Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover. Photo: Vanity Fair
The Paradigm Lag: Why It's (Still) Awkward to Talk About Caitlyn Jenner – by Megan Garber, The Atlantic
“Cultural conventions haven’t yet caught up to cultural realities. Etiquette and language, the discursive products of quandaries that have been hashed out over time, can be slow to catch up with the fast-moving realities of the culture. And so, in an America that still often elides “sex” and “gender,” a bit of awkwardness when it comes to talking about Caitlyn Jenner is pretty much inevitable. The vocabulary is, to many people, unfamiliar. The lines between “transgender” and “transexual” are murky. People, generally, mean well; people are also, to a certain extent, confused. Culture is fast; convention is slow.”
The Struggle Continues – by Laverne Cox, Tumblr
“But what I think they meant is that in certain lighting, at certain angles I am able to embody certain cisnormative beauty standards. Now, there are many trans folks because of genetics and/or lack of material access who will never be able to embody these standards. More importantly many trans folks don’t want to embody them and we shouldn’t have to to be seen as ourselves and respected as ourselves.”
Lifetime’s ‘UnREAL’ Traces the Cracks in Reality TV’s Fourth Wall – by Jon Caramanica, New York Times
“Reality television has been used as a milieu on comedies like “The Comeback” or “Barely Famous,” and it has become its own subject on plenty of shows that have chosen to break the fourth wall to heighten drama. But the acerbic and unrelentingly sad “UnREAL” doesn’t exist just to send up reality television, or to pick at its scabs. Nor is it primarily a tell-all about the behind-the-scenes hands that shape reality-TV narrative. Rather, “UnREAL” uses that access as a tool to ask questions about these sorts of programs: not just about how they operate — savagely, if its stories are to be believed — but also why participants on both sides of the camera subject themselves to them.”
The Hypocrisy of the Internet Journalist – by Quinn Norton, The Message
“Your internet experience isn’t the main result of algorithms built on surveillance data; you are. Humans are beautifully plastic, endlessly adaptable, and over time advertisers can use that fact to make you into whatever they were hired to make you be. I still get kind of goosebump-y thinking about it sometimes. There’s a little evil voice in me somewhere that whispers “people make the best toys of all.””
Dude, What Is to Blame for the New ‘Point Break’? – by Kevin Lincoln, Grantland
“At the end of the day, you can’t create a character named Johnny Utah and then just expect him to lie dormant, confined to one film, as though he had some regular old movie-character name. Johnny Utah demands to be onscreen. He demands that his story be told, over and over, until the sun swallows the Earth because we were all too busy watching Point Break on our watches. Yes, he may no longer be played by Keanu Reeves — hi ,Luke Bracey, who is an actor — but he’s still the same Johnny Utah, in that other characters can be like, “Utah, I need a theory,” and Johnny Utah will give you a damn theory.”
A Beautiful Death – by Hayden Donnell, Pantograph Punch
“The viking funeral roaring at MediaWorks and in much of the New Zealand media world shows that its end has been a wake-up call. Campbell's exit was one of the toughest hits we've taken from the forces of commerce. It gave us the message that it’s not enough to do a good job. That making a difference doesn’t mean much. That great journalism doesn’t matter.”
Jill Soloway adapts “The Rules” for women directors in Hollywood: you must cry at work – Quartz
“So you gotta go for it. Just do me a favor and FUCK SOME SHIT UP. Surprise yourself, wake up your actors, get wild with your performances, try shit, put in that funky dialogue you’re embarrassed of—in fact, rub your fucked-up-ness all over your scripts, add some shame and embarrassment and glee, and then dare yourself to shoot it, SERIOUSLY. Go big or go home—be a creature unlike any other.”
Football world left in state of flux – by Michael Brown, NZ Herald
“If only [Sepp Blatter] had resigned last week before the Fifa congress and presidential vote, or last decade. Now the football world is left in a state of flux. Fifa is a deeply divided organisation, often on racial and economic lines, and it will take some time to repair the damage done under Blatter's regime. It will take someone with great leadership to heal the divisions and it's not certain anyone really exists to do this at the moment.”
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