Ah, the ‘70s and ‘80s bodice ripper era…when men were men and women were raped. The romance community likes to filter it through a rose-colored rearview mirror, chased by alternating mild chagrin and feminist horror. But more than 30 years later, those misogynist underpinnings of forced seduction romance — mostly overpinnings, if we’re being honest… Read More Plugging the Alphahole
When I was in my late teens, visiting Calcutta (this was pre-“Kolkata” conversion, not that renaming a place changes its ethos), I was groped by a guy as my cousins, my mom and I stood on a curb waiting to cross over to a shopping mall. Stunned, I whirled around and glared — I was… Read More Agni Pariksha: Violence Against Women and the Test of Fire
It’s the last day of December. You know what this means: obligatory year-end navel-gazing! This being me, I’m doing it with books, movies, TV shows and other pop culture happenings! Best Personal Pop Culture Thing: getting published in both fiction and nonfiction. Worst Personal Pop Culture Thing: the closure of Soap Opera Weekly. Biggest 2012… Read More 2012: Year in Pop Culture Review
Twenty-third in the long-running franchise of films based on Ian Fleming’s globetrotting superspy, this year’s Skyfall has been praised across all platforms as a great movie, a fun ride, a grand adventure but “not really James Bond.” It’s a strange, albeit incredibly specific, criticism…and one that I disagree with. I grew up watching Sean Connery,… Read More Bondage Games: Why Skyfall Plays Well With Others
Years ago, when discussing fan fiction, I would make the analogy that it’s like babysitting your neighbors’ kids: You get to practice with these characters for a few hours, see what it’s like, and then give them back. In more recent days, I’m coming to see a flaw to that logic. Because no two children are… Read More Going Pro: What Gets Lost in the Move?
It’s with a sort of numb horror that I’m thinking about how, the same week that the Internet explodes with condemnation of Daniel Tosh and his crass gang rape joke about a female heckler at a comedy club, a young woman was attacked by a mob in Guwahati, India, while a camera crew recorded the… Read More All We’re Really “Asking For”
I’m fascinated by the use of Twitter as a consumer outreach tool. Obviously, to some extent, it’s what we all do online: sell our persona and then do market research on the results. For instance, I’d like to think that a side benefit of me joining Twitter is that people think of entertainment journalists as… Read More Twitter And Marketing: Get Him To The Greek (Yogurt)!
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