James Brady Ryan

First published on Nerve.com on July 14, 2009. Read the original with comments here.

To talk about True Blood is to talk about sex: barely a scene goes by without something between innuendo and a full-on orgy. This isn’t new to vampire fiction, as Latoya Peterson pointed out in a piece for Double X. That the sexuality of the female leads is under heavy scrutiny is no surprise, given how much horror fiction has centered on feminine helplessness. To Peterson, the current crop of pointy-toothed dramas continues the genre’s fascination with sexual violence and the idealization of the chaste woman. I can’t fault her for taking issue with eroticized depictions of abuse, often against women. But she’s wrong to equate the sexual politics of True Blood with those of the abstinent, repressed Twilight. Continue reading →

First published on Nerve.com on March 23, 2010. Read the original with comments here.

Welcome to Pop Torture, a biweekly column in which I embrace my pop-culture masochism and search out the most painful ways to experience the movies, TV, and music that fill our lives with such ecstasy and agony. (Needless to say, I’ll mostly be focusing on the latter.) Each week I’ll take on a new challenge, and each week I’ll share my adventures with you, provided I survive them.

The Challenge: To prepare, eat, and survive a meal made exclusively of recipes from Semi-Homemade With Sandra Lee.

Sandra Lee is the host of not one but two shows on the Food Network, famous for making meals that, by design, cut as many corners as possible. Anything that can be purchased pre-made is tops in her book, which has led to a less-than-stellar reputation among other cooks, foodies, and anyone with eyes/taste buds. (She’s also known for coming off as an unrepentant lush — half of her airtime seems to be spent throwing back cocktails.)

But Lee does have qualifications, as her unintentionally hilarious Wikipedia page points out: “Lee’s official Food Network bio states that, ‘Lee then attended the world’s leading culinary art institute, Le Cordon Bleu.’ Lee enrolled in a recreational two-week course at the school’s Ottawa outpost, which she acknowledges that she did not complete.” I’ve spent a decent amount of time laughing at Sandra, but I’ll admit I’d never tried any of her recipes. If I actually put her food where my mouth is, would I have to stop laughing? Continue reading →

First published on Nerve.com on September 6, 2009. Read the original with comments here.

Martinis, blackmail, five-thousand-dollar outfits: ah, high school. Why, it seems like it was only yesterday that I was walking to Monkey Bar during lunch with my friends — all wearing impossibly tall stilettos — while trying to decide: do I go to my mother’s reception at the Met, or do I try and seduce the drama teacher to get that lead role in the spring production of Cabaret? Because I’m Sally Bowles or I’m nothing. Then we would all down a bottle of Patron and go to Bergdorf’s. I think I had some classes, too, or whatever. Math? Maybe I had math once.

If that all sounds unrealistic, then clearly you didn’t go to high school on the CW. The most egregious example of the high-school-as-Dynasty genre is Gossip Girl, but there are plenty of others — the updated 90210, The O.C., Laguna Beach, NYC Prep. I don’t know when someone decided that the most universal high-school experience was a fashion show (actually, it was circa 2003), but the idea certainly caught on. And while this particular vision of high school can be good fun — and I will admit to watching many of these shows with great delight — I started to wonder if there were any realistic portrayals of teenage life on major networks anymore. Continue reading →