Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
Since the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, non-English films from all over the world used to compete for a nomination in one single category, best foreign film, as all the other Oscars traditionally went to American and, sometimes, British productions. But in 2019, Netflix’s...
In the early 1960s, one of the most popular series on American television was “The Twilight Zone.” This was a time when television, even in the United States, was still in black and white. Most of the show’s episodes were riveting, poignant and, in a number of cases, scary as hell —...
When the show “Indian Matchmaking” dropped on Netflix, my initial reaction was one of revulsion. Matchmaker Sima Taparia and her clients represented everything I loathed about the culture I was born into. Of course, I was not blind to my personal triggers and biases, having grown up in a...
As the world was forced into lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alex Lee Moyer’s documentary “TFW No GF” was released online. The film focuses on an internet subculture of predominately young, white men who already experienced much of life from the comfort of their own homes,...
In 1954, when television sets were just becoming widespread in American homes, Alfred Hitchcock made “Rear Window.” The film portrays L. B. “Jeff” Jeffries, a magazine photographer played by James Stewart, stuck at home in a wheelchair with a broken leg, whose only entertainment is gazing...
A few days ago, Quaker Oats announced it would retire its 130-year-old brand of pancake syrup and breakfast foods, Aunt Jemima. The company acknowledged that the Aunt Jemima character was based on a racial stereotype. In the aftermath of the decision, other companies, among them Mars Food,...
Phillip Roth’s 2004 novel, “The Plot Against America,” has been made into a six-part TV series and shown recently on HBO in the United States and Great Britain. David Simon wrote the script for the television version and directed the production. Simon’s earlier credits include “The...
Jazz is a musical art form that cultivates complex and highly disciplined improvisational skills. In its brief history — hardly more than a century — jazz has always floated between being perceived as a style of popular, crowd-pleasing music or as a sophisticated art form produced by...
When I was a was a young teen attending a German high school in southern Bavarian in the late 1960s, we were made to know how to distinguish between high and popular culture. High culture was Kafka and Thomas Mann, Beethoven and Mozart, Goethe and Berthold Brecht, Fritz Lang and Josef von...
When Bob Iger was 23, his first boss at ABC told him he was “unpromotable.” “I wish he were alive just to see that he was wrong,” Iger, now chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, told Wharton management Professor Adam Grant during a recent appearance as part of the Authors@Wharton...
Beware of who you follow, my mother always said, because not everyone has your best interests in mind. I must have forgotten this advice those couple of years when I considered Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut to be a female empowerment idol in India. Anyone who follows Bollywood is aware of the...
