The Weekly Bits is long on purpose (might get clipped in your inbox, so open in a browser) and there are lots in ‘em! So read it while you’re cooling down from a fight, discovering a new route to work, or just having a slow morning Dr. Pepper.

There WILL be typos (not a threat, just a fact)

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I adore Robby Hoffman, like many comedians, they’ve always felt a little guarded. They were part of The Interview series from The NYT, where they got intimate and incredible with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and I just loved it. They shared a lot, basically expanding on things they had already touched on in sets or other interviews, but had never gone into detail about and made me love ‘em even more.

Okay, so, Real Housewives of Rhode Island season 1 is a wrap! It’s been like decades since I watched a Real Housewives show from jump and in real time. THEY GOT A HIT WITH THIS ONE! I desperately wanna go to Pizza Mamma (I know, I know), but my major takeaway is that Jo-Ellen is an actual bully and hella lame. Not letting up on Rulla like that in Part 2 of the reunion was NASTY NASTY NASTY work.

I liked her a lot at first, and I think it’s partly because she looks like my first crush, Danielle Fishel, but, like—that’s out the window, babes. Also…is it just me, or was Andy DEEPLY annoyed at the reunion?

Taylor Swift got married, and while I don’t really care, I do find saying this in her predictions post last week, HILARIOUS

saying “Kelce’s closet is entirely HBCU chic — will the inside pocket of his suit be embroidered with “Still I Rise?”

I DEW hope the person who leaked the photos doesn’t get caught and gets a really big payday! It made me think of weddings in movies that I do like! Araminta’s OTT wedding in Crazy Rich Asians, Juliet and Peter’s super romantic and very them wedding in Love, Actually, Lisa and Roland’s wedding in The Wood, and this is TV, but David and Patrick’s wedding in Schitt’s Creek was soooooooo sweet and sooooo them.

Back to RHORI for a minute, while Liz is making posts that look like that Jesus footsteps poster about not coming back, Alicia is making her social media rounds and was on an episode of Therapuss!

I really don’t like the person who hosts the show, so I don’t wanna watch, but I’m sure the clips will make their way to me.

Essencefest is making folks mad again this year! I don’t have more to say on that, just that like…I feel like it makes people mad every year?

Newness x Thots

Married At First Sight is back and it’s in Seattle (are you old enough to remember the Irene Slap or no?) and I has a love/hate relationship with this show. Certain types of reality tv make me cringe ‘cos it gets too real and is no longer playful, this one teeters that line.

Two seasons ago, they were in Chicago! One of the couples, Camille and Thomas, is still married, and another couple that was created ‘cos of A CHEATING SCANDAL, are engaged (::throwing kids kitchen toy hard tomatoes but also they found love so not with a lot of power::) AND THEY WERE ALL HANGING OUT LIKE LAST WEEK AND EYE DONUT LIKE THAT.

What Eye Watched

EVERYBODY SHUT UP! SHUT UP LUTZ! My mom, Greta Lee, was on Good Hang!!

Liz Meriweather (creator of New Girl) is the EP on a new show about a FEMALE SERIAL KILLER! I’m excited, I want it now, and I hate saying “Female” because it makes me feel like I’m on an early episode of Love and Hip-Hop but in a bad way.

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ELLE is out! It’s cute, it’s funny, I’m not sure how much sense it makes with the film but, it’s fine. It also got a season 2 already so…yay!

Forbidden Fruits was rotten. It was bad. It was boring. The saving grace? Victoria Pedretti a.ka. Love Quinn—she always saves the day

Survival of the Thickest certainly has a full review to come, but omgggggg watching this story, I’ve always felt like so much of my life was being told on screen. Tasha Smith was not in the final season (but it was just a scheduling thing, no one start any rumors), and I’m not ready to rewatch the whole series, but if you are in a hella regulated space right now YOU SHOULD!

Help, Lin-Manuel has gotten his hands on The Warriors. I’m excited and scared.

A week in film…

Watching a relationship on film can be so satisfying because you get the beginning, middle, and end of it all. For about 110 minutes, you get to choose if you’re rooting for or against them, which person you can’t stand, and which person you’re hella backing up. You get to sit in the world of their life and love while eating nachos—or if you’re at Alamo…what passes for nachos.

Maybe that’s why folks love movie relationships so much and get invested in them. They let you believe there’s always a clean ending around the corner, that every fight means a breakup or every grand gesture means forever and ever and a day. but real life doesn’t always give that kinda certainty.

Sometimes relationships end because people don’t love each other anymore, sometimes they end because someone dies (or like, pretends to). Both suck.

I watched Gone Girl and Good Grief this week (GG x GG? OMG that wasn’t on purpose, but the film angels had a plan I guess). In one film, we see a relationship just fall apart. The love is lost, the conversations stop, the resentment grows, they hated each other, and then...MURDER!

Who needs couples counseling when you can just pretend your husband killed you while you go on the road and eat sloppy cheeseburgers? Sounds fun until you fuck up and end up back at square one lol.

In the other film, we see what seems to be a great relationship but then SURPRISE BABES—DEATH!! SADNESS!! SECRETS FROM THE GRAVE!!

That’s the thing about looking at relationships through the lens of film, everything is heightened while you’re watching it, but it’s okay because it’s not real, it’s not your life, so the anxiety leaves when the movie is over.

but like I’ve always known, life usually isn’t like the movies.

Most of us won’t fake our own death or have the love of your life die and learn shit from a letter. We also may not get a perfect montage explaining where everything went wrong or a final scene that tells us exactly what happens next while they kiss as the credits roll.

Both of these films capture how intense it is to lose love, and I’ve come across other films that show the absolute misery it is to grieve someone who is still alive, but I don’t think I’ve come across a film that captures how intense it is to love. And in that case, life not being like the movies is probably a very good thing because hopefully, you’ll get to experience what it is to love in every way for yourself.

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Babes—DID YOU SEE THIS?!

I just found this Instagram @secondhandex and I LOVE IT. It’s so funny! IDK why I couldn’t really fuck with the coffee shop version, but THIS is hilarious! Plus, any jokes about Fire Island make me very happy!

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On A Scale of One To Gay….

One day last week I opened Safari on my phone (shut up) only to have the tab from my Google search of “Tasty Blacks” looking back at me. It is because when watching last week’s episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta, the girls played a quick game of “How Long Were You A Lesbian?” while at dinner in Scotland, and K. Michelle said it was a favorite site of hers. Also, Phaedra saying she is the only one who hasn’t dabbled in the pond of pussy is a truth I fully believe.

Bob The Drag Queen has never really sat well with me, idk. And him doing that one moment with Todrick upset my spirit. I had my Todrick phase, but yeah.

The Wrong Girls trailer just dropped and I SHALL be seeing it! Alia Shawkat is present and a stoner so, yup!

Did you know I host a monthly movie night in Chicago at Dorothy where I give away lots of prizes, ask trivia questions, and look stunning—all while watching a queer/queer canon film and IT’S FREE?

This month I’m showing Chicago, and we’re playing Queen Latifah Trivia so….be there and say hi.

Lastly, I feel like as gays, we have been letting a few too many people into our house. Like some stuff has gotten a little too mainstream, and I’m not ok with it. We should have kept some stuff for ourselves—also niggas have been extending too many invites to the cookouts over the years

Cinehunni Selects

This week’s theme: parents who are going through it

I Write, You Read

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Where was last week’s quote from? The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt!

Remember, every week I’ll drop a pop culture quote that has stuck with me and if you correctly guess where this is from AND share this to your IG/Threads (@ me!) you’ll be 1 of 3 people who get a present from The Cinehunni Dispatch!

A surprise DVD, a postcard, a film-inspired crafting moment, and a special note from me + more will be inside.

This week’s quote:

See you later hunni!,

<3 Shelli

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I’ve never been some super patriotic person, even during the Olympics, I’m kinda just rooting for anyone Black or with the cutest skating routine.

I am mostly excited this weekend to spend alone time with my love, to stuff my tummy with grilled cheeseburgers, Polish sausages, and iced Red, White, and Blue lollies, and to light a firework if I can get my hand on one.

But two movies come to mind when I think about this holiday—Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do The Right Thing and Andrew Fleming’s 1999 film, DICK.

I know it seems weird at first, BUT HEAR ME OUT BABES!!

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The films speak to each other in hella interesting ways. It’s obvious that the tone of each is deeply different, one being constantly playful and satirical. The other being playful at times, but ultimately a portrayal of horrifying lived experiences of many folks (still), but both in their own ways put America itself under a bit of a microscope in eras (DICK = The 1970s, Do The Right Thing = The 1980s) where so much was going on.

I’m not saying these movies are THE SAME, I’m saying that these two films that I like and think about during this holiday, can be in conversation with each other.

Do The Right Thing looks at racism and inequality through the lens of a Brooklyn neighborhood on the hottest day of the year, while DICK looks at corruption through the eyes of two white teenage girls on a bigger level in Washington. I think both films use their characters, regular degular every day ass people, to show how folks approach politics and patriotism TEW THIS DAY.

There are folks like Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo “never not had a job” Esposito) who are actively fighting the fight, folks like Mookie (Spike Lee) who just wanna get through the day until something happens where they GOTTA do something, then you got folks like Arlene (Kirsten Dunst) and Betsy (Michelle Williams) who are so unaware of what’s going on, stumble into the realities of what is, and then let that fall guide them into making a difference.

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Being politically engaged looks different to folks.

I know that I can be doing much better at being more aware of what is going on, it gets hard for me because, well, so much is always going on and there is just so much bad news all the time constantly. That’s not a good reason to not stay aware, I’ve just got to figure out better ways of how (and when) to consume, and I also don’t like feeling embarrassed when I don’t know about something someone is talking about so, you know, self shaming works I guess!

For some things that hit closer to home, I’m Buggin’ Out. If it has to do with queerness, trans folks, abortions, our bodies, or what happens to people who hurt our bodies, I’m far more aware. Because just like Buggin’ Out felt about not seeing Black faces on the walls of Sal’s, that stuff affects me and my heart directly.

But I think because of the blend of myself and the life I’ve had so far—being queer, being Black, being a woman, growing up broke, coming from parents who were addicts, growing up religious, SA constantly appearing in my life, and so much more—that it feels overwhelming to feel so strongly about so much all the time.

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But, I also don’t want to be so neutral that I’m Mookie. I don’t want to be so caught up in the “trying to get by” of my own life, that I don’t really have time or the mental capacity to get involved with (or stay aware of) what’s going on around me. ANNNDDDDD I also don’t want to wait for something SO BIG, SO CLOSE TO ME to happen for me to notice more or create space either.

When Raheem is killed, Mookie is no longer able to be so conflicted. When Betsy and Arlene hear Nixon being horrible on tape, their rose colored glasses come off. Mookie starts shit at Sal’s…and the girls take the president down.

Like Arlene and Betsy, I’ve been empowered by and proud of politicians and then immediately let down by them. I joke a lot, but I’ve been thinking more about Mamdani these days. Someone I can see doing actual changes, but who I also know is going to make mistakes too. I believe in him, but more importantly, I believe in what he represents.

He makes a woman like me, who is this blend of all these characters in these films, not feel silly about still occasionally thinking that while things are so, so bad, there is so much space for it to go so, so, right. Even if it’s just in my neighborhood, even if it’s just in my house, even if it’s just in a text between me and my best friend.

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So, while I’m not patriotic and I do not give a flying fuck about the 4th of July, I do believe that films—even two that you didn’t really imagine watching together—can make you think a bit more about everything. Like who you are, where you stand, what you can do more of, and what you believe in.

Happy watching, happy eating, and happy random long weekend where we give small children access to fire that they can hold in their hands.

See ya hunni!

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I Write, You Read

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The Weekly Bits is long on purpose (might get clipped in your inbox so open in a browser) and there are lots in ‘em! So read it on your commute, at your desk while procrastinating, or let it sit in your inbox and read it throughout the week!

There WILL be typos (not a threat, just a fact)

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Happy Pride! It’s basically over, and it has felt like the least pridey Pride, and personally, I’m okay with that. I DO care that it was Mamdani’s first Pride while being in office, and while he did not perform as Madonna—I still was very happy!

I Kissed a Girl is back and it’s going to be the final season, and while I’m happy that “representation” is on TV… why are we still having allies host the shows instead of some popular queer folks? There are more than enough famous, popular queer folks who can host these shows. Idk, maybe it shouldn’t bother me but…it does. There are like 3 reality dating shows that feature mostly queer women (Queer Ultimatum, I Kissed a Girl, and Coming Out for Love), and two out of the 3 are hosted by straight women. I know what you’re thinking, HOOCHIE DADDIES DOES NAWT COUNT because they aren’t competing for love, just to be the ultimate hoochie daddy—DIFFERENT PRIORITY.

Like, go allies but also. Stop.

LISTEN TO ME. I have NEVER wanted someone to fail more than the group “One Baddie After Another” on Pop Culture Jeopardy. I cannot STAND them. The white guy is smug, and the Black guy feels like the type to laugh and take part in jokes about Blackness that his white friends make (I’m completely correct about this btw, because it just happened on an episode I watched). More on that next week after I finish

THERE IS A HEATWAVE THIS WEEK!

So stay hydrated with your water stacks (look it up) and wear cotton panties. I like these from Marks & Spence and Tomboyx has cute boxer briefs. These aren’t ads I just want everyone’s bits to stay cool and comfortable. This heatwave also reminds me of how I know I couldn’t be on Love Island. You want me to sit in the heat, in a full beat, get ate up by bugs, avoid the AC, AND do activities to fall in love? No.

Everyone has fallen in love with the nun podcast Dominican Sisters Open Mic, and as someone who is historically obsessed with nuns, so have I. This is new to me though, because I love nuns in like—a naughty, religious kink kind of way—but I love the Dominican Sisters of Mary in a sweet, non-naughty, listen-to-them-while-I-make-a-kink-free-morning-coffee kind of way.

Side note: If you ARE interested in nuns in a naughty AND cinematic way, have I GOT SOME FILMS FOR YOU BABES! Interno di un convento or Behind Convent Walls (1978, Italian & very good), Benedetta (2021, it’s fine), Visions of Ecstasy (1989, gets the job done), and Las Hijas del Fuego or The Daughters of the Fire (2018, Argentinian, not necessarily nuns but one hell of a scene at an altar)

The BET Awards was this weekend! Did I watch in real time? No. Why? I don’t have a Paramount+ subscription, and I couldn’t find it elsewhere to save my life. Janet Jackson made an appearance, and Queen Latifah was part of Lauryn Hill’s tribute, which started off with Tanya Blount singing “Joyful, Joyful”. THIS MEANT A LOT TO ME AND ANY BLACK KID BORN BEFORE 1990.

Tanya starred in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit with Lauryn. They have a beautiful moment singing “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” — but Tanya singing “Joyful, Joyful” as an homage to the CORE MOVIE MEMORY OF A MILLION BLACK MILLENIALS gave me shivvvvers!

I have been spending far more time on IG recently and I’ve been keeping up with the babes that I dig (my fiancé and Mamdani are the only two people I have notifications on for btw), so can we talk about Leigh Soriano a.k.a OldFashionedHussle doing a collab with creators (well deserved) ‘cos when I say I love a storyteller, SHE IS WHAT I MEAN.

Drake is a girly pop and he’s throwing a party for everyone named Janice ‘cos of his song Janice STFU. It’s insane behaviour (with a U ‘cos Canada) and EYE LOVE it. Someone write a song about Shelli’s so that I can get tipsy and eat crab legs on a boat for free. Also, the song samples 2010’s I Follow Rivers by Lykke Li, and it used to play on repeat while I worked the night shift at The Gap. MEMORIES!

We should get into what I’m not watching and won’t be shamed into watching: Love Island. Babes, I have never watched a US season AND I haven’t watched the series generally since season 5 when Amber and Greg won (Amber has since come out as a lesbian btw), and the only reason I know Olandria is because her ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS FACE IS (RIGHTFULLY) EVERYWHERE

Also, Knicks in five!!! I can say that because I am marrying a New Yorker, and shout out to Jordyn Woods—designer, it girl, lucky charm—and THEE bag making it into the literal Guggenheim. P.S I used to steal from Stop & Shop in college soooo, that’s also a little NY-flavored Shelli tidbit for you.

Newness x Thots

Is God Is comes out on Blu-ray on July 28! Have we been so annoying about going analog that we’re forcing physical media to make a comeback?! GOOD JOB TEAM! If we can somehow force Jenny Bicks and Paul Feig to give me seasons 1–3 of Welcome To Flatch on DVD, we’ll have really done a great job

Elle comes out this week (July 1, Prime Video) I saw it, I like it, but more on that next week when you’ve had a chance to take it in. Clueless, Jawbreaker, Wish Upon a Star would all like a word though, so keep that in mind.

What Eye Watched

Office Romance was cute, and it was even more perfect because, spoiler alert, shout out to partners who lean into your kink and play along. Also, my best friend was right…I think Brett Goldstein wrote this movie just so he could make out with J.Lo. But also, do not fuck people you work with. And also, GAY SISTER FINGER BANGING EVERYTHING SHE CAN IN PRISON GETS A STAR.

I’m reading Rooting Interest by Cat Disabato, and I promise to be done with it by next week. Also, shout out to my Emma for announcing her new book with 831!

CAN WE TALK ABOUT PORSHA WILLIAMS FOR A SECOND?! GREAT. I wouldn’t call myself a Housewives fanatic (I do love a cracka), but I know enough, and one thing is not up for debate, and it’s that Porsha deserves everything! The Porshasexual Princess who puts the silent P in LGBTQ+ was just on Ziwe, and if you think that was a time, you need to watch her interview with Carlos King. It’s so intimate without telling all her business, and intense without getting traumatic. She drops the most delishhhhhhhh gems, and I love it, I love her, and if you know someone who can get me on the GoNaked PR list, I’ll book my braid-down IMMEDIATELY.

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Can we pretty please talk about this? I cannot stand remakes, and too many sequels freak me out (like Practical Magic 2 and me might have to fight, but who knows), but I don’t mind paying homage, and I feel like this is how you do it. I really hope Alyse Marie gets this done!

