Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
The Thin White Duke. Photo: AFP
Brother from Another Planet – by Greg Tate, MTV
“David Bowie ranks as high in our electric church’s Afrofuturist pantheon of demiurges as Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, and Miles Davis. That’s for his outrageous aristocratic style, not-just-skin-deep soul, badass brinksmanship, and all-around Alter-Negrocity. Not to mention the Starman’s own sui generis take on The Funk. Bowie remains that rarity — a white rock artist whose appropriations of black kulcha never felt like a rip-off but more like a sharing of radical and bumptious ideations between like-minded freaks.”
We Idolised and Imitated Him, But Couldn’t Get Bowie on Our Show – by Jermaine Clement, The Spinoff
“Music, comedy, visual art, fashion, science fiction. Characters and whole movies influenced by the work of the man. Any artist who changes persona, not just their look, but becomes an entirely different character, gets credited for their creativity, but like us that day in our flat, they’re just copying him. Wonder if they’ll ever know? His influence isn’t just felt in art, though, people too are influenced. He made it cool to be a freak, to feel like an alien.”
How the Internet Picks Its Boyfriends – by Sulagna Misra, The Cut
“Oscar Isaac, and the men who came before him, are the positive side of the ironic misandry movement, in which people of both genders joke — but not really — about how men in politics and popular culture often fall short of our expectations. Instead of noting how someone has failed to respect us or listen to us, shaking our heads, and tagging the incident #banmen, we’re holding up our internet boyfriends as a better way to be.”
'Shocking Celebrity Nip Slips': Secrets I Learned Writing Clickbait Journalism – by Kate Lloyd, Broadly
“Things get especially murky once you delve even deeper into the behind-the-scenes sorcery. One tabloid journalist told me she worked on a site where every picture of a female celebrity—including those in full coverage outfits—was tagged with the word "panties." I'll also admit to using the phrase "nearly-naked" in headlines just to hit the search term "naked".”
Their Next Round – by Rembert Browne, Vulture
“I used to get crushed when I was younger and would watch movies about young people,” says Coogler. “And I’d be like, No — that’s not us. Or reading articles about the millennial generation — people making general statements about us. Again, no. Wrong. Just hire us, bruh. Hire me and let me work.” Says Jordan: “The majority of roles out there are written not by us” — meaning young black people — “so if [most writers’] only interaction with someone who looks like me is from stereotypes, what you see on TV, then those are the types of roles that are going to keep getting written.”
We Have a Serious Problem – by Douglas McGrath, The New Yorker
“Let’s review,” Trump said. “I said that Megyn Kelly was menstruating. I insulted Carly Fiorina’s face. I did a routine about Ben Carson’s belt that should have provoked a psychiatric intervention. I proposed internment camps for the Muslims already here, and then I said that we should bar all other Muslims from entering the country. And you’re telling me that my numbers are what?”