television 
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
12/29/2020
The Life in "The Simpsons" Is No Longer Attainable
In the 1990s, "The Simpsons" drew humor by putting bizarre dysfunction in the context of middle class suburban banality. Today it's the idea of homeownership paid for by a stable single income that seems outlandish.
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SOURCE: USA Today
12/5/2020
Historians Fact-Check 'Mank': Who Really Wrote 'Citizen Kane?' And Does 'Rosebud' Have A Hidden Meaning?
Film historians suggest the new Netflix drama overstates Frank Mankiewicz's influence over the final form of "Citizen Kane" and takes some other liberties with the facts.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
12/3/2020
The New Comedy of American Decline
Two new comedy series revisit the trope of the American abroad; one works because it looks critically, if humorously, at the idea of American exceptionalism.
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SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
11/27/2020
Wishbone of The Good Lord Bird
by Mark Lause
"In the end, The Good Lord Bird spins a worthwhile and entertaining yarn, but each episode starts with the unfortunate and misleading words: 'All of this is true. Most of it happened'."
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SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
11/12/2020
‘The Reagans’ Review: Challenging a Leader’s Legacy
If the new Showtime documentary wishes to undermine the legacy of Ronald Reagan, one reviewer suggests it ultimately makes the 40th President more sympathetic and appealing.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/11/2020
"The Crown" Takes the Shine Off Queen Elizabeth’s Reign
In its sharp and splashy fourth season, the show finally criticizes Elizabeth for her ignorance, characterizing her as a ruler whose stubborn devotion to tradition makes her and her family out-of-touch fools caught off guard by change.
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/12/2020
‘The Reagans’ Review: Making America Great Again, Round 1
"The series provides a steady succession of parallels between Reagan and Donald J. Trump, none labeled as such but all difficult to miss."
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SOURCE: Vox
11/10/2020
Everything About Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy Movie Is Awful (Review)
"It strips out Vance’s sociopolitical commentary entirely, which, however you feel about the commentary, leaves the story without an all-important ingredient: a political and sociological point."
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SOURCE: CBS News
11/8/2020
Ken Burns on America, Selling His First Film, PBS's Long Deadlines and More
"I have had the privilege of spending my entire life making films about the U.S., capital U, capital S. But I've also had the privilege of making films about 'us,' the two-letter, lowercase, plural pronoun, that has a kind of intimacy and warmth to it."
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SOURCE: YouTube
11/6/2020
Classic Sesame Street - Ronald Grump Builds The Grump Tower
What happened when Oscar the Grouch signed a bad real estate contract with Ronald Grump for a two-can trash condo in Grump Tower?
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SOURCE: The Nation
11/3/2020
Aaron Sorkin’s Inane, Liberal History Lesson
by Charlotte Rosen
Aaron Sorkin's Chicago 7 film strips away the radical, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist politics of the 1960s New Left to make the defendants heroic defenders of liberal democratic politics.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
10/26/2020
The Mischievous Irreverence of “The Good Lord Bird”
“The Good Lord Bird” roots for Brown, but it has no patience for hagiography.
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10/25/2020
Survivors, Apprentices, and Entrepreneurial Sharks: The Mark Burnett Reality TV Presidency
by Daniel Horowitz
Mark Burnett's reality TV empire has championed individualism and the myth of the entrepreneurial genius while reviving the celebrity and launching the political career of Donald Trump. Is 2020 the end of the line for both?
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SOURCE: The Guardian
10/13/2020
'I Was Hit and Knocked to the Ground': The True Story of the Trial of the Chicago 7
“There are some things that I wouldn’t agree with how Sorkin has characterised certain figures in the trial, myself included. But the impact of the movie is there and I certainly endorse and support it," says Chicago 7 defendant and antiwar activist Rennie Davis.
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SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
10/13/2020
Popular TV Characters Have Become a Part of the 2020 Campaign. Here’s Why
by Oscar Winberg
By the early 1970s, politics was moving to a focus on candidates over parties; New York Mayor John Lindsay sought help for his 1972 presidential bid from actor Carroll O'Connor, whose endorsement blurred the lines between the liberal O'Connor and his reactionary Archie Bunker character.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/6/2020
‘The Good Lord Bird’ Is Good TV. But Mix Art and Slavery at Your Peril
Critic Carvell Wallace writes of the new television adaptation of James McBride's novel that trying to make entertainment out of the subject matter of slavery is an impossibility in 2020.
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SOURCE: New York Times
9/23/2020
Go Live in Another Decade. I Recommend It.
After 1960, much of history as many Americans experienced it — through popular culture on TV, on the radio and at the movies — is preserved and easily accessible online. With a few clicks around YouTube, history leaps into the present, often in ways that deepen and complicate the narrative.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
9/20/2020
Watching “Watchmen” as a Descendant of the Tulsa Race Massacre
While the HBO series directed national attention to the Tulsa massacre, some Black descendants of the residents of the Greenwood district targeted by mob violence and arson were uncomfortable with their families' tragedy being mined for dramatic purposes.
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9/13/2020
How an American TV Mini-Series Helped the Germans Acknowledge the Holocaust
by Robert Brent Toplin
An American television minseries overcame initial skepticism by German authorities to rouse public conscience about the Holocaust and the complicity of ordinary Germans with persecution and genocide. Americans hesitant toward "political" popular culture should consider its contributions to truth and reconciliation.
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8/30/2020
John Oliver Dunked on Joy Behar over George Washington's Slaveowning, but Didn't Do the Reading Himself
by Erik Curren
In a rush to dunk on Joy Behar for being clueless about George Washington's practices as a slaveowner, John Oliver flattened the story himself; reading Mary V. Thompson's book would help everyone speak with more authority.
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