- Film Criticism’s Crisis in the Letterboxd Era (June 16, 2026)
The digital war between critics and audiences isn’t new, but it has seemingly reached a disconcerting inflection point this year. Populist hits based on beloved IPs have garnered fervent reactions from fans who reject criticism and accuse critics of bias, pretentiousness, or both. This prolonged stretch of backlash feels especially precarious amid a film industry shifting away from traditional criticism in favor of influencers.
These existential threats somehow haven’t quelled the appetite for criticism itself. It’s still in high demand, just not from places you would expect. Audiences are increasingly relying on Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, and Letterboxd to decide what is worth watching. The demand is so high that complaints about short and silly Letterboxd entries consistently go viral.
Despite this demand, the purported gap between critics and audiences is wide, highlighted by three films released in close succession: “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” “Michael,” and “Mortal Kombat II.” It signals a legitimacy crisis for critics, with audiences no longer trusting them to give honest, uncompromised assessments of films and questioning whether they matter anymore.
The Film Critic is Dead
Audience dissatisfaction with critics began this year with “Super Mario Galaxy.” Critics maligned the sequel to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” due to its incoherent narrative. Audiences argued that it was a kids’ movie; it didn’t need narrative coherence, a common refrain from the “let people enjoy things” songbook. Conversely, “Michael” proved to be more morally complex. While Jafaar Jackson was lauded for his portrayal of Michael Jackson, critics were unimpressed by the film’s lack of insight into him and his personal controversies. (“Michael” originally depicted Jackson’s 1993 child abuse allegations but was edited and reshot after Jackson’s estate discovered that they were legally barred from doing so.) Jackson’s fans regarded the negative reviews as another example of the media’s mistreatment of him during his lifetime. In their eyes, critics shouldn’t be trusted to properly assess the film, a charge also made by Jackson’s own nephew, Taj, on Twitter.
“Mortal Kombat II” received better reviews than either film but still fell into the anti-critic discourse. In a now-deleted tweet, producer Todd Garner suggested that critics unfamiliar with the video game were ill-equipped to review the film. He later apologized, acknowledging that “once a movie is out in the world, no one is above criticism.” However, several people online deemed the apology unnecessary, arguing that critics were pretentious, had an agenda, and “shouldn’t be arbiters for the masses.” At the time of this writing, “Mortal Kombat II” is technically “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes with a 64%, and this irony reflects a serious disconnect between the critic and the reader. Fans and general audiences will reflexively reject negative criticisms of a film they love or think they’ll love, even within a positive review, if they deem the review isn’t positive enough.
A Post-Critic World
This crisis of faith in traditional criticism is exacerbated by the diminishing avenues for such work. In 2026 alone, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, CBS News, NPR, and Vox Media have undergone mass layoffs. Well-known critics lost their positions, including Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair, and Zachary Pincus-Roth of the Post. Some critics, including Lawson, have successfully transitioned to Substack, which doesn’t present a permanent solution if more and more critics are filling a marketplace whose audience must pick and choose the few writers they can financially support. The lack of salaried positions in arts criticism also creates an oversupply of freelancers seeking limited assignments with inconsistent earnings.
Meanwhile, the film industry is actively mapping out a post-critic landscape. Studios jumped on Rotten Tomatoes’ creation of the Popcornmeter, a metric of verified audience reactions, allowing them to sidestep critical praise altogether. Press screening slots have increasingly gone to influencers who receive incentives, with the expectation that their coverage will be mostly positive. Those screenings have a healthy social embargo, while critics see their writing windows shrink. The gap between social reviews and written reviews is so stark that some warn against relying on the former.
While it looks like everyone is leaving the film critic behind, that doesn’t mean they’re leaving film criticism behind. In fact, criticism is still in hot demand via social media.
Long Live Film Criticism?
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd lets users log movies and see what other users have logged, potentially inspiring them to watch them too. Users can share their opinions through diary entries, garnering likes or comments from others. Similar to traditional criticism, the platform has facilitated conversations about films on a much larger scale, with fewer guardrails. This vibrant community of film lovers has since become a phenomenon. Letterboxd has expanded into digital publishing and has become a sought-after presence on red carpets, where correspondents ask actors what their “four favorites” are, with the clips racking up millions of views on social media. They even commission critics as part of their Journal.
