Doreen St. Felix
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Articles by Doreen St. Felix
The Great, Cynical Fun of “The Traitors”
The American version of “The Traitors,” which premièred in 2023, is hosted by a Scot, Alan Cumming. He is a scheming ringmaster, his eyes kohl-lined, his body wrapped in couture finery for which there are no descriptive words. He can roll consonants in a way that has not happened before in human speech. He makes a meal of the goth gig. He is too good to be doing this, to be on NBC on a Thursday.
The Great, Cynical Fun of “The Traitors”
M&S launches new collection with five Claudia Winkleman-inspired fashion must-haves This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more TV viewers have been obsessed with …
Christa Pike and the Absurdity of Humane Execution
A preponderance of failed lethal injections—the method accounts for the majority of botched executions since 1982—along with drug shortages, has led to the revival of older capital-punishment methods, such as the firing squad, and the introduction of new ones. Two years ago, the state of Alabama decided to start killing people on death row by asphyxiation, via nitrogen gas fed into the lungs until the masked person strapped to the gurney expires.
Christa Pike and the Absurdity of Humane Execution
Death Penalty 1 hour ago Christa Pike Joined Rare Group Of 8 People Who’ve Survived Lethal Injection, Here’s What They Did To Get There boredpanda.com - Samridhi Goel • 1h Christa Pike’s failed lethal-injection procedure added a startling new chapter to America’s history of botched capital punishment.
The Thomas and Kavanaugh Hearings Restaged as a Theatre of Fact
“The Ford/Hill Project,” a documentary play, may capture recent events, but it’s a product of the present: activist theatre in a moment when the idea of civic urgency is losing purchase. In the hands of the creators Lee Sunday Evans and Elizabeth Marvel, history is mortar: moldable until it dries, in the way of all plaster-like substances.
The Thomas and Kavanaugh Hearings Restaged as a Theatre of Fact
Black man, white man, Black woman, white woman: the cardinal points of our racial and sexual situation. None of the principals in this production can “talk” to one another, so to speak. But the constant movements of the actors into different pairings allow for some searing expository work, especially in the case of Clarence “high-tech lynching” Thomas, and Anita Hill, who was called a liar, a fabulist, a whore, and, above all, traitress of the advancing race.
The Art of Getting Lost in Minnie Evans
A man buys a drawing. A terrible friction materializes between the two of them, the man and the drawing, the latter of which might have been a vision on paper of existence on another plane—a flat botanical realm, rainbow-bright, governed by floating, expressionless heads. The symmetry, the sense of exact echoing across a central median, an inescapable reversibility. Harmony, as a force of relation, dominates; here is the telegraphing of a closed world accessible seemingly only to one.
What Natalie Harp Carries
On September 1, 1987, a military train loaded with munitions coursed out of Diablo Valley, in the East Bay of Northern California. President Ronald Reagan would, through his extralegal maneuvering, put the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua down by force.
Usher and Chris Brown’s Audacious Joint Tour
That Friday, the sky had opened up. MetLife, an outdoor venue, was drenched, and the start was delayed. Guest Services gave out plastic ponchos. Workers had placed tarps on the stage, which was shaped like a massive arrow, to collect the storm. DJ Fresh, now acting as Brown’s hype man, did the warmup, vamping at his decks. Everyone whooped when he boomed into his mike that no one was scared of a little motherfucking rain.
Whoopi Goldberg Was and Always Will Be the Whole Show
That voice of God filling the basement theatre at Lincoln Center—you know it as well as that of your own mother. The glottal quality, the vowel dilation. It belongs to Whoopi Goldberg, who, in a prerecorded message, coaxed the matinée audience at “The Whoopi Monologues,” an upbeat reimagining of her one-woman show from the early nineteen-eighties, into silencing their phones. The audience was delighted to be coaxed, delighted to hear from Goldberg herself.
