Still Processing

This week, we discuss "A Wrinkle in Time," Ava DuVernay's attempt to take the audience on a magical adventure with Meg Murray as she searches for her father through multiple universes. Our time traveling experience ... wasn’t as magical as we hoped. But this is good news...

We went to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. to look at the recently installed portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama. The paintings--Barack's by Kehinde Wiley, Michelle's by Amy Sherald--prompted both rapture and controversy when they were unveiled in February, and we wanted to see them in person to try to evaluate our own responses. As we traveled through the gallery from George Washington to Obama, we discussed what portraits can tell us about presidential power...

This week, we examine four of the Best Picture Oscar-nominated films—“Call Me By Your Name”, “Get Out”, “Shape of Water”, and “Phantom Thread”—to ask whether we are entering a new phase of romance films. By diverging from conventional norms and stereotypes, these films have created on-screen relationships that are reminiscent of our own relationships...

This week we're looking for a thread running through three seemingly disparate moments: the release of Clint Eastwood's new film "The 15:17 to Paris," the Olympics in South Korea, and the tragic death of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. We use these events to discuss how culture can act as a smokescreen for reality and a way to avoid our fears. Plus: Jenna defends her surprising position that spoilers are actually good...

It's going to be one of the biggest opening weekends in movie history. But "Black Panther" is about so much more than the box office. This week we're putting Ryan Coogler's new film in the full context it deserves and demands, with a little help from our friend Ta-Nehisi Coates.

There's no episode of Still Processing today, but Wesley and Jenna are cooking up something special — a whole show on "Black Panther" with special guest Ta-Nehisi Coates. Check your feed Friday morning!

This week, we take the Oscar-nominated film "Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri" as a starting point for a discussion about a new sense of placelessness in film and TV. Over the last year, we've been seeing stories set in ambiguous spaces--the limbo between heaven and hell, distorted models of our world, towns that look like no place we recognize as American...

This week, in light of Justin Timberlake’s upcoming Super Bowl performance, we revisit his infamous 2004 “wardrobe malfunction” halftime show with Janet Jackson. We dissect the public reaction to “nipplegate,” why Janet (and not Justin) took the fall, and how the controversy changed the course of both artists’ careers. We consider Justin’s new musical direction in the context his history of appropriating other cultures...

This week, we examine the outrage that is expressing itself in all corners of the culture. In the process, we found unexpected connections between events and ideas that might seem unrelated: Ed Sheeran being left out of all the major Grammy categories as a (possible) way to avoid controversy, the heated debate over an account of a bad date with Aziz Ansari, the testimony at the sentencing of Dr...

The wait is finally over - we’re back for Season 3! This week, we look at the movie “Proud Mary” starring Taraji P. Henson as a jumping off point for the cultural moment that black women are having right now in pop culture. We run through a brief history of black women in movies and television and consider those who built the foundation for this moment...