Rated Reads this week takes a look at the Sex and the City revival's race problem, the trailer for a visually stunning new sci-fi movie and a deep dive into the true face of the growing drill music genre.

And Just Like That was an opportunity to address Sex and the City‘s diversity problem, and it failed miserably

And Just Like That, the sequel series to Sex and the City, hit screens last week, and it’s already stirring up plenty of controversy (I don’t even watch it, and even I’m not happy about what they did to Big). For Glamour, Ateh Jewell highlights a particularly egregious problem of the new series – its failure to adequately address the overwhelming whiteness of the original series and its bad habit for cringeworthy attempts at wokeness. And just like that, we realised that some of our pop culture favourites are best left in the past.

In 2021, Reality TV Finally Became All Spectacle

None of us are okay in 2021, but reality TV is especially not okay. Everywhere you turned this year, there was some truly bizarre new concept out there that dozens of executives happily waved through. Remember that clip from the Channel 4 show The Love Trap where women fell through trapdoors? Remember Sexy Beasts?! For Vice, Lauren O’Neill finds some method in the madness, pointing to the increased role of virality and bizarro humour in contemporary reality TV. Nothing will ever fully explain The Masked Singer to me, but this is close.

And You May Find Yourself in the Library of Congress

 

It’s always been my strong belief that David Byrne’s really big suit deserves to be in a museum, and finally it seems like somebody agrees. Vulture reports that the National Film Registry of America has selected a new batch of films to be preserved in the Library of Congress for cultural significance, and among them is the Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense. It’s only right and fair that historians looking back on our civilisation will see David Byrne sprinting around the stage like his life depends on it, and presume that this was what we were all like.

 

Michelle Yeoh fights her way through the multiverse in trailer for A24’s Everything Everywhere All At Once

 

Thanks to Marvel, 2021 was the year of the multiverse. Thanks to A24, 2022 seems to be heading in a similar direction. The AV Club has the trailer for the new indie sci-fi film Everything Everywhere All At Once, which offers us the truly fantastic premise that there are an infinite number of versions of Michelle Yeoh out there. We couldn’t be more in.

 

 

Mask Off: how UK drill subverts reality, fantasy, and public image

 

Drill music is one of the fastest growing subgenres of rap, but it’s also all too easy to misunderstand. Moral panic and accusations of glorifying violence have followed drill since its inception, forcing artists to get creative with their public personas. For their winter issue, Dazed takes a look behind the stereotypes and discusses how various drill artists on either side of the pond like TeeZandos and V9 are finding their own path to artistic success.

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