I finally watched “Wuthering Heights”. I actually started watching it on a plane last week, and turns out it is not horny enough for me (I WILL give it up for 1:29:21), but far too horny to watch on a plane full of people and dogs. HOWEVER, the idea of getting all solo touchy feely atop a mountain with intense breezes while wearing a cute bustled skirt DOES INTRIGUETH ME ALOT(ETH). Saltburn remains undefeated in the Emerald Fennell Cinematic Universe

I watched Happy Gilmore 2 (idk why but now my algorithm is fucked), Obsession (OMG HELP), and the World Cup (The Netherlands is my team and I’m in need of a Summerville jersey). I re-watched The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (why wouldn’t I) and Survival of the Thickest (Season 3 is the final, and that makes me sad), and am finally finishing up Pluribus.

My week told through a film…

Speaking of nuns, Guess what bitches, I started going back to church a few months ago and it’s been a cute time! If you don’t know, I grew up religious, father is/was a pastor but the dyke of it all mixed with daddy issues turned into religious trauma and i skidaddled for a while. Anyway, It’s been…nice. I don’t talk much when I’m there. I go, mind my business in the back row, and then take the vibes with me when I leave.

But this Sunday was a little different. I was in church on Pride. I actually didn’t realize it until I was sitting there and remembered that about twenty minutes north there were like, idk, thousands of people celebrating all things queer (and probably like 20 being haters ‘cos what’s Pride without a little bit of hate!!!)

It made me think of all the times I sat in church, both before and after I came out (well…forced out, shout out to an ex and an aunt), and was so wildly uncomfortable in my queerness. The times where I couldn’t name it but knew the damnation being yelled from the pulpit was for me, and the times where I could name it but knew that I was just being tolerated.

I thought about films like Pariah and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, stories about kids trying to become themselves while being surrounded by people preaching love with an asterisk. They understand what it feels like to have a large part of who you are treated like something that needs to be prayed away instead of just loved.

Thinking of those films years later, while sitting in a church that I chose to go to, in clothes that I chose to wear, while in a relationship that I don’t hide being in, on a day where so many queer people in the city are beautifully wrapped up in—or on the road to—accepting themselves, felt validating and really fucking good.

It also made me think of Disobedience. I know I talk about it ‘cos it has one of my fav sex scenes (there is spitting involved) but believe it or not, I like it for way more than that. See in this film, Ronit (Rachel Weisz) is grown. Just like me, she’s built a whole ass life away from the church and community that rejected her. She didn’t have to come back to deal with her father’s death, they weren’t close, but she chooses to anyway. The film isn’t really about whether her father accepted her or acknowledged the damage he did (or allowed others to do to her)—it’s about how she moves and wraps up the chapter when she understands he never was going to.

I think about my father a lot when I’m in church.

Our relationship isn’t great right now, but that’s not the whole of what saddens me. It’s not that I know he’ll never truly accept who I am or acknowledge the hurt he’s caused. It’s that our core memories are behind us.

They’re good memories, and I’m grateful for them, but none of them were made while I was living as my truest self. He never really got to know that version of me. Or maybe more accurately, he chose not to.

So this Pride, while sitting quietly in the back row of church wearing my queer little bracelets and getting a text from my whole ass fiance, that’s what came to mind.

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Babes—DID YOU SEE THIS?!

Everyone should be subscribing to National Theatre at Home. It’s $12 a month (this is not an ad, I just love it) and it’s incredible. I watched Ncuti Gatwa in The Importance of Being Earnest, and it was so fucking good and felt like I was there. Also HILARIOUS.

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Also, there are exactly 5 shows on Prime that are worthy of you keeping your subscription at least through the summer and its heatwaves: Swarm, Delores Roach, Fallout, Overcompensating, The Girlfriend, and Wilderness. After that, you can cancel your membership and start walking to Walgreens for your toothpaste.

Colman Domingo on Good Hang = Perfection.

On A Scale of One To Gay….

Listen, House of the Dragon is back out and no I have not watched it. Why? I need at least 3 episodes to be out so that I can fully form my thoughts while also holding out hope for scissoring of some sort to happen in one of the towers. Also, it constantly reminds me that I need to re-dye my hair and I don’t want to think about that right now ‘cos money.

Also, the only toxic relationship I ever want to stay toxic is back in full effect on The Vampire Lestat. I feel like this season was made just for me because it started in Detroit—maybe they didn’t send me screeners because I’ve openly talked shit about the Eastside over the years… EYE STAND BY IT BTW.

I was sitting on our couch yesterday, screaming to my fiancé about how I’m in my Layla (Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives) era. That just means I’m trying to be more vocal about how I feel and what I want, but am sometimes going TOO hard with it and need a little light “hey, slow down” tap at times. Then they told me that Layla came out as bi. Like, two hours later, I went and did some research, and saw she addressed it on Jay Shetty’s podcast. So yeah, like, sure, why not end Pride Month on that note.

Cinehunni Selects

This week’s theme? “Wanting Love A Little Too Much—AND DOING INSANE SHIT THAT YOU SHOULD NOT BE AND LIKE OMIGOSH PLEASE STOP AND BE SINGLE FOR LIKE TWO SECONDS!”

We saw Obsession this week, and now I just wanna tell you to go watch all these movies about relationships.

I Write, You Read

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Every week, I’ll leave you with a pop culture quote that stuck with me a whole lot, this week:

If you correctly guess where this is from AND share this to your IG/Threads (@ me!) I’ll send 3 of you a present from The Cinehunni Dispatch!

It’ll be a surprise DVD, a postcard, a film-inspired crafting moment, and a special note from me + more! I miss snail mail so….YAY!

See ya later Hunni!,

<3 Shelli

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According to the internet, you’re a millennial if you were born in the years 1981–1996. For a big chunk of us, that means your adolescence was wrapped up in the introduction of chat rooms—and the birth of the whole ass internet—TRL and 106 & Park, and Friday trips to Blockbuster Video. And if you’re me, it also means you probably can’t spell millennial on the first try.

It meant growing up with the things made popular again in this, 2026, the year of our analogue lorde lord.

Generation X was before us, and after us came Gen Z. No matter the generation, one thing is synonymous with the youth of every era—sex was all in pop culture, and teens were the target.

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The 80s gave us Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky’s, and Screwballs; the 90s gave us Kids, American Pie, Cruel Intentions, The Wood, and Trojan War; then the 2000s came and gave us Superbad, The Girl Next Door, and about a million American Pie spin-offs.

All had a few things in common: they were all (mostly) hella white and suburban, they told boys that it was okay to be sexual and painted girls as sluts or frigid, and they all featured teens trying to lose their virginity, get someone else’s virginity, or at the very least make out with someone before college starts.

And I was watching it all.

I was also reading it all and listening to it all, and there was no one around to tell me not to. I joke that if it weren’t for my parents’ complete lack of supervision, I probably wouldn’t be the pop culture-forward writer that I am today. Well, that and the myriad of INSANE experiences I had—but mostly the whole lack of supervision.

I could watch and read and listen to pretty much whatever I wanted. I was alone a lot as a child. I had a TV with cable in my room, a VHS player, and a radio. Then, right next door, something in the home of many Black millennial kids—the Computer Room.

The internet raised me, and that’s really, actually not good lol. Because it meant I was figuring out everything on my own, or from other latchkey kids who had that AOL CD-ROM they got from school (or Farmer Jacks) that gave them access to the World Wide Web.

We were just telling each other a loop of incorrect information. Posting away messages with song lyrics full of innuendo, making LiveJournals and Xangas full of pixelated photos of movies we shouldn’t have been seeing. It was just the start of misinformation and hormones spreading like wildfire.

I started thinking about this because I’ve been reading Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert. Not only is it incredible because, throughout the book, she chats about/quotes Black pop culture and many of its writers and critics (hello dream hampton, WHO I MET AND LIKED ME!), but because it’s a whole journey through girlhood and pop culture on a level that I kinda never thought of.

Black girls are often sexualized from a very young age. We’re told we’re “fast” by the women around us, but the grown men around us are so rarely clocked as the, well, disgusting pedophiles that they (likely) are.

I agree that being a teen and being pretty horny go hand in hand, and that pop culture will always find a way to show you to yourself, and that’s all well and good. BUT You eventually grow up, look back, and realize, “oh…that’s incorrect as fuck,” and move forward.

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I feel like that’s something that teen girls do…but teen boys of the era, I fear, often turn into the men who purchase microphones or hide behind poorly named Twitter accounts.

Teen pop culture has since evolved. I think the shift started to happen in about 2010. Teen dramas that teetered on the line of wild while rarely crossing over into hypersexed or “uh-oh” territory. Pretty Little Liars, DOPE, The Vampire Diaries, Easy A, grown-ish, and even Project X show that shift.

It’s still very playful and sex forward but with some depth and awareness to it that did not exist in the pop culture I had as a teen. I love that, I think it’s great that things like Blockers, Booksmart, Bel-Air, Sex Education, and other shows/films I don’t know exist because I am outside of the age bracket, exist now.

So, in honor of this book and my teen years (I was in high school 2000–2004), I’ve decided to compile a list of all the sex-forward pop culture I can remember that had a hold on me in some way. Heads up—a big scoop of it features teen girls, and absolutely should not have!

Cosmopolitan Magazine should be on this list for sure, I cut out all the sex tips and kept them in an Adidas box in my room. For what—I don’t know…anyway, let the trip down memory lane begin!

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My Letterboxd is your new favorite place, but here are some CURRENT shows about sex that I love.

• Mrs. Fletcher

  • I have talked about this on Threads but it’s NOT streaming anywhere! Well…anywhere like legal. It is only one Dailymotion because some beautiful soul uploaded very odd versions of it. Grateful nonetheless.

• Dying For Sex

  • We DO NOT talk about this limited series enough. We is me. I do not talk about this limited series enough.

• Insecure

  • hey, remember when Twitter was divided about the whole blowjob and cumming scene? CRAZZZZYYYY!!

And here are some teen films from my era that I LOOOOVVVE

• Roll Bounce

• Swimfan

• Jawbreaker

• O

• Loser

• The Wood

• Sugar & Spice

Movies

Fear (1996)

This movie needs to be thrown away and locked up, then covered in cement. Mark Whalberg becomes obsessed with a 16-year-old girl (Played by a 19-year-old Reese Witherspoon), and it’s so bad. But I watched it and couldn’t get it out of my mind. There is so much wrong with this film, and so many parts of it were so fucked up, but the whole first half of the trailer markets it as if he’s just a misunderstood bad boy that she happens to fall in love with. SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE SNATCHED THE REMOTE OUT OF MY HANDS.

Cruel Intentions (1999)

Step-siblings who wanted to fuck and played weird little fuck games with their “friends” because they were rich and bored. AND I ATE IT THE FUCK UP. It was weirrrrrrrdddd, but something felt more…okay about it because at least everyone involved was a teenager? IDK, it gave us an iconic kissing scene and Bittersweet Symphony, so maybe I’m 10% glad no one took my remote.

Poison Ivy (1992)

No…..No…..No….I hate to say it, but I was obsessed with this movie for far longer than I should have been. Drew Barrymore was 17 years old when she was playing Ivy, a girl who was seducing (she was a kid so…she def wasn’t seducing anyone) her best friend’s dad, played by Tom Skerritt, who was 58. It’s an erotic thriller, a genre that no teen should ever be involved in. What’s worse is that in 1993, The Crush came out, where Alicia Silverstone plays a 14-year-old who is obsessed with a photographer who is millions of years older than her. HELLLLPPPPPP.

The Players Club (1998)

When I think of blonde hair on Black women, I think of Ronnie, and when I think of Ronnie, I think about watching her yell at a bunch of white cops at a party to tip her more money. I don’t remember how I saw it, but I vaguely remember cousins being around, but no adults. Anyway, Ronnie (Chrystale Wilson) is still around and still a babe.

American Pie (1999)

I mainly cared about Natasha Lyonne’s character in this movie, but yeah, the fact that it took place in Michigan was always really cool to me. Also wild that he put his dick in a hot pie, that he recorded a girl without permission, and that one of his friends was fucking his other friend’s mom. WHY WAS I WATCHING THISSSSSSS?

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Music

Ludacris—What’s Your Fantasy (1999)

Babes…..I have a vivid memory of singing this song in the back of my best friend’s van on the way to pick up her aunt for Saturday errands. Top of our lungs, fully unaware of what these fantasies were all about, but knowing that I wanted in. It’s….wild.

t.a.t.u—All The Things She Said (2002)

THE LORE OF THIS SONG. HELP HELP HELLLLPPPP. Some people were an All The Things She Said queer and some were The Kiss poster kinda queer, and everyone was a “Queen Latifah makes me feel a way” kinda queer.

While we all now know that this was A SCHEME SET UP BY TODD (I love to say this even though I JUST learned what it means), it was still a part of my history of learning about sex.

The Donnas—Spend the Night (Full album, 2002)

The Spend the Night album is one of my favorites and was also one of the first times, I feel, that I felt it was okay to have hormones as a teenage girl. The album is great, but a lot of it talks about ALL the same stuff that the boys were singing about, except this time IT WAS GIRLS.

It didn’t feel corny that they were flipping things; it felt actually cool. Also, Google the drummer Torry Castellano for a surpriseeeeeee!

Aerosmith—Crazy (Music video, 1994)

HORRIFYING. Was this video part of a bit of a queer awakening for me in some way when I saw it on pop-up video years later…YES. Was this also layered for me ‘cos a bit of my queerness was also wrapped up in the movie Empire Records that starred Liv Tyler…also YES.

But the bigger question is…

WHY WAS STEVEN TYLER MAKING A VIDEO THAT STARRED HIS 16-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER AND A 16-YEAR-OLD ALCIA SILVERSTONE, WHERE THEY ARE SCHOOLGIRLS WHO GO ON THE RUN, WIN A STRIPPING CONTEST AT A STRIP CLUB, AND ALSO HAVE A HEAVILY IMPLIED ROMANTIC CONNECTION?

QTNA!

Q.B.’s Finest—Oochie Wally (Music video, 2000)

Egregious. Every lyric, every word….BUT THERE I WAS SINGING ALONG, WAITING TO ACT IT OUT IN THE FUTTTTUURREEEE.

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Books

The Sex Chronicles and Addicted by Zane (1998-1999)

WHY AND HOW DID I GET AHOLD OF THESE BOOKS IN LITERALLY MIDDLE SCHOOL? I remember reading these and not fully understanding everything, but knowing that I probably shouldn’t be. It was an interesting time because, like, everyone else was reading these books too. Lock up whoever the ADULT librarian was who let me check this out.

The Coldest Winter Ever by Sistah Souljah (1999)

This I read in high school, and I THINK it was on a syllabus. Every girl in school had that thick, soft-covered book in her backpack or in her locker. Winter Santiaga was the girl everyone wanted to be, but looking back WOOOOWWWW WOW WOW WOW. She was 17 years old in relationships with men older than her, and why was I so invested in that? HELP. LOCK UP THE TEACHER WHO (MAY HAVE) PUT THIS ON THE SYLLABUS.

Belle de Jour by Joseph Kessel (1928)

I got this book from the same teacher who let me read her copy of Bridget Jones Diary, in high school….and I ate it the fuck up. It’s about a housewife who becomes a sex worker (without her husband knowing) to fulfill herself sexually.

It should be noted that this particular book spawned a whole thing for me. I later read the memoir The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl (2005) by an author who went by the name Belle de Jour (who would later be revealed), AND watched Secret Diary of a Call Girl, starring Billie Piper, which came out in 2007.

This one was a whole new level for me because, although the original book was fiction, the other was real. It was something about this being someone’s real-life stories that fascinated me. So when it became a series later, it was so cool to see it all come to life.

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TV

Degrassi—”U Got the Look” a.k.a Manny’s thong episode (2003)

When I was in middle and high school, I was wearing regular cotton drawls, probably from Old Navy or those packs of Fruit of the Loom you could get from like CVS or Rite Aid. Then came the thong. I didn’t have

This episode was iconic ‘cos like…MANNY PUT YOUR THONG AWAY!

Undressed (1999)

Now this show? THIS SHOW? Added it to the list of why I wanted to go AWAY to college and have a dorm. Having sex in a twin bed where you’d chat about it afterwards with your roommate? GIMMIE IT NOW. Turns out, having sex in an XL twin bed is not at all as glamorous as they make it on the TV, but the roommate chat is quite the bees knees.

Also, everyone was on this show back in the day, I’m serious, go look it up.

Taxicab Confessions (1995)

The second story in this episode is wild, the girl talking about her love of women.

“I love women….i want to be having sex with you, i want to be making love to you day and night, night and day. I don’t want to like, shop with you, that’s like, fucked up.”

It’s WILD. I was watching this show, the feelings of being queer had already set in by this point, and I was watching other people talk about being queer, usually in New York City. There were people OPENLY talking about being gay and kinda giving no fucks about it.

Shows like this are the reason why I was so dead set on moving to New York.

I wanted to be in a place where I could not just talk about it but be about it, and I did. When I look back to how much this show in particular probably influenced me, not sexually but in more terms of my sexuality, it’s like a wild, glaring alarm bell that I was searching for people and a place where I could be myself.

Unknowingly looking for queer community inside my TV, while my volume was set to 3, and my hand was sweaty from how tight I was holding the remote just in case my mom came knocking.

Real Sex (1990)

You know those videos on IG like The Hopeless Romantic Society where they interview folks on the street about their sex lives and relationships?

That’s exactly what Real Sex was, except that in between the interviews, there would be full stories of people and their kinks. I learned WAY TOO MUCH. It was kinda crazy, I think it also taught me early not to yuck people’s yum? There wasn’t much on it when I was watching that I understood fully, but it was kind of like a way longer version of those videos they used to teach girls about sex and periods in school.

Except with nudity. So maybe not like them at all, but whatever you get it.

It was, I think, the first place I ever saw a dildo, strap-ons, threesomes; it was insane. You can’t watch it anywhere except YouTube, where people have uploaded grainy videos of it. I do think it could be a fun night, though, to watch and either cringe or pick your mouth up off the floor about all the stuff that is happening.

okay bye —

Slip stars my imaginary mentor Zoe Lister-Jones (who also wrote and directed the show), and was a Roku original series where we meet Mae, a museum curator, who we learn sees her life as dull and repetitive. Where some folks would see a career on the rise, a quiet marriage, and an overall vibey life, Mae just wants a change.