Letterboxd users have come to view diary entries as opportunities for long-form criticism, and have reacted negatively when those opportunities aren’t taken. One popular type of entry is the “one-liner,” where a user makes a short, pithy joke about a film. While these entries gain many likes (and entertain filmmakers who read them), they have also garnered backlash. Film Twitter is regularly inundated with Letterboxd entry screenshots and subsequent dunking on those entries. Recently, a Twitter user outright claimed that Letterboxd “kinda ruined film criticism” because of its penchant for stupid one-liners.
If that tweet were taken at face value, it would imply that Letterboxd is a platform for film criticism and that everyone is capable of writing film criticism. While anyone can use it as they like (and film critics do), the primary purpose of Letterboxd’s logging component isn’t film criticism. Letterboxd itself also doesn’t claim its feed to be film criticism; rather, it is a “global social network for grass-roots film discussion and discovery.” The second assumption taps into the aforementioned crisis. Criticism has often been informed by knowledge of film techniques and history, which help determine whether a film has achieved its intended aims and its place in the larger canon. However, not everyone has access to that basis of knowledge, nor do they have the writing skills to convey their perspectives. If Letterboxd allows anyone and everyone to be a film critic, what does good criticism, or a good critic, look like?
Requiem for the Film Critic
I’ve been grappling with that question myself. I did not have a formal path into film criticism. I studied writing, but I wouldn’t dare suggest that I have the encyclopedic knowledge of critics like Pauline Kael, Justin Chang, Angelica Jade Bastien, or Robert Daniels, among others. I do have a strong understanding of my tastes, the ability to communicate them effectively, and, most importantly, the desire to learn more and engage others for the sake of learning. Those skills, alongside some social media savvy, have played a significant role in my success (and ultimately led me to write this piece).
Audiences do want film criticism. If they didn’t, or didn’t care, then they wouldn’t complain about Letterboxd one-liners or poor Tomatometer scores. However, they don’t want criticism from traditional film critics, who they believe lord their knowledge over them. It’s a rejection of perceived ego and authority that is currently reshaping large swathes of society, from science to education. As in those cases, that rejection threatens to diminish our understanding of a work of art’s relationship to another work of art and how they reflect who we are. We can’t afford to lose that.
Film criticism needs a recalibration if it wants to remain a vital part of the zeitgeist.
For critics, we must encourage and uphold standards of knowledge and writing while inviting fresh, modern voices into the fold, as RogerEbert.com’s Black Writers Week is doing. We should be inviting audiences along the journey of criticism, regaining and retaining their trust. It may mean meeting them where they are and detailing what we look for in a film, facilitating dialogue instead of perceived pontification. (Within reason, as dialogue is not an excuse for harassment, and the block button is still free.) We should make it so audiences don’t need to harass Letterboxd one-liners into longer entries. The distinction of criticism isn’t between types of media, but between content and substance, consumption and experience, impassiveness and curiosity.
- I Am Telling You: Dreamgirls at 20 (June 16, 2026)
Is it a coincidence that both the Broadway and Hollywood versions of “Dreamgirls” are celebrating anniversaries this year? Writer-director Bill Condon’s movie adaptation starring Beyoncé, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx, and Oscar-winning Jennifer Hudson opened on Christmas Day, 2006. That was 20 years ago!
But if you really want to feel old about an anniversary, the Broadway version of Dreamgirls opened at the Imperial Theatre on December 20, 1981. That makes it—and you—45 years older than you were in 1981. Don’t feel bad; I’m decrepit old, too. I saw the original production in 1982. It was a gift for my eighth-grade graduation, and the first truly “mature” show I saw on Broadway.
I also saw the movie version on its opening weekend. Knowing Condon’s love of Broadway musicals (he also wrote the screenplay for the movie version of “Chicago”), I can assume that releasing his movie near the 25th anniversary of the musical was no accident. Perhaps this dual anniversary was intentional after all.
Looking back, I realize that Dreamgirls was the final show in a decade-long streak of musicals designed to get Black folks to visit the Great White Way. The year of my birth, 1970, brought Purlie, a musical based on Ossie Davis’ “Purlie Victorious” to the stage with Melba Moore and Cleavon Little. Three years later, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun (called simply Raisin) opened with “Good Times” star Ralph Carter in the cast.
