Media & Entertainment Archives - Page 2 of 9

Come on in, the water is fine

FROM OUR NEW SHORT STORY SERIES, 'IMAGINING OTHER WORLDS': "The weather wanted everyone in the state of Ohio to remember Henry Clement Strudel. For weeks plump, gray clouds carried heavy July rain and the sky wailed for justice."

This ‘Raising Dion’ story-line is a powerful lesson on consent, disability and possession

The relationship between Esperanza and Dion can be viewed to challenge the typical representation of disability while also encouraging nuance, accountability and change.

Increased representation for marginalized people won’t fix anything if people in power remain overrepresented

When we consider the dangers of the underrepresentation of marginalized people, we can’t ignore the potential danger in the overrepresentation of people in power.

At 20, Lil Nas X is still a child. Why do older adults keep sexualizing him?

Yes, 18 is the legal threshold from childhood to adulthood, but legality has never been something that applied “equally" to Black children, especially Black Queer children.

It’s not “complicated”: Black children deserve space to question, challenge & reject the world around them

August 29, 2019
Amber Butts
Blackness & Anti-Blackness, Film/TV, Race & Blackness

When we collapse children’s autonomy in both fictive and lived realities, we undermine their ability to contemplate nuance.

Passing the torch to Black heroes in comics is part of the white supremacist lineage of reconciling servitude

May 31, 2019
DJ Ferguson
Blackness & Anti-Blackness, Books, Film/TV, Internet, Media & Entertainment, Race & Blackness

I'm distasteful of the comic trope of for succeeding white men because I believe this is one of many strategies white people have adopted to cope with their mortality, and keeping us bound to them in servitude

Taylor Swift isn’t copying Beyoncé. She’s mocking her.

May 8, 2019
Nylah Burton
Blackness & Anti-Blackness, Media & Entertainment, Music, Race & Blackness

Taylor Swift is not copying BeyoncÃ©. Sheâ€™s mocking BeyoncÃ©. This difference assumes a level of intent that brings forth deliberate malice and cultural disruption.

How “Avengers: Endgame” sabotaged Thor’s character development for a movie long fat joke

Marvel hates fat people, which is why there are no fat characters in the films except for in the background where they are either bad at their jobs, bad people, or the butt of a joke. Marvel, like superhero culture more generally, is obsessed with an idealized standard of beauty that expects hypersexuality from women, and hyper masculinity from men.

How Afro-futurism helped me reclaim the narrative around Blackness in a hopeless world

May 2, 2019
Gyasi Lake
Blackness & Anti-Blackness, Books, Media & Entertainment

As social media made me more cognizant of the atrocities of state-sanctioned violence, my thoughts began to grow darker. My soft optimist soon crystallized into a hardened soul.

Black young adult fantasy is helping to heal my diasporic disconnection

The ancestors aren’t seen as a template of how to behave but represent a set of values and ideals with which to guide the living.