Pop Culture

#TheWeekThatWas | Weed in Indian Culture

With actor Rhea Chakraborty's arrest over 'procuring' weed for late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, the conversation has been hyped by overzealous media houses in a quest for skyrocketing TRPs.

Revisiting Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 23 years after its debut, there's nothing like Joss Whedon's pioneering TV series

From our #RewindToUnwind series, an ode to Buffy the Vampire Slayer: a look at what made it special when it released in 1997, and why it remains relevant, nearly two-and-a-half decades later.

The Filter Koffee Podcast: Cyrus Oshidar on MTV’s irreverent success, brand building and the vision behind 101India

In this episode of The Filter Koffee Podcast, Cyrus Oshidar talks about MTV in the ‘90s, the relevance of pop culture in brand-building and the thought behind 101India.

In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, A Secret Love and Four More Shots Please!, rooting for romance and desire

At first glance, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year but became available to stream in India via MUBI only recently), Chris Bolan’s Netflix documentary A Secret Love, and season 2 of Nupur Asthana's Amazon Prime Video India Original show Four More Shots Please! seem like entirely different entities, but at the core of all three — when you strip away the layers of form, treatment, tone, era — is a heart-stopping romance. #PrideMonth

Westworld and Ramin Djawadi’s music: Choosing to see the beauty in HBO sci-fi drama's disarray

Occupying that nebulous zone between soundtrack and score, the Westworld music destined to endure will inevitably be Ramin Djawadi's covers

Westworld Season 3, Episode 8 review: A soaring, hopeful finale that delivers the message a world in crisis needs

This is a finale that represents the very best of what Westworld can be — visually, thematically, emotionally. In writing its ode to humanity, HBO's star also writes an ode to itself.

The problem is not how Greta Thunberg looks, but how we view young women

Greta Thunberg came to our laptops, phones and TV screens without make up, without formal dressing-up, or hairstyling. She came with pain in her eyes, and anger, and words that seared. Was it enough? Apparently not, for many men who commented on her looks and 'plainness' | Manjima Bhattacharjya writes in 'Curious Fashion'

Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On and American Playboy offer a compelling viewpoint on porn

As Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On and American Playboy stream on their respective platforms, taken together, they tell a compelling (if disturbing) story about how we got here; a story about sex, our bodies, and porn.

BoJack Horseman season 6 bows out with two weddings, an (almost) funeral, and a poignant farewell

The final episodes of BoJack Horseman season six come at a time when fans of Kobe Bryant have been bitterly divided over what place (if any) a 2003 sexual assault case should have, in analyses of his legacy, after his death at the age of 41 in a tragic accident that also claimed the life of his 13-year-old daughter and at least seven others.

The future is sci-fi: On Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, AI and artificial empathy

If androids become virtually indistinguishable from their organic counterparts, how do we tell them apart? In Do Androids Dream of Electric, Philip K Dick proposed an alternate criterion: empathy.