Noah Berlatsky

english lit academic. wish fulfiller. thwarted world-changer.

David Ress' Aphexswift is genius precisely because it's so unlikely.

Can a popular author also be celebrated for literary quality? Not if that author is a woman like Austen.

Their sexuality traps and destroys male innocence, as they grad hold, by the penis- the better to lead him to castration. Make no mistake that castration is greeted with fear, terror, and disgust—but also with glee. Women as super villains allow their characters to be super powerful; a force for evil is at least a force. In a media landscape where women are often rendered secondary, invisible, and passive, the femme fatale, in her icy violence, seizes female agency along with the phallus that she so efficiently cuts off.

"The look on Miley's face during Nicki Minaj's savage, expletive-laden rant says it all," Salon tweeted the day after the VMAs. Less than 140 characters, but still enough to link a black woman to a longstanding racial slur.

Rodriguez is confused when she says that people want her to steal white people's superheroes. But she also has a point.

Under the guise of philanthropy, 8 Minutes essentially blackmails some of the most marginalized and powerless people in society.

Metal aggression isn't sexual, but existential. As a result, women in the genre are both rare and unexpectedly equal.

There's a good argument to be made that the earliest, and the best, rockabilly performers were women. Slicked-back, hiccuping, hopped up cool.

Some love stories don't end happily. So why do so many romance novels insist they do?