The Tangential

“Jackie”: Ingmar Bergman in the White House

Jackie is one of those movies that’s precision-engineered to land an Oscar nomination for acting. It’s an impeccably cast historical drama about the private aspects of an iconic moment, shot alternately in close-up and long-shot. Oh, and there’s an accent. It’s the Mid-Atlantic accent of Jacqueline Kennedy, played by Natalie Portman: an actor who’s peerless at being…

“Passengers”: Stop the World. I Want to Get Off.

It might be going a little far to look at a thousand-foot corkscrew throbbing its way through space and say “this is what rape culture looks like,” but it’s undeniable that Passengers is one of the all-time most elaborate illustrations of a radical failure to seek consent. The starship Avalon (less reliable though just as pretentious as its…

“Rogue One”: Talking Points

This is a good movie. While most critics have been very enthusiastic (Rogue One is 85% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), prominent critics at publications including the New Yorker and the New York Times have savaged it. They have their reasons, but Rogue One will stand the test of time. It’s a very well-made movie, a distinctive…

Ordway’s “White Christmas” Sets the Stage for a Happy Holiday

There is nothing better to put one in the holiday mood than a lovely show filled with music and charm produced at a theater decorated lavishly with a huge tree, garlands, and lights galore. Add to that a snowy evening and a view of Rice Park with thousands of twinkling white lights. All of this…

“Rogue One” Can’t Avoid Being Political

It’s a telling comment on our unsettling political moment that Bob Iger, the head of Disney, has felt compelled to clarify that “there are no political statements” in Rogue One, the new Star Wars movie in which a diverse cast of heroes take on an evil empire led by white men. (Darth Vader is voiced by James Earl…

“Binge” Explores Eating Disorders with Humor

Between shows like Broad City, Insecure and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, it’s been a good couple years for comedies that explore the more painful, awkward and liberating moments that come with being a woman. Cue Binge, an irreverent, sparkly, very funny comedy about an anti-hero who suffers from bulimia. If you like the shows listed above, you’re going to want to see more than just…

A short history of The Tangential

The Tangential is a pop culture and creative writing blog launched in 2011 by three writers living in Minneapolis: Becky Lang (now Radecki), Jay Gabler, and Katie Sisneros. That was a golden age of irreverent confessional blogging, and over the first couple years we built a national following. Notably, we gained over 120,000 followers on Tumblr, where we were often associated with the provocative, extremely online writers in the movement known as alt lit. We created spinoff blogs including The Sport Hole, The Party Whip, The Tangential Ruins Minneapolis, and Tan Genitals. We hosted Minneapolis events and published three books.

We were having so much fun, in fact, that we never got around to monetizing. Oops! Well, we did have a little income from the books and events, and we became an Amazon affiliate. (This is your official disclosure that we subsidize our hosting costs via revenue from partner links.) Eventually, though, the editors and contributors who fueled the site’s early years largely moved on to other projects.

Today, The Tangential is run by Jay, who continues to publish criticism and other writing as well as to maintain the site’s catalog of posts — if only for, as we’ve always said, “the good of society.”