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      in Movies

      8 TikTokers Redefining the Movie Review

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      The personalities of MovieTok are not critics in the traditional sense. Their upbeat videos earn them contracts with Hollywood studios in addition to the devotion of movie lovers. These accounts offer a sampling of the new breed of movie reviewers.@straw hat goofy

      @straw_hat_goofy ♬ original sound – Straw Hat Goofy Name: Juju GreenAge: 31Followers: 3.4 millionSpecialty: Easter eggs and red carpet interviewsPast Clients: Disney, Universal, Warner Bros., ParamountBefore TikTok: Worked as an advertising copywriterMovie Hall of Fame: “Her” (2013)@maddikoch

      @maddikoch Why won’t they let him leave??? #plottwist #movie #movierecommendation #moviesuggestions #movieclips ♬ original sound – Maddi Moo Name: Maddi KochAge: 22Followers: 3 millionSpecialty: Movies you might have missedPast Clients: Peacock, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+Outside of TikTok: Studying finance at Virginia TechMovie Hall of Fame: “What Happened to Monday” (2017)@kodak_cameron

      @kodak_cameron Even technologically these movies are on par with Lord of The Rings. #spiderman #milesmorales #acrossthespiderverse #intothespiderverse ♬ Aesthetic – Megacreate Name: Cameron KozakAge: 21Followers: 1.5 millionSpecialty: News and analysisPast Clients: A24, Neon, PeacockOutside of TikTok: Studying film production at Oakland University in MichiganMovie Hall of Fame: “Whiplash” (2014)@cvnela

      @cvnela INFINITY POOL: CRAZIEST HORROR MOVIE⁉️ GO SEE IT IN THEATERS NOW TO DECIDE FOR YOURSELF #creepy #scary #horror #movierecommendations ♬ Creepy and simple horror background music(1070744) – howlingindicator Name: Monse GutierrezAge: 26Followers: 1.4 millionSpecialty: HorrorPast Clients: Neon, Amazon Prime VideoBefore TikTok: Worked as a substitute teacherMovie Hall of Fame: “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006)@cinema.joe

      @cinema.joe #fyp #foryou #movies ♬ original sound – Cinema.Joe Name: Joe AragonAge: 33Followers: 931,000Specialty: Monthly movie guidesPast Clients: A24, Peacock, Apple, Lionsgate, HuluBefore TikTok: Worked for an insurance companyMovie Hall of Fame: “Anything by David Fincher”@jstoobs

      @jstoobs It’s finally getting a wide release this month so see it and cry your eyes our #film #movies #pastlives ♬ original sound – stoobs Name: Megan CruzAge: 34Followers: 535,000Specialty: Women filmmakersPast Clients: Disney, Warner Bros.Before TikTok: Worked in restaurantsMovie Hall of Fame: “Jennifer’s Body” (2009)@stoney_tha_great

      @stoney_tha_great They Cloned Tyrone is GENIUS #TheyClonedTyrone #Netflix #MovieReview #JamieFoxx #JohnBoyega #SciFi #Comedy #Blaxploitation #BlackTikTok #conspiracytiktok #MovieTok #CapCut ♬ original sound – Stoney Tha Great Name: Bryan LuciousAge: 31Followers: 387,000Specialty: HorrorPast Clients: A24, Sony Pictures, Hulu, MGM+, Peacock, NetflixOutside of TikTok: Works for a tech companyMovie Hall of Fame: “Twister” (1996)@sethsfilmreviews

      @sethsfilmreviews #oppenheimer #moviereview #movies #foryou #fyp #filmtok #movietok ♬ original sound – Sethsfilmreviews Name: Seth Mullan-FerozeAge: 24Followers: 256,000Specialty: Audience polls, art house and foreign cinemaPast Clients: Mubi, Lionsgate, StudioCanal, HBOOutside of TikTok: Works as an online personal trainerMovie Hall of Fame: “Persona” (1966) More