Instead of addressing all the things, she…slips into cheating on her husband after an event one night with a musician who has a high bun and can probably touch every ceiling he comes across.

The night kicks off a series of hella unfortunate events for Mae.

She wakes up the next morning and she’s married to the high bun! She’s rich, he’s famous, and they have the most gorgeous Brooklyn apartment I think I’ve seen, but she’s still unhappy. This is the first one of at least five parallel universes she ends up in.

In every universe, she is the only one who remembers her previous life; everything is different—her homes, her partners, her style, and her jobs or lack thereof. The only constant is Gina (Tymika Tafari, who let’s fucking face it is a GOTDAMN STAR OKAY?!), who has been her best friend since she was a child and remains so in every one of these new lives she leads.

Then here’s the kicker—she discovers the only way to launch into a new universe is to orgasm. She has to keep coming to find her way back.

I love Zoe as an actress. Fawn Moscato in New Girl is one of the greatest characters of all time.

I also really, REALLY enjoy Zoe as a writer (minus The Craft), she has a thing with time and memories, and so do I.

Bits of my memories are foggy, and I have lost time both trying to erase and chase them, and in Slip I feel like Mae is doing a lot of the same. Listers’ 2021 film How It Ends, is so underrated and maybe in my top ten films of all time.

It also hits on time and memories. Losing them, finding them, figuring out how to move through them, and all of that is also present in Slip.

Mae is trying her best to comb through the memories of the life and love she thought she didn’t want to figure out how to not just get it back, but to hold onto it.

Time is such a thing; you never know how much of it we have left. And memories have the power to control your feelings—throwing you forward in smiles or backward in tears. Mae uses the power of time and memory and grabs bits from each life in every universe to finally figure out what she needed and wanted in her original one.

Also, it gets gay, and not just like for a smidge of a second but for a whole episode! Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek) plays her wife, Sandy, in one universe, and it’s pretty dope. Without spoiling it, I really like how they capture that queer relationships are full of love, passion, friendship, and flirtation—but that they also have their not-so-perfect moments too.

I just dig how their connection isn’t fraught with trauma, and we see such an expanded world for them that we don’t often see when it comes to lesbian couples on TV.

In each of Mae’s relationships in these worlds, each one isn’t just teaching her a lesson, but it’s trying to force her to reckon with all the feelings that launched her into this whole thing in the first place.

It’s sort of letting her live in the world of “The grass is greener on the other side”, making her look at the issue of comparing her life to others and realizing it may be good for them, but it ain’t for her.

All in all, I feel like Slip is the age-old story of not knowing what you have until it’s gone but told in a really unique and layered way.

It’s about making sure you know you and that you dig you, and wow, I never thought I’d quote RuPaul ever again, but…if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gon’ love somebody else?

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Where To Watch

so….I don’t think you can without a VPN of some sort (we use this one) BUT when you do get that all situated, you can watch AppleTV (with an itvX add-on) OR on itvX.

It was originally on The Roku Channel but it’s not there anymore! Maybe send Zoe a DM with a link to this post and ask for a copy, it’s actually not uncommon for folks with series no longer available to send links— of Flatbush Misdemeanors used to do it all the time.

If you liked this piece you should pop over to this one:

Thank you so much for reading The Cinehunni Diaries! If you like what you read share, comment, subscribe, and consider becoming a paid subscriber <3

*This piece was originally published on Autostraddle and has been edited.

This post has some spoilers for Peaky Blinders series 1-6, not in some huge way but bits and pieces!

I love Peaky Blinders. I have always loved, and this is going to sound INSANE, a deep peek into a very violent, yet loving and deeply problematic family, a category The Bridgertons also falls under but we don’t wanna talk about that.

My dad loves mafia films and his all-time favorite film(s) are The Godfather Trilogy.

So I grew up watching him watch these movies, and even though I have YET to watch that particular trilogy myself, I became fascinated with that dynamic. A family in the underworld that came from nothing and now controls everything.

Scarface, BMF, The Goodfellas, Hoodlum, American Gangster, Casino, Belly….they all give a look into fame, fortune, and the families—chosen or blood—that built it all.

Then I became high-key obsessed with learning about the actual families a lot of this stuff was based on, and STILL AM.

Enter, The Shelby Family. THEY TOOK MY BIRMINGHAM BREATH AWAYYYYYYYYY!!!

Loved them since I first saw Tommy Shelby light that cigarette and roll it on his lips. The series uses the story of the real-life Sheldon Family as inspiration. Steven Knight, who created the series, is of blood relation to the gang family who were mainly causing chaos during the tail end of the 19th century into the top of the 20th.

Of course, the show focuses on the family and all the ABSOLUTELY WILD SHIT THAT HAPPENS WITH THEM ALL, and some of that, say….extended family, includes some Black folks who were also based on some real people.

I’ll immediately say this, the way Blackness is woven into the series feels genuine and also realistic. Most of the Black folks in their orbit come from one specific moment in Tommy’s life (World War 1) and grew from there.

It’s not like they were childhood friends (like their children and younger siblings would eventually be), but instead they, well, trauma-bonded and stayed homies when they got back home.

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Peaky Blinders takes place in 1919-1934, this is pre The Windrush Generation, which was one of the big moments where West Indian folks started coming to the UK for work. World War Deux had duh, knocked out a lot of the workforce, so there was a massive opportunity to fill the void.

Yes, obviously, there were Black folks in the UK during the time Peaky Blinders takes place, but finding A WHOLE LOT OF INFORMATION ON THAT IS HARD.

EYE HAVE TRIED! BUT, the Black characters’ presence still makes sense.

Jermiah Jesus played by Benjamin Zephaniah (who passed away in 2023), was based on a real person.

In the series, Jermiah and Tommy are friends from serving together in WWI (he also served with John), and they just…stayed friends. Jermiah went the Jesus route and Tommy—did not. Jermiah was very much Team Shelby and puts his bible down to tussle here and there, but he’s mostly (unfortunately) magical negro adjacent.

He has a son, Isiah Jesus, who grew up around The Shelby Family and eventually became a certified Peaky Blinder. He’s besties with Finn Shelby (they are a few years apart), and you literally see him grow up in the show, which I LOVE. When he was younger he was played by Jordan Bolger:

then when he’s older he’s played by Daryl McCormack, who I ADORE from Bad Sisters.

Also, Also, Finn later marries a Black woman named Mary, played by Abbie Hern.

It’s dope right, because they keep Blackness in this world in a way that makes sense. It becomes generational; you start to see just how it becomes a part of The Shelby Family’s world.

When I watch certain shows that are mostly white, I understand and don’t fully expect to see Blackness. Usually, when it happens, and some sort of Black story or character comes into play, it’s so weird. It’s hyperclear that it’s a checkbox and like—EYE DONUT NEED OR WANT THAT!

I’d rather you do it in an intentional way that leaves space for some sort of true longevity and an actual story, or like, leave us out entirely.

*****START OF SPOILER ALERT SECTION FOR A MAJOR S5 PLOT POINT******

There is also Mr. Ben Younger, played by THEE Kingsley Ben-Adir. First, honesty hour….I often mix Kingsley and Regé-Jean Page from Bridgerton up—I AM TRYING TO DO BETTER.

Anyway, he comes in towards the end of the series as a love interest and (Spoiler Alert) becomes the father of Elizabeth Younger, his daughter with Ada Shelby.

and then SHIT GETS A LITTLE DICCCEEEYYYYY. Because THE CALL (RACISM) IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSEEEEEEE!

Her older brother Karl, Ada’s son from an earlier marriage, calls her “that thing” and says her literal presence is going to get them killed. He also says that she is going to eventually get sent back to Africa.

WHERE IS THE NEAREST REFORMATORY BECAUSE LOCK HIS ASS UP NOW!

*****END OF SPOILER ALERT SECTION FOR A MAJOR S5 PLOT POINT******

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Ada isn’t having it but…she doesn’t do enough for me. If you think Black children born into white families where there is no other Black presence need to be protected now—imagine it then.

And that brings us to today, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man takes place in 1940.

Everyone is older, including all their children. We’re focused on Duke Shelby (also called Erasmus), the illegitimate firstborn of Tommy Shelby. I find it interesting because the Shelby Family is so messy that I didn’t think they would be in the business of labeling legitimacy but hey—that is their Caucasian business!

Anyway, he’s running The Peaky Blinders and it looks like his right-hand man is also Black:

I don’t know his role, I haven’t seen the film yet, but his name is Jay Lycurgo IRL, and whatever his rank is in The Peaky Blinders under Duke’s command feels like it is VV up there.

Ada Shelby (Sophie Rundle) has a gigantic presence in the film. Maybe we’ll see her daughter, maybe we’ll touch on her identity in a world of Naz*s, maybe we’ll see her fathers side of the family, maybe we’ll see Finn’s wife and if they had children, Duke and Isiah were close so maybe we’ll see what he’s up to, maybe this new charcter has a family as well? WHO KNOWS.

This film is so long-awaited by an audience that loves it DEEPLY, so I’d be shocked if we touch on any of those stories in a big way, but I’d also be not so shocked if they actually did. One can only hold onto my razor blade and hope.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man has a limited theatre release and came out earlier this weekend, but it will be streaming on Netflix for all to watch on March 20th.

If you don’t wanna binge everything, you can watch the essential episodes, but honestly…just do it for the whole Shelby shebang. You can also watch the official recap below!

I live in Chicago, and it is playing in a theatre near me, which means I’ll likely see it before it hits the flix, BUT if you’re waiting and wanting to do a little rewatch (or first watch), I GOT YOU!

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A Cinehunni binge guide to the Peaky Blinders series to prep you for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man!

Seasons 1 & 2

When to watch? March 9-12 (Monday-Thursday)

3 episodes a night, 4 days in a row. This is easy peasy Tommy Shelby squeezy. They both move pretty fast and give you the story that you need and background on every character.

Plus, Sunday was daylight savings time-we either lost or gained an hour, I don’t know, and i’m not going to look it up (I STILL DON’T FULLY UNDERSTAND THIS BUT IT’S LIGHT OUT LONGER AND EVERYONE IS HAPPY ABOUT IT) BUT each season is only 6 episodes at just under an hour each!

Things to pay attention to:

• how many Shelby’s there are

• literally anything Polly says

• every person that any Shelby sibling is interested in

• the Shelby house

• ADA FOOKIN’ SHELBY. PAY ATTENTION TO ADA SHELBY

Season 3

When to watch? March 14 (Saturday)

One season in one day

It’s about to be a lot, and maybe you don’t need that much violence and drama in your life during the work week. So, your Saturday has been planned.

I suggest watching a little something light as a palate cleanser, so you aren’t going to bed having watched one of the Shelbys murder someone because they looked at them weird (this is not a spoiler…it is just a fact). May I suggest an episode of Kimmy Schmidt, Fisk, The Residence, or Queen Charlotte perhaps?

Things to pay attention to:

• THE SHELBY HOUSE

• Tommy’s style

• Arthur Shelllllllbbyyyyy

• relationships between the siblings

• ANYTHING POLLY SAYS

Season 4

When to watch? March 15 (Sunday)

We’re picking up steam, binge it all today. Order yourself some breakfast in the morning and knock out 3 episodes. Then 3 episodes in the evening (paired with a McDouble, 10-piece nugget, large fry extra salt, and a Dr. Pepper extra ice) to wrap it up.

Things to pay attention to:

• Tommy

• scottish accents

• Ada and her outfits

• POLLY

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Season 5

When to watch? March 16-17 (Monday-Tuesday)

We’re splitting it into two days babes. Tell your roommate/partner/part-time makeout friend that the TV choice is yours in the evening. They can join, or you can give them headphones, a book, and a cookie to hang out with you on the couch while you watch.

Things to pay attention to:

• YOUR EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING

March 18

TAKE A BREAK BABES, YOU’RE ALMOST THERE!

Season 6

When to watch? March 19-20 (Thursday-Friday)

WE’RE BACK TO THE SPLIT!

3 episodes a day, however you see fit. Watch in the morning with breakfast, watch on company time if you work from home, watch on company time if you don’t work at home (if this results in your firing, I do not take responsibility, I have literally been looking for a job for like a year hunnybaby SO TREADETH THEE LIGHTLY)

THAT’S IT, YOU MADE IT!

Take a break and don’t go right into watching the movie—get some sleep and watch it on the 21st!

The trailer is below and you’ll likely find me on threads chatting about it soon and until then—NO FUCKING FIGHTING!

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Etc.

• Esme is my second favorite character in the Peaky Blinders universe

• raise your hand is the name Sondra Celli rings a bell

• i have only been attracted to Tom Hardy when he is playing a very large man with issues that cannot be solved with therapy or like…anything else really

• still telling you what to watch on IG so follow me there!

If you liked this post, you might like this one too!

‘KAYTHXBIIII!!

I LOVE REVENNNNNNGGGGGGGGEEEE (FILMS)!!!!!!

Especially when it’s served from Black girls and this morning I got such a lovely surprise because the trailer for the film IS GOD IS from the mind of Aleshea Harris was released and I am more excited then I ever was to see it.

Adapted from a play of the same name, IS GOD IS, is about two sisters (played by Mallori Johnson and Kara Young) who are sent on a mission from their estranged mother (Vivica FUCKING A. Fox) on her deathbed to kill their father.

Years ago, he set their mother on fire…IN FRONT OF THEM. Leaving all three of them physically and mentally scarred and then going on his merry ass way to move on with his life—and likely fuck up the lives of others.

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I care about this film so much and it is my film of the year already I am calling it.

Not only do i think movies are so back, BLACK FILMS ARE HERE. I refuse to say back because they never left, but many Black films are being made to talk directly to Black audiences and others just so happen to be listening (or ear hustling as my fiance would say) to the conversation.

Just as Sinners was Black to the core, IS GOD IS is as well.

The trailer—every second, every frame—is undeniably speaking directly to Black girls.

If for some reason you watch the entire trailer and think that’s false…1 minute and 3 seconds in….Ya Ya by Beyoncé starts to play.

WHAT DO YOU MEAAANNNNNNNNNNNN?

I love revenge films, especially when it’s women who get to enact it. Carrie, Kill Bill, Hard Candy, Sissy, and Death Proof are my favorite ones. There are a few things I run up against as a lover of revenge films though.

• They are mostly white women

• They are mostly seeking revenge because of sexual assault

• If it’s a Black person, they are mostly seeking revenge due to some historical trauma

So it’s hard to love those type of films but I do anyway.There is a right way to get revenge and IS GOD IS is going to prove that.

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I connect with these films because there are some parts of me that wants to get revenge of my own. Revenge that feels justified inside but scary when it comes to the top of my mind.

I have a history of hurt that lives in my bones. Hurt that no matter how hard I work to forgive it, forgive the people, make sense of it, and if not let it go at least move through it—will never go away.

So this film, where at LEAST three Black women are getting the revenge that they deserve, speaks to me. I hear it, I feel it, and I cannot wait to see it.

SO watch the trailer but also, get into my breakdown of it and Tessa Thompson if you’re reading this, get with me so I can do something for the folks in Chicago and Detroit for this film!

Out May 15th!!!

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Trailer Breakdown Thots and MY OPINNNIIOONNNSS!

*****************************************************************

Peep the photo hanging from the dash

So the girlies have been ride or die since birth, and of course we tend to extra bond with folks who were there during some parts of our trauma. But the sisters have completely different personalities, one is quiet and one is dangerous.

They love each other bad but when setting out to seek revenge—everybody MUST be on the same page or personalities are bound to clash. The photo has a sort of split down the middle so maybe it could mean the sisters—at some point—go their seperate ways.

Forever mama’s little girls

They are estranged from their mother but when it’s time to meet up with her, their style changes. It gets more innocent with the florals and the pigtails. No matter what they’ve been through, they still want to put on their best selves for her. Which could mean accepting her proposal of seeking revenge will be met with an enthusiastic “Yes mama!”

Queen Viv being MUTHA is gold. That’s All. And leave it to a Black woman to always stay fly.

Sister, Sister

Kara and Mallori kill these roles purely based on these stills. Their characters vibes pour out of them and you can tell the story of their sisterhood is a super close one. You can tell who took care of whom, you can understand why one may be more fragile, you can understand who may want to forgive and who will never let anyone forget.

Home Sweet Home

Religion is often woven into Black films, but usually in a way that is just doing the absolute most. I love that this film is going to hit on it in some way and THIS SHOT! THIS SHOT! It reminds me of my grandmas house in Southwest Detroit on Electric.

ROADDDDD TRIIPPP

This also qualifies as a road trip movie which I ALSO LOVE. It seems they have to do a little bit of traveling here and there to get to their father. Of course, revenge doesn’t come easy but I feel like they will not be letting a few miles keep them from getting what they want.

Papa can you hear me?

Here is my thing, I know we love to show Black men in film being great fathers, and really kind, and like whatever “a stand up guy” means….but also sometimes it’s great to show them like not being shit.

It’s so stressful as a Black person to always strive for some form of excellence—in real life and on-screen—we are always held to a different standard. So i know it sounds weird, but it feels nice to know that even for a fictional second, we can show that sometimes NIGGAS ARE NOT SHIT! also Sterling K. Brown PHHHHHEWWWW AN ACTOORRR!

and speaking of….

…who is these niggas?

I got a huge feeling their papa was a rolling stone. Niggas like “The Monster” tend to leave whole families behind to go start new ones where they actually show up in some way. I think these two are their fathers other children who he actually has been SOME SORT of a father to.

The girls ride around in an Oldsmobile…

It’s beat up, it will likely break down at some point in the film, but it’s theirs. The boys above have a brand new car, old school vibes, but immaculate and maybe given to them by the father they all share.

Perhaps the old car is their fathers too, the only thing they have left of his. Or perhaps it’s not at all and I’m reading too much into it and those boys are no kin to them and just some niggas they come across during the trip. BUT IT IS FUN TO READ INTO A TRAILER BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT I DEWWWW!!!

Stacked Cast & Incredible Writer/Director Alert

Let us PLEASE look at this cast and cry tears of gratitude

followed by screams of joy that the original creator of the play ALSO IS THE DIRECTOR OF THE FILMMMMM!!!!!

