Vandana Shiva. She isn’t exactly entertainment, but she is a major figure in environmental studies who has written plenty and has many documentaries about her. She is highly lauded. There are plenty of good things to say about her, but whenever I read her, I always have heavy criticisms because she routinely teeters on essentialism and uses language that undermines the spirit of her work, which tells me the essentialisms that hide in the corner are a feature and not a slip of the tongue and it bothers me greatly. I guess I wouldn’t say I hate her work as much as I hate how little she is criticized when she is brought up in academic spaces and I am convinced that the lack of criticisms of her is part of a greater trend in undergraduate academia that highlights trends that are IMO easy for the ruling class to co-opt or work with, and essentialism is very easy to be manipulated.

Harry Potter. Very cliche I know. In some ways it is nostalgic in a Christmas-y sort of way, however, it is a total failure that IMO goes beyond the mere person of JKR. The books are antisemitic (goblins run the bank), justify slavery (house elves like to be slaves actually), works as copaganda (Harry literally becomes a cop at the end after the entire wizard state was easily taken over by fascists), and justify what I can only describe as a metaphor for race science while simultaneously taking the moral high ground (muggles are lesser than wizards in the books but boooo that’s mean and really only a cartoonish villain is the problem. It has big conservative “we are obligated to care for our lessors just as we care for our dogs” vibes. The books could have been written as a metaphor for how chauvinist the UK is.).

Marvel, and specifically Iron Man. Tony Stark is a war criminal and a groomer. He literally makes Spiderman into a fucking child soldier so he can fight Captain America and after he dies, he gives the fucking panopticon to said child soldier. Also, his savior narrative is nauseating, although similar to Christ, his death and “sacrifice” made zero sense whatsoever.