pop culture | The Smart Set

The Art of the Photo Dump

Lindsey Staub — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 11:30:00 +0000

Culture is a pendulum swinging back and forth between tail ends of a spectrum. If the previous decade saw conservative politics, liberalism is on the forefront; if the starlets of yesteryear were curvy, today’s will be skinny; if your closet is stocked with skinny jeans, be prepared for the takeover of the straight leg. Culture […]

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When the Satanists Moved In

Erica Zelinger — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:30:00 +0000

Writer Paul Crenshaw found himself trying to make sense of the fear that engulfed everything in his 1980s childhood in small-town Arkansas and the world around him. The Cold War. Stranger Danger. Satanic Panic. In his most recent book of essays Melt with Me: Coming of Age and Other ’80s Perils, published by The Ohio […]

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Swift Transformation

Brian Kantorek — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 11:30:00 +0000

I’ve been on the fringes of music and pop culture for many decades now, immersed in an underground hardcore punk scene that often derides popular music’s influence. That’s not to say that I’ve always ignored or dismissed what’s popular. There are plenty of popular performers and bands I’ve found magnetic and genuinely enjoyed, despite all […]

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Best of 2017

The Smart Set Staff — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 17:17:33 +0000

This year was ripe with political conversation and conflict. That’s a given. At The Smart Set, we reflect on the things that brought us joy this year. These were the texts in which we found comfort: the noise control from the constant squawkings of pundits and politicians invading our spaces, from the bad feelings and […]

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The Naked Truth

Joan Marcus — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 16:12:43 +0000

The day after the season one finale of Naked and Afraid premiered on August 3rd, I went to brunch with my in-laws at a deli in Bethesda, the kind of place that serves toppling smoked meat sandwiches and omelets the size of handbags. When the subject of the Discovery Channel’s hit reality series came up, […]

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From Gossip to War Glamour

James Polchin — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:12:43 +0000

In July of 1940 The New Yorker published a curious note about Cecil Beaton visiting Gertrude Stein on the eve of France’s entry into World War II: Miss Stein was at her villa in the south of France, when war was declared. Cecil Beaton was her house guest that week-end. At 11 p.m. a friend […]

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Banished Words

Jerry DeNuccio — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:12:43 +0000

As it has every year since 1976, Lake Superior State University has released its latest “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness.” The annual list, the impish brainchild of LSSU’s Public Relations Office, contains the twelve most nominated words among the thousands sent mostly by folks from the United […]

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Selective Memory

James Polchin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:12:43 +0000

Start with the painting “People” (1927) by Guy Pène du Bois. The large canvas is not the first painting in the Brooklyn Museum’s show “Youth and Beauty,” but it should be. It presents a crowd of fashionably dressed men and women gathered on a hillside, all looking off toward some distant event or perhaps admiring […]

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Go East

Morgan Meis — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:12:43 +0000

“Ostalgia” is a dangerous art show. The name alone tells you that. It is troubling that a term such as “ostalgia” exists at all. The term first gained popularity in Berlin after the Wall came down in 1989. By the mid-1990s, some people were feeling nostalgic for the divided Berlin that had so suddenly passed […]

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Creative Forces

James Polchin — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:12:43 +0000

I don’t imagine that artist and writer Claude Cahun ever sat down to lunch with the young Alberto Giacometti, who arrived in Paris about the same time as Cahun in the early 1920s. But there they were, developing their ideas about Surrealism, haunting the same galleries and bookstores, all within the complex artistic milieu of […]

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