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Well class, that’s it. This film has just become my everything and I can’t wait until we all get to see it and discuss it as a class!

Happy watching, reading, and go to the site to keep up with all things IS GOD IS.

Etc.

• We have to talk about just how important the use of Ya Ya is! Beyoncé don’t just approve anybody to use her music so phew! SEAL OF APPROVAL!

• The day before this trailer drop (last night lol) I had just made a list of the films I was most excited for this year and IS GOD IS was on it. Just feels like kismet that the very next day all the key art and more came in.

• I’ve been doing lotsa posts on my IG about film so go follow me there!

• My mama looks like Maxine Shaw Ericka Alexander and has been told that her whole life.

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  ‘kaythxbiiii!

Charli XCX shared all of her realities of being a pop star. 13,000 likes.

Lena Dunham wrote about her body and her diagnosis. 1,447 likes.

Doeechi wrote about her showerhead being racist. 183 comments.

Tegan and Sara are writing about a whole lot…but most of it is behind a paywall. Pretty much every post has at least 100 likes.

Troye Sivan wrote about dealing with aging and feeling uggo. 2,500 likes.

For a while, Substack used to feel like this:

And in some kind of way, that’s what folks liked about it. Dropping “omigosh I follow this Substack that…” into conversations at parties or sharing posts to Instagram stories, with that not hella recognizable logo in the corner that made you curious enough to click.

It was this little, lowkey corner of the internet. Folks who were looking for writing of all kinds they weren’t getting enough of in major media, and the writers who weren’t getting opportunities to write it, or maybe they were, but not consistently.

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By the time I got to it a few years ago, it was out of the whole bootstrap startup phase. I mean, at one point Mr. Musky was trying to buy it, but it wasn’t up for grabs, but it still felt cozy.

And now everyone knows about it. There are so many pieces about Substack, what it is, and what’s more interesting to folks—who’s on it.

Celebrities of every alphabet list are popping up. I think a lot of them already had accounts, reading and subscribing, but didn’t want anyone to know. It’s like celebrities with secret Letterboxd profiles. I just KNOW Cillian Murphy has one, but WE’LL NEVER KNOWWWWWW.

NEWAY…people are having some thots and opinions about it.

Some are playful..

but a lot of folks are not having it.

I too have some feelings about it.

On one hand, these people are artists. Each in their own right. Writing their own lyrics, or in a phase of their career where they want to be taken seriously, and like okay, they deserve that.

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They’re also literally just humans. Imagine having your life just in the media and on social, with actual millions of strangers giving opinions, memifying it, and all you can do is sit there and take it. I get why Substack can feel like a little rebellious spot where they can speak for themselves and just BE themselves without approval from a PR team (who I still imagine looks like Angelica’s mom from Rugrats)

I know how freeing writing can be. It’s part of why I am a writer. I know what it feels like to release something onto the paper.

Writing it out. Seeing my feelings. Connecting them to something. Putting it on the page. Feels really good.

But like also—I’m not famous.

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Like some folks on here, I feel a bit of the “unfair” of it all. Media suckssssssss right now. If you’re not already connected to a publication in some way, getting a recurring byline is the fuck HARD if you want to go the standard media route.

Making a living as a writer was already hard—but there was another way. You could create a Substack, write here your way, and get paid for it. Folks who wanted to directly support a writer they “really knew,” someone outside a larger publication or media house with politics or agendas they didn’t align with, came here.

When I first started my Substack, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I used it as a place to write the things I couldn’t land elsewhere. I wrote the pieces here that made me continue to love writing everywhere else. At the time, I was working as the culture editor at Autostraddle and had bylines at other publications but Substack was my favorite little secret corner of the internet.

Then, about a year after I started my Substack, my role at Autostraddle ended. Some of the other places I wrote for started laying folks off or just shuttered. I needed to not only keep writing, but also make monies. And all the people who loved my work on Autostraddle became the start of my audience here, which was so dope.

These are regular people who give me $5 of their hard-earned money every month to support me. I make them laugh. I tell them what movies to watch so they can relax in their daily lives. I share my life through films they’ve already seen—or I just say insane things at 2 a.m. in Notes. And they support me.

I didn’t start seeing celebs on my Substack feed until a few months ago and EYE WAS SURPRISED. That leads me to this note.

I kind of agree. The word normies is wild to me lol and I’m not necessarily looking for an escape when I’m on Substack, but I agree with the general vibe.

The other side of how I feel is… perhaps they’ve “lost” the privilege of some parts of normalcy?

Because of your fame, you can’t just go to Trader Joe’s on a Tuesday with your headphones on, sipping the cold brew you just bought as you slowly go aisle by aisle… and maybe you like also can’t be on Substack without some scrutiny.

Celebrities on Substack is one thing. Celebrities with content behind a paywall is a wholeeeeee other conversation. Large publications on Substack? Another WHOLE ASS conversation. Like, I don’t understand why something like New York Magazine needs a Substack.

AND THEN there’s the argument that celebrities being on Substack isn’t the reason your posts don’t get engagement or subscriptions—and for the most part, that’s true. But you have to admit it does become way more difficult to get eyes on your work when celebrities, with less than three posts, show up on the bestseller or rising lists.

I also think people hesitate to say how they feel about it because they don’t want to seem bitter or like a hater. That sucks, because feeling bitter—or being a hater—is often fair.

Also, also I feel like many folks are afraid to share their feelings because it invites critique of their work that’s usually harsh for no reason, or completely unfounded… and usually from an account that only follows celebrities.

Anyway. That’s how I feel about it.

Extras:

• Speaking of publications, remember when Carrie made $4.50 a word at Vogue and then Candace Bushnell (SATC Creator) did that interview with The New Yorker basically confirming that in the 90s that’s what the going rate was? Carrie could write like 5 words and keep 5 Substacks going for like…ever.

I have written several times about Bridgerton. I fucking love this show. I had zero clue about the existence of the series before it premiered on Christmas Day 5 years ago.

I didn’t read the books (I’ve since only read the 1st one but own most of them), was not part of the fandom, and had no idea of any of the changes that Mama Shonda made when it went from book to series.

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I had my issues with it (the whole color blind casting threw me once I read up on it) but like many people who talk shit about something—EYE STILL LOVED IT!

I am dedicated to this family and the only other caucasian family I care more about are The Featheringtons which…WHERE ARE THEY THIS SEASON?!

Anyway, the latest season trailer dropped this week, and in case you’re new to all things Bridgey, each season focuses on a different child from the elite family. This season we are zooming in on bisexual baddie and artisté, Benedict Bridgerton, the 2nd of the 8 Bridgerton children.

He’s a sweet little man who loves to be creative and apparently likes to dip his paint stick in lots of people’s pots around town. Which is like, fine! But his mom is like “get married” and he’s like “omg maybe but like leave me alone about it or whatever”

There’s a party and it looks like there….he meets the masked love of his life who we find out is Sophie (Yerin Ha). She is a new face (lol) in the world of Bridgerton and other than knowing that she works as a maid for Lady Gun (Katie Leung) and her daughters Rosamund (Michelle Mao) and Posy (Isabella Wei), we don’t know anything else.

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It looks like this season is following a Cinderella plot of sorts, so maybe Sophie is the daughter of one of Lady Gun’s two dead ex-husbands? I don’t know, and to be super honest…I’m not fully invested in their story.

Maybe it’s because it’s the 4th season, so the show has built up so many storylines that I have other fun ones to focus on? I don’t know, but the only Cinderella stories I’ve cared about star Brandy Norwood or Drew Barrymore, so…we’ll see shall we?

So, just as I have done in the past, let’s go ahead and get into my thoughts on Season 4 based on the trailer!

Chat soon gentle readers!!

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BITCH—WHERE ARE MY THE FEATHERINGTONS?!

Where are my well-dressed and horrible queens?! I didn’t see a lick of true color in that trailer? I know we sort of wrapped it up with their BIGGER storylines last season, but they all had kids, and we need to know what is going on with every single one of them, not just Penelope. I just have a feeling that Mama Featherington will return to the Ton still happily single and wearing bright purple while being debt-free.

Also, today I learned that none of them are redheads IRL! I knew Nicola wasn’t, but I was SHOCKED at the rest of them!

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The Mondrichs are trying not to lose recipes

Baby Mondrich got a surprise title last season, and now he and his family, including his parents Will & Alice are now part of The Ton. Last season, they were navigating how to keep elements of their old life (independence, romance in their relationship, kind and sweet children) while adjusting to the new shit their new status brings (financial stability, better opportunities for their children, the ability to REST). They don’t want the title and money to change their kids or their family.

I love this because I think it’s something many in this generation (millennials and beyond) of Black families are navigating too. Like, we are allowing and advocating for our (future) children to choose paths in life that THEY want, bringing up children with empathy, wanting them to be who they are, and it’s new to how many of us were raised. The Mondrichs want to bring in elements of their old lives to their sudden new one and are truly trying to figure out how and phew!

P.S I thought it was hilarious last season when they basically got told because they are now rich and titled that they can’t sleep in the same bed or bedroom, and they were like…LOL WHAT?

Whose gotdamn white baby is that?

The answer is NO ONE’S! Every Bridgerton so far has married someone who isn’t white, except for Colin…

…but HE MARRIED A PERFECT REDHEAD WHO IS SMART AND HOT AND WITTY SO THAT’S FINE. They are pulling an early aughts Kardashian (Colin is Kourtney, duh), and it’s kinda wild and I also kinda love it, but also like do I? and also whatever? And also, let’s just see what happens?

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Will we see Benedict bisexualing?

Season 3 was the first time it was made explicitly queer clear that Benedict was not straight. He dove into Lady Tilly’s fanny and touched butts with Paul and they also did a lil mini Eyes Wide Shut action, or Challengers if you’re under 30 and don’t get that reference…but also I’ve never seen Challengers...threesome. They had a threesome.

I personally called it in Season One, anytime someone says a character digs a “bohemian” lifestyle (and also hangs around closeted queens who throw fabulous parties) I know it’s code for queer…I’VE SEEN RENT, I KNOW THE LINGO. I talked about the lazy queer-coded takes on Eloise at one point but I didn’t fully buy into it—EYE DID BUY INTO HER BROTHER THOOOOOOO AND EYE WASSSS RRRIITTEEE!

I’m wondering if in this season there will be any queerness in his storyline. Eloise and Penelope basically call him a fuckboy

So maybe before he starts chasing after Cinderhottie Sophie, he’s like hooking up with one of the ton boys? or maybe he has to choose between Sophie and someone he fell in love with too? I don’t know!

FRANCESA IS IN A LAVENDER MARRIAGE?!

She has always been the sibling who is not fully interested in being a Bridgerton and is most likely to do whatever she needs to live life on her own terms as much as any Regency-era girl could. So if that meant getting married to a guy who is also hella private, rarely home, is fun and nice to be around, lets her do her own thing (like…read), and isn’t truly pressed about going to parties during the season? OKAY COOL.

She wasn’t fucking with anyone on the market last year and married John Stirling in a quiet ceremony and then was getting ready to move to SCOTLAND (lol she said GET ME OUUTTA HERE NOW!). She meets Michaela Stirling (Masali Baduza) at her brother Colin’s wedding reception.

Michaela is the cousin of her husband, John, AND FRANCESA GOT BUTTERFLIES WHEN SHE SAW HER.

Now, let me tell you right now. If Netflix throws this storyline out, makes it fully unqueer, or anything of the sort I’M SUING AND WINNING. You don’t get to play stringy romantic music, have her fumble over her words, have them both stare into each other’s souls, AND THEN NOT BUILD ON IT THE NEXT SEASON.

PLUS I know they veer from the books ::cough cough:: the sheer amount of niggas in the show, with or without storylines ::cough cough:: but they also keep some things the same. In the books, Francesa falls in love with John’s cousin MICHAEL. So I’m just saying…

P.S Lavender marriages can be full of love, and I think she adores him, BUT i think she also wants to kiss his cousin lol

ALSO, I called Francesa being queer before season 3 premiered and I just KNOW season 4 will confirm it for me!

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MAMA BRIDGERTON IS BACK ON THE MARRRRKEETTT

I’ll never forget that scene in Queen Charlotte where she is talking to Lady Danbury about how wildly horny she is because she hasn’t had sex since her husband passed. They apparently had a great sex life (EIGHT KIDS SOOOOO) and her garden was WELL tended to and now, out of nowhere, her drive is back.

Masturbation was a thing of course, but many high-class women/girls barely knew about sex, let alone masturbation—this was found in a CONVENT during the era, also, go watch Behind Convent Walls.

Remember when Daphne had her lesson on both in Season 1, and when The Queen had to have it spelled out for her by a young Lady Danbury in Queen Charlotte?

@netflixin which we were all lady danbury #queencharlotte

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1When they were aware of sex, single/widowed women who wanted to have NSA relationships couldn’t without risking their reputation or the reputation of their family, and Dowager Viscountess Bridgerton falls under that. She still has daughters to marry off and has to keep up their family status in order to make sure they attract high quality men great suitors.

Her only true route is to remarry. She met Lord Marcus Anderson (LADY DANBURY’S BROTHER LOL) last season, and they lowkey it off, and I’m here for it. She’s only 49 in the show, so why shouldn’t she get another shot at love and a little bit of lust? Plus her falling in love with Lady Danbury’s brother is only fair because Lady D had an affair with her dad so—EVEN STEVENS!

The besties are back

The girlies are friends agaaaaiiiinnn. Eloise has presumably fully forgiven and healed from Penelope lying to her about being Lady Whistledown and they are sisters! I love how cuddled up they are (I think Penelope is pregnant again?) and I do wanna know who gave Eloise this haircut (they must pay) and who she is looking at like this.

You would do it too for a check

How is it going to work now that everyone knows who Lady Whistledown is? Like, don’t we all know it’s her? She literally told everyone. So is she just going to like, start signing all her papers, xoxo Penelope Bridgerton? In the trailer, you still hear Mary Poppins Julie Andrews’ voice, and you can see people still reading Whistledown, and like, we love a small publishing house but is she just gonna keep it going? is The Ton going to pretend they don’t know it’s her so they can still get their gossip? Whatever, I love it, gotta keep those Bridgerton coffers full!

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That’s all I got! Season 1, Part 1 premieres January 29th and I wanna know everything you’re thinking!!!

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Extras

• Y’all be the fuck SLEUTHING ‘cos this catch was crazzzzyyyy

• Do we think Tia feels seen watching Bridgerton?

  

If you liked this piece you should pop over to this one:

Thank you so much for reading The Cinehunni Diaries! If you like what you read share, comment, subscribe, and consider becoming a paid subscriber <3

I’ve been having a very bisexual few weeks.

Not me personally, but I am being haunted surrounded by them in a lot of my free time.

I started reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo for the first time (EYE HAVE SOME THOUGHTS ON WHOMST SHOULD PLAY MONIQUE), Mae Whitman (Miss Bi-Furious herself) popped up in a episode of Desperate Housewives my fiance was watching, and most importantly, I watched Tessa Thompson cause complete and utter bisexual mommi-issue madness at a 1950s party gone WILDLY FUCKING wrong in Hedda.

Before we get into it, let’s address the queer poly couple who actually hate their lives elephant in the room—queer period pieces and I DEW NOT GET ALONG:

• I famously hate 2015’s Carol (IT’S FUCKING OVERRATED)

• 2023’s Eileen was very much not dykey even though it was marketed as such

• 2021’s The United States vs Billie Holiday kept the queer kiss in the trailer but removed it from the movie

• 2019’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire was fucking long and BORING

• 2020’s Ammonite was also fucking tedious

The very few exceptions are The Favourite (Yorgos and I were friends during this time) and the fucking amazing, incredible, absolute, no fucking notes perfection that is The Handmaiden.

Unlike many a dyke—I do not care for yearning in queer films. Respectfully—get that shit the absolute fuck outta here. The queer cinema canon is far too full of it. I don’t need two hours of longing glances and moody ass music. There is a very specific sweet spot in dyke cinema between hand-holding and full-on fisting, and it’s rarely hit.

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I’m begging us to find it more often, because when we do—like I feel Hedda does—you’re left with a film that leaves you a little bit ruined in the best way. For me, being ruined by a film can just mean I’m carrying it with me for a while after watching. Coming back to it again and again, trying to figure out my connection to it a little more each time. It’s a kind of masochistic relationship I have with certain films, where I’m uncomfortable but also obsessed and confused about why I want to experience it all over again. Hedda is now added to that list.

Written and directed by Nia DaCosta, it’s about a woman who is bored, broke, and determined to have the absolute best things in life. She’s the type of woman they called mad because she’s free, or at least she was free before she was tamed by the medicine that is a Mad Men era marriage. She married for access, not love—but she has been craving both since birth.

In this massive reimagining of the 1891 Norwegian play Hedda Gabler, our Hedda, dearest reader (ugh I miss Bridgerton) is Black and queer.

She was born out of wedlock to a white general and when he died, she was left with nothing but a promise of proximity to his world of castles, riches, and all things luxury. Similar to Farleigh in Saltburn (played by the incredible Archie Madekwe) she’s just close enough to matter but not ever fully invited in.

We only see one night in Hedda’s world (MOVIES THAT TAKE PLACE IN ONE DAY IS MY GENRE AND I KNOW WE ALL KNOW THAT) and babes it’s a mad, mad, world.

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Hedda is a master manipulator (also known as a Libra) she will get what she wants by any means necessary. She’s also incredibly messy. The party she is throwing is meant to be one to impress her husband’s work friends and boss to get him a new job.

So, she invites some of her “free-spirited” friends to round out the guest list and ensure she isn’t entirely bored. And guess who else she invites—HER FUCKING EX-GIRLFRIEND EILEEN (Nina Hoss) THAT SHE ABSOLUTELY IS NOT OVER, WHO IS ALSO COMPETING FOR THE SAME JOB AS HER HUSBAND.

During the 107-minute runtime, we learn that Hedda is cruel and selfish, and I don’t know if I can blame her for any of that. She is, when you get down to it, a woman in (some sort of) love. And as the saying goes, love can make you do crazy things…like attempt to ruin several lives at a perfectly good cocktail party.

She isn’t just manipulative, calculated, and again, cruel…she’s a brat. She manages to be both broke and yet entitled (layered legend) and not just when it comes to money or anything tangible.