Between those two, Melvin Van Peebles created Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death and Don’t Play Us Cheap!. And then, of course, there was The Wiz, the first musical I ever saw on Broadway. I was 6, and Mabel King’s wicked witch scared the hell out of me. Six years later, Dreamgirls would also scare the hell out of me for a different reason. But I’m getting ahead of the story.
So many of these shows were nominated for Tonys. In 1981 alone, the Tony Awards honored The Wiz‘s scarecrow, Hinton Battle, for his featured role in the Duke Ellington revue, Sophisticated Ladies. The show was also up for Best Musical and had nominations for Gregory Hines and Phyllis Hyman.
Ellington’s contemporary, Lena Horne, received a special Tony in 1981 as well, for her one-woman show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. She was fresh off the movie version of The Wiz, the most awarded all-Black Broadway musical before Dreamgirls exploded into the stratosphere. Horne sang one of The Wiz‘s 11 o’clock numbers, “If You Believe,” on the Tonys.
Growing up in the New York City area in the 1970s and early 1980s, I was bombarded with TV and radio commercials for musicals populated by Black faces. Ads for The Wiz were plentiful back in 1975. Nell Carter, who was originally cast as Effie White in Dreamgirls, was on my TV in 1978 singing Fats Waller songs from “Ain’t Misbehavin’” to a Tony-winning tee.
Two years later, Effie White herself, Jennifer Holliday, was in commercials for the revival of Your Arms Too Short To Box With God. She roared out the lyric “yo’ arms too short to box with GAWWWWWW-AWWWD!” My cousins and I would mimic this to the point of driving my aunties crazy. Holliday’s take on the word “God” sounded as if she were being struck by lightning. That’s what you get for throwing haymakers at the Lord!
Alas, these digressions have me “steppin’ to the bad side.” This is supposed to be about Dreamgirls. So, let me set the stage: it’s June 6, 1982. Dreamgirls just won six of the thirteen Tonys it was nominated for, losing Best Musical to Nine. Jennifer Holliday won the Tony over her fellow nominee, Sheryl Lee Ralph. Ralph played Deena Jones, so this was a bit of poetic justice for the character of Effie.
Effie Melody White also worked her way into the zeitgeist courtesy of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” the song that ends Act 1. It’s the musical’s 11 o’clock number, but it actually showed up around 9:15. When released as a single, the song was a number one hit for Holliday, earning her a Grammy and a number one spot on the Billboard R&B chart.
The song that launched a thousand failed attempts at amateur night on “Showtime at the Apollo” was everywhere in 1982–and I was damn near sick of it! Taken out of context from the show, the vinyl version starts in media res with that awkward conjunction in that first line. From there, Holliday takes the listener to church, her gospel-inflected growl breaking the heart while touching the soul. She was singing about grown folks’ business, which is why I didn’t get the song at 12 years old.
And I am telling you, I heard this song 50-11 bazillion times on the radio, and on record. Who didn’t have a 45 of this torch song? You know when I didn’t get to hear it? When I went to see Dreamgirls on Broadway.
My predominantly Black audience was there for one reason only: that song! When Effie made her appearance, the show had to stop for a second because of all the applause. But that was nothing compared to the moment when Holliday’s Effie turns to Ben Harney’s Berry Gordy clone, Curtis Taylor Jr., and sings that opening line.
“And I am telling you, I’m not going!”
That was the only lyric I heard in the entire musical number. And this is not a quiet song, folks. My audience went berserk, jumping up, clapping, and stomping their feet. The building literally rattled. Even my aunt and uncle were applauding as if their lives depended on it. You could not hear a note above that rapturous reaction. I was terrified! I thought the theater was going to collapse.
Fast-forward 24 years to me watching “Dreamgirls” in another theater, the Loews Lincoln Square 13. This time, it was the movie version playing 23 blocks north of where I saw it live. Effie White was changing into another Jennifer, Jennifer Hudson. My predominantly Black audience was there to see Beyoncé and Ed-DEE, who should have won the Oscar for his performance as James Thunder Early. Some of the older folks gasped when Loretta Devine, Broadway’s original Lorrell, made a cameo appearance.
I can tell you that the people at my screening were not there for the former American Idol contestant who dared to stand in Jennifer Holliday’s shadow. The folks I knew at home had a “Not my Effie!” response to Hudson’s casting, which might explain why my movie theater audience was muted in their reaction to her performance for a while.
