Letter Locks
Atlas Obscura looks into the world of letter locks, twists, folds and tears that kept letters secure before envelopes. It’s pretty cool. You should click through and see for yourself. (Thanks, Polly!)
“Black Storytellers Are Using Horror to Battle Hate”
“Black Horror is far from a new phenomenon, as demonstrated by last year’s documentary Horror Noire, based on the book by Robin R. Means Coleman, which unpacked the deeper meaning behind a century of African American history in frightening screen stories—from the silent era to 1968’s Night of […]
“Godzilla’s Conscience: The Monstrous Humanism of Ishiro Honda”
At Criterion, Steven Ryfle writes about director Ishiro Honda and Godzilla. “Ishiro Honda gathered his crew and gave them an ultimatum. He was about to put his career at risk, and he would only work with those who approached his current project—a movie about a radiation-spewing prehistoric reptile […]
“The Forgotten Tale of How Black Psychiatrists made Sesame Street”
“Sesame Street had had originally been conceived as a novel way of bringing remedial education into the homes of disadvantaged children, especially children of color. [Dr. Chester Pierce], though, saw a different kind of potential for a show like this: one that could directly counter and counteract the […]
The Bollywood Time Machine, Destination 2500 BCE: Mohenjo Daro
My previous installment for the Gutter, Dharam-Veer, falls into the Fully Fictional sub-genre of Historical Wackadoodle. Today we’ll look at an example of its counterpart: the Real-Ish. These films are part of a grandiose tradition of Hindi films that refer to real events but usually give them musical, […]
“The Quagmire of Race and Horror in Cinema”
Dani Bethea kicks off Gayly Dreadful’s Pride Month with a meditation on race, gender, gender presentation and horror in cinema. “Particular intricacies always exist in the stories and lives of Black people, especially in the framing of (horror) imagery. As a Black American, I have a very particular […]
