The Take
This is the Take. It's where you come to understand more about your favorite movies, shows and culture. Our video essays make the story worlds you enter richer and deeper. Think: Endings Explained, Character Studies, Hidden Messages and Symbols Revealed, Actor and Director Profiles, and more.
We want to share our love of visual culture with the world. So here's our Take.
226
Why Handsome Hollywood Clones Are Taking Over C...
Between the Chrises, the Ryans, and all of the square-jawed, dark-haired guys on Ryan Murphy's shows, it’s getting harder and harder to tell movie stars apart... So, why is this happening & what do these types really represent?
10 min
227
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Trial: The Wackiest Moments f...
Gwyneth Paltrow’s ongoing trial is a deliciously ridiculous combination of wealth, celebrity and courtroom drama. Here's a rundown on the case & our take on why everyone's so obsessed.
11 min
228
Hailey Bieber: The Face of Gen Z’s Anti-Aging C...
Hailey Bieber’s rise in the skincare community has coincided with a crisis of the younger generation fearing aging at ever-earlier points. So is Hailey really that into health and skincare, or is her glow only skin deep and she’s just taking advantage of a market and generation already trending that way?
12 min
229
How I Met Your Mother's Marshall - The Truth Ab...
On HIMYM, Marshall seems like the perfect man... But, upon further inspection, he seems to be just as self-serving and morally limited as the rest of the cast, and he displays the show's inherently limited moral outlook.
11 min
230
Why Hollywood Can’t Ignore Its Consent Problem ...
Sex is out at the movies, and family-friendly superheroes are in. That’s partly because sex no longer sells, but also because the way audiences feel about movie intimacy has changed, too. Here’s our take on how consent plays into how we view intimacy onscreen – and whether Hollywood needs to start censoring again.
9 min
231
How Olivia Wilde Became the Internet’s Dream Vi...
Olivia Wilde had a wild past couple of years and still gets *a lot* of hate online. But how did Olivia Wilde become the Internet’s Most Hated Woman in the first place – and are there any darker agendas at play?
14 min
232
What Chris Rock’s “Selective Outrage” Says Abou...
Here’s our take on Chris Rock’s attack on outrage culture, what he gets right and wrong, and whether becoming more conscious of this outrage cycle can break us out of today’s tired back-and-forth culture-war conversations.
11 min
233
Plastic Surgery Regrets: How Stars Shape Danger...
The plastic surgery business is booming, and more people than ever making body modifications that they regret but that are impossible to reverse. Can create a culture that allows people the freedom to choose what they do with their body, without making them anxious about the body they’ve been born with?
9 min
234
The Royal Family’s “Other Women”: A Brief Histo...
Is Prince William’s Royal Affair actually real – or could it be totally invented by gossip and the media? The history of the Royal Family is full of juicy affairs and beloved mistresses, so the press is highly aware of how magnetically we’re drawn to this story arc of the royal “other woman.”
8 min
235
Endless Summer Vacation: Miley Cyrus’ “Personal...
Miley Cyrus is the queen of reinventing herself - and with her new era, it looks like Miley has found her most honest form yet. Our take on the hidden messages of Endless Summer Vacation, the new “Miley era,” and why it pays to drop genres and personas to get personal.
10 min
236
Selena Gomez: The Queen of Kindness… And Drama
Selena Gomez: queen of kindness... and controversy? Today we're looking at why, despite her best efforts, Selena keeps finding herself embroiled in controversy after controversy.
8 min
237
Succession’s Shiv - The Real “Woman Problem" in...
Succession does a great job of dealing with not just how the “woman” dynamics realistically play out around Shiv, but also how they’ve shaped her psychologically. Shiv has been molded into an arrogant-yet-insecure Girlboss who not only doesn’t help other women but often weaponizes feminism in service of her family.
13 min
238
Yellowjackets Ending Explained: S1 Character Ar...
Don't miss our Take on the hidden significance behind Yellowjackets season one’s most poignant reveals.
13 min
239
Elvis: What Baz Luhrmann Left Out… and Why
Biopics aren’t always the truth, but they are versions of the truth. With Elvis, we are hearing the King’s story through the voice of a classic unreliable narrator. So, what was left out… and more importantly, why?
10 min
240
The Banshees of Inisherin, Explained - What Tho...
Why do friendships break down – and once a conflict starts, can it ever really be over? The Banshees of Inisherin takes on these questions on both the personal and the political level...
14 min
241
Friends' Rachel & Her Sisters: What’s Really Dr...
Rachel’s sisters on Friends are unimpressive human beings – so what was it about Rachel that let her escape their spoiled, stunted adulthood?
10 min
242
Andrew Tate’s Empire Proves the Toxic Male is T...
Andrew Tate’s rise to fame has been rapid, but how did someone with such openly misogynistic views build up such a devoted following in a short space of time?
12 min
243
Leonardo DiCaprio & The Decline of The ’90s Hea...
Do young women still have a thing for Leonardo DiCaprio? Leo remains forever etched in our collective memory as the archetypal 90s heartthrob. But has our culture largely moved on from that 90s male ideal he’s clinging to?
10 min
244
Why Today’s Content Creators Get So Much Hate
Content creators are some of the most famous, influential, and popular people in our culture… so why don’t they get the same amount of respect as other creatives?
14 min
245
The Stay-at-Home vs Working Mom Binary Has Stop...
The stay-at-home versus the working mom. For too long women have been pigeonholed into these caricature-ish, loaded ideas of identity that prioritize capital and a social order over humanity and nuance.
12 min
246
Austin Butler and Why Women Don't Get to be "Me...
Sure, Austin Butler has been mocked on social media for retaining Elvis' drawl for years after filming wrapped... but he's also still getting awards & puff piece after puff piece. The fact that woman could never get away with this style of method acting exposes a bigger double standard in Hollywood.
15 min
247
How We Fail to Count Women: The Female Informat...
Gender gaps – we see them across the world, in almost every industry and aspect of our lives. But did you know that there’s a gap between men and women in information itself?
10 min
248
Why Sex No Longer Sells in Hollywood
They say that ‘sex sells’, but if that’s true, why has it practically disappeared from modern Hollywood filmmaking?
12 min
249
Why Your Favorite Show is Getting Canceled Soon
The streaming revolution has given audiences immediate access to a larger catalog of shows than ever before, but what good is that if they keep getting canceled midway through narrative arcs?
12 min
250
The Toxic Male: Why We’ll Never Really Escape Him
The era of outrage over toxic masculinity is truly dead – and Hollywood and social media have doubled down to put the toxic male back on top and at the center of our stories.
12 min