Her entitlement extends to people and their devotion to her. Eileen has (seemingly?) moved on from Hedda and their love story. She’s changed or maybe evolved with the help of a new love, Thea (Imogen Poots), who just so happens to be an old schoolmate of Hedda’s. To Hedda, that’s a insult and she is about to VERY MUCH show everybody how it is.

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“How dare Eileen move on from me? How dare she grow? How dare she be happy without me????” The whole film is one long tantrum that goes too far, and it’s GREAT. Hedda is both pathetic and powerful, and the moment I realized that is when I became hella intrigued by her.

How many times have you wanted to be your purest, pettiest self when someone’s done you wrong? but something in you, something GOOD in you, stops you from actually going through with it. Not Hedda. She does it. That’s not the scariest part though. What’s terrifying is how quickly and effortlessly she does it all. Watching her is wild because some part of you knows just how close you could have come to this kind of chaotic behavior if you’d just let yourself. It’s probably cathartic…until it’s not.

DaCosta’s version doesn’t feel like just some modern, diversity-riddled update, and that’s hard to pull off, especially with major changes to Hedda’s identities. Our 2025 Hedda is Black and Queer, but DaCosta trusts her audience (which I wish directors would do more) and knows many of us are coming in more curious about how those changes to the character play out versus constantly needing them acknowledged in the film.

Tessa’s performance? Beautiful. Vain. A little dangerous. Fantastic.

I dug the queer twist in this one because it’s fueled by anger and passion—NOT YEARNING. The chemistry between Hedda and Eileen is there, and the subtlety it has to have because of the time is a big part of what makes it sexy.

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Hedda hits two things that are ever-present in dyke films, age gap and interracial love. While I dug this film, I am still going to scream that I just want more Black queer love stories where both partners are Black or AT LEAST with another POC…I'M BEGGING YOU PLEASE LET ME HAVE IT!!!

All in all, adding Hedda to the queer canon is a yes from me. Thompson even managed to make me a little less annoyed by bisexuals, but let us not get carried away…I said a LITTLE less.

Heading is streaming now on Prime Video!

If you liked this review, you might dig this one too:

Okthanksforreadingbiiiiiiiii!!!!!

I am so over the POC girl + two white (or white-passing/racially ambiguous and suitable for a white palette) boys triangle.

Why do the YA shows that center young Black love—or love stories with other POC—not get the same hype, longevity, or cult-fan status? Forever on Netflix comes to mind:

I only hear it talked about in certain circles on social media and in real life—but The Summer I Turned Pretty? It’s q-white literally everywhere.

Is it a lack of marketing? Is it budget? A lack of imagination? Lack of care to push these stories hella forward? Probably all of the above.

I (non-seriously but also kinda for real) blame a lot of this on Episode 1, Season 4 of Broad City where Ilana says:

But before we get there, let’s talk about why I’m even here: this is the summer I am officially exhausted with this bizarre obsession over the POC girl chasing after white boy(s)—THEY ARE MULTIPLYING NOW AND SOMEONE MUST PULL THE PLUG.

Like… please. I’m done.

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Falling in love with someone who happens to be white? Cool. Great. Wish you the best. But turning that dynamic into a template for pop culture over and over again? That’s a whole other thing. This isn’t new, and it’s not just YA, but right now these shows (and the women writing them) are my focus.

It feels like a pop culture DEI initiative that has since gone way too far. We ask/demand to be represented in far reaching pop culture and they say “Yeah girl for sure!—but like, only if whiteness remains the prize”…and that’s not progress.

Sometimes though—the call be coming from inside the house and it be your own people.

Let’s start with Mindy Kaling. I used to be a fan back in the day, like a HUGE one, but somewhere along the way it just got… weird. She is also guilty of the brown girl, white boy love triangle (looking at you, The Mindy Project) and I guess at first I overlooked it.

I get that in season one of a show you might have to appease white execs to ensure you get another season. Fine. I kinda get playing the game to get into the room. But once you’ve got a hit, you have more than a seat at the table… you can do what you want.

AND YET, EVEN AFTER SO MUCH FUCKING SUCCESS WHERE SHE NO LONGER NEEDS TO PROVE ANYTHING, THE LOVE INTERESTS OF HER BROWN CHARACTERS REMAIN WHITE (or white passing).

In almost everything she has created—The Mindy Project, Never Have I Ever, Sex Lives of College Girls—and even in stuff she’s produced (Late Night, Velma, A Nice Indian Boy), the main love interests are still white.

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It feels like aligning herself so closely with whiteness has been her go-to forever. If we go back to her unaired pilot from 2006 (written with Brenda Withers), Mindy and Brenda, the love interest of Mindy was white. and even FURTHER back in 2001, while at Dartmouth, she wrote (with Brenda Withers) a play based on Matt Damon and Ben Affleck—two of the caucasianist men—called Matt and Ben….wottice going on here babes?

And it’s not just that the love interests are white—it’s the chase. These brown characters are always running after the white boy, only to get ignored, rejected, or—after enough humiliation—“rewarded” with an “omigosh wait, I do like her!” moment.

Like… help.

There’s something so wildly insidious about constantly positioning Black girls and other girls of color as the pursuers, while the white boys get to sit back and be convinced. It’s not romance—it’s begging for crumbs (or the bare minimum) and saying it’s a love story. ANNNNDDDD when this dynamic gets repeated over and over across YA, it doesn’t just stay on TV it starts shaping what we feel about who gets to be desired WITHOUT FUCKING QUESTION and who has to prove they’re WORTHY of desire at all.

I’ve said it OVER AND OVER AGAIN that pop culture bleeds into our real lives, whether you realize it or not. Why do you think so many people are looking for a Prince Charming?

Earlier, I talked about understanding the need to appease white folks just to get in the door. It’s not an ideal I subscribe to, but I won’t lie and say I don’t get it OR that I haven’t done it in the past. Which brings me to Jenny Han—the woman behind the show no one will stop talking about, The Summer I Turned Pretty.

In it, an Asian girl (Belly Conklin) is stuck in a love triangle with two white brothers, both of whom are the definition of mid men with mommy and daddy issues.

The show is based on books written by Han. But in the books, Belly is also white. Han made Belly Asian in the show once she had the power to do it—because back when she first started writing, every time she tried to give a story an Asian lead she got rejected. But making Belly Asian wasn’t some big flip of the script. She basically just dropped an Asian girl into the same overused blueprint—non-white girl chasing the same boring white boy(s).

If she really wanted to do something big, maybe Belly (who is half-white mind you), her brother, or even her mother for fucks sake could’ve had a meaningful Asian love interest. Instead, she gave a heavy lean into Taylor Swift and the very white fanbase that comes with her.

Jenny Han also made the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, another show where an Asian girl is in love with/has a crush on a bunch of white boys (and also one that is mixed race but giving palatable), AND the internet told me that she wrote another series, the Burn For Burn trilogy, where one of the leads is Asian and has—you guessed it—multiple white love interests.

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Also on the Jenny Han train is XO, Kitty, the spin-off of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. In that series, the Asian lead actually has multiple Asian love interests—but it also happens to be the show in the universe that folks dislike the most.

Black creators aren’t free from this trope either—Enter Shonda Rhimes. In Scandal, Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope is stuck in a white boy love triangle. In Private Practice, Naomi (Audra Mc-fuckin’-Donald) has four love interests—three of them white. And of course, Yang on Grey’s Anatomy, while famously in love with Burke, also had relationships with two white boys.

In How To Get Away With Murder (PRODUCED by Shonda, NOT created by) we’re first introduced to Annalise and her white husband, Sam. Then there’s my beloved Bridgerton—which I DO NOT have time to get into (but had the time to get into it here for Vogue)—and Queen Charlotte, which leans all the way into the real-life Black girl/white boy love interest of it all.

So is all this as deep as internalized racism? Is it as heavy as straight-up fetishizing? Or is it really just not that serious and these creators just don’t see anything wrong with constantly placing their Black, Brown, and other POC lead girls into romantic storylines with white boys/men? Or am I projecting because I hated not seeing myself reflected in love stories unless the girl was chasing someone white? Or am I not projecting and it’s a very real thing that media has been showing us for decades how unworthy Black women are of love or how hard it is to love them or how easily replaceable they are?

MAYBE IT’S ALL OF THE ABOVE! MAYBE IT’S NONE OF THE ABOVE!

Sometimes, I get afraid to write and share opinions like this because when I’ve often seen it done and the backlash is usually something along the lines of “Black women complain about everything…it’s not that deep”

It’s kinda like…why does it have to be all of that? or why can’t my complaining ALSO be valid?

This is one of my most popular reviews on Letterboxd about the movie Plan B—so seems like I’m not the only one who feels this way about this topic.

EYE DONUT KNOW… but like I always say—WHO AMETH EYE TO ASK SUCH QUESTIONS!?

Anyway, enjoy your shows and not thinking about this stuff as deeply as I dooooooo!!!

Extras:

• YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE I’M TIRED OF SEEING THAT I ALWAYS SEE IN FILM AND TV? BLACK or BROWN GIRL/WHITE PARTNER IN QUEER MOVIES! Like, I am BEGGING you to please stop this pairing and shake the tabbbbbblllleee!!!

• Also on that note—I know everyone knows I cannot STAND the dykey beloved films Carol and Portrait of A Lady on Fire—but I also did not like The Watermelon Woman (SURPRISE!)

• ALSO, WHILE WE’RE HERE, LET’S WRAP UP YEARNING ACROSS THE BOARD. STOP IT STOP IT STOPPPPPP ITTTTTTT!!!!

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Heads up—this piece and film mention sexual assault—skip it if you need!

I’d had a fucking sucky few weeks before I went to see Sorry, Baby on a Monday night a few weeks ago. I had no clue about this movie (besides wanting to see it during Sundance this year, but I couldn’t because of surgery). I immediately said yes to the screening when I got invited and told my bestie to meet me there.

In Sorry, Baby, we meet Agnes, played by Eva Victor, who wrote and directed the film. Agnes is odd—but not in the annoying manic pixie dream girl type of way. She’s just… kinda weird lol. She’s deadpan, quick, and high-key hilarious. She uses paper torn from books as a makeshift curtain, eats peas (does anyone eat peas outside of shepherd’s pie?) and she is also kind of a genius. Her bestie, Lydie (THEE Naomi Ackie), is the frick to her frack.

They were in school together, roommates and besties, and understand each other on a level that no one else could. Their bond is specific and intimate in that way where they have seen each other in multiple molding stages of their lives. It’s deep, it's layered, it's connected, and most importantly..it works.

Their friendship—well, parts of it—reminds me of the one I have with the person I went to see the film with, my bestie and former (and only) roommate. There’s a scene at the top of the film where the two of them are on a couch, covered in blankets with snacks within reach, just talking, laughing, catching up. It immediately reminded me of all the times we curled up on our own couch, drinking ciders, eating candy, and watching Pitch Perfect or The Dark Knight for the 50th time. Those kinds of moments that may not really feel important when they’re happening, but end up meaning a lot later.

I don’t have a ton of friends, but the few I do have, I love. Specifically, two come to mind—one who lives in another state with his husband, and the other is the one who went to the film with me. I’ve been friends with both of them for over a decade. We all met while working the overnight shift at The Gap, folding jeans and pretending not to be dead tired at 5 am. Those late nights and shared retail trauma were part of what bonded us in a way that stuck. And even though life has put us in different places and situations, it’s still solid.

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Watching Sorry, Baby made me think about those kinds of friendships—the ones that stay, even when everything around you changes, or gets messy. Like in the case of Agnes when, as the logline says “something bad happened to Agnes.”

The film unfolds in chapters, and in the first one—The Year With The Bad Thing—we learn that Agnes is an incredibly talented writer, and that her professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), is the reason for the bad thing. The rest of the film is the fallout and the recovery.

We don’t find out exactly what happened until Agnes spells it out later. But the scene itself is perfectly shot and directed in a way that trusts the viewer. You’re meant to watch, and bring your own mind and your own experiences to it, to fill in the blanks.

We see her walk into the house in daylight. Time passes. The lighting drops fast and eerily, taking us from a dark comedy vibe to a horror movie one for just a few minutes. Then she leaves in a weird, slow hurry—boots in her hand, chaotically half-putting them on as she sits on his steps, then rushing down them and speed-walking out of the frame.

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That scene in Sorry, Baby reminded me of something I’ve said many times: films that use rape just to drive the plot fucking bore me. Films that make it the entire plot—even the revenge ones (Promising Young Woman, I’m looking directly at you, bitch)—also bore me. And this might sound weird, but films about rape are rarely done right. I don’t even know exactly what I am looking for when it comes to stories like that, but I definitely know what the fuck I’m not looking for.

There have been exactly two films about this topic that I’d recommend to people: American Mary and Sorry, Baby. That’s it. Not many get it right, but these two—in wildly different ways—absolutely fucking do. They dig without cheapening the experience or turning it into something it’s not.

What Sorry, Baby gets extra right is that it shows the impact of rape on a person’s life without making it their entire identity. It shows how it bleeds into everything else while you’re just trying to keep life going. Agnes isn’t hella flattened or reduced to the “bad thing.” She’s still witty, still weird, still her—just also figuring out how this bad thing has and may shape different areas of her life. Basically, the thing happened, but it doesn’t swallow her whole.

What makes it hit even harder is how it never loses the friendship angle. The only person Agnes has told about the bad thing is Lydie. And Lydie handles it perfectly—because she knows Agnes. It’s a moment that solidifies that this film isn’t just about the bad thing; it’s a love letter to friendship. The truly knowing kind. The kind that reminded me of my own.

Eva is that blend of hella dope writer, director, and actress. I love a triple threat that actually deserves the moniker. We all know my favorite triple threat—Desiree Akhavan—and I thought a lot about Desiree while watching Sorry, Baby—I WANT TO GO TO DINNER WITH BOTH OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME AND JUST FUCKING KICK IT WHILE EATING PIZZA.

Sorry, Baby is their feature directorial debut and it’s just so fucking good. It’s that perfect mix of confident directing and strong writing that makes the film stick with you long after you’ve logged it on Letterboxd.

This movie is for people who often think about the moments that built the friendships they have today.

It’s for the girl who was always up for chilling with me on the couch until 4am and constant presses of the pause button, and for the boy who laughed with me on the corners and trains of a city new to both of us, with nothing but negative dollars in our pockets.

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The movie goes beyond being well-written and expertly acted, beyond being beautifully shot with aesthetics that belong on one of those IG film pages with a carousel of stills, and beyond being so perfectly directed that—even with a subject I unfortunately know all too well—I find myself wanting to watch it over and over again.

It’s a lesson in how to take a disturbing, often truly fucked-up subject and keep it human, honest, and connected. It’s so uncomfortably relatable that it’s insane.

Anyway, 10/10 go see it. IDK how films get into the Criterion Collection but SLAP THE GOTDAMN STICKER ON THIS ONE BITCH.

It’s out in selected theatres!

Extras:

• If your professor is texting you, it’s already crossed a line. Like BITCH talk to me during office hours only.

• I have NEVER SEEN SOMETHING SO ACCURATE as the scene at the doctor’s.

• This film features ANOTHER Interracial queer couple. I am begging you to please put two Black queers in a relationship on screen. Like, yes, we all love Fight, and they have a history of fictional relationships with Black women but still. BEGGING PLEADING DEMANDING PLETHE.

• Hey, remember that time that Desiree Akhavan responded to my tweet back when Twitter was Twitter and still fun? I DEW BITCH AND I THINK ABOUT IT OFTEN.

  

Thank you so much for reading Hi Shelli!

As always if you like what you read I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber <3

We know that just because a show or a new season drops, that doesn’t mean you had the time to watch it. So we waited at least a week to drop pieces that have got a light to heavy spoiler flow. So that being said…spoilers ahead!

Joe Goldberg is many things: a book lover, an obsessive romantic, a self-proclaimed protector of love... oh, and a prolific serial killer with a knack for narrating his crimes like he's writing a heartfelt diary entry. But before he was hiding bodies in basements or falling in love every five seconds, Joe was just a little boy who wanted his mom to love him back.

Really love him.

Unconditionally.

And if you’ve watched YOU from Season 1 through to now, you know that Joe’s “mommy issues” aren’t just a footnote in his villain origin story. They’re the blueprint.

Joe’s childhood was a cocktail of abandonment, violence, and neglect, shaken (not stirred) with a twist of warped affection. His mother, Sandy Goldberg, was inconsistent at best, emotionally unavailable at worst, and always just out of reach. One minute she was promising to keep him safe, the next she was handing him over to the state (after he had killed his abusive dad for her, mind you).

Joe’s earliest memories of love came with conditions, unpredictability, and loss, all of which eventually become the toxic framework he carries into every relationship he has.

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Joe doesn’t just fall in love with women. He tries to fix them. He tries to be their everything because that’s the love he always wanted and never got with his mom. He micromanages, manipulates, and yes—murders—under the guise of protection. In Joe’s (albeit twisted) mind, if he just does enough, if he is enough, people won’t leave him the way his mom did.

Sandy haunts Joe like a ghost with red lipstick and a cigarette. Whether he’s projecting her onto Beck, or measuring Love’s maternal instincts against hers, Joe’s entire worldview is tinted and tainted by the way he was (and wasn’t) mothered. He idealizes women, then punishes them when they inevitably disappoint him.

He builds them pedestals and then panics when they wobble.

And let’s not forget Joe’s dad era in Season 3, where he becomes the very thing he swore he’d never be: a parent who damages his child.

His fear of repeating his mother’s mistakes is palpable, but so is his inability to break the cycle. It’s heartbreaking to watch. The trauma and unresolved mommy issues run too deep, and Joe seems almost incapable of making healthy choices that don’t involve murder.

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As we've watched across five seasons, each woman in Joe's life becomes a distorted mirror of his mother. Beck represented the unattainable love he craved: intelligent, beautiful, and slightly damaged enough for Joe to "fix." Love offered the ultimate maternal fantasy: someone who not only accepted his darkness but matched it with her own. Marienne represented his chance at redemption, only for Joe to revert to his patterns when threatened. Even Kate Lockwood—powerful, protective, and ultimately disillusioned—becomes the enabler his mother never was before she too sees through his facade.

