Nickelodeon benefits from an ultimately one-sided relationship, in which Steve from Blue’s Clues serves a manufactured comfort. By Dede Akolo As we all know, Steve from Blue’s Clues is very proud of you and everything that you’ve accomplished. At least that’s what he says in this video released on Nickelodeon’s Twitter account for the twenty-fifth...
Author: Guest Writer (Guest Writer )
Post
Predating the Pain: Black Horror in Focus
There is a distinction between Black horror and horror that merely features Black characters. Black horror must engage with Black experiences, music, culture, references, or diasporic religion as central components and must be made with a Black audience in mind. By Adia Cullors Since the massive success of Get Out (2017), there has been a...
Post
Parasocialism and Industry Amnesia in K-Pop Fandom
While “Global North” parasocialism tends to lean towards non-reciprocal parasocial interaction of fans merely admiring a celebrity, parasocialism in K-Pop fandom proves to be a more multi-directional devotion. By Sharon Kong-Perring In February 2020, three weeks before the world shut down, I began the grand rituals of a night out with someone special. Like any...
Post
How Online Parasocial Dynamics Impact Marginalized Creators
Marginalized people with platforms face harsher expectations and worse criticism when it comes to parasocial dynamics online. CW/TW: Discussion of white supremacy, queerphobia, social exploitation of marginalized people By Shaanth Nanguneri In every Tiktok, Youtube video, and Tweet we consume, our parasocial relationships with content creators are evolving. The idea of a parasocial relationship in...
Post
A Parasocial Love Story: Where the Intimate and the Performative Collide
As socialization increasingly shifts online, we are likely to form more (and more intense) parasocial bonds and see a blurring of the boundaries between the real and the parasocial. By Sohel Sarkar In 1893, when Arthur Conan Doyle shoved his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes off a cliff, fans went into public mourning, forcing the author...
Post
Ambient Trauma: Giving Name To The Burgeoning Pains Of Our Times
Healing from ambient trauma will require destroying the ideologies and systems that engender harm and in their place cultivating more just and caring ways of living. CW: discussion of trauma in the general & abstract form (i.e. no specific details), with occasional reference to specific environmental disasters and general events By Jonathan Fisk Nobody is...
Post
The Border Crisis of the Migrant-Slave
Black mobility, as seen in the case of the Haitian migrant-slave, is not only a threat to the sovereign-national border, but to the border-as-limit to the meaning of emancipation and agency writ large. By Tea S. Troutman Borders—like the nation-states, colonies, and otherwise legible cartographies of sovereignty they demarcate,—are first and foremost anti-black. That’s it....
Post
White Mediocrity Is Diluting The Influential Power Of Music Awards Shows
The capitalist system of The White Celebrity™ keeps using music awards shows to reward itself for mediocrity at the blatant expense of Black and Asian artists. By Ebony Purks At the 1985 American Music Awards (AMAs), Prince’s critically acclaimed, avant-pop song “When Doves Cry” won the AMA for “Favorite Black Single.” At some point, this...
Post
Encountering Biphobia And Challenging White Supremacy In Western Psychology
Western psychology was developed under and exists within a white supremacist society that more often than not works hard to quell any and every revolutionary bone in your body. TW: biphobia, racism, and ableism in Western psychology, mention of death By J.R. Yussuf I was drawn to therapy with hopes that it would help me...
Post
‘Bad Girls Club’ and the Profitability of Misogynoir in Reality Television
The spectacle held in Bad Girls Club’s mass appeal was the promise of anti-Black violence, misogynoir, and the narrative exploitation of women who needed real help. By Monika Estrella Negra Bad Girls Club, in which a group of self-proclaimed “Bad Girls” are given the opportunity to hash out their toxic social skills together in a...