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      in Movies

      On TikTok, Movie Critics Go By Any Other Name

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      On MovieTok, reviewers can reach an audience of millions and earn tens of thousands of dollars per post. “Critics,” they say, are old news.Maddi Koch loves to spread the gospel about a good movie. Her favorites are little-noted thrillers with few stars but juicy concepts or dig-your-nails-into-the-sofa plot twists.On TikTok, where Koch has three million followers (and goes by Maddi Moo), her review of “What Happened to Monday,” about a dystopian world where seven identical sisters share a single identity, has drawn over 24 million views. “If I were to die tomorrow, I’d watch this tonight,” she raved.Koch, who is a senior at Virginia Tech and is sometimes paid by film companies to promote their work, says she makes videos to connect people and to spare them “the pain of arguing over finding a movie or not knowing what you’re really looking for.” (Most of her videos, including the “What Happened to Monday” review, are not sponsored.) When asked, she’ll describe herself as a “random girl” who loves movies, a “content creator,” or, sure, even an “influencer.”But one title that she would never use might be the most obvious: “Critic.”“I just don’t see myself in that light,” she said.Koch, 22, is among dozens of personalities on TikTok, along with peers like Straw Hat Goofy and Cinema.Joe, who reach millions of people by reviewing, analyzing or promoting movies. Several earn enough on the platform — from posts sponsored by Hollywood studios (many have taken a break from working with them since the actors’ strike), through one of TikTok’s revenue sharing programs or both — to make their passion for film a full-time job, a feat amid longstanding cuts to arts critic positions in newsrooms.But the new school of film critic doesn’t see much of itself in the old one. And some tenets of the profession — such as rendering judgments or making claims that go beyond one’s personal taste — are now considered antiquated and objectionable.“When you read a critic’s review, it almost sounds like a computer wrote it,” said Cameron Kozak, 21, who calls himself a “movie reviewer” and has 1.5 million followers. “But when you have someone on TikTok who you watch every day and you know their voice and what they like, there’s something personal that people can connect to.”On MovieTok — as the community is known — the most successful users generally post at least once per day, with videos typically ranging between 30 and 90 seconds. Many attempt to capture the viewer’s attention within the first three seconds (“This movie’s perfect for you if you never want to sleep again,” begins Koch’s review of the hit horror film “Barbarian”) and speak directly to the camera, with screenshots from the film in the background.Many creators, most in their 20s or early 30s, specialize within a particular niche. Joe Aragon (Cinema.Joe, 931,000 followers) is known for his breakdowns of coming attractions; Monse Gutierrez (cvnela, 1.4 million followers) and Bryan Lucious (stoney_tha_great, 387,000 followers) demystify and rank horror films; Seth Mullan-Feroze (sethsfilmreviews, 256,000 followers) leans toward art house and foreign cinema.Unlike film departments at major metropolitan newspapers or national magazines, individuals on MovieTok generally don’t aspire to review every noteworthy film. And while most expressed admiration for traditional critics’ grasp of film history, they tended to associate the profession as a whole with false or unearned authority.“A lot of us don’t trust critics,” said Lucious, 31. He was one of many who pointed to the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, where the scores of “Top Critics” often differ widely from those of casual users, as evidence that the critical establishment is out of touch. “They watch movies and are just looking for something to critique,” he said. “Fans watch movies looking for entertainment.”MovieTok creators are not the first in the history of film criticism to rebel against their elders. In the 1950s, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and other writers of the journal Cahiers du Cinéma disavowed the nationalism of mainstream French criticism. In the 1960s and ’70s, the New Yorker critic Pauline Kael assailed the moralism associated with Bosley Crowther, a longtime movie critic of The New York Times, and others. And movie bloggers in the 2000s charged print critics with indifference or hostility to superhero and fantasy films.“There’s always this denigrating of those so-called ‘other’ critics as somehow elitist and old-fashioned while presenting yourself as the new avant-garde,” said Mattias Frey, head of the department of media, culture and creative industries at the City University of London and the author of “The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism.” He defined criticism, by any name, as “evaluation grounded in reason,” citing the philosopher Noël Carroll.Juju Green, known as Straw Hat Goofy on TikTok, said he is on a “mission to combat film snobbery.”Alex Welsh for The New York TimesJuju Green, a 31-year-old former advertising copywriter, sees himself as on a “mission to combat film snobbery.” Known as Straw Hat Goofy, Green is the most prominent member of MovieTok, with 3.4 million followers and an emerging side career as a correspondent and host. His most popular video, in which he identifies Easter eggs in Pixar movies, has nearly 29 million views.Seven years ago, Green started a movie-themed channel on YouTube — which favors longer, more produced videos — but abandoned it after the birth of his first child. On TikTok, he found that he could reach an enormous audience with relatively little effort. He said one of his first videos on the platform, a post from January 2020 about Tom Holland’s performance in “Avengers: Endgame,” received over 200,000 views in about an hour.“I had a feeling like I was meant to do this,” he said. Green quit his advertising job last year.Without the salary of a news organization, MovieTok creators earn money by partnering with entertainment companies. A sponsored post promoting a film or streaming service can be worth anywhere from $1,000 to $30,000.Green’s clients have included Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros., among others. In January, Universal paid him to create a post at an N.F.L. game promoting the movie “M3GAN” that received nearly seven million views — part of a marketing campaign that helped the film earn $30.2 million in the United States and Canada on opening weekend, about 30 percent more than box office analysts had predicted.It is impossible, of course, to make a direct link between TikTok influencers and ticket sales. But there are signs that the impact can be considerable. Sony executives have cited MovieTok campaigns as one reason for the strong performance of “Insidious: The Red Door,” which cost $16 million to make and has taken in a surprising $183 million worldwide.Being paid by the studios presents an obvious conflict of interest. Creators may be reluctant to speak negatively about the products of a company that pays them (or might). While traditional news organizations, including The Times, sell ads to movie studios, they do not allow critics, reporters or editors to accept compensation from them and generally keep editorial and business operations separate.Carrie Rickey, who was the film critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1986 to 2011, said she refrained from working too closely with studios to avoid even the “appearance of impropriety.”“It would mar my reputation as an independent writer,” she said.Many on MovieTok have evolved an ad hoc code of ethics — accepting payment only for trailer announcements or general recommendations, for example, rather than true reviews — but recognize accusations of bias as an occupational hazard.“I always try to be super transparent with my viewers,” said Megan Cruz (jstoobs, 535,000 followers), noting that she is careful to identify gifts and sponsorships in her videos. “We do exist in this in-between space and I think it’s important to clarify whenever you’re getting any kind of advantage.” (By law, paid endorsements on TikTok must be labeled; but gifts, including swag boxes and travel to red carpet events, are not always disclosed.)Cruz, 34, echoed other MovieTok reviewers who said they dislike doing sharply negative posts and would be unlikely to slam a movie whether they were in business with the studio or not. She said she generally prefers to deliver negative opinions in the form of a “compliment sandwich,” preceded and followed by more positive remarks.Megan Cruz, known as jstoobs on TikTok, said, “I always try to be super transparent with my viewers,” noting that she is careful to identify gifts and sponsorships in her videos. Alex Welsh for The New York Times“It pains me to say that this movie, by and large, did not work for me,” she said, in a review of the horror-comedy “Renfield.” Cruz then added: “There are a lot of individual elements of this film that really do work.”Another source of income is TikTok itself. Since 2020, the platform has shared revenue with accounts that meet eligibility requirements. Gutierrez said that between sponsored posts and payouts from TikTok she has made as much as four times the salary of her previous job as a substitute teacher.After Hollywood actors went on strike in July, many creators stopped working for the studios in solidarity. SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, issued guidelines for influencers last month discouraging them from accepting “any new work for promotion of struck companies or their content.”Green, who had previously implied that he would continue working as usual, subsequently walked back those comments. He said in a recent interview that he had turned down eight proposals to work with struck companies and would continue to do so for the duration of the strike.“It was a mistake that I made and I completely own that,” he said.The lack of Hollywood work has prompted many creators to pivot to other subjects, such as independent films and anime. But with or without the studios, those interviewed for this story said their obsession with dissecting movies would remain.“I like to call it professional overthinking,” Green said.Brooks Barnes More

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      in Television

      Morgan Wade Was Looking for the Spotlight. It Found Her.

