He came to me with a time bomb in his head. Scheduled as the seventh patient in my Friday clinic, he brought notes from two other neurosurgeons who had already seen him. An artery in his brain was dangerously malformed and at risk of exploding due to a defect called an aneurysm. It was not unlike an old garden hose with a thin bubble pouching out. With each heartbeat a pressure wave rippled out from his heart and risked tearing the artery. With each heartbeat he was gripped with fear.

The good news is that surgery for these cases usually goes smoothly, except the rare times when it can be catastrophic. I explained to him that the risk of leaving the aneurysm untreated was the same as the risk of surgery: devastating brain injury to his language function or death. This is heavy at any age but unimaginably intense for a 19-year-old just beginning his adult life. He chose to have me perform the surgery in June after completing the second semester of his junior year in college, which would give him the summer to recuperate.

The operation he needed is established in surgical lore for being technically challenging, meaning even most neurosurgeons don't take it on. It has the most extreme range of outcomes: On one end the patient is cured; on the other end, the patient loses his life.

For this operation in particular, everything was done in a rhythm, because unnecessary urgency leads to mistakes. I shaved his head and doused it with orange liquid filled with Betadine. I also included his neck as a backup maneuver. A technician placed electrodes on his head to monitor his brain waves, another safety net. The anesthesiologist had ample blood in the room. The clock read 8:15.

Blood vessels in the brain are not neatly packed wires; their layout is tortuous and serpentine and different in each of us. These micro-vessels can tear if the caress of your instrument is coarse. You work top-down, like you're parting a tree's canopy to find the thick branches deep inside.

To find his middle cerebral artery I had to separate the frontal lobe from the temporal lobe by opening the Sylvian fissure that held them together. This treacherous valley was my planned corridor to the target artery. I parted the iridescent membranes and slid between the brain lobes without violating the brain tissue with its precious neurons. The wall of the aneurysmal dome was thin enough to see mesmerizing turbulent whorls of blood flow with each heartbeat. Clock read 9:15.

The key and critical maneuver is to place a small spring-loaded titanium clip (that looks like a tie bar) at the base of the vascular bubble. All this happens under the microscope, where only one person—the surgeon—can work, and allowing only one person to visit this deep inside the skull. With the titanium clip at the bubble's base, I was ready to squeeze it into position with my trigger finger and thumb. The clip was almost deployed, but the aneurysm exploded. The middle cerebral artery violently sprayed blood out of the tear. Torrential bleeding welled out of his skull. Clock read 9:45.

No simulated crash landing can prepare you. No imagining of a crisis can prepare you. It's not about knowing what the maneuvers are; the hardest part is being steady enough to pull them off.

The low blood pressure alert caught the anesthesiologist's attention. I looked at her and said only two words: give blood. While other organs can last for hours without blood, the brain needs to be irrigated so desperately that even minutes of drought wilts its tissue, causing a stroke.

I began my maneuvers and placed a temporary clamp on artery upstream of the tear. This lowered blood flow, but the clamp had to be removed every few minutes to irrigate the brain tissue downstream. So a nurse was assigned to be the timer. I placed the temporary clamp. She started the stopwatch. But I struggled to get it repaired and the timer went off, forcing me to remove the clamp and let the flow rage again. Six tries of this maneuver got me nowhere. Clock read 10:45.

I was in a building with hundreds of physicians and surgeons, but this was a one-on-one fight. There was no space for a partner, even if another neurosurgeon was in the hospital. In desperation, I moved to his neck and quickly sliced and dissected down to the giant carotid artery in his neck (this is where you feel for someone's pulse), where I placed a thick clamp called a "bulldog" to slow the blood flow. Back up to the head, I tried my maneuvers again. But I struggled to get it repaired and the timer went off. Over and over the timer went off. Clock read 11:50.

Despite my steps to lessen the blood flow, I was always working in the darkness of swirling blood, flying blind with the occasional peak through a tainted window. He received 15 units of blood over those hours and the empty blood bags piled into a small hill. At this point his own blood had escaped and been and replaced by the blood from strangers. I had made no progress.

