(How) Are You Coping?
2025 has been a mess. I was glued to all my screens during the height of the L.A. fires (which are still going), then had to look away during Trump’s inauguration, then was forced to pay attention to the shock-and-awe clown circus from hell that has been unleashed since. Even as a “media professional,” I can’t keep track of it all—the Nazi salute, the Hegseth confirmation, the birthright-citizenship “cancellation”—which, of course, is the point.
I’ve been struck by the disjunct between how I want to be coping and how I’m actually coping. I want to take the long view and find joy and connection where I can: read books, watch older movies, develop new hobbies, reach out to friends and strangers. But I’m not there yet. So, instead, I’m gobbling up articles and podcast episodes about how tech companies have distorted politics and reality like a lab rat addicted to sugar, then self-soothing with hero porn like The Pitt, the Noah Wyle-starring ER-meets-24 medical drama on Max. (It’s not bad, but its goriness means it’s not for everyone.) And, of course, there’s the most delicious distraction of them all: hating the Oscar contenders. In that sense, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (pictured above) and its 13 nominations are providing a national service. A movie about a trans Mexican woman that’s proven offensive to trans people and features no Mexicans in any major role, it is also a musical that seems to loathe music and a preposterous melodrama with a truly outlandish plot that’s somehow… boring. I do not understand how a single person involved thought this film should exist. The hater in me hopes it wins as many prizes as possible so that the Academy embarrasses itself even more. The critic in me hopes that the attention somehow directs a few curious souls to The Sisters Brothers, Audiard’s 2018 Western, starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix, that I found to be an actual masterpiece.
-Inkoo
—The big debut in prestige TV this month was the second season of Severance. I did not care for it! Nor for the first season! There is a lot of hype for this show. But, talking to friends, I realized there are many people out there (like me, initially) who just could not get through Season 1.
—At the tail end of last year, I also reviewed Black Doves and The Agency and thought some thoughts about the state of the spy genre.
—My favorite bit of media that I binged on during the holiday break was the four-part podcast The Runaway Princesses, about a pair of Dubai royals who attempted to flee their family and the U.K. government’s complicity in returning them to their father’s control.
—“How Hollywood lost the culture war.” A fantastic piece from my friend, the brilliant Matt Brennan, on how forces inside and outside the industry led to the current dispiriting state of pop culture.
—“How bin Laden Killed TikTok.” I am not on TikTok and I don’t think I want to be; I’ve pulled away from most social media in the last few months, partly because I’m tired of the petty, pointless scorekeeping and partly because it’s a lot more work now to see if the information on one’s feeds is actually true. But I’m interested in how people think about a platform as huge as TikTok, and this Panic World episode was really eye-opening in terms of how politicians and many mainstream journalists don’t understand how the site works, and thus how disinformation (and panic) about its impact can spread so quickly.