Elizabeth Ito’s Neighborhood: “City of Ghosts” and the Rise of Netflix Animation
Phillip Maciak explores the extraordinary niche that “City of Ghosts” occupies in Netflix’s varied animated programming....
Studio Branding in the Streaming Wars
Joshua Glick considers the differentiation strategies of the streaming platforms in historical context....
The Appearance of Light: On Barry Jenkins’s “The Underground Railroad”
On “The Underground Railroad,” illumination travels across media, refracting and shapeshifting....
Blue Skies Again: Streamers and the Impossible Promise of Diversity
Kristen Warner explores the “illusion [of] the democratizing, diverse ideal of streaming.”...
Streaming Enthusiasm and the Industrious Family Drama
Michael Szalay on what the rise of streaming platforms and their dark family dramas tell us about the US flagging empire....
Cobra Kai, the Twilight of American Empire, and the Allure of Paramilitary Violence
Albert Wu and Michelle Kuo explore how Cobra Kai manages to tackle American empire, wealth disparity, and rising fascism without cynicism....
Queer Girls in The Wilds: Refusing White Feminism's Settler Colonial Fantasy
Hannah Manshel and Margaret A. Miller explore the various colonial and anti-colonial valances of Amazon's The Wilds....
Breaking the Waves: Britney Spears and Lars von Trier in Lockdown
Philippa Snow watches Hulu's Framing Britney Spears and a few other films about the destruction of women at the hands of hateful men....
Seven Plus Seven Plus Me: The Up Series Under Lockdown
In the wake of Michael Apted's passing, Claire Marie Healy revisits the director's most lasting monument: the sprawling, poetic Up series....
Anthony and Carmela Get Vaccinated
Peter Coviello misses his family in New Jersey — and everything else in the pandemic year — through a full rewatch of The Sopranos....
Negative Space: Close Reading Trauma Porn
Maya Gurantz dissects the structure and comes to terms with the compulsive appeal of streaming abuse documentary series....
Negotiating the Generic Closet in the Writers' Room
In an excerpt from The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, Alfred L. Martin Jr. explores the politics of writers' rooms....
