The Week in Culture: Lady Gaga, SXSW, and More

The Atlantic

It can be hard keeping up with what's going on in a culture when news can get old in a matter of 15 minutes. To make things a little easier, we we're rounding up the biggest stories from the week, plus some you may have overlooked.

Lady Gaga's "Telephone" video launched late last week, but people were still going crazy trying to make sense of it all. We did a frame-by-frame deconstruction of the nine-and-a-half-minute opus—and were surprised by what we found.

In other music news, the South by Southwest music festival kicked off on Wednesday, and we told you all about Toro Y Moi's performance and Smokey Robinson's keynote address.

Music wasn't the only thing playing at the Austin, Texas festival—we kept you apprised of everything that was happening at the film component, from the surprisingly good MacGruber debut to the jarring camera shots in Cyrus. And we also offered some tips for attending a movie premiere and surviving a film festival.

March Madness is in full swing, and we told you the six things you should look for during the NCAA tournament.

But it wasn't all music and games this week. Culture-lovers lost two luminaries: influential rock singer Alex Chilton and underground hip hop artist Nujabes.

Anchor blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates tipped us off to a whole bunch of interesting stuff, from Dwayne Betts' poem "Augusta" to the indie band Wild Beasts to New York Magazine's profile of Tony Judt to the unexpected humor in Cougartown to the stunning trailer for the upcoming HBO series Treme to Jerry Seinfeld's hilarious appearance on Saturday Night Live.

And he offered us all a lesson in Internet etiquette with these words about a comment thread that turned toxic:

The comments in this thread are getting really stupid, really fast. It's worth asking yourself why your posting, before you actually post. I'm going to do some mass pruning. Please don't let this happen again. If you find yourself finishing your post with cheap slams at whoever your disagreeing with, consider walking away from the computer for a few minutes.

Other pieces you may have missed:
'Modern Family' and 'The Middle': A Tale of 2 Series
New York, New York: Land of the Superheroes
'She's Out of My League': Modern-Day Fairy Tale