popular culture

Rather than attributing Holmes’ and the Joker’s nonexistent moral compass (and neither seems to have one) to an absence of moral training that would be there if prayer were back in public schools, we may need to look at their apparent lack of a self-conscious narrative as a more telling source.

Beasts is a transcendental film that enables the viewer to swim through a child’s memories, witness a hurricane and flood, watch a man die, see a home vanish. But is the imagery too transcendent and romantic?

Please, for the love of the primordial, preliterate covenant of sound: leave George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” alone.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter retells the story of America, laying the blame for many of the worst episodes on vampires. Does this history let us off the hook?

The kosher Buddhism presented in “Buddhists’ Delight” is basically relaxation. Not so relaxed that we forget about our liberal political commitments, but relaxed enough that we don’t check our Blackberries when they buzz.

Just in time for the election comes the film version of Mexico’s Cristero War, depicting brave rebels risking it all for religious freedom. Only problem with the story: it’s not really true.

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders’ widely condemned Islamophobic video is a travesty—but overreaction just distracts us from our common concerns.

No giant earthquake rippled across the surface of the earth but I wanted to know what happens next. If you’re absolutely sure the world is going to end on a specific day, and it doesn’t, what do you do? How do you explain it to yourself? What happens to your faith in God?

In The Mirage, 9/11 is actually 11/9, the day when Christian fundamentalists from Texas slammed airliners into Baghdad skyscrapers, sparking a war on terror that rages across a nearly unrecognizable North America. Will Americans go for a book where the world power is the United Arab States and the lead characters are almost all Arabs and Muslims?

When it comes to the consumption of meat, our human hands have long been dirty. This isn’t a discouragement to stop striving for the good. But a moral proposal that promises to wash our filthy fingers spotlessly clean—in seconds flat—is suspect. Because they will still be dirty. The pressing moral question, of meat, becomes: given that human hands are obviously soiled, what can be done with these polluted tools?