts is a catchall to describe those who willingly offer up embarrassing details of their lives for the entertainment of others. It’s a word usually lobbed at female writers, particularly those whose personal essays are reduced by male critics (a nice way of saying “Internet commenters”) as self-indulgent, navel-gazing screeds that serve no purpose other than directing attention to the writer’s byline. And in an era with a multitude of ladyblogs, there are as many female writers who respond to these personal essays with derision, usually questioning the source material’s brand of feminism (or lack thereof). The mass response to anyone who is willing to share parts of her (or, sometimes, his) life online usually stems from the fact that the critics wouldn’t personally share the same type of material themselves. Because someone is doing something they wouldn’t do, that person must be doing something wrong. … Read More

Media

Jon Stewart’s Greatest Crusades Against the Mainstream Media

By Chloe Pantazi on

On last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart lodged a pithily accurate critique of CNN’s tactless and misinformed reporting on the dubious arrest of a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Amid clips of CNN’s rambling, self-contradicting shambles of reportage, Stewart quipped, “It’s like a news story as imagined by M. Night Shyamalan,”adding that what was “exclusive” about the report is that “it was completely fucking wrong.” Stewart topped off his critique with the following astute insight: ”We’re accustomed to 24-hour news networks thriving on conflict. Generally, though, that conflict is between two outside parties — political opponents, pundits — but CNN’s reporters have discovered that they can remove the middle man and spend hours of programming fighting amongst themselves. They have figured out a way to shit in their own mouths. CNN has become the Human Centipede of News.” Stewart’s superb takedown of CNN impelled us to revisit the best of the political satirist’s verbal crusades against the mainstream media.  … Read More

Media

The Best Cultural Writing You May Have Missed Over the Long Weekend

By Chloe Pantazi on

From suburb-bound hipsters to Beyoncé and Girls, and the aftermath of terrible Valentine’s Days, we rounded up the best of the weekend’s cultural writings. Weigh in on the most talked-about pieces of the past few days and tell us what else you’ve been reading in the comments. … Read More

Media

The Rise of the Artisanal Magazine

By Jason Diamond on

Death and dying are so hot right now — or at least it seems that way, if you spend your days trying to comprehend the changes in how we traditionally consume information. Lectures? Those might be D.O.A. Bookstores? Yeah, those could use a burial plot. The book publishing industry? That’s basically a zombie film waiting to happen. Magazines? Oh wow, that’s a really slow and cruel death; causes include a frightening combination of blogs, microblogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook timelines, listicles, and Reddit. The media (which also might be a dead man walking) is fixated on inanimate things leaving this mortal coil; we simply love a good demise. And while it will probably be a very long time till we’re reading exclusively off iPads and Kindles, sooner rather than later, most of our favorite magazines and newspapers will either be completely digital or will have seriously cut down the amount of physical copies they publish. SPIN and Newsweek (who, after 80 years, had to face the realities that “cannot be ignored” as editor-in-chief Tina Brown put it) have already gone that route. While it was a practical financial decision, Brown noted that, “Exiting print is painful, and poignant, for all of us who love the romance of print and the unique weekly camaraderie of those hectic hours before the magazine’s ‘close’ on Friday night.” … Read More

Media

Jonah Lehrer Apologizes in Heartfelt Speech, Doesn’t Seem That Sorry in Q&A

By Emily Temple on

This afternoon, Jonah Lehrer — of Bob Dylan quote manufacturing, plagiarizing, fiery fall-from-grace fame — gave a talk “about decision making” at the Knight Foundation’s annual Media Learning Seminar, for which Poynter reports he was paid $20,000. Lehrer’s speech was an apology, a self-flagellating mea maxima culpa made all the more brutal by the enormous screen next to him running a constant Twitter stream of people making fun of him. … Read More

Media

15 Ways of Looking at The New York Times’ Latest Irritating Analysis of the Hipster

By Judy Berman on

If the prototypical highly educated, white, 20-something city dweller is a skinny dude in a vintage Stryper T-shirt with elaborate facial hair, then The New York Times is the used-to-be-cool middle-aged parent squinting skeptically at that clothing and mustache, trying to figure out whether this is all a joke at her expense. It has now been almost two years since Brian Williams, who was already over 50 at the time, shamed the paper of record for treating Brooklyn and its denizens with a condescending brand of anthropological wonder. But The Gray Lady just can’t leave so-called “hipsters” alone.

The latest entry in what will probably one day be compiled into the worst book ever written is “How to Live Without Irony,” a dire op-ed by Princeton French professor Christy Wampole that begins with the bold pronouncement, “If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype of ironic living.” But it isn’t just the time-machine-to-2002 vibe of the piece that’s got Twitter in a spin; it’s the imprecise definition of “irony,” the tired hand-wringing about modern technology, the laughable insistence that the ’90s of the author’s youth was irony-free, the contention that “nonironic living” is now so endangered that its practitioners are limited to “very young children, elderly people, deeply religious people, people with severe mental or physical disabilities, people who have suffered, and those from economically or politically challenged places where seriousness is the governing state of mind.”

If you were to construct a Reactionary Social Criticism Bingo card, this essay would provide no shortage of paths to victory. But since that might be considered an “ironic” way to respond to the piece, let’s go a different route. After years of publishing articles that misunderstand and indict young adults, the Times deserves to have the tables turned. So now it’s time to engage in some rapid-fire deconstruction of the op-ed and its author. Below, we’ve formulated 15 ways of looking at “How to Live Without Irony.” … Read More