As the pandemic winds to a close, we get to enjoy the hottest, brightest days of summer. We are all finally reemerging into the world with scraggly beards and a vague sense of melancholy over lost time. While socializing...
“At the end of 1879, the doctors examining Dostoyevsky discovered that he had a progressive lung disease. On the morning of February 28, Dostoevsky told his wife: ”I know I must die today!..” At 20:38 of the same day...
With entertainment juggernauts like Marvel and Star Wars, transmedia is arguably more prevalent than ever before. Transmedia is storytelling that covers multiple platforms. Marvel has its record-breaking box office films, but over the years they have expanded those stories...
We all, if we have taken the necessary precautions, are like Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man in 2020. Life goes on, but now life includes a more apparent deconstruction of society and its flaws. *** As holidays careen toward us during...
In a time where superhero movies are revered and box office juggernauts, audiences cannot escape the genre. If the 1950s and 1960s were the era of the Western, then the 2010s and 2020s are the era of the superhero...
Everyone loves a good villain. Sure the heroic protagonist has their enjoyable moments when it’s their time to shine, but nothing is more satisfying than watching a villain work their evil wonders. As wrong as it feels, it is...
When discussing Dostoevsky’s work, I often refer to Leonid Grossman’s quote in The Poetics of Dostoevsky where he says Dostoevsky wanted “to introduce the extraordinary into the very thick of commonplace, to fuse…the sublime with the grotesque, and push...
Since his first major work Notes from the Underground was written in 1864, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s influence can be found in literature, philosophy, and even pop culture. Dostoyevsky’s ideas have transcended his original Russian audiences of the 19th century and are now...
Daniel Day-Lewis. Denzel Washington. Viola Davis. Meryl Streep. All these A-list celebrities are magnificent choices for the greatest at their craft in America. Lists plague the internet discussing the greatest of all time. While it is rather arbitrary to...
One of the most intriguing ideas of Western Literature is that of the doppelganger: the double, the evil twin, the mischievous imposter who steals away our identity or corrupts our reputation, whether in broad daylight or under cover of...