Season 5's Bronte is perhaps the most telling reflection; a writer who shares his love of books, making her the perfect vessel for his projections. But with each episode, it becomes obvious that this final season is less about Joe finding new victims and more about the women in his orbit finally seeing him for what he truly is: a "pathetic misogynist" who has mastered the art of self-victimization.

In the final season, we see Joe's approach to "love" for what it truly is. Not protection but possession. Not care but control. Three years into his picture-perfect life with Kate, Joe has embraced his killer instinct without the pretense of necessity. The smothering love he learned from his relationship with his mom has evolved into something sinister—a man who believes his violent tendencies are good rather than necessary evils.

What's fascinating about the final season is how it brings Joe's maternal wound full circle. Kate initially serves as a maternal figure of sorts, protecting him, scrubbing his past clean, and creating a safe haven for him. But when she begins to pull away from his increasingly unhinged behavior, Joe's abandonment wounds reopen. And instead of going to therapy (I’m literally begging at this point), he responds by becoming even more controlling, more desperate, more dangerous—destroying the very relationships he claims to cherish.

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the final season is seeing the collective consciousness of the women in Joe's orbit reawakened. From Nadia in prison to Kate's growing disillusionment, the women who have been manipulated, gaslighted, and traumatized by Joe finally emerge out of their fog and start to recognize the patterns of his manipulation, they see through his self-victimization, and they begin to take back their narratives.

The boy who was abandoned by his mother ultimately meets his downfall at the hands of all the women he tried to mold into her replacement.

And trust and believe, this isn't just character development; it's the show coming full circle. Joe, who has spent his entire life running from the truth of his childhood, must finally face the reality of what he's become.

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Penn Badgley's (you will always be famous!!) astute portrayal of Joe in this final season is the proverbial nail in the coffin in the deconstruction of the fantasy Joe built around himself. The mask slips, revealing not a romantic hero but an absolutely broken and damaged man whose childhood wounds have festered into something monstrous.

Joe's journey was never really about finding love. it was about running from himself. Joe Goldberg was never the hero of his story. He was always the villain, shaped by a mother who couldn't love him or protect him the way he needed, but perpetuated by his own refusal to heal.

In the end, the show poses a powerful question about our society's fascination with men like Joe. Bronte delivers one of the most powerful lines of the entire series (IMO) in the finale: "The fantasy of a man like you is how we cope with the reality of a man like you."

Well, damn.

That reality carries the full weight of the underbelly of this show and Joe’s twisted sense of self and morality. It's a mirror held up not just to Joe, but to all of us who have been captivated by his toxic charm for five seasons.

What started with a mother's abandonment ends with a collective awakening—Joe's, yes, but also our own. The cycle of mothering, smothering, and destruction finally breaks, not with redemption, but with the harsh light of truth.

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If You Liked This Edition of Hi Shelli……

Thank you so much for reading Hi Shelli!

As always, all reviews are in front of the paywall and if you like what you read I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber it helps me pay guest writers like Gloria for their words so that I can share them with you.

As Netflix's YOU prepares to deliver its final chapter of Joe Goldberg's twisted journey, let's take a stroll down memory lane through the graveyard (see what I did there?) of Joe's relationships.

Our favorite literary murderer has left quite a trail of broken hearts (and more than his fair share of broken bodies) in his wake. So get in babes, we're ranking all of Joe's significant love interests, from least to most compatible!

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8. KAREN MINTY (Season 1)

Sigh. My girl Karen never stood a chance. The ultimate rebound relationship after Beck. Karen's only real crime was being normal, stable, and genuinely nice (with a gorgeous fro to match). But in Joe's world, that translates to "boring." I mean, the man compared her to oatmeal.

God forbid a woman be sane, Joe! Karen's biggest flaw was that she simply wasn't damaged enough for Joe's savior complex to kick in. She deserved better than being Joe's ‘Beck’ placeholder, but at least she escaped with her life. Consider yourself lucky, Karen.

Compatibility Score: 2/10 – Too wholesome for Joe's darkness.

7. NATALIE ENGLER (Season 3)

Our suburban femme fatale barely had time to develop before Love Quinn took her out of the picture. As Joe's neighbor in Madre Linda, Natalie represented everything he thought he wanted: mystery, sophistication, and an escape from his suffocating marriage. Their chemistry was undeniable, but we'll never know if their connection could have developed into something real or if Joe was—yet again—projecting his fantasies onto yet another unsuspecting woman.

Either way, their relationship was quite literally dead on arrival. Sorry, girl.

Compatibility Score: 3/10 – Not enough screen time to truly assess, but the forbidden fruit factor was high on this one.

6. BECK (GUINEVERE BECK) (Season 1)

Ahh, the relationship that started it all for us. Beck was Joe's perfect storm: literary, beautiful, vulnerable, and juuuust damaged enough to need saving. One thing about Joe? He loves him a project. Their romance had genuine moments of sweetness… if you don’t count the stalking and eventual carnage. Alas, Beck's fatal flaw wasn't her mediocre writing (sorry!) or her toxic friendships—it was her normalcy.

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She wasn't the fantasy Joe built up in his head—starting to see a pattern here, Joe… #noticing…

…just a flawed human trying to figure out her life. Once the pedestal crumbled, so did any chance of survival.

Their relationship was doomed from the first "Hello, you."

Compatibility Score: 4/10 – The chemistry was real, but so was the mismatch of expectations.

5. DELILAH ALVES (Season 2)

Potential hot take? But Delilah and Joe had what might have been his most honest connection. As his landlord in LA, she saw through his nice-guy façade from the start, and their eventual friendship had an authenticity rarely seen in Joe's relationships.

Their brief romantic encounter felt like two damaged people finding comfort in one another, rather than Joe's usual obsessive love. Had Love not intervened, could Delilah have been the one to truly understand Joe?

We'll never know, but her investigative instincts getting too close to Joe's secrets sealed her fate, making her one of the show's most tragic casualties, IMO.

Compatibility Score: 5/10 – Mutual respect and honesty, but never destined for long-term..

4. MARIENNE BELLAMY (Season 3-4)

Librarian Marienne seemed tailor-made for Joe: bookish, intelligent, and fighting her own demons. Baby, our girl Marienne checked ALL of Joe’s boxes. Their connection over books felt genuine, and her daughter brought out a protective instinct in Joe (even if it wasn't entirely unhealthy).

But what makes Marienne unique is that she's the one who got away—repeatedly. Her cat-and-mouse game with Joe across continents showed she had the survival instincts that previous women lacked. Their relationship represents Joe's most genuine attempt at redemption, even if his methods remained… problematic.

Compatibility Score: 6/10 – Intellectual equals with similar wounds, but too much baggage. Bonus points for her iconic 613 platinum blonde braids.

3. KATE LOCKWOOD (Season 4)

The ice queen who thawed Joe's heart in London brought something new to the table: she didn't need saving. Wealthy, self-possessed, and carrying her own dark secrets, Kate was Joe's match in many ways.

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Their relationship evolved from mutual suspicion to genuine connection as they recognized the darkness in each other. Kate's acceptance of Joe's past (or what she knew of it) offered him a unique form of redemption. As Joe's most recent love, she represents his most mature relationship, though that's admittedly a frighteningly low bar.

Compatibility Score: 7/10 – Equals in darkness and complexity, with complementary damage.

2. LOVE QUINN (Season 2-3)

The only woman who truly matched Joe's level of obsession and willingness to kill for love. Their relationship was explosive from start to finish. What began as Joe's perfect fantasy quickly became his nightmare when he realized Love was just as broken—and dangerous—as him. Their toxic marriage in Season 3 was like watching two caged predators circling each other. Despite their dysfunction, Love and Joe understood each other in ways no one else could.

Remember “I wolf you”? Exactly.

Ultimately, she was the mirror Joe never wanted to look into, making their fiery end inevitable but oddly fitting.

Compatibility Score: Perfect match in intensity and darkness, horrible match for a stable and, generally, non-murderous relationship.

1. CANDACE STONE (Season 1-2)

Joe's mysterious ex, who refused to stay dead earns the top spot not because they were good together, but because their relationship defined him. Candace was the origin story for Joe's pattern of obsession, stalking, and violence. She was the one who recognized his true nature before anyone else and fought back.

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Their relationship taught Joe his methods, showed his weaknesses, and established the cycle that would repeat with every woman after. Most importantly, Candace was the only woman who truly frightened Joe—not because she might hurt him, but because she knew exactly who he was behind the mask.

Compatibility Score: 9/10 – Their dysfunction shaped Joe into the predator we know today.

So as we prepare for Joe's final chapter, one question remains: will he find someone who breaks this deadly pattern, or is Joe destined to repeat his cycle of obsession forever?

Whatever happens in the final season (Out TOMORROW), one thing is certain—in Joe's world, love and death have always been uncomfortably close companions.

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If You Liked This Edition of Hi Shelli……

Thank you so much for reading Hi Shelli!

As always, all reviews are in front of the paywall and if you like what you read I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber <3

Rooting for a Black female love interest in YOU feels almost counterintuitive.

On one hand, Black girls deserve love (and mainstream validation) as much as anybody. On the other hand, do they really deserve to get it from Joe Goldberg? Murderous psychopath and resident pervert?

YOU doesn’t always do right by its female characters. The show has a habit of romanticizing red flags, but somehow, through the chaos, the Black women of YOU have consistently held their own against Joe and they deserve their flowers ahead of the final season.

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Karen Minty

Most people think of the one that got away and attach it to missed opportunities, but when it comes to Karen Minty (played by Natalie Paul), I can only think of dodging a bullet (or whatever Joe’s weapon of choice is on the day).

Karen had a brief fling with Joe in season one, shortly after he was dumped by Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) for the first time. She was upfront with her desires, snagged him with some mind-blowing sex, and got the hell out of dodge before Joe had time to realise she was a much better catch than Beck—and make her the next object of his psychosexual murder fantasies.

Sure, there’s something to be said for her adherence to the Disposable Black Girlfriend trope, as Joe breaks things off because he just has to get back together with Beck... and also after literally cheating on Karen with Beck.

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Beck’s bad news, I’m sorry. But hey, it’s all good for Karen either way. She’s one of the few girlfriends who make it out alive at the end of the day. One can only wonder what she’s been up to since. Will she pop up in the final season to tell Joe that he’s a freak (and not the good kind)?

I’m happy she went where she was celebrated—not tolerated—but also…I need her to get her lick back. Pronto.

Sherry Conrad

Despite its WASPy setting, season three features not one, but two Black female characters in prominent roles. First, we’ve got Sherry (Shalita Grant), a mother of twins, mommy blogger, and queen bee of Madre Linda, CA, where the newly married Joe settles with Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). She’s positioned as one of the biggest obstacles to Joe and Love as they settle into wedded bliss.

Her obvious insincerity—controlling the social scene with a passive-aggressive smile and thick layers of faux sympathy—already makes Sherry one of YOU’s most nuanced and interesting characters. But the series goes even further, peeling back the layers behind Sherry’s mask. She and her husband Cary (Travis Van Winkle) even proposition Love and Joe for group sex, leading to some hilariously cringeworthy moments.

Sherry’s one of a few lucky ladies to confirm that Joe is, ahem, a “big boy.” (He’s still a total psycho, but good for her!) But the real fun begins when she and Cary overhear Love confess to the string of murders she’s committed, and they get locked in Joe’s glass dungeon.

Love tries a few mind games to poke holes in a marriage she believes is performative, thus validating whatever weird thing she’s got with Joe. In the end, though, Sherry and Cary’s joint will is stronger; their love gets them through alive.

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There’s honestly nothing more satisfying than seeing a Black woman loved unconditionally, and though YOU doesn’t always get it right, they actually nailed it with Sherry.

Her love story stands out as a rare, beautiful exception, proving that even in the most twisted narrative, a Black woman can be both complicated and cherished.

Marienne Bellamy

Season three also introduced us to Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle). Joe’s obsession with Marienne is a nuanced one: it combats the Disposable Black Girlfriend trope that we saw with Karen, all while holding a mirror up to Joe.

Marienne’s very existence stands in contrast to Joe’s White Knight complex, his disproportionate obsession with white girls, and how it all feeds into a little phenomenon called “Missing White Woman Syndrome.”

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Through her, Joe gets a crash course in allyship, and paired with their shared love of academia, it’s not impossible to see why Marienne would make perfect “you” material.

As Joe’s relationship with Love crumbles, he starts to wonder whether all this marital strife was designed to lead him to Marienne—and we’re wondering if the love of a good Black woman can fix Joe, for real this time. (It won’t, for obvious reasons. But we did wonder!)

Joe does the same shit with Marienne that he does with all his obsessees. He breaks into her home, jacks off to lewd pictures of her, kills for her, etc. But she does escape from his clutches alive… it just takes a long time, an extended stay in his glass dungeon, and faking her own death just to get away from his ass. Well played, Marienne.

A brush with Joe Goldberg is not without suffering, after surviving the mess Joe made of her life, here’s hoping she’s now out there just raising her daughter in peace, far from his deluded reach.

Netflix’s soapy, self-aware melodrama isn’t always great to the girlies. Whoever Joe Goldberg sets his beady eyes on is just as quickly doomed by the narrative, and after nearly five seasons of toxic habits, this is a pattern I’m more and more receptive to Black characters missing out on.

In a show that thrives on chaos and obsession, it’s refreshing to see these women survive it all.

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Extras:

• She may not have been a love interest, but let us not forget our literal Nigerian Princess, Blessing (played by Ozioma Whenu). She is rich, mean, and gorgeous—AND SHE TOO SURVIVES JOE as he is killing off a bunch of Kate’s friends as the “Eat The Rich Killer” in season four.

• Who else wanted to tell Beck about herself when she said “Little Miss Karen Minty!”1

If You Liked This Edition of Hi Shelli……

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Thank you so much for reading Hi Shelli!

As always, all reviews are in front of the paywall and if you like what you read I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber <3

And after four seasons of trying to figure out who in the actual fuck Joe Goldberg is, the show’s fifth and final season drops this Thursday. Joe’s been stuck in an identity crisis for almost eight years now. He’s played every role—loving dad, the perfect husband, the sweet, nerdy boyfriend, the bookseller with a heart of gold—and honestly, like a million other things.

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But in reality? He’s just a condescending whole ass serial killer with insane mommi issues, who loves to monologue—and, hello, I am absolutely obsessed with him.

I didn’t watch YOU from the start, I actually had never seen a single episode until about 3 years ago.

It was a show that I will forever connect to falling in love, which is wild because it’s a show about a guy who thinks he’s falling in love but is actually just twisting reality one mediocre white woman at a time (WITH THE EXCEPTION OF MY ABSOLUTE QUEEN LOVE QUINN GOLDBERG) to fit his very screwed up idea of it.

Joe Goldberg is, objectively, a terrible person. And yet—somehow—he has a fanbase. This man has literally put multiple women in a fucking CAGE. He’s stalked, manipulated, lied, gaslit, and committed a whole slew of ACTUAL murders. And still, here I am, deeply invested. Not just watching—but actively rooting for him. Catching myself (not every time, but often enough) high-key hoping he gets away with it. and I’ve been doing it for four fucking seasons.

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WOT. IS. WRONG. WITH. MEEE?

Is it Penn Badgley’s fault? Is it the voiceovers? Is it all the heavy wool blazers he wore in season 4?? EYE DONUT KNOW. but the final season is here and I’m ready to wrap it up!

In one of the posters for the fifth season, Joe is waist-deep in water, inside that glass cage that’s been part of his story since before we met him. It’s got that 2021-era red TikTok glow, with To the last breath floating above him.

It’s VV dramatic but also kinda dead on? The cage used to be his comfort zone, where he felt most in control, but now it looks more like his grave.

If you look closely, every part of Joe’s life (that we’ve watched) is in the poster. The stairs behind him feel like the ones leading down from Mooney’s. The door looks like it came straight from under the bakery in Madre Linda. And the ceiling? Hella reminiscent of that underground hellhole where he kept Marianne in London.

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Maybe I’m reading too much into it (I’m absolutely fucking not), but it feels like a full picture—like everything he’s done, all the mistakes, all the bodies, are finally catching up. His past, piece by piece, is closing in around him.

To celebrate the final season of YOU, I’m teaming up with the crew at Netflix to bring you a full week of all things—well…YOU.

I tapped two of my fav writers— of Culture Craft and THEE Lyvie Scott—to bring it all to life. A few pieces will be rolling out this week touching on the vibes of the show that I thought def needed to be zoomed in on.

Pieces on Joe and his VERYYYY unresolved mommi issues (Hello, Freud), a completely necessary ranking of his love interests (from the chaotic to the iconic), how the Black women in the series are depicted (I will defend Sherry Conrad until the end of gotdamn time), and an ode to my unhinged queen and the only one to ever match Joe’s energy—Love Fuckin’ Quinn.

All those (and maybe a few more) will be coming out this week!

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The season releases THIS THURSDAY APRIL 24, and I’ll give you the weekend to binge in peace before I drop a piece breaking down eggzaklee how I felt about it.

I’ve already done my rewatch ahead of season 5 BUT if you haven’t done yours you can follow these steps:

• Watch one season a day starting tomorrow (Tuesday)

• Stay off social media ‘cos you need a break anyway and to remain spoiler free

• Order pizza on Saturday at noon

• Put on cozy clothes, set up the couch, and read the articles here on Hi Shelli until your pizza arrives at about 1:30

• Get comfy on the couch, put your phone on DND, start binging season 5 at 2:00 PM

• Take a break at 7:00 PM, perhaps place an order for tacos and send articles from Hi Shelli to your friends

• Resume binging, eating, and snacking

• Wait for Penn to likely post some wild shit on Tiktok and also await Cardi B and her review on season 5

If you don’t want to follow my PERFECTLY LAID OUT REWATCH PLAN ABOVE, just watch Penn recap seasons 1-4 and then go in the comments to tell me your favorite moment from the series!

Extras:

• We must talk about this article over on TUDUM breaking down YOU by the numbers. It’s perfect and nerdy and I love it very, very much.

• I read the first book and omfg he is so horrible in it and I was very much not rooting for him at all.

If You Liked This Edition of Hi Shelli……

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The first one I did a while back was on High Fidelity:

This time I am exploring the canceled Fox series Welcome to Flatch.