I went to my final maneuver. I asked the anesthesiologist to give him adenosine, a drug that temporarily stopped his heart from beating, flat-lining him, but also creating a zero-blood-flow state so I could see. On a monitor to my left, the EEG electrodes from his scalp showed me his dancing brain waves. On a monitor to my right, the EKG electrodes from his chest showed me his heart rhythm.

That moment after his heart was no longer beating, but before his brain starved without blood, was the loneliest place I've ever been. But it did give me one shot, one clear view to repair the aneurysm. And fortunately it worked. The heart was chemically restarted and the brain waves never stopped dancing. I exhaled. The clock read 12:50.

I kept him asleep on machines in the ICU for weeks and when I woke him up he was physically and mentally fine. He was all there. He went back to college and did well, but he did take a semester off.

The gravity of the situation is nearly an unbearable weight. At those moments there is no space for thought, only training and instinct. These days patients seek me for their deadliest diseases. For me, it's how I make a difference, doing something others won't do or can't do. It may seem strange, but I don't dread these moments. It's where I give my best, it's when I'm at my best.

Rahul Jandial, MD, PhD, is a dual-trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram, and visit his website here.

"I was in college when I saw my first tickle fetish video, pretty much by accident, and it was so arousing I nearly had a heart attack," Reddit user Tickles Clown recently told me.

I'll be honest, I wasn't totally surprised to learn there are porn sites dedicated to tickling. There are also countless online discussion forums, banks of hentai tickle illustrations, and getting paid to be tickled on camera is not unheard of. The fetish is about to become more public on February 27 when HBO releases their new documentary, Tickled, which uncovers a disturbing underground ring of "competitive endurance tickling." So yeah, you you can safely add tickling to the list of childhood joys the internet has tainted.

Some of the greatest minds in history, including Aristotle, Charles Darwin, and Galileo, have attempted to explain why tickling straddles the line between pleasure and pain, and why the sensation cannot be self-induced. It's a great mystery of the human body that remains largely unanswered by modern psychology. But when you consider what the act of tickling consists of—a power struggle in which a tickler attempts to force a ticklee into submission through fits of laughter—it's easier to understand the fetish side of the mystery. I reached out to a tickle fetishist and a tickle porn site operator to learn exactly what it is about feathers stroking armpits that gets some people off.

Psychologists have defined two different forms of tickling. The first, knismesis, accounts for tickling that involves light touching to induce an itching sensation and is not associated with laughter. The second, gargalesis, involves repeated, harder touching to sensitive areas to elicit laughter. Gargalesis is the form of tickling in question when talking about fetish because, in most cases, it is impossible to self-induce. Some fetishists and online medical dictionaries now refer to a third term, knismolagnia, which specifically denotes arousal from tickling.

Tickles Clown, a fetishist I met via the r/tickling subreddit, explained how his world changed when he first discovered the existence of tickle porn, "It was like lightning had struck an erupting volcano. I was like, 'Why didn't I ever think to look this up?'" However, he notes that tickle porn was not always as easy to access as it is today with dedicated fetish sites and countless amateur producers, "Nowadays there's pages and pages [of tickle porn] between Pornhub and everywhere else, but in the mid-2000's you didn't have many options."

Tickles Clown also indulges in tickling outside of porn, often "with strippers and camgirls," and put the appeal of tickling in pretty simple terms, "Bondage or no bondage, clothes or no clothes, it's all a marvelous, erotic game." When asked to elaborate, he continued, "The lack of control on the ticklee's part plays into the arousal one hundred percent. It IS the arousal. The fact that you can touch them, and their body just responds to it whether they want it to or not, is a brilliant form of dominance."

Having watched through a few tickle fetish videos, it seems to be a combination of other fetishes wrapped into one and there's a lot of variation within the subgenre of tickle porn. It comes down to the gender of those involved, the number of ticklers, what they're wearing, and the toys they use, be it fingers, feathers, vibrators, or vacuum cleaners. Categorically, it all exists somewhere between massage session roleplay and full-on BDSM.

