There is no unhappiness quite like that of a Legacy Media Family. Such is the premise of HBO’s Succession. At the heart of the show is Logan Roy (a very leonine Brian Cox) and his four children, the most viable candidates to take over leadership of the publicly-owned but family-run company called Waystar Royco, a conglomerate of business ranging from cruise lines to motion picture production to cable news. The Roys are miserable, especially when they are all together, and they are always together—insulting, undermining, and threatening each other with little reserve or discretion. They find the savage fun in dysfunctional, and many of us could not wait for the show to return after a long Covid-19 hiatus.
Karen Hornick
Part Three (Redux)
Karen Hornick’s 2015 post on Elena Ferrante’s novels–and the uses of seriality–is right on time again.
“Atlanta’s” Elevator to the Sanctum
The first ten episodes of Donald Glover’s marvelous FX series Atlanta aired weekly from early September through November 1, 2016. Its first season, in other words, unfolded throughout the weeks leading up to the presidential election. In retrospect the power of its first season may live on in as a powerful snapshot of what we were, or thought we were, in the last months of Obama’s America. It wasn’t a particularly pretty picture, but the very different feel of national events since November make me wonder if Atlanta‘s spectrum of tones can be repeated in the next season. Season One is almost always comic, but its humor ranges from darkly satiric to tender and romantic as the show conjures up rootsy yet media-savvy depictions of life in Atlanta.
Part Two
What follows is the second installment in an ongoing serialized essay about two overlapping developments within modern American culture: the questionable popular demand that political leaders come “with a narrative” and, on the literary front, a general revival of approval for long serial narratives.
Serial Storytelling in the 21st Century or, If Knausgaard Is the New Proust, Can Elena Ferrante Be the New Tolstoy?
Part 1
I’m all about finding the political in art, but assertions about the role of art in the political make me nervous, maybe more nervous than they should. But…
Mr. Turner & Mr. Leigh
Mike Leigh’s latest work, a highly episodic “scenes from the life of the artist” film about J. M.W. Turner, begs a question that has dogged me throughout life.