Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
Over The Rainbow - by Joshua Drummond, Metro
“We swing by the Invader, a merry-go-round on undulating rails with an UFO theme. It’s right next to a building site, lined with incongruous razor wire, at the border of Rainbow’s End. I go into unwarranted hysterics, wondering aloud if the wire is to prevent park patrons escaping into a career in construction. We’re all similarly affected; I’m just the worst. Perhaps it’s the candy floss we bought. We’re ripped off our tits on sugar. It’s in this state that we try the Motion Master, which, it has to be said, is complete shit. You sit in a big room and put on 3D glasses and watch a blurry chase scene featuring the characters from Happy Feet. While this happens, your chair goes bang. If you want to accurately recreate the experience at home, smear Vaseline on your eyes, and watch Happy Feet while someone hits your seat with a hammer.”
The Age of Creepiness - by Nathan Heller, The New Yorker
“It is tempting to posit that, when it comes to creepiness, we know it when we see it. But we don’t, really, not for sure, and that’s the trouble. Creepiness is the nightmare version of seduction: it can crop up in an instant, in a gesture or an ill-starred turn of phrase, and yet it takes much longer to expunge from the imagination. Is John Travolta creepy as a disco predator in “Saturday Night Fever”? Hard to say. Is he creepy as a weathered, black-clad gentleman who leers at women while fondling their chins? Yes, very much, and now forever more. What changed?”
What Does Harper Lee Want? - by Claire Suddath, Bloomberg Business
“But someone did plan for this, although it might not have been Harper Lee. Ever since Watchman was announced, rumors have persisted that a younger, more mindful Lee—the one who swore not to publish anything again—wouldn’t abide any of this. At one point, the state of Alabama even got involved to assess a claim of possible “elder abuse.” How aware is Lee, really, of this new book? Does she, as her publishers insist, approve of its publication? The answers lie with Lee’s lawyer, friend, and confidante, Carter. So I traveled to Monroeville to talk with her.”
Meet Dylan Marron, the actor and playwright behind those ‘every single word spoken by a person of color’ YouTube videos - by Soraya Nadia McDonald, Washington Post
“The Internet is all abuzz about a series of videos from Dylan Marron, an actor, writer, and director who lives in New York. He’s the creator of the Every Single Word Tumblr blog. The premise is simple: to illustrate the paucity of screen time and speaking roles for people of color in film, Marron picks a film, and then splices all of those scenes together in a YouTube supercut. Marron, 27, found a powerful device that resonated, by taking movies that are anywhere from one to two hours long, sometimes more, and pointing out the comparatively infinitesimal amount of time actors of color get to speak in those films.”
Millennials Who Are Thriving Financially Have One Thing in Common - by Gillian B. White, The Atlantic
“Millions of America’s young people are really struggling financially. Around 30 percent are living with their parents, and many others are coping with stagnant wages, underemployment, and sky-high rent. And then there are those who are doing just great—owning a house, buying a car, and consistently putting money away for retirement. These, however, are not your run-of-the-mill Millennials. Nope. These Millennials have something very special: rich parents.”
The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates - by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, NY Mag
“While the president talked about the velocity of our escape from history, Coates insisted that the country was still stuck in its vise. Last year, he wrote an Atlantic cover story titled “The Case for Reparations,” probably the most discussed magazine piece of the Obama era, which detailed the persistence of structural racism — racism by government policy — into the present day. When Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and then Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Walter Scott in South Carolina, it was Coates who seemed to most adeptly digest the central paradox of the time: how, within an increasingly progressive era, a country led by a black president could still act with such racial brutality. In late December, when Funny or Die published a fake text-message chain between the president and his daughters, it had its fictional, radicalized Malia Obama coolly insisting, “I wish Ta-Nehisi Coates was my dad.””
The Original Ghostwriter Behind Nancy Drew Was One of The Most Interesting YA Writers of All Time - by Marissa Visci, Slate
“Nancy Drew—the eternally teenaged detective who has appeared in hundreds of books since The Secret of the Old Clock was published in 1930—recently turned 85. Over the years, dozens of authors have penned the sleuth’s adventures under the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene, and she has been the subject of TV series, movies,graphic novels—even a line of video games. Her influence is so wide that not one but three Supreme Court justices have cited her as a childhood hero. It’s no wonder then that the 85th anniversary milestone stirred up nostalgic media coverage and has been celebrated with conventions as far-flung as Iowa, Ohio, and New Jersey. But last week marked another, quieter anniversary for Nancy Drew: what would have been the 110th birthday of Mildred “Millie” Wirt Benson, the first author ever to write under the name “Carolyn Keene.””
Ask a Grown Woman: Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker - by Rookie Mag