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.
276
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
277
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
278
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
279
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
280
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
281
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
282
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
283
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
284
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
285
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
286
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
287
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
288
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
289
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
290
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
291
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
292
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
293
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
294
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
295
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
296
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
297
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
298
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
299
The “Industry Plant” Problem: Harry Styles is n...
Ever since going solo post-One Direction, Harry has been on a mission to establish himself as a unique, creative voice. But has he done enough to really stand out as an original artist? And how does he fit into the larger conversation of the problem with industry plants and how hard it is for original artistic voices to break through?
10 min
300
Prince Harry’s Spare: What He’s Really Looking ...
Between Prince Harry's book Spare, the Netflix docuseries, and countless interviews, it feels like we finally got an inside look at the Duke of Sussex’s private life... so why does it still feel so unclear what Prince Harry really wants?
10 min