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...
Category: Culture and Entertainment
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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...
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How ‘Sex Education’ Gets Modern Sex Ed Right
Sex Education stands out for focusing on the emotional impact that sex can have on discovering yourself, over and over again. I’ll admit: When Sex Education first aired on Netflix back in 2019, I was skeptical that they were going to get it right. Long before the show aired, media portrayals of sex education were...
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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...
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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...
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‘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...
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‘Candyman’ Is A Bittersweet Revival
Even if we agree that DaCosta’s Candyman is a competent enough horror film of the slasher variety, we must still ask: what work does its story do? This essay contains spoilers for Candyman (1992) and Candyman (2021) "The pain, I can assure you, will be exquisite. As for our deaths, there is nothing to fear....
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‘The White Lotus’ And Why Whiteness Cannot Truly Critique Itself
The reason “The White Lotus” can’t fully commit to its critique on whiteness and power is simply because then white people wouldn’t watch it. By Ebony Purks HBO’s latest hit series The White Lotus aired its sixth and last episode on Aug. 15. Many viewers (particularly viewers of color) were left with a lingering dissatisfaction...
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It’s Not So Much The Basquiat, but the Tiffany Blood Diamond
The Tiffany Diamond is one of the largest ever “discovered.” Its beauty belies the history of colonization and exploitation of the African continent. By Arielle Gray The Carters are the new faces of Tiffany & Co.’s latest campaign. The campaign is a “first” in many ways. A never-before-seen painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat is propped up...
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‘The White Lotus’ Is An Exercise in White Privilege None of Us Asked For
‘The White Lotus’ says nothing at all, except for what we already know, which is that those who benefit from whiteness are very rarely willing to divest from it. By Arielle Gray [CN: this article contains spoilers for HBO’s “The White Lotus”] In the opening scene of HBO’s The White Lotus, viewers know that someone...