These are long reads and go a bit in-depth so you don’t have to take it all in at once.

Happy reading!!

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Before We Get Into It

Sooooo every time I do these I’ll mention these sites to help out with spoilers and trigger warnings. They could be dope to add to your list when you’re watching new shows or movies!

Does The Dog Die — A site that literally tells you if there is harm to an animal in a movie or show, but also tells you if there are things that could be emotionally triggering. There are tons of categories to click through so this is weird to say but — look for your trauma?

Rotten Apples — This site tells you if something you are watching has anyone affiliated with the film that has been involved with any sexual misconduct in or out of the industry.

Unconsenting Media — Another site that lets you know if anything sexually icky or uncomfortable is present.

These are dope sites for folks who wanna know what they are getting into without spoilers. I try to steer clear of shows that have these things going on but you never know when stuff slips in. I’ll also be using Letterboxd and The Cherrypicks!

History with Welcome To Flatch

Original Watch

I genuinely have no idea where I found out about this show. I don’t watch a lot of shows on Fox except like, Bobs Burgers, but I do love a mockumentary. I do know that when I found it I refused to let it go. It became one of my comfort shows, I know it will always make me laugh, I can put it on in the background while working, and I can even find new things in it during every rewatch.

I just—loved it.

It’s about people living their lives in small-town Ohio.

That’s it.

Just day-to-day shenanigans and chaos with cousins Shrub and Kelly and all the residents of Flatch, OH.

People love minding other people’s business, it’s why Reality TV got so popular. There is also something to watching the day-to-day lives of fictional people.

Shows like The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Abbott Elementary managed to package it up in a mockumentary bow and got us invested in the lives of these people like we actually know them, and for me Welcome To Flatch was no exception.

I am not sure when I first started watching it, but it came out in March 2022 and I threatened the Executive Producer Paul Feig on Twitter in November 2022, so somewhere in between there.

So maybe I did start watching it from the very start! This makes me feel very VERY cool—and serves as an even bigger reason for Paul Feig to give me everything I want from this show…including this hat:

and this shirt:

…spread the word and if he’s your uncle go demand that he give me things.

Date I Started My Re-Watch

Well…I rewatch the entire series at least once a month, but for the sake of this piece let’s say December 1, 2024.

Feelings On The Show Before I Started My Re-Watch

I had absolutely zero notes. Well, it’s very white…that is my only note.

Details Please!

Aired On: Fox (and you could watch it on Hulu)

Original Airing Date: March 17, 2022

Creator/developed for the US by…

EPs: Jenny Bicks developed the series and she also wrote on Sex and The City…and wrote the screenplay for the iconic What A Girl Wants! also—Paul Feig! You might know him from Bridesmaids and The Heat…and if you’re deep in dyke land you know him as the director of the highly overrated film loved by many a caucasian dyke, A Simple Favor.

Starring: Holmes (who did a series of short films but was a newcomer at the time), Sam Straley (also a newcomer but was in The Dropout), Seann William Scott (American Pie if you’re a millennial and idk…Ice Age movies if you’re Gen Whatever Comes After That), Aya Cash (You’re The Worst, The Boys) are all the main folks in the series.

Number of Seasons: 2

Number of Episodes: 27

Final Airing Date: February 2, 2023

How it ended: It kinda just…ended. No drama no wild shit just got canceled.

Xtra Xtra Xtra: Welcome to Flatch is a remake of an 2017 British show, This Country—which came from a 2014 failed pilot called Kerry.

The series (and pilot) was created, written by, and starred real-life brother and sister Daisy May and Charlie Cooper.

It’s…in-fucking-sane. It’s so stupid and fucking genius. It won a ton of awards and launched Charlie and Daisy’s careers. They went from using their mother’s camcorder to make films to being award-winning creators and actors.

This Country only has 19 episodes across 3 series (compared to Flatch’s 27 across 2) but that is mostly due to how they do shows in the UK.

I am a huge fan of Daisy May, she created another show called Am I Being Unreasonable? which is insane, and is the lead in a show called Rain Dogs which makes me so uncomfortable in the best way possible.

Here is the thing….there is no way to watch This Country in, well, this country. Not legally anyway and like don’t go buy the DVD cos they won’t work over here. So, if you wanted to, I might tell you to go and click this link, but you’re an adult so do what you wanna.

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Character Breakdowns

Big Fucking Mandy

A genius, an icon, a legend. Krystal Smith plays her perfectly. I love her, I want to be her, she is incredible. She is also a quarter-time terrible tattoo artist with a bunker and loves her dogs.

Shrub

I adore Shrub, he’s an artist and also really sweet—he’s also pretty codependent on his cousin Kelly. Sam Straley does a perfect job at bringing out the Midwest boy who has never left home to life. Also, he loves his nan and has questionable taste in women.

Kelly

Played by Holmes, she’s blindly confident and an influencer with very little influence. She’s also a shady businesswoman, has a huge crush on somebody else’s husband, and desperately needs to seek therapy about her daddy issues.

Father Joe (Seann William Scott) and Cheryl (Aya Cash)

Father Joe moved to Flatch, Ohio to be the pastor of the church and he used to be in an early aughts Christian boy band. He also convinced his girlfriend, white feminist and writer, Cheryl to move with him. He’s boring, she’s nuts, and watching their relationship is outlandish.

Sidenote: I love me some Aya Gotdamn Cash. My fiance introduced me to the show You’re The Worst (incredible), she was an insane racist with superpowers in The Boys, has her spinoff coming, and somehow has managed not to piss me off as many white women do. Phew. The absolute psychotic range.

Beth

After Mandy….this might be my favorite character on this show. She is THEE most interesting boring person in the series. She’s batshit crazy but quiet and manages to start the first polyamorous relationship the town has seen. 5 stars to Erin Bowles for bringing this nut to life.

There are also some other supporting characters like Nadine (a psychopath), Len (possibly a murderer), Mickey (podcaster, LARPer, and annoyance), his grandma Leotha (Dungeon Master and enabler), and Blind Billy (pervert and deadbeat dad). It’s a small town made up of total weirdos and I love every single one of them.

Season 1

Pilot thoughts

It’s….perfect? You know exactly what you’re getting from the start, and they consistently deliver. It’s mockumentary sitcom-making at its finest and watching it made me think of the first time I saw Parks & Recreation.

The pilot made me invested in the characters and their relationships. I found myself trying to figure out who I’d be friends with if I lived there and who I saw myself in.

That’s the way to know if you’re watching great TV. If you find yourself wanting to do a Buzzfeed-era Which Character Are You?! quiz or thinking about who in your life is very insert character here-coded, you’re connecting.

Abbott Elementary is another mockumentary show that folks praise for bringing the genre back, gone since the days of The Office—which Quinta has spoken about getting the comparison but the two are not the same.

It premiered in December 2021—Flatch came out just a few months after. Abbott is in its fourth season and it is so well fucking deserved. Great casting, great guest stars, incredible and witty writing, and fan-fucking-tastic marketing. I tend to think that if Flatch had gotten a little extra boost in the marketing department, maybe it would be going into its 4th season. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking but hey WOTTICE SEW WRONG WIF DAT?!?

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Relationships / Friendships / Situationships That I Cared About The Most…

Shrub and Kelly — Cousins who have a hilarious relationship. The co-dependant tendencies are alive and well but they have only had each other since forever and never left this town. They both have dreams they think are too big to make come true…but still think they are better than the town they call home. Their relationship has a hiccup or two but it is so cute seeing them recover.

Mandy and Cheryl — Insane. I love it. Total opposites and they fucking attracted. They are both girls girls and seeing them encourage and have each other’s backs while never turning away from their big perfect personalities makes for some fucking hilarious (but sweet) moments. It’s the whole Golden Retriever/Pit Bull thingy that people talk about on TikTok all the time but not toxic.

Shrub and Beth — I have never been more intrigued by a relationship. Beth is the oddest bitch in the world and so plain but has boys all over town fawning over her. When they finally get together it’s as uncomfortable as you think it will be….I like it, Picasso.

Dylan and Nadine — DYLAN PLEASE STAND UP SWEETHEART PLEASE!!!

Favorite Episode

Episode 13 (Pyramid Scheme) — Kelly’s Aunt Lola (scammer and feminist) comes to town in her pink car and polyblend pink suit and I couldn’t be happier. Kelly learns how to be a “business bitch”, Shrub gets a letter and has the world’s 13th-best celebration, and Father Joe is crashing out.

Season 2

We get some new players in season 2, including Barb-fucking-Flatch (played by Jaime Pressly) and her Barbaritas and Blonde hair. She is going through a divorce and only wears wigs, Kelly wants to be an entrepreneur, and Shrub falls in love with a cougar and learns about polyamory. CANCELED TOO SOON.

Relationships / Friendships / Situationships That I Cared About The Most…

Beth and Kelly — I don’t know why this works for me the way it does. Kelly cannot stand Beth and is SO MEAN TO HER BUT HELP IT IS SO FUNNY ‘COS BETH EITHER DOESN’T GET IT OR DOESN’T CARE SO SHE KEEPS TRYING TO BE FRIENDS.

Kelly and Barb — Kelly has mommy issues for sure, and she finds a mother figure in Barb. Seeing Barb come back to town as a big-deal entrepreneur who seems to have it all together gives Kelly the courage to really try at life. They might not always be on the same page but this is one of the best mentor/mentee relationship arcs I’ve seen in a comedy series in a minute.

Favorite Episode

Episode 3 (ManiFlatch Destiny) — Kelly learns about the power of vision-boarding, Shrub is couch surfing, and Big Mandy takes over bible study. This is likely the episode I have rewatched the most in the entire series…it is SEW GOODTTTTT!!!

Date I finished my rewatch: LOL well I did a rewatch within a rewatch so let’s just say…today.

Feelings on the show after I ended: MAD. BECAUSE WHY DIDN’T THIS GET AT LEAST ONE MORE SEASON!?

How did it age?: Good actually, I mean, it’s new so it wasn’t really a chance of it not but it aged pretty well. There is talk of queerness, there are trans folks on the show and it’s not made into a thing, Blackness is alive and well, some folks have money some don’t, it’s pretty fucking solid.

There is, of course, the once again obsession with interracial dating but like hey, no one is listening to me about that still so here we are.

No transphobia present, no weird racist jokes or tropes, and it passes The Common Sense media test. It also has fresh apples and no—The Dog Does Not Die.

Did it get gay?!: YETHHHHHH! Lots of queerness and also icon Murray Hill makes an appearance.

EXTRAS:

My fiance pointed out that the population changes when they show this at the top of the episodes.

They stopped showing it all the time but in the premiere, it was 1,526:

and the last time we saw it was in the premiere of Season 2 where Barb made it 1,505 after coming back to town:

Where to watch: You have to buy it! I did on Amazon ‘cos at the time it was the only place to watch after they snatched it off Hulu.

But now you also buy it on AppleTV…..It’s likely the best $16 I ever spent.

That’s all!!

Let me know if you know it/love it/watched it ‘cos I NEEEDDD TOOOOO KNOWWWWWW!

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As always, all reviews are in front of the paywall and if you like what you read I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber <3

First I start with some market research retail therapy, but afterward, it’s time to lock in. I’m going to need music and a series of movies for inspiration.

This season, I’ve been looking hard at the mid-nineties cyberpunk classic, Hackers.

I’m a fat Black, Caribbean, Queer, neurodivergent nerd, so I’m not really able to pop into the mall and come out with a new fit easily. I need something a little more obscure, a mix of something vintage, something silly, something (un)practical. Hackers takes me exactly where I need to go!

It has everything a Brooklyn girlie needs for a chill night on the Lower East Side…or a 10-hour party in Bushwick I can only stay at for 3 hours because I’m nervous and easily overstimulated.

How does such a relatively unknown, quiet, fun, and silly film give me all this? Behold, the breakdown is coming to explain it all… 

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What Movie Is This?

Hackers, released and set in 1995, is a cyberpunk crime thriller about a ragtag bunch of anticapitalist teenager hackers who discover a virus created by a large corporation to capsize an oil tanker for ransom.

The main characters are computer nerds, not in the neckbeard programmer or tech-bro genius sense, but in a young adult Y2K grunge underground way.

At its core, the film has messaging around chosen family, community care, surveillance, and technology at a time when most people could not access computers or the internet. We’re talking dial-up here folks! Payphones! Rollerblades!

During an interview, Matthew Lillard said that they were seeking to make a film that would not seem dated. Technology advancements aside, they CARRIED! 

Who’s Who?

The cast is somewhat diverse.

Several of the main cast went on to become larger stars, and this was one of their first relatively major film roles.

Let’s start with the baddie, Acid Burn played by Angelina Jolie. She previously had been modeling and starred in smaller productions. Hackers came out before both Gia and Girl, Interrupted. 

Johnny Lee Miller plays Zero Cool. Some might know him from Elementary with Lucy Liu, and he was also just about to break bigger, with Trainspotting coming out later the following year in 1996. 

Laurence Mason is Lord Nikon, he had just wrapped cult classic The Crow with Brandon Lee a year before and has worked in TV and movies ever since. Jesse Bradford (Joey) went on to star in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet the following year and then later in Bring it On, another fave. 

Renoly Santiago (Phantom Phreak) shortly after starred opposite Nicholas Cage in Con Air, and continued to work in television, with credits including The Get Down and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Matthew Lillard (Cereal Killer), who also auditioned for the lead role, later became one of the Ghostface slashers in Scream and iconic messiah Shaggy, in Scooby Doo.

Most of the cast was in their twenties, so it’s really interesting to see how the actors evolved throughout their careers—just like my fashion sense.

Sound Check

I love electronica, so this is nearly a no-skips soundtrack for me. There is a heavy UK underground rave influence throughout, so there are back-to-back bangers if you’re into trance, drum ‘n’ bass, acid house, or trip-hop. The soundtrack features several classics that cement a cyberpunk 90s vibe. 

The Prodigy and Leftfield are heavily featured for the energetic, digital, computers=techno neon feel. There’s also Massive Attack’s Protection and Halcyon & On and On by Orbital to chill out amongst some slower tracks. 

One of the great things about this soundtrack is that it allows me to LOCK IN when I’m doing something important—like shopping at Trader Joe’s or Target on a Saturday. 

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Role Call

Hackers is directed by Iain Softley, who also directed The Skeleton Key, another fan-favorite Southern Gothic love story (if you look at it from the right angle). Softley also employed real-life hackers to stay on set and ensure the acting and dialogue were authentic. 

The costume designer for the film was Roger K. Burton, and he knocked this one out of the park.

Hackers Walked So The Fifth Element Could Run?

1995 saw a LOT of movies about computers and hacking come out, like The Net, Ghost in the Shell, and Johnny Mnemonic. Previously Star Wars (1977), Blade Runner (1982), and Back to the Future II (1989) were the biggest movies taking a chance on futuristic fashion and design, but I gotta give it to The Fifth Element (1997), for finally injecting some joy back into cyberpunk futuristic fashion.

The film reminded folks that environmental damage is a major concern even in the future. Now Keeping in mind both movies’ anticapitalist messaging, let’s get into their fashion similarities.

The fashion in The Fifth Element is as timeless as Hackers, with wearable looks that remain on trend to this day. Do I think Luc Besson, director of The Fifth Element, was looking at a movie like Hackers for notes? Who knows! But the visuals convey such a similar grittiness, that when I want to embrace some wild fashion looks, I queue these two movies up.

Jean Paul Gaultier—the genius behind the ultra-tailored cone bra corset combo Madonna famously wore during her Blond Ambition tour—was responsible for the costuming and he really tapped into something needed in the cyberpunk genre. Gaultier was no stranger to cohesive runway shows, but the amount of colorful playfulness he packed into everyone’s costume was so refreshing.

The Fifth Element was one of the first cyberpunk films that used bright colors and chic shapes in such a wearable way. Before Hackers, most cyberpunk films used dark shapes and scenery, and wardrobe was muted and boxy trenchcoats, military uniforms, suits, and working-class streetwear, like in Escape from New York, Robocop, and Bladerunner. 

Hackers and The Fifth Element costumes were both inspired by the theatricality of the gay community, lowbrow fashion, and streetwear. While Gaultier was more focused on chic and sexy silhouettes with a club kid twist, Burton was designing for high school aged teens. Burton chose a more sporty, gritty, New York route. Real-life hackers at the time were dressing in all black much like the cyberpunk movie costumes have been, but both Burton and Gaultier injected their versions of aspirational cool into the characters.

Ruby wears striking looks that match their charismatic personality. Flamboyant, loud, and bold, once Ruby shows up in The Fifth Element, they steal the show. With an outrageous bouffant hairstyle, a sultry, tailored suit, and oozing genderless sex appeal, Ruby is on every Queer Black person’s inspirational style sheet in one way or another.  Lil Nas X took Ruby Rhod’s ‘sorta gay’ vibe and turned it up to eleven.

In the movie, Milla Jovovich’s character, Leeloo, applies her makeup using an automatic Chanel compact, and the blonde roots we’ve seen on Grimes.

What also links these films together? The response from the Queer community.

Many of the characters in each movie interestingly subvert gender roles. The femmes in the movie, including Ruby Rhod, are fierce, decisive, and kick butt, while the masc folks follow their lead. There is no ‘get back to the kitchen’ banter about the women in these movies, even though women are occupying male-dominated spaces.

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Due to these unique gender roles, some sci-fi nerd queer people have interesting headcanon around the transness of the entire team of protagonists in Hackers and the two lead characters in The Fifth Element. 

Fashion Focus

Is this a fashion film like our beloved Clueless? Not by far. But name a cyberpunk movie where everything is this wearable! I won’t wait.

Costume Designer Roger K. Burton built the wardrobe for these characters so well. I’d say aside from the conceptual hacking shots, the wardrobe is a supporting character.  Burton didn’t collaborate with just one designer, he shopped various small designers. Everything we see in the movie is a mix of random vintage, army surplus, custom, and small boutique finds.

At the time, there was nothing quite like the fashion worn movie-wise. It was an excellent synthesis of punk, goth, vintage, and army surplus pieces that satisfy a modern sensibility amongst the more eclectically dressed today. These outfits were selected for aura—they were very tied to a downtown punk NYC style at the time that is still alive and well now. 