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      The day before Morgan Wade was set to perform at Lollapalooza for the first time, the country singer-songwriter was in a Chicago hotel gym at around 10:30 a.m. It was arm day: regular curls, hammer curls, triceps pushdowns, lateral raises, dumbbell presses, face pulls and shoulder presses. She stopped after around 45 minutes, but only because it was actually her second session of the morning — she’d been up for hours, and had already done another 90-minute workout, and also ran three miles.“It’s just been something healthy for me to be addicted to,” Wade, 28 and slathered in tattoos, said of her fitness routine, sipping a chocolate Muscle Milk she’d grabbed from a vending machine for a quick boost of protein.For the last couple of years, Wade’s music career has been ascendant. Her 2021 album, “Reckless,” was a critical favorite in progressive country music circles, and “Wilder Days,” its stoutly aching breakout single, became an unlikely mainstream country crossover success. “Psychopath,” Wade’s second album and first on a major label, will be released on Aug. 25.In almost every other way, though, the last couple of years have been destabilizing: the erratic schedule, the increasing obligations to the music business, a slate of health struggles, the full-scale immersion into the public spotlight. And Wade, who has been sober for six years, has been finding ways to cope: therapy, fitness, clean eating, reading, journaling.In recent weeks, those tools have been stress-tested at a profound level, as Wade has found herself the subject of prurient tabloid interest regarding her seemingly unlikely connection with Kyle Richards, one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Online chatter that the women might share a romance has taken Wade from CMT to TMZ in record time.“Trust me, I’ve Googled it, man,” Wade said the prior night, backstage before a midnight gig at Reggie’s Rock Club. “I’ve Googled how to deal with the beginning stages of fame. The Wikipedia articles on that aren’t very helpful.”“I’m just a private person,” Wade said. “I’ve always been just kind of quiet. And so when all this kind of came out, I was just, it felt like everything had been stripped from me.”Lyndon French for The New York TimesWhen Wade was performing acoustic gigs at FloydFest, the roots music festival in her Floyd, Va., hometown, in the late 2010s, that she might someday be simultaneously navigating the rollout of her major label debut and the public dissection of her personal life might have seemed unfathomable.But even then, Wade was deeply disciplined. She took music seriously, writing and performing her own songs long before meeting Sadler Vaden, who plays guitar for Jason Isbell and has become her go-to producer.“She already had taken on the challenge of addiction when I met her. And she was in sobriety,” said Mary Sparr, Wade’s manager. “I saw in her that she had already had this huge challenge and chose to go ham, you know?”Vaden, who first saw Wade in a video performing her track “Mend” on a flatbed truck, described her as something akin to “a country Melissa Etheridge,” noting how the specificity of her gritty and reedy voice locates her in a country lineage, which frees her to make music that’s more eclectic and less hidebound.“Reckless,” which contained songs that Wade had written over several years, had the lightly bumpy texture of a scar that’s never quite healed. Wade’s voice is rich and sinewy, and it can sound like a scold and a plaint all at once. “Wilder Days,” which made it into the Top 40 on the Billboard country chart and was certified gold, got her signed to a Nashville major label, but she is in no way a country centrist. She has opened for Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton and Ashley McBryde, all on the genre’s more stylistically earthy side.Wade onstage at the Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif., in April. In August, she made her Lollapalooza debut.Monica Schipper/Getty Images for StagecoachWhen it came to beginning work on “Psychopath,” Wade was feeling pressure, self-imposed, to follow the success of “Wilder Days.” The first batch of songs was recorded last summer, but Vaden sensed she needed some more breathing space. “We have to just make an album that we are proud of,” he said he told her.Her manager was concerned, too. “She was burning herself out really bad,” Sparr said. “She’s the type that will say yes till the end of the world and work herself to the death until she hits that boiling point. We’ve had to mitigate her drive in those cases to give herself some more balance.”The songs from a second batch, recorded in January, are both heftier and more assured, playing with emotion, or genre, or both. The chirpy “Fall in Love With Me” is in this set, as is “Alanis,” which directly takes on the difficulties of a female performer enacting her whole self in public. “Losers Like Me” is an agitation about small-town life that recalls Kacey Musgraves’s debut single, “Merry Go ’Round.” And “27 Club” is a cutting song about dodging the worst fate, and still being unsure of what comes next.During that stretch of time, Wade and Richards were forming a friendship. Richards discovered Wade on the radio and followed her on Instagram. Wade, ever the skeptic (and who had never previously watched “Housewives”), messaged her to ask why. They got close quickly. Soon, they had a Wordle group chat, including fellow Housewife Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave and Richards’s friend Jenn Leipart. Richards began filming content for a documentary about Wade’s life, both onstage and off. The two posted photos together working out in the gym, and one of Wade sitting in Richards’s lap. Wade performed at a charity concert Richards had