The Exploding Women of Early Twentieth-Century “Trick Films”
In “trick films,” women were shown literally exploding over kitchen accidents—the early 1900s way of mining humor out of human tragedies.
The Linguistic Case for Sh*t Hitting the Fan
Idioms have a special power to draw people together in a way that plain speech doesn't.
Martin Luther’s Monsters
Prodigies, or monsters, were opaque and flexible symbols that signaled that God was sending some message.
Walter Rodney, Guerrilla Intellectual
Walter Rodney’s radical thought and activism led to his eventual killing by a bomb in Guyana, in 1980.
How Fritz Lang’s Flight from Nazi Germany Shaped Hollywood
German expressionism--imported to Hollywood by Jewish exiles--brought a lasting tradition of shadows, duality, and mirroring to mainstream American cinema.
“Beating the Bounds”
How did people find out where their local boundaries were before there were reliable maps?
The First Movie Kiss
The public fascination was so intense that fans soon started demanding live reenactments.
The Linguistics of Cooties (and Other Weird Things Kids Say)
The game of cooties lets children learn about the idea of contagion, but kid culture and wordplay aren't meant for adults.
Marijuana Panic Won’t Die, but Reefer Madness Will Live Forever
Originally produced as an exploitation film that drew on racial stereotypes, the ironic revival of Reefer Madness made it a cult classic for stoners.
The Defense of Ethiopia from Fascism
For black activists in the 1930s, defending Ethiopia from Mussolini’s invasion created unprecedented unity.