Cate Young

Analyzing pop culture from a feminist perspective.

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Green Book Is Another Film About Race for White People

There was nothing surprising about the announcement that Green Book had been awarded the Grolsch People’s Choice Award after its premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. First screening on September 13, days after most of the press had already left the city, Green Book came in under the radar as a sleeper hit. Despite taking a backseat to buzzier films like A Star Is Born, First Man, and Widows, the film managed to catapult itself into the awards season conversation by earning a distinction that matters; in the past decade, all but one film that has won the PCA has gone on to a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Three have won.

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Well-Read Black Girl's Glory Edim On Her Book Club and the Importance of Representation

When I spoke with Glory Edim, founder of the Well-Read Black Girl book club and author of the new anthology of the same name, she was in a library phone booth stealing time out of a hectic press schedule to chat with me about her journey. Recently released, her book brings together a dream team of black women writers to reflect on representation, black girlhood, and seeing oneself in the world.

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Rare Pics Of The Infamous ’50s London Girl Gang Photographed by Ken Russell Are Unbelievably Cool

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GIRL GANGS

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[aabbccddmasp]

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In “The Hate U Give,” Assimilation Is a Survival Tactic

Starr’s concern about being stereotyped as the “angry Black girl” isn’t petty or trivial.

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How the Female-Focused ‘The Favourite’ Subverts Gender Roles, From Costumes to Cake

Yorgos Lanthimos' dryly funny historical feature is all about power, and that means literally wearing the pants in a strange time.

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Taylor Swift Can't Save You

It’s hard to argue that Taylor Swift’s Democratic endorsement is anything other than a net positive. Her decision to throw her support behind U.S. Senate candidate Phil Bredesen comes at a crucial time in Tennessee politics and may well manage to significantly shift the votes of that race in the right direction. Regardless of where one falls in relation to her cultivated public image, there is no denying that Swift holds sway over a dedicated court of young, politically engaged women who see themselves reflected in her music. It’s this truth in part that led to the sustained criticism of her refusal to speak publicly about her politics in a tense and divided election cycle back in 2016. With a “girl power” image and a female Democratic Presidential nominee on the ballot, an explicit endorsement should have been a no-brainer for Swift’s snazzy new pop star brand; she’d have been just one in a long, long, long, list of celebrities who fell in line.

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“A Star Is Born’s” Disdain for Pop Music Feels Retrograde

What Jackson comes to describe as Ally’s artistic insincerity is very nakedly the nascent bloom of his own jealousy.

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‘Rafiki’ Is A Stunning Lesbian Love Story—In A Place Where That’s Forbidden

Let there be light

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Assassination Nation and the Cathartic Power of Female Rage

It’s a very American tradition to vilify women for daring to become the object of desire. The female form is used to sell everything from jewelry to chocolate to web hosting to hamburgers, and no one bats an eye when the profits of that routine exploitation flow into the pockets of already monied older men. But a woman who profits from or even merely enjoys the labour of her own body is a shock to the very consciousness of the American experiment; she is a threat to the social order and must be destroyed. She is a witch, and her magic is sexual potential.

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Natalie Portman Embodies Pop Spectacle in Vox Lux

Plot spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution. One minor scene in A Star Is Born is also referenced below.

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Yes, Diversity In Film Criticism Matters | Dame Magazine

More than three-quarters of film critics are white men, which not only impacts how films by women and people of color are received and portrayed to…

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Where Hands Touch Can't Make a Nazi Love Story Work

What counts as “humanizing a Nazi?” It’s a question that will be debated quite a bit as director Amma Assante’s new film Where Hands Touch continues its press tour in the coming weeks (it hits theaters September 14), and it’s one worth asking and answering in good faith, considering the recent resurgence of Neo-Nazi ideology in the public sphere. Even though Assante defended the immediately controversial film when its premise was originally reported—a biracial black teen in Nazi Germany falls in love with a member of the Nazi youth—the pre-emptive concerns were valid: Assante’s latest does not come anywhere close to justifying its own existence.

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Why I've Always Preferred Mean Girls to Ingenues

I've always aligned myself more with the mean girls than I have the ingenues. From Gossip Girl to Glee, I've always loved the villains.

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“Dietland” Puts a Microscope on the Cruel Ways We Treat Fat People

Indelicate language is seen as tough love.

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The Many Secret Siblings of the CW’s Teen Dramas, Ranked

From One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl to Riverdale, which version of this inevitable trope is the most chaotic?