Scenes from La Canicule in Paris
It was the middle of June, and Emmanuel Grégoire, the newly elected mayor of Paris, was installed on the banks of Canal Saint-Martin, surrounded by shirtless Parisians, set to perform his John the Baptist drag. Lyas, a curly-haired twentysomething influencer, outstretched his arms, ready, in his tattered “fashion pas facho” T-shirt—“fashion not fascist,” in English—to receive a playful palm to the chest from the Mayor, which sent the influencer straight into the water.
The World Cup and the Changing Psyche of the Haitian Diaspora
In Haiti, fútbol can provide an alternative plane of experience, one in which the victory of independence can be relived again and again. Pelé, who visited Haiti in 1975 during the height of the Duvalier regime, is revered almost as if a saint, and Brazil is the country that Haitians root for in their own nation’s stead. Now Haiti will play Brazil on l’étage mondiale, bringing to a close some fifty years of fan surrogacy.
The Heretical Energy of “Is God Is”
Night rarely falls on the harsh, sun-bleached world of Aleshea Harris’s film “Is God Is,” a revenge parable about the breaking, or the burning, of the Black family. A glare backgrounds the protagonists, twins with matching cornflower box braids, named Racine and Anaia, who carry on their skin, to varying degrees, burn scars. Racine and Anaia are motherless and fatherless.
Spirit Airlines and the Death of Leisure for the Non-Leisure Class
After Spirit Airlines ceased operations, in the middle of the night on May 2nd, a series of canary-yellow airplanes sat on the tarmac at Newark Airport, arranged neatly like children’s toys at day’s end. Travellers flying in or out of the hub ogled the spectacle, a display of sudden corporate collapse.
The Death of Afrika Bambaataa and the Afterlife of Hip-Hop
The man who was called the “godfather of hip-hop,” and who took full license from that status, is dead. Afrika Bambaataa passed away in early April, reportedly of prostate cancer, at the age of sixty-eight.
What Zendaya Leaves Unsaid
Is her professionalism an obstacle to risk? Fatal to artistry? She speaks matter-of-factly about her relative privilege in the industry. She is not “only” an actress; she is a producer, which dates back to her time on “K.C. Undercover.” As a cultural figure, she strikes me as a code-switcher. She is not the crossover case, who distances herself from Black Hollywood.
Zara Larsson Gets Her Flowers
“Midnight Sun” is more adult, more sexed, and more camp than Larsson’s past music, which tended toward the subgenre known as tropical house—E.D.M. mixed with floaty, naïve Caribbean rhythms. I wondered if opening with the album’s biggest song might drain the energy from the rest of the set.
The BAFTAs, and the Sloppy Pieties of Liberal Entertainment
The comedian Conan O'Brien will host the Academy Awards in two weeks. How will his writing team metabolize the stupefying scene at this year's BAFTA s into his routine? It seems obvious that they will have to mete out some clever response to the episode being called, in a succession of words worthy of Richard Pryor, the "Tourette's N-Word Incident." This is what happened, if you somehow missed it. The actors Michael B.
"Love Story" Is a Forgettable Elegy for Gen X
On his podcast "This Is Gavin Newsom," the Democratic governor of California has made it a goal to rigorously engage with the opposition. But he is acceding, appeasing, as he nods and "mm-hmm"s in response to guests such as Steve Bannon and Ben Shapiro, ideologues who come on the show to discuss the machinations of MAGA.
Why Jackie Robinson Testified Against Paul Robeson
In Brooklyn, there's a one-hundred-and-sixty-two-year-old building that stands at 40 Greene Avenue. For much of its life, the structure was a Catholic church, known as St. Casimir's. But in 1980 it was purchased and renovated by Dr. Josephine English. English, the first Black woman to open a private practice in the state of New York, was known as . She had delivered some six thousand babies, including the children of Betty Shabazz and Malcolm X.
