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| Me at my favorite temple of pop culture (aka Disneyland) |
Written by Lindsey Cook
For our inaugural White Rice issue, Steph and I wanted to share our goals and dreams for this new creative venture, and also share a bit about ourselves and why we love pop culture!
Television was always an incredible motivator for me. I have an incredible capacity for procrastination (I say as I write this only an hour or two before our content deadline) so growing up, TV was one of the only things that kept me in line: if I finished my homework and household chores by 9 o'clock, I could watch Gossip Girl or The Office. My friends were always baffled at how I managed to go to sleep at a decent hour on weeknights and catch the latest episodes as they aired, but my answer was always the same: I had to watch my shows.
My television-viewing methods have changed a lot since high school—few programs warrant appointment viewing these days, and almost everything is streamed from my computer—but the adoration for the medium has remained.
But it's not just television that has won my heart; I truly am an avid lover of all things pop culture, from box office-dominating superhero flicks to dogeared novels and everything in between. I love scoping out an under-the-radar indie flick in limited release, but I'll also proudly blast Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. When it comes to media, I have no issues about mainstream or cool; if I like it, I like it, and that's that.
White Rice came about in part because not only do I consume content, but I love to talk about it. I'll tweet my opinions and read the thoughts of others on the latest Stranger Things season. I'll browse film criticisms from dozens of sites on a single movie. I'll talk about pop culture to anyone who will listen. After meeting Steph my freshman year of school, she was often the one who would listen to my long-winded criticisms of popular films, or my theories on what would happen on the next episode of Game of Thrones, or my idea of the plot twist that would have made Frozen a hundred times better (look for a future blog post for that idea!) and partake in the conversation herself. And after seven years of just talking to each other, we figured that maybe some other people wanted to hear these conversations, too.
Maybe you do and maybe you don't, but I for one am excited to share what I'm passionate about with a larger audience. I do think pop culture is a great escape from real life, but it is also a lens, and that is why I think so many people spend their lives contributing to the annals of pop culture, and why people adore cherished films and songs and so on; pop culture is about both who we are and who we want to be.
I studied art history in school, so I approach most everything with an analytical eye. I am excited to provide critiques on pieces of pop culture, both new and old, and dissect all works of art. I believe that you can enjoy content while still being critical of it and finding issues with it, and I hope that through the news we share in our newsletter and the editorials we write that White Rice will be a place of thoughtful and insightful conversation, discussion, and debate about the merits and shortcomings of different works.
More than anything, though, I hope that this becomes a community where fellow pop culture lovers come together to share their love of different films, TV shows, artists, writers, and so on, and that the conversation will grow infinitely larger than the one Steph and I started our freshman year of college.
Welcome to White Rice!
- Lindsey