Divergent & Prejudice
Where there is love and emotion, there is likely to be a story worth telling, but romance is dead if modern literature has anything to say about it.
The Hunger Games: Forgetting Katniss
Most people I know don’t think about cultural legacy when they visit the movie theater. I do, and I have a question: will anyone remember The Hunger Games in five years?
Brave New Lit: Using Stories To Counter the Abortion Crisis
“This [essay] is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” The Center for Medical Progress’ investigative footage on Planned Parenthood has led to 12 states currently investigating the organization. Many in Congress have begun plans to reallocate Planned Parenthood’s funding to other healthcare organizations that don’t engage in abortions. The atrocities documented more than justify
The Oppression of the Mockingjay
What causes a culture to celebrate a televised spectacle of teenage gladiatorial combat? It’s a question we desperately need to be asking, and it’s a question that The Hunger Games frankly doesn’t seem interested in. The writers and filmmakers certainly pretend to take on that topic, but abandon the issue with disconcerting ease. If we’re
The Feminist Underpinnings of Divergent
Something dangerous happens when you mix teenage romance novels with attempted political commentary. No one seems to recognize that dystopian novels almost always end tragically. Remember how in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, John the Savage is driven from society and hangs himself at the end? And how Guy Montag is driven into exile by a
Divergent: A Dangerous Relationship
Boy meets girl. Sparks fly. Butterflies flutter. Other things come up. Feelings get hurt a little. Both go their separate ways because it’s really the best thing. Roll credits. I’m still waiting to come across a movie like that. The happily-ever-after ending is as natural and important as villains monologuing in critical moments or good
Les Miserables: A Conversation of Grace
We don’t need more “Christian” movies. People clamor for more faith-based entertainment, but that usually just involves sanitizing every story for little eyes and ears and slapping a gospel presentation on the end of the movie. Watch the Hallmark Channel if you like, but there are people in the world today who need to hear
Beauty and the (Friendzoned) Beast
Millennials have been taking a lot of flack as of late for our socially floundering ways. Get a job, ask girls out on dates, mail thank-you notes, don’t live life via texting, stop taking selfies… you get the idea. Some of this exhortation comes from our elders while a good deal of it comes as
A Better Love Story: Dante and the American Teenager
Tuesdays in college were weird. After a long day of classes and a hurried dinner at a reputable liberal arts school, I would hop in the car for 20 minutes to volunteer at a youth ministry that was not your average church group. We worked with a group of unchurched, unparented, and frequently unshowered middleschoolers
Cultural Archaeology
I never read the Harry Potter books back when they were first being published. There was too much controversy back in the day and too many other great classics to read. Even now, when you haven’t read anything by Dostoevsky, lesser books don’t work their way up the priority list very easily. That’s not to