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A collage including Betty Boop.

The Mixed-Up Masters of Early Animation

Pioneering cartoonists were experimental, satiric, erotic, and artistically ambitious.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on December 21, 2020
A screenshot from the movie "You've Got Mail."

The Romance of American Clintonism

The politically complacent ’90s produced a surprisingly large number of mainstream American rom-coms about fighting the Man.
by Meagan Day via Jacobin on October 21, 2020
Carl Reiner on stage holding a microphone.

Carl Reiner’s Life Should Remind Us: If You Like Laughing, Thank FDR and the New Deal

Reiner, Stephen Colbert, Jordan Peele, Steve Carrell, Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Their comedy descends directly from the Works Progress Administration.
by Jon Schwarz via The Intercept on July 4, 2020

An Oral History of The Onion’s 9/11 Issue

Immediately after 9/11, humorists struggled with what many called ‘the death of irony.’ Then ‘The Onion’ returned and showed everyone the way
by Maria Schneider, Brian VanHooker, Robert Siegel, Todd Hanson, Mike Loew, Chad Nackers, Carol Kolb, Chris Karwowski, Tim Harrod, Mike Sacks, Nat Towsen, Joe Garden, Jim Romenesko via MEL on June 29, 2020
Comedy troupe on stage.

Finding the Funny

Historians’ lectures provide material for improv comedians.
by Laura Ansley via Perspectives on History on May 13, 2020

Foolish Questions

Screwball comics wage a gleeful war on civilization and its discontents—armed mostly with water-pistols, stink bombs, and laughing gas.
by Art Spiegelman via New York Review of Books on February 25, 2020

Brett Kavanaugh Goes to the Movies

A film scholar reflects on the image of masculinity depicted in "Grease 2," released the same summer of Kavanaugh's alleged assault.
by Marsha Gordon via The Conversation on October 2, 2018

The Rape Culture of the 1980s, Explained by Sixteen Candles

The beloved romantic comedy’s date rape scene provides important context for the Brett Kavanaugh accusations.
by Constance Grady via Vox on September 27, 2018
A man alone among the rubble of a city

TV and the Bomb

During the Cold War, nuclear weapons were a frequent plot point on television shows. Fearful depictions in the 1950's became more darkly comedic in the 1960s.
by Reba A. Wissner via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on August 13, 2018

The Healing Buzz of "Drunk History"

Sweet, filthy, and forgiving, it’s a corrective to the authoritative, we-know-better tone of most historical nonfiction.
by Emily Nussbaum via The New Yorker on July 16, 2018

A Timeline of Working-Class Sitcoms

Over the years, there have been surprisingly few of them.
by Kathryn Van Arendonk via Vulture on May 18, 2018
Still from Dirty Dancing.

In the Dark All Katz Are Grey: Notes on Jewish Nostalgia

Searching for where I belong, I find myself cobbling together a mongrel Judaism—half-remembered and contradictory and all mine.
by Samuel Ashworth via Hazlitt on February 23, 2018

The ‘SNL’ Sketch That Predicted Our Nerd Overlords

In 1986, William Shatner told a roomful of spoof Trekkies to "get a life."
by Alan Siegel via The Ringer on January 31, 2018

The Birth of the Ku Klux Brand

A new book re-traces the origins of the 19th-century KKK, which began as a social club before swiftly moving to murder.
by Malcolm Harris via Pacific Standard on February 19, 2016
Puppeteer Burr Tillstrom poses with puppets and a small Christmas tree on the set of his television program.

Together With the Kuklapolitans

In the middle of the past century, a gentle crew of puppets united the TV watchers of America.
by Jacqui Shine via Slate on February 16, 2015
A collage of a still from "All in the Family" on a stylized television with another television in the background.

Fandom's Great Divide

The schism isn't between TV viewers who love a show and those who hate it—it’s between those who love it in very different ways.
by Emily Nussbaum via The New Yorker on March 31, 2014

Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates: The Problem With Popularization

Making history more appealing to the public may come at a cost.
by Kathryn Lofton via Religion Dispatches on June 17, 2009
Charlie Chaplin as a young man, circa 1916

Charlie Chaplin Invents Himself

The tramp picks up his bowler hat and cane for the first time.
by Charlie Chaplin via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 1, 1964
Gertrude Berg.

The Forgotten Inventor of the Sitcom

Gertrude Berg’s “The Goldbergs” was a bold, beloved portrait of a Jewish family. Then the blacklist obliterated her legacy.
by Emily Nussbaum via The New Yorker on June 9, 2025
A medieval drawing of a stork.
partner

Exit, Pursued by a Stork

When the 1930 Hays Code banned pregnancy in film, birds took over the business of birth.
by Victoria Sturtevant via HNN on December 17, 2024
Scene from "Smokey and the Bandit" of Burt Reynolds talking on a CB radio.

"A Long Way to Go and a Short Time to Get There"

In the 1970s, trucker films like "Smokey and the Bandit" celebrated rebellious, working-class solidarity and freedom, with complex politics at play.
by Adrian Daub via Dreams in the Which House on November 3, 2024
Reddy Kilowatt mascott emerging from an outlet.

The Energy Mascot that Electrified America

An animation historian on Reddy Kilowatt, the cartoon charged with electrifying everything in the early 20th century.
by Mike Munsell, Kirsten Moana Thompson via Heatmap on August 5, 2024
Still from Midnight Cowboy of a man with a gun in Times Square.

How the Movies Captured Times Square’s Grimy Golden Age

Times Square’s decline can be dated to the Depression, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the bottom fell out.
by Nathaniel Rich via Current [The Criterion Collection] on July 25, 2024
Cover of "Cue The Sun!" featuring videographers filming people lounging in backyard.

Time to Face Reality

Charting the history of a TV phenomenon.
by A. S. Hamrah via Bookforum on July 2, 2024
Black and white photo of the outside of a bar, with "CB GB: OMFUG" written on an overhang, and graffiti and posters on the walls and windows

Real Estate Developers Killed NYC’s Vibrant ’70s Music Scene

In the 1970s and early ’80s, NYC’s racially and ethnically diverse working-class neighborhoods nurtured groundbreaking rap, salsa, and punk music.
by Kurt Hollander via Jacobin on February 11, 2024
Digitally altered portrait of a man in a suit with his face pixelated, framed by computer windows.

What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes

Experts have warned that utterly realistic A.I.-generated videos might wreak havoc through deception. What’s happened is troubling in a different way.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on November 13, 2023
Security guards separate guests on an episode of ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ titled ‘I am pregnant by my half-brother.’

Jerry Springer and the History of That [Bleeping] Bleep Sound

As ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ climbed the ratings ladder, the censorship bleep became a star of the show.
by Matthew F. Jordan via The Conversation on May 2, 2023
Handheld video camera.

Smile, You're on Jury Duty!

First came 'Candid Camera.' Then 'The Truman Show.' Now, a new swath of TV speaks to 21st-century voyeurism.
by Jackie Mansky via Zócalo Public Square on April 28, 2023
Ronald Reagan and Bob Hope at a USO appearance at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina.

How Woke Bob Hope Got Canceled by the Right

The conservative comedian spoke out for gay rights and gun control, and got boycotted and ostracized by friends on the right, including Ronald Reagan.
by Ben Schwartz via The Nation on April 14, 2023
Frame from the film Being the Ricardos, features Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz at a screen reading for the "I Love Lucy" show.

The True History Behind 'Being the Ricardos'

Aaron Sorkin's new film dramatizes three pivotal moments in the lives of comedy legends Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on December 13, 2021
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