The Cut - Madonna, Mother of Self-Mythology

In 2007, Stuart Hall, who helped found an academic field called cultural studies, was over it. “I really cannot read another cultural-studies analysis of Madonna or The Sopranos,” he said. It was a half-serious jab, but he had a point: There was an unbelievable amount of scholarship on the woman who remains, 40 years after her debut, the foremother of the present-day pop star.

Hall spent his life publishing work that asked people to take stock of their relationships to pop culture; he’d thought a lot about how to write social-minded criticism. Despite his exhaustion, Madonna’s career and Hall’s vision of a radical cultural-studies field were tightly related. They emerged around the same time, and their collision not only changed academia but took on a vaster life of its own, forging a new ambivalent vocabulary for fans (and armies of internet-culture writers) to think about pop.

Users in the E.U. will soon be able to turn off the TikTok algorithm in the name of “cognitive liberty.” A Texas woman was awarded $1.2 billion after suing her ex over revenge porn. Meanwhile, in an East Coast courtroom, the New Jersey Supreme Court has sided with a Catholic school that fired a teacher because she became pregnant while unmarried. Keke will always come out on top. And watch the music video for Victoria Monét’s “On My Mama,” then watch it again to catch all the references you missed the first time.

For our inaugural Beach Reads Book Club, New York writers Brock Colyar, Allison P. Davis, Emily Gould, Matthew Schneier, and Alison Willmore will discuss the season’s buzziest book, Emma Cline’s The Guest. Sign up here to join the discourse and get the newsletter.