A list of weekend culture reads

• Vulture has an excellent take on Netflix’s standard for measuring a hit: “It doesn’t say, ‘We made something you might enjoy.’ It says, ‘We suckered you into clicking a button.’ It’s the brazen language of a huckster.”
• Little White Lies has a brilliant piece on two legendary women—film critic Pauline Kael and author Joan Didion—united by their shared hatred for ‘Sound of Music.’
• Amid the many critiques of its sexism, casteism etc, this Quint column offers a different and thought-provoking take on ‘Indian Matchmaking’: “In a show that lacks a voiceover or a single-focused point of view, its subtle editing is the real narrator—and it’s a powerful one.” 
• Related read: Variety explains how the series was commissioned and made entirely by Netflix LA—with the India office relegated to the sidelines. More interestingly: Exec Producer Smriti Mundhra was often the only South Asian in the room.
• Also a must read: New Yorker’s elegy for the landline in fiction.