Why ‘Jackass’ (Still) Works
Jackass was originally for early aughts audiences. Now 20 years and multiple blows to the head, heart, and extremities later, that moment has proven to be damn near immortal.
Television
Is Animated Television on Par with the Best Programs?
Animated television shows The Simpsons, South Park, and BoJack Horseman, are often base in their approach to controversial subject matter, but “going low” might be the very thing that elevates them.
Chuck Klosterman’s ‘The Nineties’ Reads Like a Complex Murder Board
Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties glosses subjects like Green Day, the Green Party, and Alan Greenspan like an insanely complex, cross-eyed inducing murder board.
Time Is Love in Italian Romance Comedy ‘Generation 56k’
Italian romance comedy Generation 56k toys with the timeline between instant and delayed gratification in the eras of the early internet and social media.
PopMatters Seeks Television Critics and Essayists
We are interested in articles about quality television shows. These TV series challenge prejudices and subvert assumptions, and are as artful in their depiction as the best cinema.
Did Improv Comedy Help Elevate America’s Consciousness?
Improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway? associated transgressive ideas about blackness and queerness with beloved personalities. While Americans laughed, did they learn anything?
The Best Film and Television of 2021
If you missed any of these films and television shows from 2021 you’ll want to seek them out and bask for a while in their light – or follow their darkness.
Is Syfy’s ‘Chucky’ the Horror We Deserve?
Chucky is still a doll possessed by a person possessed by a demon, but there’s something far more nefarious going on in Syfy’s new series, Chucky.
Rod Serling Undermines the American Dream with the Stories in ‘Night Gallery’
Existential fear about post-war American masculinity is dragged into disturbing light in Rod Serling’s dark tales of the American Dream, Night Gallery.
Why We Still Love Lucy After All These Years
The I Love Lucy cast insisted that the show didn’t intend to take on world-changing progressive issues, but it was far more subversive than they let on.
You Think Feminist Sitcom ‘Murphy Brown’ Had It Tough in the ’90s?
Would the Murphy Brown “Uh Oh” episodes, which addressed abortion, withstand the Texas Heart Beat act and America’s current right-wing cultural climate?