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In an interview, Roger K, Burton mentioned that most of the hackers he met doing research wore a lot of black, and he was more drawn to Lower East Side street fashion in NYC—Patricia Fields girlies make some noise. He also took inspiration from the attendees of Wigstock, a public performance event celebrating Queer culture in NYC. 

LookBook Breakdown

I am a fashion nerd. I watch runway videos with my partner, and we critique the looks as if we’re rooting for our favorite sports team. The pieces in Hackers were collected from a variety of sources, but weren’t really sellable runway looks at the time—many of the more complex pieces were DIY one-offs. Because the internet was so new then, there wasn’t the same type of documentation we have now of streetwear and underground fashion.

What we do have now is the trends and designers that continue to be influenced by the punk, grunge, military, fetish, and vintage sportswear Burton was inspired by and experimented with.  

Currently, fashion has had a collapsing of trends, meaning, there are no common trends most people shop from, it’s become a free-for-all! Therefore in stores and on the runway, you see a mix of different trends, with mass appeal and from formerly niche subgenres. To explore the cyberpunk fashion in this film, I picked some contemporary designers and threw in some classics. 

First up? Dade’s back-to-school boxy crop top and bondage harness—it was a horse bridle!?!

The costume designer said he included the leg harness to hold the quiet character together. Pairing it with the beeper and crop top, chef’s kiss! Andrea Crews’ look has a similar relaxed fit pant and this cool vintage jacket with a ‘worn in’ feel to it. Mark Fast’s layered crop over the knit bodysuit with tails is a more sporty/chic vibe. All of the hackers in the film have these storied types of looks, while the people around them are wearing basic 90s, plain t-shirt and jeans outfits. 

Main character jackets are a must for cyberpunk! Zero Cool and Acid Burn wore the coolest ones which were thrifted 70s biker jackets from hole-in-the-wall boutiques. The cut and the length of the jackets on the runway now have a modern twist, but don’t look out of place next to Hackers’. There are still oversize looks, sportswear elements, and aging techniques used for the punk/grunge vibe.

Acid Burn also gets to wear several bondage-inspired, Vivienne Westwood looks to underscore her badassery, and I love that they don’t show tons of skin but are still really sexy. For the contemporary looks, I was digging Junya Watanabes’ buckled-in harness, the idea of using athletic gear and straps with reflective pieced-together nylon fabric is stunning and totally something Acid Burn could wear. The KNWLS, Y/Project, and Ottolinger pieces play with ideas of bondage, comfort, and sportswear tailoring. 

The top Acid Burn is wearing is a replica of a Vivienne Westwood 70s bondage outfit. It’s modeled after fetish harnesses and parachute gear from the military. She wears it when they’re getting down to REAL hacker business and striking back at the corporate bad guys. Bondage is still very much alive on the runway. Check out Kidill’s jumpsuit with the tartan harness over it. It gives a very Malcolm McLaren x Vivienne Westwood vibe. Phreak would probably also be into the leopard jumpsuit.

Finally, we get to the rest of the gang. While Nikon (nickname due to his photographic memory, which is sick) is usually seen in a photographic t-shirt and vinyl pants, Phreak wears a mix of leopard and prints. Joey is pretty much dressed as if his mom picked out his clothes so we can skip him, but Cereal Killer wears layers of leather combat pants and random dangling tchotchkes, jingling everywhere he goes. These dudes were carrying these looks, throughout the film everyone was mixing prints and textures in such a fittingly carefree, playful way.

The costumes in Hackers were all accessible looks. If you have the time and patience, Depop, eBay, vintage stores, and Etsy will deliver the goods.

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IRL Inspo

Am I Hackersing or what?

This styling challenge was really fun! I had an old desert camouflage jacket from a helicopter pilot that was meh, but with some fuchsia fiber reactive dye, I was back in business! I threw on a cropped neon open-knit sweater and Simon Miller bubble clogs for some techno neon on the bottom. The pants are studded on the side for some edge, and the wallet chain with the leopard belt adds the fun back in. For makeup, I’m not too into frosted looks but I love a graphic liner. My eyebrows are usually always pink for safety reasons.

One thing about me, I love dressing like a prettyboi. I was DESPERATE to find Dade / Zero Cool’s orange vest but the hunt continues. I did find a fishing vest in a spectacular and obnoxious neon. I layered it over a neon green zebra stripe undershirt, and a button-down dad shirt with skulls on it. There’s a mini skirt/tulle layer maxi underneath, and I added some platform Demonias for height. The tiny glasses and headset were the fun, Jetset Radio Future / Matrix accessories needed to round out the maximalist look.

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For those interested in watching Hackers, you can either buy or rent it on streaming, or watch it on Youtube, but I’d like to think the spirit of the movie lends itself well to sailing the seven seas.

That’s my recap! If you’re going hacking, don’t forget to take breaks, drink water, and rest your eyes!

If You Liked This Edition of Hi Shelli!

Here’s another you might really fuck with…

Thank you so much for reading Hi Shelli!

As always, all film reviews (plus a little extra) are in front of the paywall and if you like what you read I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber so I can keep working with (and paying) amazing guest writers! <3

Slight spoilers ahead!

The first time I heard the word ‘transgender’ was in an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

It was the Season 10 Episode called Transitions which followed a case where a man was brutally beaten up for not supporting his transgender daughter’s transition.

It’s a precarious episode (as many of the trans episodes of Law & Order are), as it ends up reinforcing certain transphobic tropes even when trying to humanize trans people. But what I remember most vividly is the fear I felt as a young kid, after watching the episode. I wonder if part of me felt shaken by what I had witnessed, like I had been found out?

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Because what I saw in how trans characters were punished by the world, I saw in myself and how adults around me policed my expressions of femininity. At the age of 11, I didn’t completely understand what it meant to be transgender, but after watching that episode—I was too startled to want to find out.

I think back to this memory often. I’ve collected various memories of trans representation from my youth—films like Ace Ventura, and Boys Don’t Cry—all of which, in one way or another, saw trans people as a punchline or a punching bag. Over time, we’ve thankfully seen more thoughtful and fuller representations of trans characters on-screen—Pose, Veneno, that one Hunter Schafer directed episode of Euphoria—that’s worked to fill in the gaps of trans identity on-screen, even if we still have a long way to go.

So I was nervous when I first learned of Emilia Pérez, the newest film from Jacques Audiard, about an ex-cartel boss who fakes her death to transition into a woman.

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As hungry as I am for more trans stories in film, I remained skeptical of Jacques Audiard’s connection to this character. It’s not that I believe only trans creators can tell trans stories, but rather I understand the responsibility of telling trans stories because our depictions in the media directly affect our livelihoods.

Ironically, this same responsibility to counter the history-spanning harmful representation of trans people (see the documentary Disclosure for more) with positive depictions of trans people is yet another limiting box for trans actors and creators to invent within. There needs to be space in a trans cinema canon for sloppy—even messy—depictions of trans characters. Not to validate our experiences, but to honor and commemorate the very human nature of moving through transformation. 

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That is to say, the film thankfully understands just how flawed its protagonist is and doesn’t shy away from portraying Emilia as the complex woman she deserves to be. Karla Sofía Gascón (El Señor de los Cielos, The Noble Family) is given lots of room to breathe life into her character Emilia, including being able to play her pre-operations, which I love. Some cis audiences may find this one a bit of a head-scratcher but there is so much power in trans women getting to perform in drag, a badass move to assume full power and autonomy over our stories.

Unfortunately, I’m not as confident in the writing of Audiard, uncertain that he understood the responsibility of telling this story, nor do I think there was enough care exercised in writing the film’s titular protagonist. Emilia Pérez is, admittedly, one of the most clumsy and senseless depictions of transition that I’ve seen.

With a gawkish musical number of Zoë Saldaña (Avatar: The Way of the Water, Colombiana) and various doctors listing off all the gender-affirming surgeries available like an all-you-can-eat buffet, it feels like Emilia Pérez did not have any transgender script consultants. These scenes, while silly, sensationalize gender affirming care without weighing any the emotional nuances of choosing to change your visage to pass as a woman. The film has some of the most insensitive handling of a trans character’s transition, harkening back to the days of trans people appearing on daytime talk shows led by Maury Povich or Tyra Banks. 

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Emilia moves through medical transformation swiftly, receiving facial feminization surgery (FFS), top surgery, bottom surgery, and presumably body sculpting surgeries all in one fell swoop. Each trans person’s own experience of transition is unique and transcends beyond mainstream media’s understanding of transition as a material mode of transformation. For me, my transition was slow and spiritually transformative. There is plenty of room for different depictions of transition.

That’s my primary issue with this film. There are a lot of tired and boring trans tropes in it (trans woman killer, transition upends everyone else’s lives, trans woman described as half-man, half-woman) that I don’t believe are inherently harmful. It’s just that I don’t trust the film’s audience to be able to sift through the film’s plot, understanding what’s Emilia and what’s ‘the transgender narrative’.

That’s not to say the film is without its merits. To make up for the clumsy start, it dedicates itself fully to the arcs of its ensemble cast of women—all seeking to remold their lives in the face of their oppressive pasts. Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoë Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz deliver captivating performances that carry the film, even if Gomez and Paz are terribly underutilized.

The film’s self-described hybrid genre storytelling (part pulpy pop opera, part narcos thriller) makes for zany and fun storytelling, with some amazing musical numbers featuring Zoë Saldaña in a bold red pantsuit singing about the corrupted wealthy & powerful, along with a sequence of Emilia’s daughter singing about Emilia’s smell, reminiscing about the memories she carried of her father.

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It’s a shame really, that Emilia Pérez is burdened so much by its sloppy and comically offensive first act, given that the film has so much to offer in spectacle and character-driven storytelling.  It’s a clear no-contest winner in its championed acting, especially from Gascón. Yet, it’s undeniable that the film’s missteps set back some of the work that trans storytellers have done to wash away tired cinematic tropes of trans people.

I detest the notion that artists must be held responsible for how their work will impact audiences or how they might influence political paradigms. But, there’s no arguing that the cinematic representations of transgender people are directly tethered to our livelihoods and our safety. I know that Emilia Pérez is an R-rated film, but I can’t help but wonder what younger trans people will take away from it about what transition looks like or what it means to be trans. Will they feel seen or mocked? Will they be inspired or afraid?

Whether we like it or not, the film will likely be at the forefront of trans cinema for the next few years. And yet, Emilia Pérez begs the question: just how much room there is for clumsy representation of transness—especially from cis male directors?

Emilia Pérez is in select theaters in November and on Netflix November 13

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Ever since coming out as a trans woman, I’ve become increasingly existential about my relationships with men. Because I’m not exclusively attracted to men, I wonder what the implications are if I choose to date one. Has compulsory heterosexuality won yet again? By dating men, am I inherently centering them in my life over women or non-binary people? I know, I know. Trans, Asian, and attracted to men—the tragedy of intersectionality. Godspeed and good luck to all those who can’t seem to pick a struggle (just kidding).

As I’ve navigated the newness of transition over the years, I’ve been sifting through ghosts of lovers' past. Dating cis men has unfortunately come with exposing myself to the fetishization of my body and transphobic ideas about the ways in which I’m different from cis women “because I know what men want.”

I’ve had to evaluate how different relationships have been informed by scarcity, carried by a fear that each man who was attracted to me would be the last. Since I was little, I worried endlessly that I would end up alone as a queer person, and as I became a teenager I figured that marrying a man might be the solution to avoid such a dismal fate. Since then, I placed immense pressure on finding ‘the one’.

So when I read the logline for Sean Baker’s newest film Anora—”a young sex worker’s Cinderella story”—I was instantly sold. I’ve always appreciated and deeply respected Baker’s commitment to destigmatizing sex work in his previous projects such as Tangerine and The Florida Project. I am not a sex worker myself, but I’ve connected with friends who do sex work about the complexities of performing submissive femininity for men. 

Often in my relationships and encounters with men, I would tell them what they wanted to hear, I would do what they wanted me to do, and I would make them feel safe around me. In Anora, I recognized that same potency that Mikey Madison’s (Better Things, Scream) titular character wielded when she danced for men. The personas she took on with different clients felt familiar, even if I hadn’t fully considered the submissiveness I displayed in the persona I had slipped into at the time. I somehow got the idea that doing this allowed me to feel closer to them—when really I had just convinced myself that being with men validated my womanhood, even if I made myself small doing so. What a dystopian idea. I wonder where I picked that up.

Whether she’s working the pole or convincing men to buy a lap dance, there’s no doubt that Ani, short for Anora, is seasoned as a performer. “I was interested in who she would be when she was alone or with her friends,” says Madison on her approach to playing Ani. “And I wanted to play her as someone who’s not very self-aware, which in some ways is a protection.”

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The notion that Ani feels empowered by her work—or by moving in and out of these personas—is a complicated but easy assumption to make as a viewer. At times, making sense of who I was when alone with men vs. who I was alone with myself or with friends, was difficult. We all occupy different roles in our lives, but those two worlds, they both felt very separate. These days, where I am a lot more cognizant of the ways I perform my sexuality for others, it feels impossible at times to slip into old roles of the docile paramour, at the risk of losing my sense of who I am beyond any masking.

Non-strippers watching can only imagine the challenges of erotic dancing & working in a club. Not just the required athleticism and physical control, but the challenges of staying in character in front of clientele. When her night is over, she stacks her cash and then sleeps on the train home, wearing oversized parkas and no makeup.

She sleeps during the day, only to be awoken by her sister, who she lives with, about whether or not she’s picked up groceries. This is Anora’s reality outside of work, one that she’s left uninspired and disgruntled with and seeks to break free of via her work. Anora seeks to drive home how easy it is to lose yourself in the work of building a fantasy, making it hard to differentiate between what’s real and falsely constructed.

When I look back on former situationships, I don’t think the men I found myself with questioned who or what was beyond the curtain of my performed lust. I sensed from them a similar decision to submit to the fantasy of fabricated intimacy before us, without much self-awareness on either of our parts.

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Even Ani gets swept up in the allure of this similar fantasy she creates with her clients when her boss assigns her to show Ivan, played by Mark Eydelshteyn (Monastery, Smychok) a good time. The impetuous son of a Russian oligarch, Ivan, who encourages Ani to call him Vanya, is a boyish trust fund baby and an easy-to-please client whose affluence and wealth seem to know no bounds. “A lot of dancers and sex workers told me that young men are not big spenders and are generally trying to get the most out of their buck,” Mikey Madison says. “But Ivan turns out to be this refreshing character. He's not threatening at all; he's fun, funny, and around Ani’s age. And Mark plays his character so sincerely at first that she’s just charmed by him.”

The quick vignettes we get of Ani with customers are glamorized but Sean Baker peels back the curtain occasionally to show us the grounded, real conversations between the dancers. Laughing at the fucked-up things clients say, complaining to their boss about the shit working conditions, and complimenting each others’ jewelry (“I got dollar signs like a real ho.” “No, but you’re manifesting with those.”) I love honest moments like these. It’s almost too easy for audiences to assume that sex work displayed on-screen is empowering for its characters, when the truth is more complicated. Sex work is just work, with all its usual challenges, but often gone unprotected and disrespected.

Yet it would also be dishonest to pretend that there isn’t an occasional rush that comes with being good at what you do. In a world where the male gaze often enables violence against women, being able to profit off of or exploit a man’s desire comes with a satisfaction that can convince you that you’re invincible. Ani reaps the rewards from this high, always leveraging her position with her clients for something better—like when she goes freelance with Ivan by giving him her number. That feeling of empowerment is seductive in itself, even if short-lived at times.

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So when Vanya offers Ani the opportunity to be exclusive with him, you can sense she is enticed by the prospect of something more akin to a traditional romantic relationship. Ani remains trepidatious, stroking up a paid deal with him (“15. Cash upfront”), but the prospect of getting to experience ‘real love’ hangs above her as the two get wrapped up in their appreciation and curiosity of one another.

“I think he wants to be with Ani from the very beginning,” says actor Mark Eydelshteyn of Vanya’s inner world, “but he can’t be honest with himself and he's scared of responsibility. So he asks her to be his honey-girlfriend for a week. It’s a strange form of love.”

The two are swept up in a fever dream montage of sex, drugs, and partying, ending on an impromptu Vegas bender that ultimately ends with the two impulsively tying the knot. When Ivan’s parents catch word of the surprise union, they seek for their son’s marriage to be annulled—flipping the genre switch in Anora from Spring Breakers to Uncut Gems that sours the Cinderella fantasy that Anora finds herself in.

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The story at the heart of Anora is no doubt a tragedy. It evokes the dark reality on the other side of the fairytale that women are so often fed: that a man will come into your life, sweep you off your feet, provide for you and keep you safe. Even when all of us turn our nose up at this gauche and reductive narrative, we’re confronted with variations of this myth time and time again in how we’re conditioned to think of monogamy, of gender, of labor. 

I find it so interesting that Anora is marketed as a love story. I certainly never personally found Ani’s affair with Ivan romantic—sexy, maybe…$15,000 and a mansion is definitely sexy. But, maybe it's because I've learned the hard way that many men will confuse how you make their lives easier with how much they actually love you. I think perhaps the film is much more accurately described as a cautionary tale about placing trust in untrustworthy parties—or perhaps even an exposé on the dangers of believing anything rich men say.

Anora is out in theatres this October.

EXTRAS:

• Mark Eydelshteyn is sooooo damn funny. His physical comedy as Ivan is unparalleled — like if Ferris Bueller was a rich stoner twink.

• Anora has one of my favorite movie soundtracks from this year — featuring t.A.T.u, Slayyyter, Brooke Candy, Blondie, and more.

• At the TIFF Premiere of Anora, I had the chance to speak with Andrea Werhun, author of Modern Whore and script consultant for the film. When asked about the takeaway for sex workers watching the film, she said:

“I think the goal should always be opening the door for other sex workers to share their own experiences… let’s face it, we need to have more sex workers telling their own stories. We need to support sex workers as filmmakers, as storytellers, as producers, as writers to continue this lineage of storytelling and I think what Sean [Baker] does as an ally is open the door.”

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2 years ago · 1 like · Laya Lee

Thank you so much for reading Hi Shelli!

As always, all reviews are in front of the paywall and if you like what you read I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber <3