Messy Liberation: Feminist Conversations about Politics and Pop Culture20 Tammi

Sinners vs One Battle After Another: Race, Power, and Who Gets Centered in Hollywood

In this episode of Messy Liberation, Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown dive into a layered, messy, and necessary conversation about storytelling, race, motherhood, power, and who gets centered when Hollywood tells “political” stories.

Using three recent releases as our jumping-off point — Sinners, One Battle After Another, and His and Hers — we unpack what happens when art claims to be subversive… and whether it actually is.

We talk about:

Why Sinners feels intentionally campy, unapologetically political, and rooted in Black culture, music, ancestry, and collective survival
How One Battle After Another leans on harmful tropes about Black motherhood, revolutionary violence, and white male centrality — and why “satire” isn’t a get-out-of-harm-free card
The racial reframing of His and Hers and how changing the main characters to Black women fundamentally shifts the story’s meaning, stakes, and power
Who gets empathy, who gets invisibility, and who’s expected to carry the labor — on screen and off
Why representation alone isn’t enough, and why who tells the story matters just as much as what story gets told

This is a spoiler-heavy episode that assumes you’ve either watched these films or are okay hearing the full critique. It’s also an honest conversation about discomfort, trigger warnings, and the exhaustion of watching your lived experience turned into “prestige art” for someone else’s enlightenment.

If you care about media literacy, liberatory storytelling, and calling bullshit when “art” punches down — this one’s for you.

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Symone Sanders vs. Hasan Piker: Is Violence Part of Liberation?

On this episode of Messy Liberation, Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown break down the viral Clock It interview where Symone Sanders Townsend pushed back on Hasan Piker for comparing US police-brutality...

21 Syys 51min

There Is No 'Neutral': Macklemore, Pink, Ed Sheeran, and the Cost of Speaking Out

On this episode of Messy Liberation, hosts Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown break down Macklemore's public firing from Ed Sheeran's tour after he said "Free Palestine" on stage — and use it to dig int...

14 Syys 51min

Safe Space Is a Buzzword: What Real Community Actually Looks Like

Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown break down what actually makes a group of people a community — not just a paid membership or "safe space" buzzword. On this episode of Messy Liberation, they unpack wh...

9 Syys 57min

Nepal Floods, Climate Change, Doomscrolling: How Do We Keep Going?

On this episode of Messy Liberation, hosts Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown get real about climate grief, doomscrolling, and the nihilism that creeps in when disaster feels endless, sparked by the cat...

1 Syys 46min

When DEI Gets Dismantled: Callaway, Target & the Cost of Corporate "Values"

On this episode of Messy Liberation, hosts Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown break down two viral advertiser fails (Callaway Golf's domestic-violence "joke" ad and Target's minstrel-show-evoking Hallow...

25 Elo 46min

Hayden Panettiere's Death & Why America Fails Parents

Feminist coaches and hosts Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown unpack Hayden Panettiere's death and what it reveals about America's total failure to support new mothers. They dig into postpartum depressi...

17 Elo 45min

Why "Protect Women's Sports" Is a Lie

Becky and Taina break down two former NBA players (Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White) declaring themselves eligible for the 2027 WNBA draft as a bad-faith stunt riding the wave of anti-trans hysteri...

11 Elo 45min

Why Everyone's Obsessed with Wicker (And What It Says About Us)

Becky and Taina are back from their summer Everything Is Political series with their regular weekly episode, kicking things off with the internet-breaking trailer for Wicker — the upcoming movie starr...

4 Elo 43min