Brice Ezell
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briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell
@briceezell.bsky.social
760 followers 520 following 3.8K posts

Writer, critic (@PopMatters), teacher. ATL.
PhD in English, University of Texas.
Modern drama, theatre, and philosophy.
Writing a book on Tom Stoppard.
#COYS
https://boxd.it/1rEO5

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Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical bases of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997. .. more

Art 49%
Philosophy 16%
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briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · Dec 19
Humanities academic job seekers wondering if the job market is worth your time: it isn't.

Pinning this to the top of my profile in the hopes that this data helps people who are seeing so much hard work go unrewarded. I thought I'd have a rougher time post-market. This data explains why I haven't.
briceezell.bsky.social Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · Jun 26
The results of my 2024-25 academic job market experiment are in, and the numbers should be instructive to anyone considering university employment these days: don't. It's not worth your time, even if you've done all the work to get a PhD, even if it seems like a dream job.

Results breakdown below.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 19h
While I admire how much he tries to take audiences to time periods with totally different social norms and concepts of selfhood in an immersive way (save for THE LIGHTHOUSE, basically a Shepard play), the historical “accuracy” thing starts to feel like a fetish here.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 19h
And she is not to blame for being placed in the position she’s in. Her dilemma has a million different expressions in a landscape where collective action has been gutted in favor of market atomization. One of the many things against which we all must fight.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 19h
Now, had NHJ formed a kind of “private school walkout movement” (no small feat, especially in NYC) by encouraging parents to leave private schools en masse to draw resources to the public schools? Perhaps! But short of that, sorry, you aren’t close to touching the cogs of the system.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 19h
Decision tree of two: NHJ sends her daughter to a fancy private school, or she sends her to the school she talks about in the NYT article. Does the fundamental system that keeps divides between those schools change with either decision? No! There is no way it could.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 19h
Neoliberal “my lone individual example will be the catalyst for change!” thinking is a dead end.

Note: this is different from saying, “I have values, and I choose to live by them, fully accepting whatever that decision costs me.”

Believing YOU alone can catalyze change, in the end, is paralyzing.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 19h
That NHJ article does not deserve to be pilloried. Frankly it takes enormous bravery to document not only her daughter (fairly) criticizing her decisions, but being forthcoming about an earnest moral struggle.

What I think her example proves, though, is pretty simple.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 20h
Great new CHVRCHES tune (shouts to @kimischilling.bsky.social for sharing), one reason being that the chorus - which has some really fascinating production - includes one of those words that, if you're Scottish, can't not come through in a Scottish accent ("ground"). www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x2B...
CHVRCHES - Roses (Official Lyric Video)
YouTube video by ChvrchesVEVO
www.youtube.com

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 22h
The way Shakespeare's Ophelia is used as a reference on LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL underscores that she, contrary one particularly hilarious take on The Old Site, isn't the "Joni Mitchell of a new generation," but rather the pop bard of the normies. And that's okay!

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 22h
"Basic" is the correct take.

I think she solidified her pop chops with 1989, faltered massively with REPUTATION, and then the real heater is LOVER through EVERMORE. The limits of some of the recent stuff has been bad production and being high on the "lyrical genius" conceit.
cooperlund.online Cooper Lund @cooperlund.online · 22h
If we're also going to do Taylor Swift discourse, I think the problem is that she's a fundamentally very basic person who happened to go on an all time pop heater from like Red till Evermore and is now returning to her default state

Reposted by Tom Stoppard

cooperlund.online
Cooper Lund @cooperlund.online · 22h
If we're also going to do Taylor Swift discourse, I think the problem is that she's a fundamentally very basic person who happened to go on an all time pop heater from like Red till Evermore and is now returning to her default state

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
Real heads know this movie rocks

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
That said, the Sopranos does FEEL 90s so that one really makes sense to exclude.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
SNL’s legendary heyday was decades before 2000 though, whereas, e.g., Stewart’s peak Daily Show years came well after 2000. I don’t disagree about the cutoff, even though I’d have understood working around the technicality for a show beginning in 99.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
Ah I missed this! It feels weird to exclude the Sopranos and Stewart’s Daily Show, as the bulk of their output was in the 2000s.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
Other things cross-genre that would stand out to me:

Mad Men
Breaking Bad
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
American Crime Story (seasons 1-3)
Mayday Air Crash Investigations
House, M.D.
The Eric Andre Show

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
I think these lists are always hard because “television” is such a capacious category and it was dramatically changed by the surge of cinematic narrative storytelling. It feels weird to put up THE DAILY SHOW against, like, SUCCESSION.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
I have a top five I feel very comfortable with, speaking cross-genre:

1. The Sopranos
2. Twin Peaks: The Return
3. The Wire
4. Combo of the Bush era/early Obama era Daily Show and Colbert Report
5. LOST
thirdmanmovies.bsky.social Daniel Joyaux @thirdmanmovies.bsky.social · 1d
Okay, in honor of this week’s NYT list counting down the 100 best shows of the 21st century, everyone QT this with your ballot of ten shows!

Mine:
1. The Wire
2. Mad Men
3. Breaking Bad
4. Game of Thrones
5. Succession
6. Watchmen
7. Girls
8. The Good Place
9. Last Week Tonight
10. Veep

Reposted by Tom Stoppard

thirdmanmovies.bsky.social
Daniel Joyaux @thirdmanmovies.bsky.social · 1d
Okay, in honor of this week’s NYT list counting down the 100 best shows of the 21st century, everyone QT this with your ballot of ten shows!

Mine:
1. The Wire
2. Mad Men
3. Breaking Bad
4. Game of Thrones
5. Succession
6. Watchmen
7. Girls
8. The Good Place
9. Last Week Tonight
10. Veep

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
To be fair, Americans of all political stripes are bad at imagining the systemic impacts of their actions/voting preferences, but, still

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 1d
Put another way: modern American conservatives believe their individual decisions do not have any systemic reality, which explains the dissonance they experience when the aggregation of their preferences comes back to bite them.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 2d
And the thing the state of mind exhibited by the author misses: her daughter will never be like the kids at the school who had no choice, because she *did* have a choice.

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 2d
He be looking like Eric Andre in this sketch www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwuj...
DESCRIBE HIM TO ME!!
YouTube video by jolietv
www.youtube.com

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 2d
When Seth Meyers closes his eyes hard, he looks like he has no eyes

briceezell.bsky.social
Brice Ezell @briceezell.bsky.social · 2d
Kirk Cousins' corny self absolutely QBmogging Justin Sherbert. I will not broker any more conversation about how Herbert is elite and is simply held back by his team. His stock is down astronomical rn