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(Insert Witty Scandal-Related Title Here): Continuing the Dialogue
By Brandon T. Maxwell The following is an attempt to respond to some of the critiques of my article, “Olivia Pope and The Scandal of Representation,” recently published by The Feminist Wire. Herein, I...
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Five Things “The Sessions” Gets Right: Sex and Disability on Screen
So much of criticism, feminist critique included, hinges on highlighting what is wrong. In the case of film reviews, we so often ask what on-screen narratives convey about difference and the status...
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A Sliver of Silver in “Silver Linings Playbook”: A Look at Mental Illness in...
Hollywood is notorious for the ways it presents and brandishes mental health to mass audiences. In the rare instances in which a major motion picture even introduces concepts of mental health,...
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“Beasts of the Southern Wild”: An Affective Review
I have a confession: I didn’t like Beasts of the Southern Wild. And I don’t fully understand why. Don’t get me wrong; there were a number of wonderful facets to the movie. The beautifully textured...
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Django in Philly
By Quincy Scott Jones On my last New Year’s Day in Philadelphia, I did what I always do on New Year’s Day in Philadelphia: I watched the Mummers Parade. For those of you who didn’t grow up in the...
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Drunk On A Plane: Or, Why I Loved “Flight”
Almost a decade ago, I eagerly awaited the release of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, thinking it was a boxing movie. It wasn’t, really—any more than Flight is a movie about flying. Yet both...
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Zero Dark Thirty and the Problem of Pakistan
Zero Dark Thirty has been the subject of heated debate since its early release on Christmas Day last year. A number of reviews have focused especially on the film’s deployment of torture as a plot...
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Op-Ed: The Dangerous Limits of Race at the Academy Awards
By Roya Rastegar We are far from a “post-racial” society. The films nominated for Best Adapted or Original Screenplays reveal an intensifying compulsion to engage race in America. Beasts of the...
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It’s a Wrap: After the Academy Awards
The 85th Annual Academy Awards have come and gone. According to some, including my 11-year old daughter Mason (a TFW Collective Member), the show was the “worst ever.” I have to agree; it was...
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On Beyoncé, Benedict, and the Volition of Women
By Lisa O’Neill At a school mass at my all girls’ Catholic High School, the priest said a homily about chastity, and in particular, sex before marriage. “Let’s say you are about to get married and you...
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Taunts, Tweets, and Black Girl Genius
By Salamishah Tillet “Baby girl genius,” is what I muttered when I saw Quvenzhané Wallis shine bright on the television screen last Oscar Sunday night. Beaming in midnight blue and flexing her bity...
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Taking the white man-boy seriously
By Kyle Kusz The white man-boy is the most important cultural figure in America today. Hyperbole? Maybe. But, allow me to make a case that the ‘white man-boy industrial complex’ is producing ways of...
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Confessions of a Black Morrissey Fan
By Joshua Alston This week, Morrissey announced that he is canceling the remainder of his North American tour, due to an ongoing battle with a bleeding ulcer, Barrett’s esophagus, and a case of...
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Feminists We Love: Joan Morgan (Video)
Joan Morgan is an award-winning journalist, author and a provocative cultural critic. A pioneering hip-hop journalist, she began her professional writing career freelancing for The Village Voice....
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Untangling the Knots: Understanding the Hair Politics of Black Women (Revisited)
By Mazuba Haanyama My central aim involves the politics of bodily performance, in negotiation with shifting realities of a post-Apartheid context, where constructions of gender, race and class are both...
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First To Die: Evil Dead and Blackness in Horror
By Joshua Alston The victor in this weekend’s box-office battle was Evil Dead, the remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 cult-classic horror film, which roared into first place with a better-than-expected $26...
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Why I Haven’t Given Up on Hip-Hop
By Amber Jones When did you first fall in love with hip-hop? This question frames one of my favorite films, Brown Sugar (2002). The film explores the relationship between two childhood friends, Sidney...
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Why My Kingdom Needs Janelle Monae’s Q.U.E.E.Ndom
By Hashim Pipkin I am not a black woman. And unlike many who are not, I do not claim to be able to speak for the quotidian existence of black women in this world. I do not know their interior lives. I...
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The Rise of Beyoncé, The Fall of Lauryn Hill: A Tale of Two Icons
By Janell Hobson Fifteen years ago, the stardom of then-23-year-old Lauryn Hill had peaked when she released what would become her defining musical legacy. After rising to popularity as part of the...
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No “Madea” in Tyler Perry’s New Drama, “The Haves and the Have-Nots,” But...
By Lillie Anne Brown Ok, let me just start by acknowledging what I get: I get that Tyler Perry provides excellent employment opportunities for people of color at his Atlanta-based studio. I get that he...
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