Acts of Self-Destruction
Friedkin’s film sucked much of the humor and twisted romance from the play, I realized, treating it as straight horror. Although I have some issues with the latest interpretation, directed by David Cromer (it veers hokey, and it is missing the feeling of the vertiginous, the fear that we might be at risk of falling into madness, too), the emphasis on the burnished union between Peter and Agnes resonated. Peter and Agnes have sex and go to sleep.
“The Beast in Me” Is at War with Itself
Aggie Wiggs, a famous Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, is living in a home that is far too big for her in Oyster Bay, a wealthy enclave on Long Island. The home is too big for her because the family she once had is gone. Her envy-inducing Victorian house, wrapped in floral wallpaper and outfitted with plush rugs, still has a warmth to it, but this warmth portends sickness, fever. The pipes rattle. There are ticking sounds. The sink gurgles like an infant, spitting up rusty water.
“The Beast in Me” Is at War with Itself
3 New to Prime Video Movies I'm Watching This Weekend (December 5-7) Where else but Prime Video can you start the holiday season with Michelle Pfeiffer, a fussy Belgian detective and not one, but two Leonardo …
Still Moving - Lux Magazine
In Oakland, an eternal June Jordan looks to her right — toward the future — fixing her gaze on the Palestinian flag. The painter of the mural has placed a Black power fist to Jordan’s left, with a keffiyeh flowing between and wrapping her shoulders. The ending declaration of her poem, “Moving Towards Home, 1982,” is printed along the scarf’s edges.
The Allure-and the Policing-of Subway Surfing
Are thrill-seeking kids like birds, deterred by metaphorical spikes on the roof? In late October, the M.T.A. did install barriers—vertical pads made of hard rubber—in between cars on some trains operating on the 7 line, restricting climbing routes. These experiments in design cannot obscure the fact that the problem has mostly been handed off to the police. This year, the N.Y.P.D. has arrested more than a hundred and twenty people on suspicion of riding outside a subway car.
The Erotics of Coreen Simpson
Is it because her erotic vernacular is in such intimate dialogue with street vernacular? Is it because her frank compositions of human desire and difference reminded me of Diane Arbus? You feel, in the presence of her works, that there is little distance between the photographer and her subjects, as much as she may anonymize them to us. You wished, as you walked through the show, that Simpson had gotten the chance to photograph that alleged jezebel, the diva Baker.
Adebunmi Gbadebo and the Mysteries of Clay
The relationship between Adebunmi Gbadebo and her material, clay, is one of supplication—on the part of Gbadebo. The churched among us consider a potter something of an autocrat; they find masochistic affinity with the idea of clay as the humble, dumb stuff of life of which they are made. But clay will give its protest. In certain environmental situations, clay will choose catastrophe.
The Lush Pain Music of Nourished by Time
Marcus Brown’s voice is a crooner’s voice, a baritone, emanating notes from some spot in his body deeper than his chest. Biologically speaking, this is impossible. But taking in his vocal, its dark timbre and real dimensionality, one feels perplexed and forced to come up with an explanation. Occasionally, Brown, who makes mesmerizing, lovelorn music under the name Nourished by Time, is a serenader reaching for the style of Jodeci or SWV—sinewy, solicitous, but alien underneath the ad-libbing.
The Banal Provocation of Sydney Sweeney’s Jeans
Two American blondes have recently hawked denim. Beyoncé, an ambassador for Levi’s, dressed in outlaw drag, arrives at a semi-deserted laundromat. She slinks out of her 501s, revealing her white briefs to a couple of stunned onlookers. The jeans go in a waiting washing machine, to be tossed with diamonds instead of detergent pods. Under her cowboy hat-cum-crown, she is smiling knowingly. Her song “Levii’s Jeans” is playing. But what she’s selling in the commercial is not Levi’s.
