Author Archives: David Futrelle

Sport promises the thrills of aggression without the consequences. In many ways its pleasures are comparable to those of pornography.

A strident feminist, a lipstick and mascara maven, and a celebrity psyche healer have found common ground promoting female empowerment as the ultimate form of do-it-yourself therapy.

Criticism in the mass media in recent years has become little more than an adjunct to the capitalist culture of consumption: the critic (of films, books, music, theater, or whatever) serves primarily as a consumer advocate, a guide to the bewildering variety of consumer choices. And Beavis and Butt-head are not the only ones to […]

Kate Millett writes about horror, but she’s not willing to look it in the face.

His critics want to return to the time when the psyche was a simple thing, free of conflict, desire, and ambivalence.

I suffered from depression for many years. I thought I was simply getting what I deserved–that a pathetic person like me could not (and in some sense should not) escape a pathetic life.

A new kind of sexual language has emerged–it’s a peculiar mix of feminist rhetoric and legal discourse, a language that plays on fears and promises control.

Travel writing is still predominantly an imperial style of literature–arrogant, acquisitive, oblivious to the meanings of local custom,

My favorite literary dispute of all time occurred several years ago in the letters pages of the London Review of Books. I’m not much for literary disputes, but since this one involved mention of Rupert Brooke’s penis, and since so few of the letters in literary journals mention the male member (much less such an […]

Conservative white males have learned the language of the downtrodden. Now they’re trying to grab the big prize: if anyone accuses them of being “oppressors,” they can claim to be victims too.