The Man Whose Face Got Stuck Like That
No one could have predicted Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s turn to the bizarre.
Mary Pickford Knew Not to Take the First Offer
When the 17-year-old actress auditioned for her first film, director D.W. Griffith offered her $5 a day. That wasn’t good enough for Mary.
Alfred Stieglitz’s Art Journal
"The best one can say of American art criticism is that its CLEVERNESS OFTEN CONCEALS ITS LACK OF PENETRATION," Alfred Stieglitz wrote.
Selling Toys with the Sailor Moon Transformation Sequence
From her nails painted glossy red to the tiara appearing on her forehead, if you time it out, the transformation in Sailor Moon lasts 40 seconds.
“Meet John Doe” Shows the Darkness of American Democracy
Meet John Doe, Frank Capra’s 1941 drama, carries forward the populist themes of his other movies, only with a much darker premise.
The Allure of the Millionaire Family Drama
The reason we put aside our personal dislike of rich TV families, people we might deeply resent if they were real, is two-fold.
What We Lose When We Lose Indigenous Knowledge
By mistaking a culture's history for fantasy, or by disrespecting the wealth of indigenous knowledge, we're keeping up a Columbian, colonial tradition.
Who Decides Which Books Are “Great?”
The concept of “Great Books," the historian Tim Lacy explains, developed in the late nineteenth century as an attempt to foster a “democratic culture.”