
Ben Affleck’s Air Is a Deranged Corporate Folktale About a Sneaker
Air’s origin story about the Michael Jordan–endorsed sneaker is far too high on its own supply.

Air’s origin story about the Michael Jordan–endorsed sneaker is far too high on its own supply.

The Substance, starring Demi Moore, is a bright and showy body horror film about aging and the hypersexualization of the female body. But it doesn’t go much further than illustrating at great length that there are nasty cultural attitudes toward older women.

The US admits that it continues to kill civilians in drone strikes across Africa and the Middle East. Yet despite US government promises, it routinely refuses to apologize or offer compensation to the families of its victims.

Ling Ma’s new short story collection, Bliss Montage, leads us down strange, stimulating paths — and then leaves us before we can fully gather our bearings.

Childhood has become a period of high-stakes preparation for life in a stratified economy.

Paola Cortellesi’s film There’s Still Tomorrow offers a striking portrayal of working-class women fighting gendered violence in late 1940s Italy.

Love it or hate it, twee is back. It’s the subject of innumerable think pieces, but the subculture’s radical roots in feminism, punk, and the fight against Margaret Thatcher often go unnoticed.

In the early twentieth century, teachers were prohibited from keeping their jobs after getting pregnant. Socialist feminists organized to successfully change that.

One could say that Trumpism and corporate feminism are two sides of the same coin.

Alicia Raboy was a revolutionary in 1970s Argentina who was disappeared by the state during its anti-leftist crackdown. What would the world have been like if activists like her, in Latin America and around the world, hadn’t been murdered by the state?

Annie Ernaux’s recently translated book, Getting Lost, chronicles her passionate love affair with a married man. What makes Ernaux’s reflections so refreshing is her rejection of the idea that literature’s job is to provide readers with moral instruction.

Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s brilliant drama A Hero is about a young man trying to buy his freedom from debtors’ prison — the kind of depiction of working-class struggle that’s at the heart of some of the greatest cinema.

There's nothing natural or innate about inequality — but a long history of pseudo-science will tell you there is.

Women weren’t just the Russian Revolution’s spark, but the motor that drove it forward.

Our society is deeply invested in a rosy version of romance while offering little support for families to survive the challenges of marriage and child-rearing. We can’t survive those challenges without honest narratives about the maddening realities of love.

Nina Simone is often remembered for her involvement in the civil rights movement. She was also engaged with the radical political currents of her age, including socialism.

The feud between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren supporters is getting ridiculous. Warren isn’t Hillary and Bernie is no sexist.

Through her fearlessness and charisma, Winnie Mandela came to be seen by the people of South Africa’s townships as the Mother of the Nation.

Jess Phillips’s brief but disastrous bid for the Labour Party leadership is a cautionary tale for substanceless centrists in politics: just because pundits and TV hosts love you doesn’t mean anybody else will.

In The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman, French writer Didier Eribon sees his mother’s passing as symbolic of the disappearance of the mass culture and politics that once gave workers of her generation identity and social standing.