What we'll be listening to, watching, and reading to sate our pop culture needs.
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Peaches’s new album rubs us the right way, and so does the rest of the feast of feminist media we’ve got on deck for the weekend.
We would be psyched about Peaches’s new album Rub, even if it didn’t feature amazing guest spots from Feist and Kim Gordon. But we’ve been waiting six years for the heady return of the feminist avant-garde musician, and her synth musings are just as provocative and hilarious as ever (see “whistle blow my clit” refrain on the title track). Plus, with a video accompanying each track, we get Peaches’s full artistic vision, laser-shooting butt plugs and all.
After last week’s most awkward dinner party ever, that ended with Bill and Ginny fighting in the coat closet of a restaurant, we’re back to see where season three leaves our intrepid sex researchers. And according to previews, it looks like the Masters of Sex finale will leave them with everything up in the air, including their partnership, their study, and even Bill’s marriage.
While women live under the nascent threat of sexual violence every day, this Civil War–era drama, The Keeping Room, brings this threat into high relief. Having lost all the men in their family to the war, Augusta (Brit Marling) and Louise (Hailee Stanfield), along with their slave, Mad (Muna Otaru), are surviving on what’s left of their plantation the best they can. When two rape-y rogue Union soldiers trespass on their property, the feminism of this indie Western really kicks in.
The fall TV gods are smiling on us and after last Sunday’s inspiring Emmys, the timing was ripe for this week’s season premieres of Empire and Scandal. Were you one of the 16.2M viewers who tuned in to see the return of Taraji P. Henson’s Cookie? If so, it’s worth another go-round. If not, you’re in for a treat (including a guest starring spot from Marisa Tomei). And Shonda’s back in the saddle with season 5 of Scandal—a perfect double feature.
Kyung-Sook Shin writes semi-autobiographically in her latest novel, about a girl in a factory, straddling the pastoral childhood of her past and the writing path of her future. But at the conveyor belt, she becomes nearly a ghost of herself. Later she writes a novel about the immense uncertainty of the time: The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness. A haunting meta-portrait of a life lived on the edge of poverty.