CULTURE

For superfans, comic-con culture is more than fun – it’s sacred, a sociologist explains. Picture a packed stadium of fans in extreme weather, all clad in their favorite jerseys, cheering and cursing at their favorite American football team or European soccer club. Or a crush of screaming fans, singing and dancing in unison at a Taylor Swift or K-pop concert. Or a sea of costumed “Star Wars” fans, lightsabers aloft, filling up movie theaters on opening night of a new movie. Plenty of people like to watch sports, attend concerts and go to the movies. But what about those fans – the die-hard ones, if you will – whose dedication goes even further? The fans whose daily lives are deeply intertwined with their interests? Die-hard fans tend to have a detailed, intricate knowledge. They collec...

How The Color Of St. Patrick’s Day Went From Blue To Green. St. Patrick’s Day usually conjures images of partying, Catholicism, Irish nationalism and, perhaps most famously, the color green: green clothes, green shamrocks, green beer and green rivers. So my students are often surprised when I tell them that St. Patrick’s Day was once a solemn feast day when you’d be far more likely to see the color blue. In fact, there’s even a color known as St. Patrick’s blue. ‘True blue’ Historians don’t know much about St. Patrick. But they believe he was born in the fifth century as Maewyn Succat. He wasn’t Irish; rather he was born in Wales, the son of a Roman-British official. He was, however, captured by Irish pirates and enslaved in Ireland. After six years he went back to Britain but r...

Don’t feel bad about bingeing TV. Humans have binged stories for thousands of years. Last night, millions of people will have tuned into Netflix and other streaming services to binge their favourite shows, including the (much anticipated) second part of Bridgerton season three. Streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, Stan and Prime Video have habituated us to the “all at once” series drop. And even as some services try to find ways to break the binge model, many commentators have bid farewell to the “the good old days” of appointment viewing. Meanwhile, experts have highlighted the health concerns associated with “problematic bingeing”, including increased anxiety and depression. But there’s an important detail missing in these conversations. And that is the fact that bingeing –...

JD Vance is no pauper − he’s a classic example of ‘poornography,’ in which the rich try to speak on behalf of the poor. JD Vance has climbed to his current position as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, in part, by selling himself as a hillbilly, calling on his Appalachian background to bolster his credentials to speak for the American working class. “I grew up as a poor kid,” Vance said on Fox News in August 2024. “I think that’s a story that a lot of normal Americans can empathize with.” Indeed, the book that brought him to public attention was his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” In that book, he claims his family carried an inheritance of “abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma.” “Poor people,” he proclaimed in a 2016 interview with The American Conservative, are “my ...