The Month in Links: The White Lotus, Adolescence, You, The Pitt, Celebrity Trials + The Month in Freelance.
A roundup of links from across the internet.
Back when I was blogging regularly, I would do a weekly link roundup of articles that intrigued me across the internet, along with bumping my own freelance writing.
I attempted to do something similar when I first started this Substack over a year ago. I even compiled a few links but I found I was only adding to it sporadically; certainly not frequently enough to warrant a weekly post.
I’m still not at that stage yet, but there have been a few articles that have jumped out at me over the past month that I think would be of interest to my subscribers, so I’ve linked them here and hope to make this a regular, monthly occurrence.
Let me know if you like it or if you feel particularly impassioned about any of these links!
“[Adolescence] highlights the way the boy’s life can be ruined by his youthful and clueless misdeeds… This is a series about boys and men that ineptly forgets its very raison d’être: what they can do to girls and women under the influence of the manosphere.” [More to Hate]
Still with the manosphere, Ryu Spaeth on The White Lotus: “Self-discovery won’t come from doing handstands on a barbell or masking your mouth with hostage tape before bedtime or receiving constant affirmation of your dumbest prejudices from your favorite parasocial podcasters, but from submitting your intimate self to the terrifying scrutiny of someone other — who, for straight men anyway, is more likely than not going to be a woman.” [New York]
“What’s been striking over the past two months is how international pushback against the Trump administration has often been stronger than the internal resistance from the Democratic Party in America. Again, America First increasingly is leading to an alienated America.” [ABC]
“I have heard Moby-Dick described as a vessel that allows Melville to lavish attention on whales. I wanted Sky Daddy to do the same for planes.” [Lit Hub]
“An all-women Blue Origin spaceflight signifies only that several women have amassed the social capital to be friends with Lauren Sánchez.” [The New York Times]
The “lawyerly ASMR” of lawsuit TikTok. [The Atlantic]
“Um…excuse me? When I first heard Joe say those words, I had to pause, rewind, and watch it again to make sure I heard him correctly. Was You—a show that I had viewed as a generally feminist piece of work—really saying that the (mostly female) audience was responsible for Joe?
“Should we feel guilty for enjoying watching as he seduced, love bombed, stalked, abused, and killed for five whole seasons?
“This is Joe’s final act of manipulation: blaming women for the violence committed against them.” [Cosmopolitan]
“The sickest patient [on The Pitt] seems to be the country itself. [Culture Study]
“You are someone who is so deeply, utterly and cellularly obsessed with using the word cunt… but you also have an affinity for Elmo.” A conversation between Brett Goldstein and Phil Dunster. [Interview]
Is true crime keeping me in prison? [Vulture]
“This is not a Diddy story. This is an abuse in music story… What happened with Diddy is business as usual.” [WaPo]
“Should white people be scared to come [to the Met Gala this year]?”
“Absolutely not. Are Black people scared to come normally? No.” A great conversation between playwright Jeremy O. Harris and Monica L. Miller, co-curator of Superfine: Tailoring Black Fashion and author of the book that inspired it, Slaves to Fashion. [Interview]
“Even the subtle suggestion that books featuring queer and diverse main characters should be deprioritized in favor of publishing more ‘profitable possibilities’ is bleak.” [The Yearning]
Elsewhere from me: I wrote about what it’s really like inside The Residence. [Arch Digest]
I interviewed Yvonne Strahovski about The Handmaid’s Tale. [IndieWire]
Primary school Spice Girls cover band Scarlett would be pinching herself that adult Scarlett got to interview Geri Halliwell-Horner. “It’s the spirit!” she said when I told her that I was the not-so-PC Mel B. [The Los Angeles Times]
I was also one degree of separation from Beyoncé when I interviewed her mum Tina Knowles about her new memoir, Matriarch! [The Los Angeles Times]
I wrote about the booming sport of cheerleading in Australia. [ABC Sport]
I was back on my Met Gala bullshit, covering the red carpet for BBC.
ICYMI: Black women were the most exciting thing about WrestleMania.
Why Met Gala boycotts were out of touch this year.
Coming up soon for subscribers:
My dissent on the new Forever adaptation…
Interviews with authors Katy Horan and Rachel McCarthy James about their new books.