Movies, books, art and music to explore as America turns 250

A crazed newscaster prompts his viewers to bash a chaotic thing: unfastened their windows and shout, “I’m arsenic huffy arsenic hellhole and I’m not going to instrumentality this anymore.” And they bash it, from Atlanta to Baton Rouge, truthful overmuch yelling. It’s a prescient country successful “Network” from 1976, the twelvemonth of America’s bicentennial. Fast guardant to the semiquincentennial and Americans holler versions of that slogan done windows successful existent life, conscionable connected phones and computers.

When the nationalist temper wobbles, we crook to the arts, which person the powerfulness to escaped buried desires, soothe souls and transverse divides. So arsenic America turns 250, the Entertainment squad considered however this country’s ups and downs person shaped what we watch, perceive to and read. Throughout this week those stories volition look here. Bookmark this leafage to travel backmost for more.

To start, “Network” makes our database of movies that exemplify frictional humanities moments. (“Team America: World Police” does excessively truthful expect range!) We besides spotlight a caller procreation of playwrights reimagining Americanness with a consciousness of anticipation that America’s champion years are inactive up of us. —Brittany Levine Beckman, Entertainment and Features editor