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.
451
The Buff Clown Trope - A New Masculine Ideal
The Buff Clown has become one of today’s masculine ideals that seems to dominate blockbuster movies, and he’s often used to skewer stereotypes of toxic masculinity and ridiculous egotism. So who is this new Hollywood hero?
18 min
452
How I Met Your Mother - Lily, The Perfect Famil...
How I Met Your Mothers' Lily often has her professional and personal goals sidelined. She serves as the show's ultimate "domestic goddess," modeling true, long-term romance with her own kind of assertiveness.
21 min
453
Cruel Intentions - Kathryn, A Misunderstood Vil...
At its core, Cruel Intentions is about elite society, and the emotional reality of kids who grow up in a rich but loveless environment and then go on to perpetuate cruelty in the greater world. So is Kathryn's rage justifiable?
22 min
454
The Special Girl Trope - Moving Beyond a Male C...
If the "Special Girl" onscreen is given her status by a guy, then surely her specialness can be taken away as quickly as it’s bestowed. So beyond loving the special girl, what really makes her more deeply special?
21 min
455
Euphoria's Cassie - Why Women Like Her Are Stil...
In season 2 of Euphoria, Cassie goes bananas. Her arc has a lot to say about self-esteem, sexuality and the “slut” trope in today’s world.
20 min
456
Everything That Went Wrong with the Oscars 2022
In 2022, it’s harder than ever to know what the Oscars are supposed to be. If the “slap” is the main thing we’ll remember about the 2022 Oscars, what does that say about any deeper value the Academy Awards even still hold in our zeitgeist and cultural conversation?
13 min
457
The Tall Girlfriend and Short Boyfriend - Endin...
Coverage of Zendaya and Tom Holland's relationship often centers on the Tall GF/Short BF debate. What’s the real reason behind the media’s fixation over just a couple of inches – and why is a shorter man dating a taller woman even a story at all?
12 min
458
The 30 Crisis - Adulting When Adulthood's Unatt...
What’s expected by the time we turn 30 has changed drastically over the last decades, leading to the new 30-crisis, as seen in titles like tick, tick... BOOM!, Inside, Starstruck and The Worst Person In The World.
18 min
459
The Power of The Dog, Ending Explained - The Me...
The Power of the Dog is ultimately a story about how toxic masculinity is a corrosive force that destroys people from the inside, and so the movie’s title refers to those dark, secret selves we fear.
23 min
460
West Side Story - All The Differences Between T...
While 1961’s West Side Story is a tragic love story with a laser focus on the Romeo and Juliet romance between Tony and Maria, Stephen Spielberg’s 2021 update is a wider story about the bigger forces in society that contribute to hate.
23 min
461
How I Met Your Mother - Why Dating Rules Don't ...
On How I Met Your Mother, Barney's "rules of dating" reflect our “laws” about how to act on a hook-up, who’s an acceptable match, and how a potential partner’s behaviors should be interpreted. But real love demands throwing out the rulebook.
23 min
462
Modern Family’s Gloria - A New Second Wife Play...
Modern Family's Gloria Pritchett tore up the "second wife" playbook, proved those caricatures aren’t all real, and gave us hope that sometimes you really can get it right the second time around.
22 min
463
The Celebrity + “Normo” Romance Boom - Normal i...
Celebrities - they’re just like us! Or that’s what we like to believe, and nothing sells that story better than when celebrities get together with “normos”.
21 min
464
Why Game of Thrones Already Feels Dated
Game Of Thrones rushed toward a finale that left a confusing and disappointing legacy. So, are we ready yet to talk about the show again - and can it ever regain that place in our hearts?
20 min
465
The “Cheugy” Problem - Why No One Can Keep Up w...
When does something stop being trendy, and start being "cheugy" – and is it time to just stop trying ever to be “up to date”?
15 min
466
Licorice Pizza and Love in Paul Thomas Anderson...
Paul Thomas Anderson's films present a portrait of love that entails accepting the good, the bad, and the ugly in another person – seeing all your partner's flaws and adoring them anyway.
21 min
467
The Disposable Black Love Interest - A Tokenist...
We can spot the “Disposable Black Love Interest” character almost instantly: they’re the fleeting guest star, presented as great in theory, yet we know the main character’s not actually going to end up with them.
22 min
468
How Euphoria Visualizes Feelings
When you’re a teenager everything can feel overwhelming and intense. Euphoria takes this to an extreme, communicating "emotional realism" through cinematic techniques.
21 min
469
The Material Girl Trend - Buying Your Way to Em...
The Material Girl TikTok Trend can be viewed as an inclusive rallying cry for marginalized people and increasingly disenfranchised youth to declare and flaunt their fabulousness, however much material wealth they have (or don’t...).
17 min
470
Unreliable Narrators - Why We Love To Be Lied To
Unreliable narrators of books, film, and TV often explore mental illness, the fickle nature of memory, and revisionist bias. And these days, it’s gotten harder and harder to trust the narrator of any story, fictional or not. This is the unreliable narrator, explained... Or is it?
20 min
471
How Margot Robbie Escaped The “Bombshell Trap”
Margot Robbie has always managed to bring something extra to her "bombshell" roles, but she became a master of her own destiny and widened the range of roles available to her by developing not just as an actor but as a producer.
22 min
472
Inventing Anna - American Dream Gone Haywire
Anna Delvey embodies the 21st century American dream gone haywire in a “fake it 'till you make it” world that treats image as reality. So what lessons can we take from her playbook on how to hustle?
14 min
473
That Girl: Turning Self-Care Into a Job
While "That Girl's" lifestyle promises shortcuts toward fulfillment, does it actually create more work, and raise expectations for women yet higher?
20 min
474
The Imperfect Mom Onscreen - Why She Deserves t...
The Imperfect Mother is so jarring because she doesn’t fall in line with our culture’s assumption that a good mother must be selfless. The controversy around this figure reveals we haven’t come as far as we might think.
22 min
475
Bennifer - The One Who Didn't Get Away
Why are we even more enthralled by Bennifer’s second go-round than their first one? In part, it’s because we’re fascinated by the concept of “the one that got away.”
22 min