organized to benefit the National Alliance on Mental Illness. (Wade will also appear in the upcoming season of “Real Housewives.”)Wade, left, and Kyle Richards on a red carpet in late April. The two struck up a friendship after Richards followed the musician on Instagram.Ella Hovsepian/Getty ImagesThe public adjustments have not all come smoothly. “She told me at the NAMI event she almost wanted to leave at one point — she was like, This is so stressful,” Richards said in an interview. “I realized and appreciated later her hanging in there for me.”In the first week of July, news of Richards’s separation from her husband, Mauricio Umansky, hit the internet. Suddenly, Wade was being floated as a possible factor in the split. Strangers began dissecting her music, her lyrics, her past struggles with addiction and depression.Wade was at her family’s home in Virginia at the time. For three days, she didn’t get out of bed, she said. Sparr checked in like clockwork. “She was calling me like once an hour or every two hours and being like, What am I going to do? What are we going to do?” Sparr said. “She’s programmed to want to take an action. She wants to fix things. And, you know, sometimes there’s not anything to do but let time do the work.”Wade even skipped going to the gym. “For her to not go to the gym, I was like, OK, this is not good,” Richards said. “I’ve never seen her in two years not do that.”She continued, “I carried some guilt for having her be a victim of this because of me. I felt like it was collateral damage and I felt guilt about that, you know?”The gossip even traveled to Wade’s family; her grandfather suggested that land prices in their small town might go up. (“He has a damn flip phone!” Wade cackled.) Her 5-year-old half sister asked her why she was crying so much.“I seriously thought I was going to have to go to a rehab just preventively, to keep me from doing something stupid,” Wade said.Slowly, she got back on her feet. She returned to the gym, and set up twice-weekly therapy sessions. Getting a taste of public scrutiny, she said, made her regretful of the judgment she used to hold about celebrities. She tried to encourage her family and friends to see that she had now become the object of the kind of dismissiveness with which they had once regarded the famous. “You have to give people a little bit of grace,” Wade said.Wade said she’s going to go “Back to basics,” to articulate her post-fame version of herself on her next album.Lyndon French for The New York Times“I’m just a private person. I’ve always been just kind of quiet. And so when all this kind of came out, I was just, it felt like everything had been stripped from me,” Wade said anxiously, but with a touch of resentment. “And then too, your orientation, your sexuality, all that is just being discussed online by random people that don’t even know. It’s heartbreaking.”Sparr encouraged Wade to get offline, and to treat her relationship with social media “with a similar urgency and with a similar seriousness that she did with sobriety.”But Wade also had, depending on your perspective, either an ace up her sleeve, or a liter of gasoline about to spill onto the fire. In June, she had filmed a video for “Fall in Love With Me,” the cheeriest and poppiest song on “Psychopath.” The video features a slowly unfolding romantic rapport in a shiny “Desperate Housewives”-ish exurb between Wade, depicted in tight workout gear, and an infatuated neighbor, who watches longingly from a window in the house next door.The neighbor is played by Richards.It was inspired, in part, by avid Housewives fans who had already been speculating about their friendship online. “There was already a little bit of Reddit fodder — I call it fan fiction — about Kyle and Morgan,” before any of the “TMZ stuff happened,” Sparr said.The clip is playful, cheeky, a welcome blast of good mischief. “I’ve actually, my entire life, weaseled my way out of kissing someone on camera,” Richards said. Even though there’s a strategic millimeter between their mouths in the video’s most steamy moments, “This is the closest I’ve ever gotten, and it’s, spicy enough, I guess, that I would consider that breaking that streak.”The power of the video, far beyond the tabloid tease, is the conventional frankness with which it depicts same-sex attraction. Coming from an artist signed to a Nashville major label, it is deeply striking.“There was never any pushback from the label,” Sparr said. “But the greater feeling of everyone I talked to was like, I can’t believe you guys are going to pull this off.”There, again, is Wade’s discipline at work, steadily walking a path few before her have tried, emphasizing the representational value of the video while also toying with the story, real or imaginary, of her and Richards’s bond. And having been on the receiving end of scrutiny for the last several weeks, Wade has finally emerged on the other side, emboldened.“I don’t know why we’re in this day and time where we have to speculate about people’s sexuality,” she said, emphatically. “That is not appropriate at all. Like, let anybody be what they want to be — it’s none of your damn business.”She has more pressing things in front of her — an ultramarathon in November, just a couple of weeks before she is scheduled to undergo a double mastectomy (following a positive test for a BRCA mutation, a genetic risk for breast cancer). And she has already written a dozen songs for her next album.“Back to basics,” she said of the challenge of articulating the new, post-spotlight version of herself. “Taking elements of who I used to be and those core fundamental things and finding out like, Hmm. What I believed then and thought then, that part of me doesn’t exist anymore.” But, she added, there are some things “that I’m going to keep that didn’t die.” More

