Sunni Rashad

Batman as a character is one of numerous contradictions. He's a normal human but a superhero. He's a vigilante who fights crime. He's a hero who fights in cruel often dark and unethical ways. Batman is often criticized for not taking more systemic solutions to the problems of crime within Gotham. This is not without merit as a billionaire with virtually limitless wealth when it comes to supplying his crusade of crime and punishment. But, at the same time, what actually can be done within the continuity of DC comics to counteract the criminal element in Gotham? He's just as likely to fight a woman with the power to control every nearby plant as he is to fight a carjacker. Even if he was able to use his liquid funds to curb homelessness and food insecurity, he'd still have a killer clown shooting poison gas. How does one reform that?

At what point does the reality of comics diverge from the goal of realism many fans and writers desire?

Media literacy is the ability to understand and analyze works such as movies, television, books, and even video games. That said in recent years there's been a notable lack of nuance in media discussions and even worse a rise in pushback against anything that challenges the audience's comfort,
claims such as "All sex scenes are useless", "protagonists shouldn't be bad/do immoral things" and "There should be a clear lesson in a story"

46% of American adults in a survey say that they didn't learn media literacy in schools, which begs the question of why not? What consequences have arisen due to low media literacy and how can they be corrected going forward?

"The Idiot Plot, of course, is any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot."
— Roger Ebert in his review of Narrow Margin (1990)

The 2008 black comedy "Burn After Reading" by the Coen Brothers is a film of fools doing foolish things to disastrous consequences. Each character for the most part overestimates their own standing and refuses to see the world as it is, but is that ideologically driven, do these people within the story have ideologies? For a film that is based in D.C. and told from the perspective of a C.I.A operative it's politics are remarkably scant, so then what drives each character to behave the way they do?

Jack Horner and Death

Of the antagonists in The Last wish, these two stand head and shoulders above the rest. But between them who can be argued to be the "better" villain.

Horner is a throwback, an old school villain, evil at his core. Unrepentant and callous his simplicity lends itself to easily understanding why he's a villain but, that same simplicity could be critique as lazy or unoriginal due to him always taking the worst most inhumane option.

Contrasting him is Death.
Death plays with Puss in Boots but is solely focused on him. It could be argued he is cruel and unfair but he's literally death and that is his nature. Is his simplicity better than Horner's due to him being more of a force of nature than an character.

What elements make each villain unique?

With the rising discontent with the MCU as seen on many social networking apps and film and television critics, a revisiting of the last truly dominant Genre of Westerns which held control of the box office landscape never before seen and only really eclipsed by the current superhero/comic adaptation market.

What in particular made the western so popular and what in specific lead to the box office death of the genre? What were the politics behind the genre, the economics, and actors both in a gamesmanship context and a performative context.

The slogan "art for art's sake" arose in the 19th century with the core ethos being that art, true art is divorced, separated, alien from function, any and all functions.

But with this philosophy, there is room for critique, after all nothing is created in a bubble and artists are influenced by their society and as such so are their works.

Does art always have a message? Should it?

Many Marxist thinkers would argue art must have a meaning and purpose but even non-Marxists have levied criticism at this school of thought.

Is Art for Art's sake a philosophy that is unfairly maligned? Is it a cynical defense from critique?

Analog Horror refers to the genre of horror created with the aesthetic of Analog technology, that is to say shot on video, "found footage".

Within the subgenre there exists quite a number of breakthrough hits such as "Backrooms" "Local 58" and "The Mandela Catalogue"

What draws people to this genre and what can be said about the genre tropes and themes? What is the appeal and is there a lesson that can be garnered from the creation of these works?

Bloodborne, the 2014 game from FromSoftware is a game ripe for exploration. One element worth delving into is the nature of femininity within the world.

The ways in which the player is force to confront the cruelty in which women and female coded NPCs are treated with regards to the game's world. Elements such as the "blessings" of the old ones force the player to view the horror of a world where women are specifically targeted for cruelty.

The nature of the blood within the universe is also worth exploring with regards to origins of the blood and the people born of it.