Then Hudson sang that damn song to Jamie Foxx. You could hear a pin drop.
It’s ironic that I could hear this version, but I think the audience was feeling Hudson out to see where she’d go. Foxx exits the scene, leaving Condon to focus on her performance. The sequence doesn’t capture the lightning in a bottle that live theater generates every night, but I bet the song convinced any undecided Academy voter to cast their vote for Hudson when she got nominated for the Oscar a few months later. (She won.)
After Hudson belted out the final note to the song that has endured for 45 years, my theater audience blew up! “Good Lord!” some guy yelled from behind me. After that, everyone was with Hudson. She had us rooting for this Effie. People even cheered for her “introducing” credit at the end of the movie.
The funniest thing about my experience with the cinematic version of “Dreamgirls” is that a new song, “Listen,” was added because Beyoncé was the star. My audience clearly saw through this attempt to give Deena Jones her own “And I’m Telling You I AM Going” number, meeting it with stone silence. It’s why I jokingly refer to Condon’s “Dreamgirls” as “Beyoncé’s Folly,” because despite “Listen” becoming a hit and receiving a questionable Oscar nomination, it was proof once again that Effie was always better than Deena.
- Through My Lens: The Accidental Archivist of ‘90s Howard University (June 16, 2026)
In August of 1990, I had dreams of becoming a filmmaker, in part because of the films Spike Lee and John Singleton made. Following in my parents’ footsteps, I enrolled at Howard University to learn how to make films. By my second year, my dad gifted me a Minolta camcorder for Christmas to help me pursue the goal of becoming the next great Black filmmaker. I have not been able to check that box off my list just yet, but something else happened that allowed me to make my own mark. I was documenting history at an HBCU when doing so on video was not as common as it is today.
I did not realize it at the time, but I have always had a gift for holding on to and preserving things. It’s my genetic superpower. My paternal grandparents shared many stories with me about family history, including that I am a distant cousin of Frederick Douglass through my grandmother, and a single picture I have of my grandfather’s family around the turn of the twentieth century. Because parts of my family tree have transitioned into becoming ancestors, a Civil War rifle musket with the year 1862 inscribed on it is in my possession.
My grandfather used to talk about this musket and its having “Confederate bodies on it.” I wish I knew more about it, but that’s all I know. All of this is to say I grew up with lessons about the importance of holding on to things, preserving them, and sharing that history at a later date. Going to Howard with the intent of becoming a filmmaker ultimately led me to become an archivist.
The camcorder stayed in my backpack right alongside my class notes and textbooks. I never wrote scripts for what I recorded. I just shot everyday life in and around Howard: Students hanging out on a nice spring day on the Yard, lectures in classrooms, working at the student-run radio station WHBC, or partying at local clubs with the hottest NYC party rockers like DJ Kid Capri, who came into town. There was no real rhyme or reason for what I recorded. It was just something I did because I had this amazing device that could capture whatever was going on around me at any given moment.
Coinciding with my time at Howard, a student-run conference dedicated to Hip-Hop culture and the ins and outs of the music business took place. In 1992, I was able to capture extensively on video, and did so in an unofficial capacity, meaning I was never tasked with actually recording the conference. Like everything else I recorded back then, I just did it because it felt right, and I had the means to do so. In the years since, I have uploaded some clips from this event onto YouTube. Chances are, if people have seen any videos of this conference anywhere online, it came from my camera. I have not seen videos from this event anywhere else.
The videos also offer glimpses of students “Before They Were Famous,” such as Marlon Wayans, who was a classmate of mine from freshman year. In the years since this footage was originally recorded, I would occasionally upload pieces of it to YouTube. Most likely, any clip that shows Marlon at Howard standing in front of the Blackburn Center, the main student hub on campus, was shot with my camcorder. Fiber artist Bisa Butler is another classmate who appears on film. The shot of her that has circulated on social media is where my gift for holding onto things would pay off.
In 2023, Bisa was honored at Howard’s Charter Dinner, which commemorated the founding of our alma mater in 1867. As an honoree, a bio reel about her was put together to play for attendees at the dinner. The people putting the reel together actually saw the clip of Bisa as a student on my YouTube channel and reached out to ask if they could use it in the Charter Dinner reel. Bisa and I have been like family since we attended Howard, so of course, I obliged the request.