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      in Music

      How Hip-Hop Changed the English Language Forever

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      In 50 years, rap transformed the English language, bringing the Black vernacular’s vibrancy to the world. “Dave, the dope fiend shootin’ dope.” — Slick Rick, “Children’s Story” (1988) “Dopeman, dopeman!” — N.W.A, “Dope Man” (1987) Did you ghost me? 👻 Read 10:28 PM Homer Simpson going ghost. We unpacked five words — dope, woke, cake, […] More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Hollywood Strike Leaves Influencers Sidelined and Confused

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      Despite not being in the actors’ union, many content creators are passing up deals to promote films or TV shows because they don’t want to be barred from the guild or face online vitriol.Deanna Giulietti is not in the actors’ union, but she turned down $28,000 last week because of its strike.Ms. Giulietti, a 29-year-old content creator with 1.8 million TikTok followers, had received an offer to promote the new season of Hulu’s hit show “Only Murders in the Building.”But SAG-AFTRA, as the union is known, recently issued rules stating that any influencer who engages in promotion for one of the Hollywood studios the actors are striking against will be ineligible for membership. (Disney is the majority owner of Hulu.) That gave Ms. Giulietti, who also acts and aspires to one day join the union, reason enough to decline the offer from Influential, a marketing agency working with Hulu.The union’s rule is part of a variety of aggressive tactics that hit at a pivotal moment for Hollywood labor and shows its desire to assert itself in a new era and with a different, mostly younger wave of creative talent. “I want to be in these Netflix shows, I want to be in the Hulu shows, but we’re standing by the writers, we’re standing by SAG,” Ms. Giulietti said. “People write me off whenever I say I’m an influencer, and I’m like, ‘No, I really feel I could be making the difference here.’”That difference comes at a cost. In addition to the Hulu deal, Ms. Giulietti recently declined a $5,000 offer from the app TodayTix to promote the Searchlight Pictures movie “Theater Camp.” (Disney also owns Searchlight.) She said she was living at home with her parents in Cheshire, Conn., and putting off renting an apartment in New York City while she saw how the strike — which, along with a writers’ strike, could go on for months — would affect her income.Representatives for Searchlight and TodayTix did not respond to requests for comment. Hulu and Influential declined to comment.The last time Hollywood’s screen actors and writers went on strike, social media platforms and the $5 billion influencer industry didn’t exist. The actors’ union began admitting content creators in 2021 and still has only a small number of them, but questions have quickly emerged around how the union’s dispute with the major Hollywood studios will affect popular internet personalities.The union’s message that content creators will be blocked from membership if they provide work or services for struck companies has sent many scrambling. A number of creators have pledged support for writers and actors and circulated “scab” lists of influencers who promote new releases or appear at related events. Others have been frustrated or confused by instructions from a union that doesn’t protect them, and that some had never heard of.SAG-AFTRA, which represents some 160,000 movie and television actors, approved a strike on July 13. The division with the studios is driven largely by concerns about compensation in the streaming era and artificial intelligence. They joined screenwriters, who walked off the job in May, the first dual shutdown since 1960. During the strike, actors are not able to engage in publicity efforts for their projects or appear at film festivals or events like Comic-Con.Influencers have become crucial to the entertainment industry in recent years, especially during the pandemic, building buzz and promoting products. They post videos to hype new TV shows and movies, appear on red carpets and at events like the MTV Video Music Awards, and unbox products tied to film and television characters. Typically, as in the case with Ms. Giulietti, outside agencies hire creators on behalf of the studios.“If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future,” said Mario Mirante, a comedian with 3.6 million followers on TikTok.Marshall Scheuttle for The New York TimesNow those activities, besides limiting their career ambitions, could lead to internet backlash, with one nonunion influencer already posting an apology video for appearing at a recent Disney movie premiere. Others have posted promotional videos anyway, without backtracking or pulling the content. At least one creator posting from a recent premiere opted to turn off their TikTok comments, possibly to avoid potential criticism. On the flip side, videos from creators about jobs and events that they rejected in solidarity with actors have racked up praise and views on TikTok.“We don’t have power to make decisions for the talent, but we will in this moment recommend not engaging with struck work or struck companies on paid or organic projects,” said Victoria Bachan, president of Whalar Talent, a unit of a creator commerce company that works with more than 200 content creators. She added that young creators were also more apt to be supportive of unions and organized labor.Still, Whitney Singleton, a 27-year-old with 1.2 million TikTok followers, has been frustrated by what is being asked of her. She had never heard of SAG-AFTRA until the past couple of weeks. Ms. Singleton, using the moniker @KeepUpRadio, has attracted fans by singing and rapping about her favorite video games like Fortnite and streaming herself playing video games. It has been her full-time job for three years. She has collaborated with struck companies like Amazon in the past.“I really do value creators, and I want them to get what they deserve,” Ms. Singleton said. “But it’s really hard for me to just be finding out about an organization and being expected to fall in line with their initiative when I feel like it’s new to me and the influencer space.”She said some influencers were being asked to turn down five-figure deals, and that “the majority of creators I’ve talked to about it feel it’s unfair that as nonunion members, they’re being included in this conversation.”Ms. Singleton was invited to an early screening of the “Barbie” movie and said that while it wasn’t a paid promotion, the union’s guidelines for promoting the movie were “what I would deem murky.” Ultimately, she decided to post about the event, for which she dyed her hair pink.“I actually got no negative feedback, it was all positive,” she said. “For a moment, I felt a bit scared and put in a corner with these requirements because I respect creators in all industries, but I wouldn’t be being true to my heart if I had let those things stop me from living my life and sharing the content.”The union did not respond to questions about the criticism or about how many influencers are included in its membership. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the biggest studios, has said its offers to the writers and the actors were “historic” improvements on their previous contracts.The reality for many creators is that they dream of someday achieving a level of fame beyond the smartphone screen, making the threat of blacklisting by Hollywood’s most powerful union an ominous one.Mario Mirante, a 28-year-old comedian on TikTok with 3.6 million followers, recently posted a popular video about turning down a deal to promote a show based on his support for actors and writers and his long-term ambitions. Mr. Mirante has hoped to work in Hollywood since childhood, and even has a tattoo of Jim Carrey as “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” on his arm.“That’s a lot of influencers’ goal and aspiration and why they do it,” said Mr. Mirante, who lives in Las Vegas. “We love to entertain and express ourselves, and that’s the Super Bowl, that’s the ultimate, being in a movie or a TV show.”Mr. Mirante has previously been paid to promote the movie “Champions” starring Woody Harrelson and a product tied to the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise. “If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future, if that makes any sense,” he said. “Of course I’m not a part of it right now, but they’re fighting for basic rights, livable wages, not to have their A.I. likeness taken.”Krishna Subramanian, a founder of the influencer marketing firm Captiv8, said studios might need to pivot away from creators during the strike and get agencies to make more traditional display ads to place on Facebook and other sites.Simone Umba is a TikTok creator with more than 300,000 followers who primarily posts about TV shows and movies but has paused making such videos. She said that many influencers felt that they were “stuck in the middle,” but that most were opting to side with the union even as invitations and deals piled up.“We knew we were going to get approached, and it’s like we’re in a really messy family feud,” Ms. Umba, 26, said.She added, “Regardless of if you want to join the union or not, you don’t want to be one of those people that was willing to take a check instead of standing in support of people fighting for actual livable wages.”Ms. Umba said that it had been painful to miss out on posting about the star-studded “Barbie” movie after this summer’s marketing bonanza and that she had declined to attend an early screening of the film in Atlanta. She and a friend were messaging recently after trailers for “The Marvels” dropped, agonizing over their inability to post.“We were texting each other back and forth, like, this is so hard,” she said. She said she was prepared to hold out for months but was already thinking of holiday releases. She crossed her fingers, held them up and said, “Please, please, don’t let it get to Christmas.” More

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      Are You Ready? Gen Z Is Bringing Nu Metal Back.

