Netflix’s editorial division hit with layoffs
Four months ago, the streaming service ‘aggressively’ recruited a small army of journalists – primarily women and people of colour – to run its new fan site, Tudum. This week, it abruptly axed a significant portion of those hires. After posting disastrous results for its March quarter – the loss...
Current in Media
Opinion – why Julia Fox is the perfect celebrity throwback
From being relatively unknown to becoming a household name in just a few weeks, let’s explore why Julia Fox is the celebrity Hollywood has been missing. As we jump from one global crisis and (unwillingly) right into the next, it can feel like the only collective source of mindless escapism...
Opinion – Why assuming celebrities are pregnant is damaging
Though watching our favourite celebrities venture into motherhood is both exciting and weirdly humanising, can sensationalising their pregnancies be damaging? Society has had a fascination with Hollywood couples for as long as celebrities have existed, but where our adoration really takes hold is when they’re expecting a child together. In recent...
Milked is a tea-spitting look at dairy’s dark reality
Now available to watch for free on environmentally-focused streaming service Waterbear, Milked offers a magnified look at New Zealand’s dairy industry and the damage it's inflicting on the country and world as a whole. Why are we still drinking cow’s milk? This is the question that Milked, a new documentary available...
Is ‘main character energy’ pushing us further into self-absorption?
It might be easy to feel like we are the brightest glowing star in this experience called life, but taking main character syndrome to the extreme can be detrimental. It seems like everywhere you look these days somebody is telling you to be a little more selfish. Instagram is filled with...
Jack White calls for labels to launch vinyl record plants
In a statement and video, Jack White urges record labels to get serious about vinyl production. He says that supply chain issues and manufacturing bottlenecks need to be addressed. Jack White has asked major record labels to begin building their own vinyl pressing plants, citing industry wide shortages and...
You Decide – is horror’s portrayal of ageing women problematic?
In the modern age of horror, elderly women playing the roles of ghoulish antagonists is fast becoming an obsessive genre trope. Many such films hold up in a commercial and critical sense, but is this perhaps indicative of harmful gender values still present within Hollywood? The Shining is one of my all-time favourite movies. Personal bias aside, though, one could argue that its most harrowing scene unintentionally sums up Hollywood’s...
Opinion – ‘Pam & Tommy’ helps and hinders female exploitation
The new biopic – shunned by its titular star Pamela Anderson – has raised the question: at what point should we stop reclaiming someone’s experience for entertainment?
Lingering beneath its comedic overtone, Hulu’s new series ‘Pam & Tommy’ unpicks an ominous 90s mega-scandal: the theft and illegal distribution of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s honeymoon sex tape.
Despite chronicling the gross-exploitation of Anderson that followed, the Baywatch star has revealed the
Opinion – Kim Kardashian shouldn’t be telling us to ‘work harder’
When will famous billionaires realise they’re too out of touch to offer worthwhile career advice to the rest of us? I’m starting to believe the only thing worse than men spending millions to blast themselves into space for 30 seconds is the trend of famous, privileged white women telling normal people to ‘girlboss’ harder. In a new interview with Variety, the notorious Kardashian-Jenner family boasted about their arsenal of multimillion...
Media is finally encapsulating the realities of being young today
Though some directors have been accused of virtue signalling their way onto the silver screen, there’s no question that Gen-Z’s hyper-awareness has made media the most diverse it’s ever been. It’s safe to say that representation on screen has notably increased over the last few years, though it hasn’t come easily. There has been a divisive stance on how to best incorporate diversity into mass media, with quite a few instances...
