Candice Frederick

This profile is part of our Culture Shifters series, which highlights people who are changing the way we think about the world around us. Read about internet star Keyon Elkins and rapper Latashá.
Like anyone else who’s had a lifelong love affair with movies, Maya Cade struggles to name which films from her vast personal collection she would grab if she could only fit three in a bag on an extended trip out of town.
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“Oh, shoot,” she began during a video call in a cozy, one-hour re...

Left to right: Tendayi Kuumba, Kenita Miller, Amara Granderson, Okwui Okpokwasil, D. Woods and Alexandria Wailes in "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf."
Credit: Marc J. Franklin, 2022
It doesn’t take very long into a performance of director Camille Brown’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf” for you to realize it is an entirely singular experience among Broadway shows right now.
Maybe it’s the way seven — seven! — B...

Sofia Kappel in a scene from "Pleasure."
©Plattform Produktion, Courtesy of NEON
This article contains spoilers for “Pleasure.”
Often just the mention of a woman aiming to catapult to the top of the male-dominated porn industry provokes a number of “get it, girl!”-like reactions in today’s more sex-positive era. And understandably, because female sexual agency should be championed and it is a natural right, as is making safe spaces for women to prosper in the sex industry.
So, it makes sense ...

“All-American,” “urban,” “alternative”: The ’90s were all about one-dimensional labels that further flattened a generation that had already lost its sense of self. Back then, this was rarely a cause for concern. Hollow descriptors were everywhere ― particularly when it came to the brands we wore, paying good money so our clothes would give us an identity or validate one we desperately wanted to purport. They were part and parcel of a consumer relationship we willingly entered and empowered.
B...

Who can forget hearing Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love” as Julia Roberts looked wistfully out a car window after bidding her lover adieu in “Pretty Woman?” Or Toni Braxton’s “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” after Halle Berry epically breaks up with cheating-ass Eddie Murphy in “Boomerang?” Or even The Muffs’ “Kids in America” introducing the teenage spirit of “Clueless?”
They’re just a few of the songs that helped define a golden era for film soundtracks in the ’90s, back when the moviegoing...

In 1992 ― just four months after the cops who beat Rodney King nearly to death were acquitted, and the resulting civil unrest in Los Angeles led to an attack on truck driver Reginald Denny ― “In Living Color” decided to tell a joke about it. But not just a joke. They did a full sketch, a faux-PSA where King (David Alan Grier) and Denny (Jim Carrey) warned people not to get out of their cars. Because, well, you see what happened to them when they did.
It was one of those moments in comedy that...

At the height of her fame in 1997, singer-songwriter Fiona Apple stood up in front of a live audience at the MTV Video Music Awards and made what should have been an obvious observation about the state of pop culture at that time, followed by words of wisdom.
“This world is bullshit,” she said in her acceptance speech for Best New Artist. “And you shouldn’t model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we’re wearing and what we’re saying and everything. Go with yourself....

It’s easy to look back on a decade that seems so distant, so long gone. But when you look back on ’90s pop culture, there’s a lot about it that rings true today. For instance, we’re still subsisting on a fairly strict diet of celebrity culture and sarcasm. The economy remains in the toilet. And young people are the most influential, especially when it comes to the consumer dollar.
Maybe that’s why lately we haven’t been able to resist reflecting on, and often reappraising, the ’90s. Because s...

As a horror story, “The Baby” maniacally puts its protagonist in front of her most profound fear: a baby.
Photograph by Rekha Garton/HBO
This article contains minor spoilers for “The Baby.”
If you’ve ever been the decidedly single, childless one in your group of friends, you probably already know the thing you’re never supposed to think, much less utter out loud, to your pregnant pal: “Are you going to turn into a massive asshole when you have a baby?”
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But that’s a line from the...

Charlie Barnett.
Photo credit: Shauna Murray
This article contains some spoilers for season two of “Russian Doll.”
Perhaps it’s the knotty feeling of nostalgia that comes from being on “Russian Doll,” or that he’s been organizing every family photo in his childhood home lately, but Charlie Barnett has been thinking a lot about his past and what it really means to be in someone else’s shoes. The latter notion especially rings true if you saw the throwback photo he posted on social media last y...

Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning) and Conrad Roy (Colton Ryan) in "The Girl From Plainville," streaming on Hulu.
Steve Dietl/Hulu
It’s been nearly eight years since Massachusetts teen Conrad Roy died by suicide while his girlfriend Michelle Carter, then 17, urged him along through increasingly disturbing text messages. That tragic moment culminated with a landmark “texting suicide” conviction that landed her in prison for involuntary manslaughter. Since her 2020 release, the court of public opin...

Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost; Photos: Getty/Warner Bros.
If you were to say back in 1994 that Will Smith would win an Oscar one day, folks might not have believed you. It’s not that it was completely absurd to suggest that he had the chops to achieve what is considered Hollywood’s highest honor. After all, that same year he wowed audiences when he showed another side of the goofy, fish-out-of-water yet oh-so-cool Will on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” with the heartrending storyline of ...

Left: Mia Goth stars in "X"; right: Ophelia Lovibond stars in "Minx."
Katrina Marcinowski/Christopher Moss
This article contains minor spoilers from “X” and “Minx.”
In 1979, the film “Hardcore” attempted to bridge a gap as it compelled its Calvinist protagonist to understand that his daughter might enjoy being a porn star in a decade when religious anxiety peaked around recently loosened obscenity laws in the U.S.
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The new movie “X,” set in that same year, offers a more jaded ima...

Director Mariama Diallo on the set of "Master."
Emily V Aragones/Prime Video
4Mariama Diallo’s remarkable new horror film, “Master,” is in part about navigating the often dual feeling of accomplishment and inferiority as a Black female freshman on a white college campus. But at age 34, Diallo admits she still grapples with that same slippery sense of achievement, years after her Yale education.
The writer-director has only recently come to terms with this feeling after saying in a previous in...

Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman in "The Batman."
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
There are very few things that are still expected in this life. Those include Kanye West saying or doing something totally outrageous, Donald Trump calling the 2020 presidential election rigged and an egotistical Bruce Wayne basking in his obscene wealth and heroism in equal measure.
And now, writer-director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” has eviscerated that third bullet point. But who is The Caped Crusader without a...