Columns Archives

Formulas are not the problem with The Rise of Skywalker, but we might say lack of formulaic vision for the whole trilogy.

How The Sound of Music can prepare us for Christmas.

Stories that follow patterns like this show us that no one is really nonessential—they give us a sense that although the world is big, every person is important, no matter their birth, status, role, or function.

Through stories and storytelling, we ask and examine the most basic questions about our humanity—about our loves, history, religion, philosophies, and more.

All these struggles to define what art is really boil down to fear—a fear that elitism will strangle joy out of what it is we all enjoy consuming.

The claustrophobic feeling of the not-knowing forces us inside ourselves to examine our own reactions to the scenarios presented in the stories and—in the case of movies—on the screen.

Memeing the classics can be a way to plant seeds of interest, sparks that make seemingly dull, intimidating, or difficult pieces of literature come alive with possibility.

When the grandfather reads the story to his grandson, he invites us all to sit at his knee and listen. He invites us to be children again. 

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, and John Milton’s Satan invite us to view them as the heroes of stories that were never intended to be about them.

No one who journeys through a magic portal or gateway or liminal space in such a story believes the world or worlds on the other side will be smaller.

If you know there is a monster at the end of the story, it takes great bravery to turn those pages.

All of time itself is but a dream from which the people of Narnia—and, let the reader understand, all of us—will someday wake.

The benign neglect of Tony Stark and Peter Parker.

Some remakes of classic tales may reflect changed cultural mores, but it is a fallacy to believe we are morally evolving with each passing decade.

This series has poignantly shown us that it was longing that defined the lives of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon.

Fictional stories can help us see more clearly truths and falsehoods that seem complex in the real world.