Category Culture

How a School Shooting Became a Video Game

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The Final Exam, a recently released video game in which you play as a student caught amid a school shooting, lasts for around ten minutes, about the length of a real…

David Lynch’s Popularity Is a Judgment Against Us

The universal acclaim for the Montanan master of the cheap shot says more about us than about him. Credit: Drop of Light/Shutterstock The decades-long valorization and near-deification of the late filmmaker David Lynch is a sign of declining cultural standards…

The Cruel Abstraction of “Beast Games”

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story “Beast Games,” a reality-competition show currently streaming on Amazon Prime, opens with a dramatic camera shot, circling in three-sixty degrees to capture the show’s host, a skinny young man holding a…

The Henri Cartier-Bresson of South Korea

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Let’s start with the photographer himself. A self-portrait, which, like the rest of Han Youngsoo’s work, is in black-and-white—not a nostalgic choice, just the technology of the times. It’s deep winter,…

Madame President: The Cover That Never Was

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The portrait above, “Kamala,” painted by Kadir Nelson, would have been the cover of the November 18, 2024, issue of The New Yorker—that is, if Kamala Harris had won the election…

How David Lynch Became an Icon of Cinema

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Thursday morning, I happened to be rereading Pauline Kael’s classic 1969 essay “Trash, Art, and the Movies.” A few hours later, I learned that David Lynch had died, and a sentence…

“Silo” and the Dystopia We Live In

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story In a recent episode of “Silo,” the sci-fi series from Apple TV+, a character who does not have long to live puts on a virtual-reality headset. She’s spent her entire life…

Ballet Past and Present, at New York City Ballet

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Marina HarssHarss has written about dance for Goings On since 2004. You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up…