Alexandra Schwartz

New York

Writer at The New Yorker

Staff writer @newyorker. Divides her time between the bed and the couch.

Articles

War Movies: What Are They Good For?

1 week ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Download a transcript. Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. For nearly as long as we’ve been waging war, we’ve sought ways to chronicle it. “Warfare,” a new movie co-directed by the filmmaker Alex Garland and the former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, takes an unorthodox approach, recreating a disastrous real-life mission in Iraq according to Mendoza’s own memories and those of the soldiers who fought alongside him.
Michael Gandolfini Worries About Brawn and Bravado

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Alexandra Schwartz

On a recent afternoon, the actor Michael Gandolfini ascended an escalator to Whitehall Terminal to take the twelve-thirty ferry to Staten Island. Packs of tourists mingled with commuters and a few stray pigeons in the waiting hall. “It’s popping, always,” Gandolfini said admiringly.
Gossip, Then and Now

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. Gossip, an essential human pastime, is full of contradictions. It has the potential to be as destructive to its subjects as it is titillating to its practitioners; it can protect against very real threats, as in the case of certain pre-#MeToo whisper networks, or tip over into the realm of conspiracy.
Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang

4 weeks ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. The first episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released in 2009, consisted mostly of its host smoking weed, cracking jokes, and futzing with technical equipment.
Critics at Large Live: The Right to Get It Wrong

1 month ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Download a transcript. Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter.
“You Didn’t Hear This from Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip,” Reviewed

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Alexandra Schwartz

In August, 1918, Virginia Woolf spent a quiet stretch at Asheham, the country house that she and her husband, Leonard, rented in rural Sussex. “We’ve been practically alone, which has a very spiritual effect upon the mind,” Woolf wrote to a friend, the socialite Lady Ottoline Morrell. “No gossip, no malevolence, no support from one’s fellow creatures.” After six months spent in such isolation, Woolf quipped, “I should be a kind of Saint, and Leonard an undoubted prophet.
Our Modern Glut of Choice

1 month ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. For many of us, daily life is defined by a near-constant stream of decisions, from what to buy on Amazon to what to watch on Netflix. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how we came to see endless selection as a fundamental right.
How “The Pitt” Diagnoses America’s Ills

1 month ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. “The Pitt,” which recently began streaming on Max, spans a single shift in the life of a doctor at an underfunded Pittsburgh hospital, where, in the course of fifteen gruelling hours, he and his team struggle to keep up with a seemingly endless succession of patients.
“Severance,” the Gothic Double, and Our Increasingly Fractured Selves

1 month ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. “Severance” is an office drama with a twist: the central characters have undergone a procedure to separate their work selves (“innies,” in the parlance of the show) from their home selves (“outies”). The Apple TV+ series is just the latest cultural offering to explore how the modern world asks us to compartmentalize our lives in increasingly drastic ways.
The Staying Power of the “S.N.L.” Machine

2 months ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. The first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” which aired in October of 1975, was a loose, scrappy affair. The sketches were experimental, almost absurdist, and the program was peppered with standup from the host, George Carlin, who freely addressed the hot-button issues of the day.