Yeah, I don't really get why people feel like it's even possibly to deny this at this point? Like, yeah, his situation with Mia Farrow is muddy enough that maybe we can't really tell if the allegations about Dylan being penetrated by Woody in the attic are true or implanted. But we know—from non-Farrow witnesses—that…

Pitch Perfect 2 is a film that's marketed to women, where essentially the entire main cast is women, and where the movie is far more concerned with women's relationships to each other than with their relationships to men. All of those things are "empowering" to women; female characters don't need to be action heroes…

Like I said earlier, "I wish they had gone to jail anyway" was clearly tongue-in-cheek. I've made it clear multiple times—including in the initial post—that I don't wish for anybody to go to jail for a crime they didn't commit (i.e., the rape). What I wish is that there was a stricter punishment for their acting in…

Thus why I emphasized "some" of the accused, not all. If your friend wasn't involved, then of course I'm glad that he was found innocent. But the fact of the matter remains that there were some real shitty racial, gender and class issues wrapped up in that case that were eventually written off as "boys will be boys"…

Though I don't agree that guilty until proven innocent is a good way to run a justice system!

Nobody's "condemning" him. He's not going to jail. The worst thing that's going to happen to him is that . . . people will say mean things about him. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a good way to run a justice system, but it's an idiotic system for everyday life.

I mean, there's obviously all kinds of thorny racial shit you get into when you see who America decides to "forgive" and who they don't, but in comparing Lennon and Chris Brown, you also can't discount a) the massive difference that internet culture has made and b) the fact that Brown hit somebody more famous than he…

That wasn't the main premise for any of them, but most of them did end up mining "the black experience" for fuel at least a handful of times a season. Fresh Prince did episodes on driving while black and how black history isn't taught in schools. Family Matters did a racial profiling episode and one about Laura…

I just googled Sessue, and his Wikipedia page suggests that the trend of emasculation of Asian/Asian-American males in Hollywood might have been at least partially due to the fact that he was so appealing to women, Hollywood felt threatened by his popularity and intentionally dialed back the number (and size) of roles…

"Problematic" is a little wishy-washy, but it's intentionally wishy-washy. It came to popularity specifically because it allows us to avoid the inevitable long and defensive derails that occur when you actually straight-up call something racist or sexist or homophobic or whatnot. "Problematic" is not the problem, it's…

Other people have referred to Gone with the Wind as the "definitive novel" of Southern history or the Civil War or whatnot, but Mitchell actually said flat-out that she didn't intend to write it that way—mostly, I think, because she felt the scope of her novel was too geographically narrow, focusing almost entirely on…

Gone with the Wind's portrayal of the old South and Lost Cause ideals is much more nuanced than most people here are giving it credit for, though. Certainly the racism is there, and that is its biggest flaw and the one that undermines its critiques of the antebellum South the most. But the story is very explicit about…

The book has probably the biggest slate of bad-ass, non-reductive female characters that I can think of in any work of pop culture—Scarlett, Melanie, Mammy, Ellen O'Hara, and Belle Watling are all really compelling, strong female characters in different molds.

Cathy and Heathcliff aren't intended to be romantic, though. They're intended to be tragic. Anybody who reads Wuthering Heights as a romance missed the point rather spectacularly.

The book is pretty explicit that it's not actually rape. He picks her up and carries her up the stairs against her will, but Mitchell makes it clear that Scarlett is turned on by this and almost certainly consents to the actual sex. The movie is more ambiguous because we can't see Scarlett's thoughts the way we do in…

The book doesn't idolize Ashley, though. He's supposed to be a weak character—he's the human embodiment of the antebellum South, after all. Scarlett idolizes Ashley, but the book tells us pretty explicitly that she's an idiot for doing so. The fact that the story's emotional climax comes when she finally gets a crack…

Yeah, I certainly don't give Gone with the Wind any passes for its racism, but it's pretty damn critical of antebellum Southern society/Lost Cause ideals/etc. I'm not sure if it's because it was based on a "romance novel" or what, but people seem very reluctant to acknowledge that the scenes it presents can be read in…

“Southern nostalgia” is a fairly reductive critique of this movie/book, though. Yeah, it's racist. But the entire plot exists as a fairly obvious metaphor to to pit the personification of the Old South (Ashley) against the personification of the New South (Rhett). Over and over and over again, Mitchell shows us why…

Yeah, I don't think he should have done it, but I can understand why he did. This isn't comparable to an average Joe trying to cover up the fact that his family owned slaves; Affleck's career depends on his coming across as likable as possible to the highest number of people possible. Given that the the news that…

HBO tells you when you sign up that you can't show it in public; it's restricted to private residences (and hotel rooms). I'm guessing a lot of bars don't bother to read the restrictions before ordering it, though.