Aug 25, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Gender and Sexism, mic, Race and Racism, Scandals
Published: The Daily Dot (August 25, 2016) Is it OK to separate the moral flaws of an artist from the quality of their art? The answer is yes—so long as you understand the consequences. It’s become an American trending topic that we can’t ignore across our Facebook feeds. When we find out that Mel Gibson said anti-Semitic things, and Michael Richards used the N-word, or that Johnny Depp is...
Aug 24, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Liskula Cohen, mic
Published: The Good Men Project (August 23, 2016) co-author Liskula Cohen 2016 has been an especially political year when it comes to the movies. It seems like each of the major presidential candidates has had a major cinematic release to accompany the themes of their campaign: The unapologetically feminist“Ghostbusters” is linked to the same cultural zeitgeist fueling Hillary Clinton’s...
Aug 16, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Internet Culture, mic
Published: The Daily Dot (August 16, 2016) It’s a strange feeling, having written one of the few positive articles about Suicide Squad. If the Internet community can learn anything from “Suicide Squad,” it is that online culture breeds a specific kind of overly-informed and excessively quantifying approach to the art of criticism. This has become apparent in several ways just with the Internet’s...
Aug 16, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Bullying, Internet Culture
Published: The Good Men Project (August 16, 2016) Simply put, cyber bullies deserve to be ridiculed because they are cowards. I suppose I can exclude the rare troll or hater who actually attaches his or her real name to their verbal bile. There are even a handful of individuals who make their careers out of trolling (Perez Hilton and Milo Yiannapoulos come to mind). That said, the vast majority...
Aug 9, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Elections, Elections - Presidential (2016), Race and Racism
Published: The Good Men Project (August 9, 2016) Before I get to why Will Smith is probably right, let’s dispense with why his hysterical right-wing critics are definitely wrong. At a press event in Dubai, Smith tried to find a silver lining to the dark cloud that is Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. “As painful as it is to hear Donald Trump talk and as embarrassing as it is as an American...
Aug 5, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Criminal Justice/Prison-Industrial Complex, mic
Published: Salon (August 5, 2016) [Note: The end of this essay contains spoilers for the ending of “Suicide Squad.”] If the critics at RottenTomatoes are to be believed, Suicide Squad is a terrible movie with “a muddled plot, thinly written characters, and choppy directing.” (Salon’s ownAndrew O’Hehir calls it “profoundly second-rate … at every level of conception and execution.”) This puts me...
Jul 28, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Elections, Elections - Presidential (2016), mic
Published: The Good Men Project (July 28, 2016) I may as well be upfront about this... I am a HUGE fan of "South Park." Although their political sensibilities don't always align with my own (see: their global warming denialism), the nineteen existing seasons of "South Park" contain some of the sharpest and boldest social commentary ever aired on television. This was especially true last season,...
Jul 15, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Gender and Sexism
Published: Salon (July 15, 2016) It’s just a movie, people. Watching the “Ghostbusters” reboot was like going to McDonald’s. It is disposable, thoroughly enjoyable and distinctly American mass-produced entertainment. I savor the flavor of a Big Mac with the same casual attitude that I and the others attending my screening chuckled throughout this movie. This makes it all the more remarkable that...
Jun 17, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Asperger's Syndrome
Published: Salon (June 17, 2016) There is a Yiddish word, verklempt, that roughly translates as being choked up to the point of near-tears without actually crying. If you grew up with a learning disability or raised a child with one, there are plenty of scenes in Pixar’s “Finding Dory” which will have that effect on you… and considering that quality family films about learning disabled...
May 29, 2016 | Arts and Entertainment, Gender and Sexism
Published: The Good Men Project (May 28, 2016) When I first saw that the Ghostbusters reboot had acquired more downvotes than any other movie trailer in YouTube history, my heart sank. Sure, I’d written an article deconstructing the trailer and denouncing its flaws; then again, a year-and-a-half earlier, I’d written another piece praising the new movie for its boldness in assembling an...