Two years later, I received an email inquiring about the footage of Bisa used in the Charter Day honoree video. As fate would have it, a traveling exhibit about HBCUs was being organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Bisa did an interview with NMAAHC about attending Howard, and the goal was to pair that interview with some of the footage I had captured as a student, showing off a historical look at Howard. I was being asked for permission to include my 90s footage of Howard University in this exhibit. I considered this a tremendous honor, to say the least.
The exhibit is called “At the Vanguard: Making and Saving History at HBCUs”. After some delays, in part due to the government shutdown, the exhibit finally opened in January of 2026. It is a very powerful exhibit that makes the case for its imperativeness the moment you enter. The phrase “It is important for our young people to know how we survived” appears on a gateway panel as soon as visitors enter the exhibit. Pictures, interactive displays, TV screens with videos that play are just some of the items that are seen making your way through this amazing experience
And right before exiting the space, on the biggest screen in the exhibit is where a reel plays that starts with an interviewer asking a question, “So when did you decide to go to Howard” followed by Bisa’s voice “so rolling up on Howard’s campus” synched to some of my shots; my boy Bertrell holding his hands up wearing a skully hat and a bright orange jacket, followed by a shot of Marlon Wayans standing in front of Blackburn Center, while my homie Jay gestures toward the camera. A few scenes later are shots from the Hip-Hop Conference with my other homie Johnny at the 1st DJ Contest held at Howard, doing some turntable wizardry standing over a table while cutting and scratching a record on his way to becoming the winner of the contest (I should also point out that Bisa and Johnny are married today).
Coincidentally, everyone who registered for the 1992 Hip-Hop Conference received a welcome packet containing an insert written by Louis Romain, a senior contributor to The Source Magazine, titled “Never Throw Out That Kangol.” In it, Romain stressed the importance of preserving hip-hop culture through “old school battle tapes” and “rare 12” singles.” More than thirty years later, that message resonates with me even more than it did when I first read it.
The intimate and personal aspects of Black history are just as important as those that enter the mainstream. Local newspaper clippings, cassette tapes with “Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack” written on Side A from a late-1980s New York radio broadcast, or VHS tapes labeled “Jones Beach Greekfest ’93” all have stories to tell. These artifacts may seem ordinary at the time, but they become invaluable windows into how people lived, celebrated, communicated, and documented their lives.
The beauty of personal archives is that they reveal how Black life can look different from place to place, even during the same moment in history. The story preserved by someone in Long Island, New York, will not necessarily look like the story preserved by someone in Shreveport, Louisiana, yet both are equally worthy of being remembered. When viewed together, these individual records create a richer, more complete picture of Black history than any single institution could preserve on its own.
To say that I am humbled to be a part of an exhibit of this magnitude would be an understatement. When I originally recorded this footage, I was not thinking about 30 years in the future or about being part of a Smithsonian traveling exhibit. Recording them at the time was one thing, but saving and preserving them through the years, which included various moves, up and down the East Coast, keeping the VHS tapes intact, eventually gaining the means to digitize them, and ultimately uploading bits of them on YouTube, turned out to be just as important. Providing visual evidence that supports the first area of the exhibit, “It is important for our young people to know how we survived,” means everything to me.
I’d like to dedicate this to the memory of Mrs. Gobetz, my favorite elementary school teacher, and my high school buddy David Ffrench. As long as people remember you both, neither of you will ever be gone.
- Can the New Anti-Heroine Heal My Inner Black Girl? (June 16, 2026)
Aleshea Harris’ seething, stylish “Is God Is” vibrates on a frequency that’s hard to fully get one’s arms around. It’s a séance for the anger that Black women share, an exorcism for the indignities we’ve been forced to swallow down. It is commiseration, maybe even a call to arms, taking cues from a handful of films featuring Black anti-heroines. I’d call it the onset of a new trend, but it’s actually the third story in the past year that’s spoken to a part of myself I’ve tried to suppress, uprooting memory, survival instincts, and ingrained respectability.
