From the Archive: There's Daddy

June 01, 2017 / Summer McDonald

Note: In 2015, the Cleveland Cavaliers played the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals for the first time. That year marked the rise of the Warriors as an NBA juggernaut, to use LeBron James' description, and the debut of young Riley Curry. Tonight, the teams meet in the Finals for the third consecutive time, something that has never happened before in NBA history. I'm taking that as an occasion to post a previously unpublished blog about the Curry family, the NBA, and NBA fatherhood. There's a lot more to say about this topic, and I have much more to add. However I decided not to update the piece. - sm

You Got the Right One, Baby?

April 24, 2017 / Summer McDonald

I’m a bit confused. Well, perhaps I am simply unclear about why we choose what we choose. Pepsi removed its All Pepsis Matter ad after people responded negatively--much more negatively than focus groups, mind you--to it. The negative response, it seems, stems from the assertion that Pepsi trivialized the Black Lives Matter movement, among others, to sell pop. The gaffe was so egregious and ripe for sarcastic clapback that even Bernice King got in on the action of chastising the soft drink-maker for suggesting that we could stop all of this tension between police and civilians if, instead of protesting, Kendall Jenner took off her blond wig and gave a cop a Pepsi.

On the (Unintentional) Consequences of Get Out

April 13, 2017 / Summer McDonald

A frequent marker of satire is a premise so absurd and exaggerated that the correlative, more subtle issue being examined can be exposed for its ridiculousness: poor parents should sell their children to rich people, who will then eat the children, to alleviate their financial burden; Black people enthusiastically undergo a procedure to turn their skin white to solve the US’s race problem; single people are given a few weeks in a hotel to find a suitable partner or are turned into animals. Each outlandish premise should inspire the audience to think about the bones of the issue (poverty, racism, the culture of monogamous partnership) and interrogate the absurd ways in which society constructs itself with them.