Pure Innocent Fun: Essays

In this nostalgic and raucous collection of sixteen original essays, Ira Madison III—critic, television writer, and host of the beloved podcast "Keep It"—combines memoir and criticism to offer a brand-new pop-culture manifesto.

You can recall the first TV show, movie, book, or song that made you feel understood—that shaped how you live, what you love, and who you would become. It gave you an entire worldview. For Ira Madison, that book was Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which cemented the idea that pop culture could be a rigorous subject—and that, for better or for worse, it shapes all of us.

Here Madison explores the key cultural moments that inspired his career as a critic and guided his coming of age as a Black gay man in Milwaukee. In this hilarious, full throttle trip through the 1990s and 2000s, he recounts learning about sex from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and his mom's Lil' Kim CDs; facing the most heartbreaking election of his youth (not George W. Bush's 2004 re-election but Jennifer Hudson's losing American Idol); observing how Jerry Springer accidentally shaped queer representation; and how never getting his driver’s license in high school made him just like Cher Horowitz in Clueless: “A virgin who can’t drive.”

Brimming with a profound love for a bygone culture and alternating between irreverence and heartfelt insight, Pure Innocent Fun, like all the best products of pop culture, will leave you entertained and surprisingly enlightened.

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