Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting join hands in Romeo and Juliet, 1967

Her Bounty Is Boundless

From the first actor—a man—to play Juliet to the “girl boss” version on Broadway, Shakespeare’s young lover offers something new in every iteration.
A #buryyourgays hashtag over a black and white drawing of a cemetery

Can Fan Hashtag Campaigns Stop the “Bury Your Gays” Trope?

Organized fan hashtag campaigns put pressure on the entertainment industry to improve their writing for and treatment of LGBTQ+ characters.
Ghostface from Scream

We All “Scream” for the Metatextual

Do you like scary movies? How about movies that scare you while satirizing and paying homage to their genre?
Parody English heavy metal band, Spinal Tap

The Mockumentary: A Very Real History

What's the appeal of humor masquerading as seriousness? An entire movie genre stands ready to shed light on that question.
Silhouette of office lady using smartphone in city

Fake News: A Media Literacy Reading List

Compiled by graduate students in a 2016 course on “Activism and Digital Culture,” at University of Southern California.
Jeanne Cagney in Quicksand

How Film Noir Tried to Scare Women out of Working

In the period immediately following World War II, the femme fatale embodied a host of male anxieties about gender roles.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

How Local TV Made “Bad” Movies a Thing

Weekly shows on local TV stations helped make the ironic viewing of bad movies into a national pastime.
Simone Simon in movie art for the film 'The Curse Of The Cat People', 1944

Dial Meow for Murder

Notes on the figure of the feline in horror.
A scene from Within Our Gates

How Oscar Micheaux Challenged the Racism of Early Hollywood

The black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux was one of the first to make films for a black audience, a rebuke to racist movies like The Birth of a Nation.
Two women speaking beside a water cooler in an office

Streaming Television Might Just Bring Us Together After All

A look at TV watching as a social activity, from the "water cooler" network shows of yore to today's "second screen" live-tweets.