The film reminds me of a handful of moments in my life that I’ve felt shame (and “handful” is probably an understatement), and one in particular that shaped my psyche for the worse. It happened when I was a junior in high school, one of maybe four Black girls in my grade, and regularly attending football games with my friends. I wore my hair out then, braiding it haphazardly at night and unfurling it in the morning—but after this game I remember reconsidering that. Because after about 30 minutes of this consistent, subtle pinching at the crown of my head, I turned to discover that a group of boys had been throwing used candy—hastily chewed lollipop sticks and Jolly Rangers—into my hair. My friends, sitting on either side of me, had been picking the candy out as best they could. They hadn’t let me turn around. They hadn’t told the boys to stop. And after my discovery, they wouldn’t express any interest in moving.
In the moment the shame came from being Black in a white, unwelcoming space. From having a head of hair that became something else—a dumping ground; a moving target—behind my back. That shame stemmed from a lie: that I was somehow unworthy of protection. But now, when I’m hit with the memory of that day, I’m ashamed of the truth. The anger I felt, the desire to fight somebody (hell, everybody) was just, but I let the apathy convince me that it wasn’t. Denying it only made it worse, of course; any anger I shelter now feels tied to that moment, the proverbial pilot light in the furnace of my rage, always burning.
It’s that same rage that Harris has spent the past 10 years weaving into her work. The award-winning playwright holds a vested interest in misogynoir, a form of misogyny that explicitly affects and diminishes Black women. “At that intersection, people can be quite dismissive of us, and certainly of our anger,” Harris said at a Q&A hosted by Film Independent. “People just don’t take it seriously… They really flatten it. They’re not interested. They’re not curious in any nuance in why a Black woman might be mad.”
It’s why Harris penned “Is God Is,” a tale of revenge that pushes back against that indifference. It began as a play, borrowing from Greek tragedy and spaghetti westerns, and now takes on a second life as a cinematic tribute to the Black feminine in all its righteous, messy fury. It’s such a crucial film because to many, a mad Black woman is a nuisance. Any expression of anger gets in the way of our “natural” role: that of the caregiver, the ultimate bystander. Adopting a posture of anything other than utter compliance is a shot across the bow, a glitch in the matrix. It breaks every rule set down to keep the wheels of society turning. “It is dangerous,” Harris says, to be a Black woman who is also angry, to point out the systems that have been “dehumanizing” us for centuries.
Harris’ debut is not afraid of the danger. It follows twin sisters (Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, both are immaculate tours de force) who’ve grown up disfigured after their father, the “Monster” (Sterling K. Brown), set their mother on fire for the crime of trying to leave him. Years pass before they reunite with the woman they call God (Vivica A. Fox), who, in her final days, requests that they finally take vengeance against their dad. He tried to kill her, after all — it makes sense that someone return the favor. And harrowing as it is to watch these women wrestle with the rage and grief tied to such trauma, there’s also a sense of healing that comes with Harris’ compassionate approach to it.
While there’s rarely been an outright shortage of the kind of on-screen Black anti-heroines we see in “Is God Is,” a lot of the films we regard as gospel now are tinged with stereotypes and prejudices that still leave a sour taste. For every “Jackie Brown”—a film that sings with a surprising empathy for its Black protagonist—there are a half-dozen films that sink beneath their thinly veiled misogynoir. It’s (sort of) like what Harris says: a nuanced look at Black female anger is much harder to find than one that turns it into a punchline. Until recently, that is—in the past few months, the concept of the Black female vigilante has become inescapable. More than that, it’s taken on the nuance that I’d given up hope of seeing.
“Is God Is” is the latest in a growing roster of films that let their heroines express the full breadth of their fury. Indie films have been quietly building up a foundation for this trope, but this new, improved expression of the Black vigilante seemed to launch into the mainstream with 2025’s “One Battle After Another.” Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) became the new face of complex Black femininity overnight, and a lightning rod for thorny discourse shortly after. The spitfire revolutionary grates against two pervasive racial caricatures—the Angry Black Woman and the sex-crazed Jezebel—with a womanist twist. She cares deeply about her crusade, but she won’t neglect her own desires, either. Perfidia wields her sexuality as readily as she does her anger: they’re weapons in her arsenal, especially to fend off fiends like the lecherous Col. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), but they’re also a response to a world determined to wear her down.
Perfidia lashes out in ways that might not make sense to outsiders looking in—but, as Taylor told the Los Angeles Times, they’re justified for a woman who feels “the least protected” out of anyone in society. “You see this woman be ignored,” the actress points out. “You see this woman be fetishized.” Her bravado is the result of that dehumanization: she chooses herself because she fears no one else will.
