Culture
How a Texas Author Learned to Love Cockroaches (and Other Tales of Off-Putting Creatures)
‘Get High With Ricki Lake!’: New Film on Medical Marijuana Leaves Out Texas Families
Featuring heartrending stories, Weed the People aims to change the stigma around cannabis treatment — but fails to look much outside its California bubble.
“I smell weed!” Ricki Lake walks onto the back patio of a South Austin home and laughs. It’s Monday night and the backyard is filled with people v...Read More
‘TransMilitary’ Is the LGBT Advocacy Film Middle America Needs to See
The documentary shines brightest when it shows trans soldiers simply going about their lives.
It’s April 27, 2016, and we’re in the living room of a modest home in Clarksville, Tennessee. Family photos hang on the wall, and there’s a framed paintin...Read More
‘BANG’ Offers a Dark Look at the Human Cost of Mexico’s Drug War
Daniel Peña is not sparing in his assessment of Texas, where farmworkers are poisoned by fertilizer and pesticide, and Mexico, where guessing who will be next to die in the drug wars has become a lottery game.
Daniel Peña’s debut novel reminds me of a bantamweight boxer. Lean and compact, it is packed with energy, ready to land blow after punch after jab on any rea...Read More
‘Alt-Right: Age of Rage’ Is a Thoughtful Ode to Anti-Fascism
At SXSW, a new documentary dissects the ideology of those who battle the alt-right with as much precision as it exposes the hate of Richard Spencer and his ilk.
It’s August 12, 2017. We’re in the immediate aftermath of the deadly far-right rally in Charlottesville. We see police lights, caution tape, smashed-up cars...Read More
‘Lean on Pete’ Sheds Light on Youth Homelessness, but Not Its Main Character
Featured at SXSW this week, the film magnificently portrays the problems faced by homeless youth — but fails to develop its protagonist in a compelling way.
As attendees of this week’s SXSW festival rush from one sold-out event to the next, they’ll likely walk right past some of Austin’s approximately 2,000 ho...Read More
Boom and Bust in Big Spring
"The Kings of Big Spring" conveys the difficulties and deprivations stared down by the Depression era's 99 percent.
Profundity alert: when a book’s subtitle contains the word “American,” never mind the phrase “American Dream,” you know you’re dealing with an autho...Read More
In ‘The Atomic Cafe,’ U.S. Cold War Propaganda Comes Out of the Bunkers for the Trump Era
Screening at SXSW on Saturday, the film's Cold War-era footage never feels distant — perhaps because both careless stewardship of the bomb and surreal official propaganda seem to be making a comeback.
When Jayne Loader was a child growing up in 1950s and ’60s Fort Worth, she lived across the street from E.O. “Soapy” Gillam, the “bomb shelter king of N...Read More
‘The Most Dangerous Man in America’ is a Pleasant Flashback to One of the Wildest Stories of the ’60s
In this deeply reported new book, two Texas authors interrogate the deeper meaning of Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and LSD.
I was born in 1967. The 1960s, for me and most people my age and younger, are almost purely an abstraction. I’ve familiarized myself with more than a few face...Read More
Loon Star State: Dreamers
To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here....Read More