The Banal Provocation of Sydney Sweeney’s Jeans
That brings us to the second blonde, the actress Sydney Sweeney, who recently became the face of American Eagle. What is this campaign selling? The package is all over the place, a mishmash of tone and intent. There is the car-commercial fantasy, of Sweeney, in control, tending to her Mustang’s engine, the camera trailing her as she wipes her hands on her backside.
The Banal Provocation of Sydney Sweeney’s Jeans
What has America learned from the Sydney Sweeney situation? We asked the experts The great ongoing American conversation escalated into a great American bar fight this summer, as a long and increasingly unhinged national back-and-forth about race, politics, sexuality, the nature of both the Trump administration and fame itself was triggered by … a jeans ad. What happened? …
The Tragedy of the Diddy Trial
Sean Combs mouthed “thank you” to the jurors, his hands clasped in prayer. The intricacies of their deliberations will be revealed later on, in the requisite television interviews, but, as of Wednesday morning, what mattered was that Combs had been acquitted of the racketeering and sex-trafficking charges that would have put him away for life.
The Tragedy of the Diddy Trial
On the second day of jury selection in the case of U.S. v. Sean Combs, Arun Subramanian, a federal judge for the Southern District of New York, called for a closed-door meeting with a defense attorney involved in the case. Subramanian, who is in his forties, and appointed to the court by Joe Biden, exudes a kind of good-natured adaptability; he is a disciplinarian, but a reasonable one.
The Tragedy of the Diddy Trial
Now Guy Fieri reality show winner files lawsuit alleging breach of contract over Chicken Guy! franchise Kevin Cooper, who won "Guy's Chance of a Lifetime," says the celebrity chef didn't live up to his promises after Cooper opened a Fieri franchise.
Play It Again, Charles Burnett
You’re reading Critic’s Notebook, our weekend column looking at the most interesting moments in the cultural Zeitgeist. August 6, 1965. The government lays one more brick in the foundation of its imagined Great Society. Great men of Washington and of the civil-rights movement surround President Lyndon B. Johnson as he signs into law the Voting Rights Act.
Play It Again, Charles Burnett
I’ve seen 41 movies in theaters so far this year — here are the 5 best and 5 worst It’s almost the halfway point of the year. And putting to one side my concerns about how worryingly fast 2025 is flying by, I’m using this …
“The Encampments” and the American College Student
The institution has not neglected to commemorate the history of agitation against it. The year 2018 marked five decades since students occupied the halls of Columbia University, demanding that the school’s board sever ties to the defense industry during the Vietnam War, and also that it cease construction of a gymnasium—“Gym Crow”—which would have segregated access to Harlem residents. Columbia retaliated by shutting down the shutdown.
“The Encampments” and the American College Student
They All Signed the Harper’s Letter. Where Are They Now? They All Signed the “Harper’s” Letter. Where Are They Now? Many of those who were loudest in denouncing cancel culture then are now curiously silent …
Goings On Newsletter
Our theatrical spring continues to be a bright one, with a bounty of audacious, boundary-breaking work emerging Off Broadway in the coming weeks. At the Atlantic Theatre Company, Mona Pirnot’s tribute to the downtown theatre scene, “I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan,” is at Atlantic Stage 2, through April 30, and Eliya Smith’s kid-bereavement drama, “Grief Camp,” will be on the mainstage, through May 11.
The Shameless Redemption Tour of Jonathan Majors
What decade is “Magazine Dreams,” a spiritually stifled drama about a bodybuilder driven to fits of chemically induced rage, set in? In the early moments of the film, written and directed by Elijah Bynum, everything about the fashion, the setting, and the subject suggests the late seventies. Standing in the gaping maw of a garage is an Adonis, the bodybuilder Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors).
