Sarah Fletcher

Dec 19, 2024 | thecritic.co.uk | Sarah Fletcher

Experience and behaviour are not solely reducible to consent Lily Phillips has become a general Rorschach test for contemporary sexual culture. Radical feminists, misogynists, Christian conservatives, sex workers, and the rest have been able to parse whatever message they wanted from what appears to be a genuinely vulnerable moment. In some ways, our consumption of this clip is even more objectifying than the consumption of her naked, prostrate body.

Nov 13, 2024 | thecritic.co.uk | Sarah Fletcher

Romance is painful but it is also possible What can you do if you believe that what you desire is what might destroy you in the end?  In a gum-stained and sweaty-walled bathroom in a pub in Manchester, a girl applies  flamingo-pink lipstick in the mirror and is telling me about some guy named Freddie. She gave me a cigarette outside fifteen minutes ago, which makes us best friends. He’s a dickhead, I half-agree.

Sep 9, 2024 | meer.com | Sarah Fletcher

Time is an ontological and an epistemological issue: it is embedded in how we record our existence, how we organise our society and how we tell the story of history. Time is of the essence. Time is money. Kill time. Buy time. Behind the times. Ahead of time. These are all common English sayings, and they all imply the same thing: time is a resource, time is capital, time can be saved, time can be lost. You are either ahead of time or behind it.

May 7, 2024 | thecritic.co.uk | Sarah Fletcher

Sex scenes should be salvaged from hardcore pornography Sex scenes come with a soiled reputation. You’re usually twiddling your thumbs with your parents, deciding on a blank space of ceiling to focus on intently until the longest two minutes of your life fades to black. Or maybe it’s the predestined entrance by your mum at the worst time when watching a TV show, and a staggered, nervous defence that no, I promise, it’s not that.

Apr 20, 2024 | thecritic.co.uk | Sarah Fletcher

Taylor Swift is idealising the grim realities of the lives of poets It was hard to not take Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department announcement personally. Very rarely have I felt — dare I even invoke the phrase — culturally appropriated by someone so prominent in the media. But in seeing a pop star who changes eras with meticulous and mercurial dexterity claim to be a “tortured poet”, I had an undeniable sense of feeling she was treading on the proverbial toes of my metrical feet.