Girls is [...] a landmark in the modern media landscape in its normalization of that which was previously swept under the rug by television’s idea of a woman: the uncomfortable reality of a 20-something-year-old middle-class white girl’s life. In televising authenticity, Girls standardizes ‘unlikeable’ behavior and life experiences which previously appeared outlandish or even crude as a direct result of the history of straight white women in television, framed by the gender performance of its girls.

The long Soviet sixties and the Khrushchev Thaw were a particularly singular time. The temporary liberalization of Khruschev’s censors allowed for filmmakers to interrogate the conditions of the postwar USSR in ways that would have been unthinkable during the Stalin years; and yet, the overwhelming social malaise of the generation led to those portrayals taking on a distinct tone of anxiety, fragmentation, and purposelessness.

"Reality television, including Love Island UK (2005–), Love is Blind (2020–), and Perfect Match (2023–) expand to a Marvel Cinematic Universe level of lore and, as a result, continually lose millions of viewers every season. [...] The formulaic nature of competition shows with constant variables, such as cooking shows with repeated challenges, rely on editing portraits of individual personalities to keep audiences engaged. These shows continue to stay on air by imitating themselves; however, there is still spirit in these contestants."

"This sense of repression, which comes with an accompanying boredom, is what seizes Duras’ film, rendering it as an oppressive and intolerable portrait of the banality of the Western colonial project from the perspective of those stationed abroad. It is thus, from this historical vantage point, that we can interpret the film as less so a film about actual, existing people as much as it is a film about the ghosts of Western colonialism."

"The most interesting element, however, is the character carved on the headstone–‘mu,’ which means ‘nothing’ in Japanese. Meanwhile, other filmmakers like Kurosawa and Mizoguchi, just like any traditional headstones in a Japanese cemetery, only display the family name. [...] The first term to point towards is the Buddhist concept of emptiness, which ‘mu’ likely implies."

"Depictions of women expressing unique sexual desires are not unilaterally patriarchal: Buñuel makes it clear that they are not inherently castrated, but are repressed in their expression by the dominant structures that Mulvey diagnoses. Reflecting patriarchal dominance over female sexuality, the male characters in Belle de Jour control the film’s narrative. Even as the male characters are dictating the narrative, Severine dictates the perspective from which we view the narrative. Buñuel does this intentionally in order to further the audience’s sympathy for Severine and her feelings of powerlessness."