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      Bands like Deftones and Slipknot are resonating with younger fans, thanks to TikTok, the Y2K revival and, of course, enduring teenage angst.When Deftones’s hit “Change (In the House of Flies)” blared out of Tyson Burden’s car stereo in April 2020, he started to choke up. It wasn’t the tune’s familiar growls or the teenage nostalgia it prompted that made him almost cry; it was his 15-year-old daughter, Nia LaVey Burden, sitting in the passenger seat and reciting the words to the song.“She knew all the lyrics, and my mind was blown,” said Mr. Burden, 39, a retail manager in Jacksonville, Texas. Turns out, Nia had discovered the band on TikTok a few months earlier. After the initial shock, he joined in, and the two threw their heads back and belted out the chorus.“It was just this really magical moment between parent and child where we love the same thing,” he said.Tyson Burden, right, started choking up when his daughter, Nia LaVey Burden, started reciting all the lyrics to Deftones’s “Change (In the House of Flies).”Tyson BurdenNia is part of a growing group among Generation Z that is listening to nu metal for the first time. The subgenre, considered one of the most accessible forms of metal, blends a heavy sound with elements of hip-hop, funk and alternative rock (think: Slipknot, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Kittie), and its lyrics often tackle dark subjects like pain, depression and alienation. Once popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it has now found a second life among young listeners, thanks to TikTok, the Y2K revival and, of course, enduring teenage angst.For Asher Nevélle, listening to nu metal is inspiring. “You feel like you can do anything,” said Mr. Nevélle, 25, a musician based in Los Angeles who performs under the stage name Freak. “It’s this ‘I don’t care’ attitude. Like, you can look at me, you can stare at me, you can judge me, but I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.”Silver chains, overly lacquered liberty spikes, pants so big they put ball gowns to shame — part of nu metal’s appeal is its flamboyant style, and celebrities have taken note. Billie Eilish is topping her oversize outfits with baseball caps à la Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit; Machine Gun Kelly is gelling his hair up into five-inch stalagmites; and in June, Justin Bieber was spotted in a pair of baggy wide-leg JNCO jeans.Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit once blew up a boat live on MTV.George DeSota/Newsmakers, via Getty ImagesBillie Eilish is known for wearing oversize outfits, often topped with a baseball cap à la Mr. Durst.Mauricio Santana/Getty ImagesRenee Dyer, 19, fell in love with nu metal fashion before the music. She doesn’t think a person needs to dress a certain way to be considered a fan, but her clothing choices are heavily inspired by nu metal. “It makes me feel as though I’m living in that era,” said Ms. Dyer, a retail associate who lives in Toronto. Among her favorite pieces are JNCO jeans and Tripp NYC pants. (“The bigger the jeans, the better!” she said.)During nu metal’s initial explosion, visual aesthetics were central to the scene by design, said Alex Strang, a cultural analyst at Canvas8, a market research agency. Bands adopted flashy costumes and provocative stunts to distinguish themselves and grab people’s attention. “If you’re TRL,” Mr. Strang said, referring to a television program popular in the early aughts, “and you see this weird thing with people rapping and shouting and being angry, and some people in boiler suits or wearing masks, you’re going to want to put it on TV, right?”Nu metal’s embrace of shock value led to a plethora of theatrical antics, such as when Mr. Durst blew up a boat live on MTV and when members of the band Mudvayne attended the Video Music Awards with fake bullet holes in their heads. More than two decades later, these bits are now ripe for recirculation on social media. For example, one popular Twitter account run by Holiday Kirk, a music journalist, posts bite-size clips of absurd moments in nu mental history, frequently garnering tens of thousands of views.On the internet, “everybody has access to everything all the time,” Mr. Strang said. “And so Gen Z kids will just cherry-pick the best bits of a bunch of different genres and be into everything and like everything. It’s like a bricolage in action.”Historically, nu metal has appealed to outsiders who felt a strong emotional connection with its gloomy subject matter. The most die-hard fans felt protective over their favorite bands and did not like the idea of “normies,” or people who were conventional or popular, listening to nu metal. In the 1990s, “either you were all in or you were a poser,” said Lynn Thomas, 53, a longtime Deftones fan from Pittsburgh, whose 21-year-old daughter discovered the band on TikTok.A growing group among Generation Z is listening to nu metal bands for the first time, including Deftones …Bridget Bennett/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images… and Slipknot.Jose Sena Goulao/EPA, via ShutterstockBut now many Gen Zers are more concerned with sociopolitical issues such as abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, “rather than, ‘Who am I hanging out with at the field party this weekend?’” Mr. Thomas said.These spaces may be less exclusionary now, but fans say there is still a sense of gatekeeping among nu metal heads — whether it’s older fans looking down on the newly initiated, or pretension from people of all ages about the bands they deem uncool. Since discovering the subgenre in January, Jay Katze, a 17-year-old high school student in Bradenton, Fla., has connected with some fellow listeners on the internet, but he has also been called a poser, a term he finds “silly” and “childish.”“Who do you expect to support the band you love if you’re pushing out anyone else who shows interest?” Mr. Katze said.Since discovering nu metal this year, Jay Katze, a 17-year-old student in Florida, has connected with other fans on the internet, but some of them have called him a poser — a term he finds “silly” and “childish.”Jay KatzeOff the internet, fans are also creating physical spaces to cultivate the nu metal community. For the past two years, Sam Gans, 31, and Danielle Steger, 38, both die-hard nu metal fans, have organized sold-out “Nu Metal Night” dance parties in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. People go “absolutely nuts” with their fashion at these quarterly events, Mr. Gans said, showing up with gelled and colored hair, studded belts, JNCOs, chain wallets and face paint.“There were people doing back flips off the stage,” Ms. Steger said of one New York party in March. “There was a whole row of headbanging, moshing.” One man kept asking the D.J.s to play “that one song” so he could propose to his girlfriend, Mr. Gans said. Nobody could hear him and figure out the name of the song — so the man never went through with the proposal.The nu metal wave isn’t lost on popular artists today, either. Grimes, 100 gecs, Rina Sawayama and Demi Lovato have introduced elements of the subgenre into their sound, and some bands who were part of the initial nu metal explosion are feeling the impact as well.In May, Kittie performed its first new song since 2011 at Sick New World, a music festival in Las Vegas featuring almost entirely nu metal bands. The group went on indefinite hiatus in 2017, but bookers started calling again in the fall of 2021 because of renewed interest, said Mercedes Lander, 39, Kittie’s drummer.“It did take a little bit of talking into,” Ms. Lander said of the offer to reunite. But one year after the initial request, Kittie got back together. “When we stepped onstage, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is how it’s supposed to be. This is what I’m supposed to be doing,’” she said. “This is a fantastic feeling.”In May, Kittie performed its first new song since 2011 at Sick New World, a music festival in Las Vegas featuring almost entirely nu metal bands.Greg Doherty/Getty ImagesTo Ms. Lander, it makes sense that the songs she wrote with her older sister, Morgan Lander, when they were teenagers still resonates with people. “It just kind of proves that teenage angst is timeless,” she said.Morgan, 41, Kittie’s frontwoman, shared the sentiment. “That’s not to say there isn’t still a fire and anger in us now — yeah, we’re still pissed,” she said, jokingly.Mr. Burden, the retail manager in Texas, said that after discovering his daughter was into Deftones, he showed her more of the band’s discography — particularly the album “White Pony,” which he loved as a teenager. And in May 2022, he even found himself at a scene he had dreamed about for over 20 years: screaming, headbanging and thrashing at a Deftones concert alongside hundreds of sweaty, decked-out fans. He just never imagined that he would be standing next to his daughter. More