“It felt good to see a woman actually be selfish,” Taylor said of her Oscar-nominated role. “I know it’s probably tough to take in, but that’s what we got to see because everybody is not wearing capes.”
Taylor isn’t wrong: love her or hate her, Perfidia is a concerted response to another tedious trope, the Black Superwoman. That trope canonized the long-suffering, independent woman who powers through daily indignities with a selfless smile and virtuous grit—think Diahann Carroll in “Julia”—and it caused almost as much harm to our collective image as her messier contemporaries. Characters like Perfidia, like “Is God Is” sisters Racine and Anaia, might represent a pendulum swing more aggressive than seems necessary, but in so many ways their bluster is a matter of survival. There’s a pinch of Pam Grier, the patron saint of the blaxploitation era, in their need to fight violence with violence. What sets them apart from the Coffys and the Foxy Browns is, perversely, their selfishness. While they can take a page from their book and defend their community, this new class of Black vigilante defends herself first. Reparations are hers to claim, and the catharsis that stems from watching her work belongs to the Black female audience.
The rise of Afropessimism—the school of thought arguing that society was built on antiblackness—is another crucial ingredient here. If our dehumanization is the key to keep the world turning, and if it is built into the very fabric of the world order, then there’s nothing to do except tear it all down. In “One Battle,” that looks like insurrection and violent disruption; in “Is God Is,” it’s about dismantling toxic dynamics within the Black community itself. And in Honey, a new novel from Imani Thompson, that very theory becomes the justification for a murder spree: her femme fatale, a doctoral student at Cambridge, kills men to balance the scales in “the spectacle of Black death.” In the hands of better writers, “The Boys” might have also tackled Afropessimism through the lens of the superhero genre. In its final season, Susan Heyward’s Sister Sage briefly tries to bring about the end of the world solely to get some peace. Her nihilistic motivations are perversely… kinda relatable. (I’m not a psychopath, I promise—in fact, it’s because characters like these exist that I know I’m not alone in my exasperation).
It’s not always about textbook violence, though. In Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda,” societal payback can be as simple as one bored housewife (Tessa Thompson) ritualistically humiliating the affluent guests at her housewarming party. Boots Riley’s “I Love Boosters” follows a disenfranchised girl gang as they get their lick back against an exploitative Bay Area designer. In HBO’s “Industry,” it’s a genius mixed-race Black woman (Myha’la) climbing the ladder the same way a privileged, white finance bro would. There is room for a kaleidoscope of characters in this new category; room for messiness, mistakes, and humanity. “I think that’s really what builds empathy,” DaCosta told Refinery29 in 2025, “not making a small box for ourselves that we have to fit into.”
The parameters that define this newfound trope are still being drawn, but it’s definitely not for Black female characters who make themselves small for their white counterparts—that, or those who lack a complex inner life. It’s the latter, especially, that’s kept promising vehicles like the otherwise riotous “They Will Kill You” from making a real mark. Kristoffer Borgli’s “The Drama” likewise fails its female lead. The film glances at the idea that a Black girl, isolated and bullied at her majority-white school, would adopt a form of violence that white men have all but trademarked without unpacking why—and that lack of curiosity feels like a slap in the face. Even “Industry” is teetering into exploitation after its fourth season, which strips Myha’la’s Harper Stern of most of her interiority, using her instead to prop up the characters in her orbit.
That disinterest isn’t always malicious, but it does speak to a flaw in the design of the Black female vigilante, at least when written haphazardly. Not every use of the trope is created equal, which makes the sudden, surface-level interest in it—particularly over “softer” explorations of Black femininity—a little concerning. Black heroines are still denied the girlhood that their white counterparts have monopolized in every medium that matters: film, TV, even TikTok. Refreshing as it is to see our anger brought to life in a new way, it can’t be the prevailing image of the Black woman. Otherwise, it’s the same tropes of yore, just with a trendy facelift; the harvesting of our pain with a splashier sheen.
Perhaps that’s why Harris’ debut works so well: “Is God Is” actually acknowledges that this cycle of violence can’t last forever. Finding an outlet for our anger is just one half of the equation, but where does it go once we’ve plugged in?
