Is Euphoria a TV Show or an Aesthetic?

From the HBO Series to Cottagecore, the Blending of Surface and Serious May Serve Modern Life

In the comment section of a one-hour loop of the Labrinth song “Forever” that’s already hit upward of a million views on YouTube, one person wrote: “This song makes me feel a way I did not know existed.” Another: “I can literally listen to this sound all night.”

“Forever,” with its catchy “oh-oh-oh, ooh” refrain, and the HBO teen drama it was composed for, Euphoria, share a big, aching quality that has made the show, which wrapped its second season this week, a phenomenon. From glitter eyeshadow to moody neon pink and …

by Jackie Mansky | March 4, 2022

Why Do We Count Down to the New Year?

How the Doomsday Clock, a German Sci-Fi Film, and Dick Clark Got Us to '5-4-3-2-1'

by Alexis McCrossen | December 27, 2021

Few people counted down to anything until the 1960s and 1970s—and yes, that included the new year. Celebrations and midnight kisses on December 31, of course. Countdowns, no. How, then, …

How 1970s Pop Culture Cemented Today’s Partisan Divisions

Journalist Ronald Brownstein Explores the Creative Explosion in Los Angeles That Prefigures Our Current Politics

by Sara Suárez | April 23, 2021

Longtime political journalist Ronald Brownstein paid a visit to Zócalo yesterday to speak about his new book, Rock Me On the Water: 1974- The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, …

The Kathy Fiscus Tragedy Transfixed the World. Seven Decades Later, I Can’t Let It Go

A California Historian Can’t Shake His Obsession With the 1949 Death That Became the First Live, Breaking News TV Spectacle

by William Deverell | March 10, 2021

I can walk from my home to the area where Alice Fiscus stood in the kitchen chatting with her sister Jeanette on that fateful late afternoon of April 8, 1949. …

Where I Go: Coming Together ’Round the Telly

In Praise of TV-Watching, the Pinnacle of Evening Entertainment

by Lamorna Ash | December 9, 2020

I wish I was watching TV right now. When I’m not watching TV, I like to reflect on all the previous times I’ve watched TV or look forward to the …

Why Americans Love Andy Griffith’s Toothy Grin

In the Post-Civil Rights Era, Images of Southerners as ‘Slow-Witted Rubes’ Soothed White Anxieties

by Sara K. Eskridge | August 22, 2019

Today, when many Americans think of the “good old days”—when neighbors knew each other and the world seemed safer and simpler—they often conjure visions of the 1950s and early 1960s, …

television