Last week, on the topic of the film Bad Girls, Paramount shared clips from the 97‑minute movie on TikTok, breaking it into 24 segments. TikTok has a striking ability to connect with cultural products from past eras, turning them into dances, montages, jokes, and communities of fans who are often younger than the original audiences. This campaign is part of a broader push around a new musical slated for an early 2024 launch and the Mean Girls script crafted by Tina Fey. The film that helped launch the careers of Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, and Amanda Seyfried more than twenty years ago remains a cult favorite about high school dynamics. The hashtag MeanGirls on TikTok has amassed billions of views, underscoring that the appeal of this story persists across generations.
In a similar vein, recent literary award attention for Vladimir has become part of a persuasive pitch about gaze and age. The novel centers on a boy and a much older woman, and its author, Leticia Martín, engages with difficult questions about power, desire, and consequences.
Like many controversial works, Vladimir invites readers to question what counts as evil and who bears responsibility. Martín suggests that society has often softened male abuse and needs broader definitions of accountability. The narrative also hints that gender boundaries may blur in the future, complicating how readers perceive character and motive.
Martín has spoken about preferring fiction that portrays women who are imperfect, flawed, or even morally ambiguous. She explains that true female autonomy may lie in actions that defy traditional expectations and in the recognition that women hold creative power over their own lives. Her message centers on resilience, choice, and the ongoing project of redefining what women can accomplish when they reject old stereotypes.
The importance of being angry
The brutal literary debut of Sheena Patel, I am a Fan, introduces a protagonist who is far from virtuous. Jealous, short‑tempered, and impulsive, she engages in morally questionable behavior while a renowned artist subjects her to manipulation. The novel paints a portrait of toxic relationships in a world saturated with narcissism and social media. It also bites at the prestige of literary and artistic circles that brand themselves as progressive while preserving exclusive, upper‑class structures.
Patel has discussed aiming to explore how society centers around fandom and praise that can be shallow. He explains that characters are often drawn with coherence that can feel constraining, and he wanted to challenge those norms. The author emphasizes the value of anger as a legitimate emotion and a force for change, imagining a protagonist who pushes past conventional boundaries to seek something better than mere conformity. This theme connects with Sara Mesa’s Un amor, which Isabel Coixet adapted for film, as it pushes characters toward fresh directions—sometimes through risky, provocative choices.
Crazy, psychotic and off the rails
There is substantial discussion about the portrayal of flawed women in literature and film. A Madrid writer with a Russian background and based in London recently analyzed nine recurring tropes of the unsympathetic female, including the mercenary, the angry one, the witch, and the derailed figure. The author explores why audiences and industries react to women who do not fit the conventional ideal, arguing that real nuance often gets lost in simplified depictions.
One widely discussed film is Todd Field’s Tár, featuring Cate Blanchett as a conductor who wields power with dangerous precision. The conversation around the film centers on how power operates in male‑dominated environments and how it can corrupt even those who appear flawless. Critics note the difficulty of advancing in such worlds when gender dynamics are uneven, making the portrayal feel both sharp and troubling.
Analysts have reflected on why audiences are drawn to complex female figures in series and cinema. The discussion often highlights that strong, morally ambiguous heroines can be more compelling than perfectly virtuous ones. The best recent work offers rich, messy characters and stories that invite debate, rather than tidy moral judgments. In this light, the appeal lies less in moral clarity and more in the depth of character, the tension of choices, and the paradoxes that fuel conversation.