The Atlantic

<em>Black-ish</em>'s 'Lemons' Is Art for the Age of Trump

The latest episode of the ABC sitcom expresses anger at the election’s outcome. It also insists on empathy.
Source: Kelsey McNeal / ABC

What will the Trump presidency mean for the nation’s artistic output? Will the United States’s new Commander in Chief, who has been by turns part of the entertainment industry and a mocker of it, inspire creators in their endeavors? Will he deter them? “In dark times,” David Foster Wallace , “the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness.” While these times, of course, are not dark for everyone, for those for whom they are—for the Americans who are confused and angry and fearful about the new course of the nation—it’s an open question: What will art look like in the years to come? Will it protest? Will it grapple? Will it

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