culture | The Smart Set

Don’t Sing, Scarf, or Spit

John Capista — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 14:28:17 +0000

Culture, if we can still call it that, has taken a definite downward turn in the last couple of decades. Tee shirts with I HATE YOUR F—ING MASK (the F word spelled out) printed in large letters on the front. Texting at the dinner table. Parents using profanity to children. Being honked and tailgated while […]

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Curious Listening

Cameron Carr — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 11:30:00 +0000

There’s a familiar refrain from an older generation speaking to a younger one: Why isn’t there any good music these days? It’s often posed like that, as a question, and accompanied by an insincere request for the younger to show the older something good. I can expect to hear it every holiday when I hop […]

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On Saudade

Alex Viviano — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 11:30:00 +0000

“Saudade, saudade. Nothing more that I can say says it in a better way.” The artist Maro sang these lyrics while representing Portugal in the annual Eurovision song contest in 2022. These lyrics in particular acknowledge the difficulty of making a concept with a high degree of cultural connotations from the artist’s home country accessible […]

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Belonging

Usha Raj — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:30:00 +0000

One evening when I was seven, my mother showed me and my brothers a large neon sign on the side of a high-rise in the heart of the bustling city of Calcutta. Against the dark outline of the building, a huge ceiling fan whirred, its blades outlined in neon. As I watched, the projection faded, replaced by the outline of a table-top sewing machine with the wheel on one end turning around as […]

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Good intentions, Filmmaking, and the Decoloniality Paradox

Gautam Bisht — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 11:30:00 +0000

Brahmastra, a Sanskrit word, refers to one of the “astra” (weapons) used in the two great wars of the Indian epics — Ramayana and Mahabharat. As described in the ancient scriptures, it is the ultimate weapon with an unparalleled catastrophic effect. Given that the Indian audiences have been looking forward to a local film that […]

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Portrait of a Lady

Lev Raphael — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 12:23:39 +0000

I was only about ten when my mother returned from visiting her aunt in a lavish New Jersey rest home and said, “That’s my worst nightmare — not knowing who I am.” I’d been on one of these visits myself to what looked like a Colonial mansion out of a movie, and was dazzled by […]

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Drifting In and Out

Natasha Burge — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 20:36:32 +0000

Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia 2018 There is boomtown energy on the pavement tonight. Bodies crowd the curb, sand-scoured vehicles fly past, and the electric clatter of neon is always in the eye. There is a honk from a taxi behind me and the sizzle of meat on a spit. In this part of town, they sell […]

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Time (out) in Tuscany

John Capista — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:30:00 +0000

As we gradually and, in some cases, fitfully emerge from under the shadow of the pandemic, the ordinary pleasures of the B.C. (Before Covid) era beckon with renewed allure: a grandchild’s hug, a restaurant meal, a day at the ballpark, and that abandoned vacation that now seems even sweeter than it did when first planned. In our case, my wife and I have been spending two to three weeks in Italy each year to […]

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Capturing the Invisible

Theresa Lin — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 11:30:00 +0000

I have long understood the appraisal of the Asian American in the public conscious — as a vagrant third man, situated between white and Black. The Asian American has sought to extricate themselves from this precarious position since their arrival as imported labor, then later as empirical evidence of American justice. The challenge, in part, has been to define, in terms that are shrewd and […]

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Pedestrians

Kay Ugwuede — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 12:03:09 +0000

My family called a popular detergent we used in the ’90s, “Klin” for a long time until I pointed out, in an argument, that it was in fact “So Klin” a shorthanded variation of the phrase “So Clean.” On the 28 gram (1 oz) packs we often bought, the “So” was a small prefix in […]

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