- Captivating Third Season of “House of the Dragon” Is More Complex Than Ever (June 15, 2026)
Of all the sophomore seasons of television released in the last decade, “House of the Dragon” remains one of the most perplexing. While the acting was still on par with season one, the plot meandered with no sense of urgency or understanding of the work it was based on. With “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” bringing back critics and fans’ faith in adaptations of George R.R. Martin’s work, season three, which was publicly denounced by Martin in a Hollywood Reporter profile earlier this year, had some incredibly heavy lifting to do. And somehow, it mostly manages to pull it off.
The first episode of season three picks up immediately where season two left off; in the Vale, Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) chases after the wild dragon Sheepstealer; Daemon (Matt Smith) slays enemies in his wife’s name with the help of Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes); Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) sits the Iron Throne in the wake of Aegon’s (Tom Glynn-Carney) disappearance; and Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) gleefully tells her small council of Alicent’s (Olivia Cooke) promise to surrender Kingslanding to her cause. This doesn’t sit well with her council, especially her son Jacaerys (Harry Collett), and the notion that she met with the woman who orchestrated her defeat begins to fester in many of Rhaenyra’s allies.
This festering grows until a pit begins to open up underneath the already tediously held together Team Black faction. The Greens and the war they ignited have left the kingdom in shambles, and Rhaenyra’s reputation and womanhood remain the most pressing points of contention surrounding her. When she wields a sword, her opponents laugh, and the streets of Kingslanding are furnished with writing declaring her the “Queen of bastards.” While she has been forced into an incredibly precarious situation, there are times when the choices Rhaenyra makes are questionable not only to the characters she shares the screen with but also to the audience.
With these complicated decisions, “House of the Dragon” finally begins to breathe some new life into the series. By allowing each one of its characters to make selfish and at times ludicrous decisions, the chaotic and warped points of view detailed in Martin’s “Fire & Blood” come to life. Unlike season two, these decisions are followed by fallouts that range from beloved character deaths to the alienation of the smallfolk, each of which is felt not only in the faction that they happen to, but around the realm. Secondary characters like Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Hightower) and Ulf the White (Tom Bennett) become our eyes and ears, showcasing to the audience what the world of Westeros looks like for everyone who isn’t a Targaryen or a Hightower.
Still, the greatest tensions come from these royals, who, as the series progresses, feel like they’re inhabiting a medieval-set spin-off of “Succession.” The third episode of the season is a standout, with D’arcy showcasing some of their best acting yet as Rhaenyra attempts to reign in power before losing her grasp, and somehow managing to latch back onto it all in the span of an hour. At the center here is her relationship with Daemon, which remains one of the series’ most fascinating dynamics. After being separated for most of season two, they latch onto each other with a newfound desperation, as Daemon begins to fuel the fire that lies somewhat dormant inside Rhaenyra.
When he slays her opponents in front of her, she watches on with fascination, as the darkness inside of her comes closer to the forefront of her very being. With Daemon’s help, Rhaenyra is finally forced to enact the kind of violence that she previously condemned, and this engagement with it adds a fascinating layer to her character that has been missing. While she isn’t bloodthirsty by any means, she realizes that the world they live in is no longer one where she can be merciful. It’s not until she commits a direct act in the form of a beheading with her own two hands that she can finally harness this power. But with violence, of course, comes more adversity.
Each character in the series is forced to confront their actions, no matter how long ago they took place. Moves that looked politically savvy weeks, months, and even years ago come back to bite them, ushering in an era of war that is now impossible to rectify. Complaints of nothing happening last season have been remedied by Ryan Condal and Sara Hess, with naval battles and betrayals taking place right from the get-go, backed by a score by Ramin Djawadi that continues to propel the show to new heights. There seems to have been a realization in the writers’ room not only of what made the show so interesting when it premiered in 2022, but what made audiences stick with the series, even when it wasn’t deserving of their loyalty.
Thankfully, this adaptation is finally beginning to explore the core themes of Martin’s novels. While there are certain changes in character motivations that don’t necessarily work, the politicking that once felt lackluster actually has consequences, and watching these events unfold is more thrilling than ever. As the stakes grow, the show has managed to salvage its beating heart, allowing its characters to become fully realized, complicated versions of the husks who took up the screen in season two. Although they at times do not mirror the versions of these characters that existed in Martin’s original pages, “House of the Dragon” gives its audiences something exhilarating to chew on, even though it may initially be hard to swallow.
Four episodes were screened for review.
