Depeche Mode’s “Stripped” Encapsulates Analog to Algorithmic Longing
In future generations, it is easy to see Depeche Mode’s “Stripped” inspiring the same sensual viscerality as humans being penetrated by their AI sex dolls.
Charles Switzer
Charles Switzer is an entertainment journalist and professor of film at two
American universities. His writing about cinema and literature has
appeared in publications such as Bright Lights Film Journal and typically
explores iconic works within the context of contemporary lenses to reflect
new ideas across the passage of time. He lives in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, with his husband and their dog.
Kate Bush Taught Pop How to Dream with ‘Hounds of Love’
If Kate Bush’s The Dreaming is a hellscape of bizarre fragmentation and nightmarish beauty, Hounds of Love teaches pop how to dream and capture those contradictions in sound.
‘The Shrouds’ and David Cronenberg’s Cinema of Bodily Grief
David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds harkens back to his early body horror obsessions with a poet’s tone, retaining the connective tissue that embodies him.
‘Lord of the Flies’ 2025 or: How the Empire Struck Inward
The lasting terror in Lord of the Flies isn’t that civilization breaks down: it’s that the tools of empire (dominance, ideology, forced conformity) remain alive and well, even in our children.