Steven Spielberg Archives - Bright Wall/Dark Room

For most of Spielberg’s career, science fiction has been the mechanism through which he learns and teaches empathy. But in Disclosure Day, empathy itself is the speculative leap. The genre function is inverted: science fiction stops speculating about aliens and starts speculating about us. Aliens are ordinary. Human compassion is extraordinary. The sci-fi is us.

Spielberg Nipping at Your Nose

Jonathan Foster·

Issue 42: Holidays

Spielberg believes in magic all right, Christmas or otherwise.

Letter from the Editor

Chad Perman·

Issue 37: Steven Spielberg

When I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark as a kid, I didn’t know a thing about tracking shots, composition, or visual framing—I only knew I wanted this film in my brain forever.

The World’s More Full of Weeping Than You Can Understand

Joel Blackledge·

Issue 37: Steven Spielberg

Spielberg’s dystopian vision in A.I. retains a sincere humanity at its heart, even while acknowledging that that heart isn’t beating.

Watch The Skies: Empire of the Sun and the Difficult Third Album

Brian Doan·

Issue 37: Steven Spielberg

Spielberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel, about his time in a Japanese-run internment camp in China, comes at us less as an argument than as a series of cinematic intensities.

No Unauthorized Breeding: Jurassic Park and Female Control

Valerie Kalfrin·

Issue 37: Steven Spielberg

Jurassic Park began as a novel, a cautionary tale about genetic engineering. On screen, it became a metaphor for reproductive fears and patriarchal control.

Steven Spielberg: America’s Most Important Historian?

Fedor Tot·

Issue 37: Steven Spielberg

Spielberg is a great filmmaker, not a great thinker. And that's the problem.

Ain’t You Somethin’

Arielle Greenberg·

Issue 37: Steven Spielberg

on The Sugarland Express (1974)