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      Millions Danced Joyfully to Her Song. She Drew on Her Pain to Write It.

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      Nomcebo Zikode, the South African singer of the pandemic hit “Jerusalema” that inspired a global dance challenge, wrote the chorus while battling her own depression.It starts with a clap, and then the feet tap along to the beat: four times on each side, followed by a quick jump. As the melody rises, dancers dip low and twirl.It’s a dance easy enough for anyone to learn, and people all around the world have done so, with everyone from an urban dance crew in Angola to Franciscan nuns in Europe showing off their moves on social media.The “Jerusalema” dance, named for the South African hit song that inspired it, provided a moment of global joy during the lockdowns of the pandemic, a welcome distraction from the isolation and collective grief.But it was the chorus, a lamentation over a heavy bass beat, that was balm to millions. Sung in a low alto in isiZulu, one of the official languages of South Africa, audiences didn’t need to understand the song to be moved by it.The singer Nomcebo Nkwanyana, who goes by Nomcebo Zikode professionally, drew on her own intense pain when she wrote it.“Jerusalem is my home,” she sang. “Guard me. Walk with me. Do not leave me here.”After more than decade as an overlooked backing vocalist, and with her faith in music faltering, Ms. Zikode, 37, was in a dark place in 2019 when she wrote those words.Her manager, who is also her husband, insisted she write the lyrics to help her crowd out the voices in her head that were telling her to give up on music, and herself.Ms. Zikode, 37, was in a dark place when she wrote lyrics that would uplift millions.Alexia Webster for The New York Times“As if there’s a voice that says you must kill yourself,” she said, describing her depression at the time. “I remember talking to myself saying, ‘no, I can’t kill myself. I’ve got my kids to raise. I can’t, I can’t do that.’”She didn’t listen to the recording of the song until a day after it was made. As the bass began to reverberate through her car, everything went dark, she said, and she almost lost control of the vehicle. She pulled over, tears streaming down her face.“Even if you don’t believe it, this is my story,” she said. “I heard the voice saying to me, ‘Nomcebo, this is going to be a big song all over the world.’”And that prognostication soon proved true.In February 2020, a group of dancers in Angola uploaded a video showing off their choreography to the song, and challenging others to outdo them. As lockdowns were enforced just weeks later, the song was shared around the world.The global success of “Jerusalema” has taken Ms. Zikode on tour to Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. It also led to her being featured on the song “Bayethe,” which would win the Grammy award for Best Global Music Performance earlier this year.But while “Jerusalema” has brought her global renown, she has had to fight to earn any financial reward from it and to be recognized as part of its creative force.She sued her record label, and a settlement in December called for her to receive a percentage of the song’s royalties and to be allowed to audit the books of the label, Open Mic Productions, that owns the song.At least as important, the agreement also states that Ms. Zikode must be cited as the song’s “primary artist” alongside Kgaogelo Moagi, more commonly known as Master KG, the producer behind the instrumental track on “Jerusalema.”But even this victory in South Africa’s male-dominated music industry comes with significant caveats: For one, Master KG is receiving a higher percentage of royalties. And Ms. Zikode said she has yet to see payment. “I’m still waiting for my money,” she said.Open Mic did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but in a statement put out after her Grammy win, the label said: “She is a very talented artist and we welcome this agreement as a progressive resolution.”The global success of “Jerusalema” has taken Ms. Zikode on tour to Europe, the Caribbean and the United States.Alexia Webster for The New York TimesStruggles with money are nothing new to her.The youngest of four children born in a polygamous marriage, Ms. Zikode’s father died when she was young and her mother, the third wife, was left destitute. Desperate, her mother let a church outside Hammarsdale, a small town in South Africa’s eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, take her daughter in for four years.There, she slept on bunk beds among rows of other children. She sewed her own clothes and helped to clean the dormitories. The church choir was a solace, but she sorely missed home until she was able to return in the 10th grade.Her mother sold maize or bartered what vegetables she could grow for secondhand clothes. The neighbors who would ask the young Ms. Zikode to sing for them would feed her and take her in for a few nights as her mother struggled.When she was old enough, Ms. Zikode learned to braid other people’s hair to earn some money, but remembers self-consciously pressing her elbows to her side, for fear that her customers would smell that she could not afford deodorant.But what she really wanted was to sing, and she got her break at an open-call audition. She spent years singing backup for gospel stars, sharing crowded apartments with other backing vocalists. When gigs dried up, she took computer classes as a career backup plan.Ms Zikode’s first major South African hit came in 2017 when she sang vocals on the song “Emazulwini” for a well-known house music producer and D.J., Frederick Ganyani Tshabalala. But what had seemed like a long-awaited break turned into a letdown when DJ Ganyani, as he is known, did all he could, she said, to prevent her from performing the song live on her own.“They try by all means to suppress the singers,” Ms. Zikode said of the D.J.s and producers who hold most of the power in South Africa’s music industry.DJ Ganyani did not respond to requests for comment.Hoping a record label would better protect her rights, Ms. Zikode signed with Open Mic, but once the deal was inked, the label went quiet, she said, and she was left hustling to record her debut album.Feeling abandoned by the record company, her husband and manager, Selwyn Fraser, sent messages to other artists, masquerading as his wife on Instagram and Twitter, trying to get bigger names to work with her.This outreach campaign connected Ms. Zikode with Master KG and resulted in “Jerusalema.”It’s not only the song that has made her a household name in South Africa, but also her very public fight for her royalties and recognition, in the courts and on social media, said Kgopolo Mphela, a South African entertainment commentator.“She’s coming across as the hero, or the underdog, taking on Goliath,” Mr. Mphela said.For all her struggles with reaping the monetary benefits of “Jerusalema,” Ms. Zikode’s musical career has made her financially comfortable and she now has a music publishing deal with a division of Sony Music.Her 17-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son want for nothing, she said. She and her husband renovated their home, adding an in-house studio.Ms. Zikode can also bask in the accolades that have come with her Grammy win for “Bayethe.”Ms. Zikode won a Grammy for “Bayethe,” which she performed with two other South Africans, the flutist Wouter Kellerman and the performer-producer Zakes Bantwini.Alexia Webster for The New York TimesOn a chilly April night in Johannesburg, in the Grammy’s afterglow, Ms. Zikode stepped out of a borrowed Bentley at an event to celebrate South Africans who have achieved international success.As she walked the red carpet, determined to own the moment, she granted every interview request, whether from the national broadcaster or a TikTok influencer. Later that night, she accepted two checks, one for herself and one for a charity she founded that helps impoverished young women.When she took the stage to perform the song that made her famous, she hiked up her gown to dance the “Jerusalema.” More

