From the (Sub) stacks: It’s the end of the world as we know it: Marriage, Taylor Swift, and the Melancholia of 2026
When I watched “Melancholia” on an absolutely dreary 4th of July day, I desperately needed somewhere to put my angst, most of which I can blame on perpetual unemployment and all the instability thereof. Why else would you (re)watch a film where depression and mental illness is a metaphor for the end of Earth and all life in the universe?
The weather wasn’t the only thing that had me feeling like I was buried in the darkest depths of it all of course. There’s the fact that this was my country’s 250th anniversary, and it seemed to be doing its utmost to betray everything it claimed to be founded for. This, of course, is also the story of America, which bought and sold human beings as it crowed exaltingly about freedom, fought viciously against giving women the vote (or really anything that deemed them other than the property of a proximate male), etc.
But there was something especially egregious about it this year. There was that photo of a Black woman on a D.C. metro train surrounded by masked fascists, and I try to take some solace in the fact that there was more to that story as various protestors and military veterans stood up and opposed everything the Trump White House is attempting to do.
