Tag: best friend
The Real Lesson of ‘The Truman Show’
Truman Burbank, the unwitting star of the world’s most popular TV show, is supposed to be an everyman. The Truman Show is set in an island town, Seahaven, that evokes the prefab conformities of American suburbia. Truman is a brand in a setting that is stridently generic. Since his birth, he has navigated a world manufactured—by Christof, the creator of his show—for lucrative inoffensiveness. Everything around him exists to fulfill the primary mandate of a mass-market TV show: appealing to
The Women of Rural America Are Dying Too Young
“Boy crazy” was what people called it. “She was so boy crazy,” I would hear about my girlfriends. I never heard the reverse, that a boy was “girl crazy.” Girls having crushes, sneaking out at night to have fun: It seems innocent enough. But in my small, conservative town, a “wrong” choice at a young age could cut girls off from their future dreams, leaving them mired in despair.
Growing up in the ’90s in Clinton, Arkansas, all that
He’ll Be Back: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Act
Arnold Schwarzenegger nearly killed me.
I had joined him one morning as he rushed through his daily routine. Schwarzenegger gets up by six. He makes coffee, putters around, feeds Whiskey (his miniature horse) and Lulu (his miniature donkey), shovels their overnight manure into a barrel, drinks his coffee, checks his email, and maybe plays a quick game of chess online. At 7:40, he puts a bike on the back of a Suburban and heads from his Brentwood, California, mansion
Jenny Slate’s openness is not a shtick
Jenny Slate tends to attract the same kinds of adjectives again and again: relatable, quirky, authentic. It’s the kind of fondly diminutive language so often applied to women in the public eye who talk a lot about their feelings and make jokes about body hair and gastrointestinal issues. But Slate’s emotional openness is clearly more than a shtick. Her work takes on themes that might seem like surprising fodder for comedy—loneliness, kindness, loss. “I do feel very
13 Feel-Good TV Shows to Watch This Winter
Call it the First Law of Winter Viewing: The colder the weather, the stronger the urge to watch something warm. Although there’s nothing wrong with, say, returning to Stars Hollow for the umpteenth time or indulging in TV’s bounty of feel-good programming for the new year, why not press “Play” on an unconventional—yet equally comforting—pick? Below, we’ve compiled a guide to under-the-radar shows and nostalgic favorites that are stuffed with heartfelt themes, soothing settings, and wholesome narratives. All are perfect
How China Is Using Vladimir Putin
Back in the 1960s, China and Russia squandered their chance to defeat the West when they became bitter rivals during the Cold War. Today, their presidents—who are expected to confer again this week—are trying to correct that fateful error. The world’s most powerful autocracies have joined forces for an assault on the liberal order led by the United States and its allies—a threat made all too real when Russia invaded democratic Ukraine in February with Chinese support. Authoritarianism was again
Who Leaves, Who Stays – The Atlantic
When U.S. troops abruptly left Afghanistan after 20 years, the consequences were devastating both for the people who remained and for those who managed to escape. For many women in Afghanistan, their lives changed dramatically in a matter of days. Women and girls who had previously gone to work and to school were suddenly forced entirely out of public life.
Bushra Seddique, a journalist and fellow at The Atlantic, was one of those women. The decision that she, her
The 20 Most-Anticipated Films of the Season
The Toronto International Film Festival has long marked the start of the fall movie season, the time when new releases finally start to transition from mass-appeal blockbusters to something a little more grown-up and suited for the Oscars. After two years limited by the pandemic, TIFF returned in 2022 to its robust, splashy self, loaded with gala premieres and more than 200 new features. Below are some of the best films my colleague Shirley Li and I saw in Toronto;
19 Readers on the Rise of Dating Apps
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, a person who came of age in the online era tweeted this question: “Literally BAFFLED as to how people found love before dating sites and social media. Was settling the norm? Or did everyone just happen to
The Joy of Learning to Drive at 37
Thirty-seven, I decided, was old enough. Even here in Britain, that is an advanced age to begin learning to drive, but somehow, I had never gotten around to it. And so I found myself, one morning last fall, trying to master the exact sequence of foot movements required to hit something called “biting point.”
That’s the sensation you feel when the gears connect to the engine—when your left foot, on the clutch, perfectly balances with your right foot, on the