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      Comedian’s Malaysia Joke Prompts Threats and a Diplomatic Incident

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      Jocelyn Chia’s line about the 2014 missing airliner was part of a Comedy Cellar set in April. But when video was posted this week, outrage poured in.At the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan this spring, the stand-up comedian Jocelyn Chia performed a routine that she had reliably included in her sets for more than a year, about the historical animosity between Singapore, the city-state in Southeast Asia where she was raised, and its neighbor Malaysia.But when Chia and the club posted a clip from the April 7 set to TikTok and Instagram this week, it provoked a heated backlash. The 89-second video showed the comedian bantering with an audience member who volunteered that he is Malaysian. And it concluded with Chia’s making light of the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people onboard. Angry Malaysians flooded the comment sections on Chia’s social media accounts. The Comedy Cellar received 4,000 one-star reviews on Google almost overnight and its website was hacked, its owner said. TikTok removed a clip of the joke from Chia’s account, flagging it as “hateful behavior” and a violation of its community guidelines, according to a screenshot Chia shared with The New York Times.Even Singapore’s minister for foreign affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, weighed in, condemning Chia and apologizing for her “horrendous comments” in a tweet noting, “She certainly does not speak for Singaporeans.”The incident demonstrated the fraught line toed by comedians when edgy routines are removed from their natural habitats in dark, late-night, alcohol-lubricated clubs and posted to social media for all to see. Managers of the Comedy Cellar and the West Side Comedy Club, where Chia has performed, said they had received or been threatened with negative reviews as part of the backlash. Chia said that her family and friends had received hate messages.At a club, “you can get away with saying stuff that’s kind of outrageous,” said Noam Dworman, the Comedy Cellar’s owner. “You can’t put that same moment into a small screen that you’re watching over morning coffee.”But Chia, who performed this week in New York and has future gigs planned, said in an interview on Friday that the fallout had not damaged her career. “I’m in no way canceled in America, in any sense of the word,” she said. “Now people want to come see me.”Chia, who was born in Boston and held joint American-Singaporean citizenship until adulthood, was a lawyer who decided her true calling lay in stand-up comedy.Her extended routine, which the clip abbreviated, mentions the former Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew and how he appeared to tear up in 1965 when the city-state was expelled from Malaysia “because he thought we were not going to survive,” Chia says in the video. “But then 40 years later, we became a first-world country. And you guys, Malaysia, what are you now? Still a developing country. Awww.”Likening the 1965 rupture to a breakup, she imagined Malaysia trying to woo Singapore back and explaining it hadn’t visited because “my airplanes cannot fly.” Then she added, to laughter, “What? Malaysia Airlines going missing not funny?”The complete routine has been one of her most successful recent bits, she said. “It gets raucous,” she said. “The full bit is well set up — I build up emotion.”The set seemed to set off an international incident only after its appearance this week on social media. Following the backlash, Chia removed the clip at the Comedy Cellar’s request, then reposted it to TikTok without the club’s logo. That’s when TikTok removed it.“I didn’t want the haters to think they had won and got me to back down,” she said. “Audiences at the Comedy Cellar see the best comedians and they love it, so how can I be embarrassed by it?”Felicia Madison, the managing partner and talent booker at the West Side Comedy Club in Manhattan, said she had been threatened with negative reviews by fans who figured out that Chia had appeared there. “We’re a pretty new club,” she said. “When people want to see if they should go, they look at reviews.”Dworman argued that the spate of negative reviews — which dragged down the Comedy Cellar’s overall rating before Google restored it — went beyond people exercising their right to be offended.“You’re entitled to dislike it and complain about it, but they’re trying to make it too risky for me to allow this woman to speak onstage,” he said. “That’s not a refutation of what she said, or a thoughtful appeal to the fact that this is something she should consider was too hurtful. This is essentially using brute force to make the other side say ‘uncle.’” More