The Shameless Redemption Tour of Jonathan Majors
1 day ago The actor wants back in the industry’s good graces, but his new movie, Magazine Dreams—and the surrounding press tour—isn’t enough. The athlete’s physique is both a marvel and a weapon. Witness Killian Maddox, a bodybuilder whose formidable muscles gleam under golden light. He is a violent man—some …
Goings On Newsletter
Plus: Baz Luhrmann’s medieval Monsieur; Black femininity Off Broadway in “Wine in the Wilderness”; and the havoc of “The Threepenny Opera.” View in browser | What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. In today’s newsletter, up-and-coming film directors take the screen.
The Flawed Heart of “Adolescence”
Netflix is currently ranking the British miniseries “Adolescence” as its most-watched television show among Americans. The streaming service shrouds the methods by which it reaches these metrics in a lot of mumbo-jumbo. But this drama, about a thirteen-year-old boy who is suspected of killing a girl at his school, is, by my observations, creeping toward critical and fan consensus. Are Americans stunned by “Adolescence” because of the culture shock it offers?
“Paradise” Is Manna for the Moment
“Paradise,” on Hulu, is a political thriller with a vintage feel. Surely Hollywood’s obsession with the Presidency has produced this kind of drama before? There is the handsome white Commander-in-Chief, President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), shuttled to the high office through the maneuvers of his emotionally abusive baron of a father. And there is his Black sentinel, Agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K.
Kendrick Lamar and the Messy Art of Meta-Performance
A sense of abasement hovers over the performer of the Super Bowl halftime show. It is slight, but it is there. The musician selected must be an internationally recognized star, and yet that star also has to submit to stipulations and standards set by a conservative sports organization. (The Jay-Z of it all notwithstanding.) The production team is allotted mere minutes to erect the stage setup, and, after the spectacle is wrapped, they’ve got to disassemble it just as quickly.
“Eusexua,” the Dance-Floor Album That Doesn’t Need Berlin or Prague
This past fall, the artist FKA Twigs promoted her then forthcoming album, “Eusexua,” with a series of international raves. Londoners were told to meet her at the Cause, Angelenos at the Reserve, New Yorkers at the Chocolate Factory. The guests abided by the dress code—“scorched soil and steel”—even if it meant bribing a stylist friend to lend out the archival Rick Owens. Natural pupils were buried under starburst contacts; geometric symbols were painted on faces, mimicking Twigs’s style.
Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and the Collapse of the Hollywood #MeToo Era
In the faux aristocracy that is Hollywood, a Blake Lively should not have reason to meaningfully cross paths with a Justin Baldoni. Lively, best known for playing Serena van der Woodsen in the CW series “Gossip Girl,” is an ingénue of teen-soap television, who has parlayed a career as a film actor into a permanent role as a domestic diva slash style icon. In 2022, she co-chaired the Met Gala; two years later, she appeared on the cover of Vogue’s September issue. She is married to Ryan Reynolds.
Refinding James Baldwin
The text that weighed on him at the time of his arrival to Turkey was his novel “Another Country,” then unfinished. The turbulence of civil-rights America, too. Baldwin is said to have come to the residence of Engin Cezzar, a Turkish actor who played Giovanni in a workshop of a stage production of “Giovanni’s Room” in New York, completely spent. Baldwin in flight. We associate him with two countries.
How “Nickel Boys” Critiques the Camera in America Cinema
The second feature is “Dahomey,” by the French Senegalese director Mati Diop, streaming in the States as of mid-December, which complicates genre in the other direction. Documentary as a descriptor feels terse. Diop has made a talismanic movie about the “impossibility of return,” as she told my colleague Julian Lucas in a recent profile. “Dahomey,” a process film, follows the journey of twenty-six Beninese art works, repatriated from the looting French back to Benin, in West Africa.
Documentaries of Dissent
A reader comes to a piece of criticism with a basic assumption: the critic is writing about a work that the reader can eventually go and seek out herself. Reviews are premised on an ideal of access and distribution—art leaving the private realm to meet communal air. Never mind how classist or lazy or obsolete the tastes of the critic; she ought to be a conduit for the “seeing” of the thing. This has long been the nature of the critic-reader bond in America.
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