Office Mike, who owns and operates the website ticklecrazy.com among various other porn pages, explained, "It's a lot of BDSM, domination, submission, there's a lot of different things going on within tickling. What people are most into on my site is typically female-on-male tickling, which is exactly what it sounds like. There are a bunch of contexts, like where the girl tickles the guy and ends up in a hand job or sex, but more often than not it's the guy tied up and is tickled by a couple of girls."

Read More: We Asked People How They Discovered Their Fetishes

Likening tickling to BDSM may seem like a stretch at first, but tickle play can be taken to extremes. Tickles Clown acknowledged such possibilities but noted that it's not really part of the fetish for him. "I generally tend to keep it playful and not 'torturous,' at least not to the point where the girl is peeing herself or crying tears of pain," he told VICE. "Touching a girl in her vulnerable spots, especially when she's naked, and especially when she can't fight you, and watching her have a natural, involuntary reaction to that touch is the sexiest thing ever."

"There's a lot of that struggle aspect that feeds into the fetish," Mike said. While the act of tickling itself is not particularly weird or shocking on its own, "the actual play can be really alarming, and I think that's what arouses people. You'd be surprised how quickly it becomes shocking and taboo with tickling and the execution of the play."

'Tickled' uncovers the fetish's torturous side.

If you're someone who hates fingers squirming on the underside of your feet with a fiery passion, getting tied down to a bed and tickled at length is a special kind of hell. Office Mike told VICE, "The sensory input is so overwhelming that it becomes a form of torture, like Chinese water torture. Something that should seem innocuous is done to extremes to become rather unpleasant." Tickling has been used as a legitimate form of torture by ancient Chinese dynasties and even during the Nazi regime. According to the book The A to Z of Punishment and Torture, gargalesis is not only an effective torture tool, but it was favored because it's a rare form of abuse that leaves no sign of having taken place.

If you want to see the extent to which tickling can turn into a nightmare, HBO's upcoming Tickled documentary has no shortage of shocking moments. The film follows journalist David Farrier as he exposes Jane O'Brien Media, an organization responsible for exploitative "tickle cells" across the United States operating under the guise of "endurance tickling" videos. The documentary puts into perspective how, like any other fetish, tickling is innocent and fun until it's abused to the point of criminal activity.

However, both Tickles Clown and Office Mike stress that for the vast majority of tickle fetishists is no more harmful than someone who has a foot fetish. "It's no weirder than being obsessed with feet, which is way more common and extremely odd to me," Tickles Clown told VICE. 'It's not violent or scatological in the way a lot of BDSM is. I look at [tickling] as just yet another strange, superfluous, biological peccadillo that's cropped up as humans have evolved. Last I heard, they're not even certain what the evolutionary benefit of tickling is, or why we evolved to be ticklish."

Mike suggests, like most fetishes, it's easy for the media to portray knismolagnia as deviant behavior, but that's not what he sees when dealing with independent porn producers. "There's not a lot of murder and intrigue behind the scenes. I deal with a lot of husbands and wives, and they are just regular people."

Despite the bondage, torture affiliations, and underground tickle cells, tickling is still rather harmless compared to some other fetishes out there, and perhaps a more common turn-on than you might think. "We all partake in fetish activity in our love life," Mike told VICE. "It's often subtle, but for example you give someone a foot massage, or you get into a tickle fight, these are very common things in relationships that are often used as foreplay. It becomes a fetish with you articulate that particular activity into its own formal ritual."

Follow Lonnie Nadler on Twitter.

Dustin Lance Black's Wikipedia page does not read like the description of a man who could build a bridge between gay liberal elites and the flyover states. He directed a documentary about a queer road trip to Burning Man, won an Oscar for writing the screenplay of Milk, and lives in London with his fiancé, the Olympic diver Tom Daley. But with his new mini-series, When We Rise, Dustin hopes to unite the country.

Premiering at 9 PM this Monday on the Disney-owned ABC, the show follows three LGBTQ activists from 1970s gay liberation to 21st century battles over marriage equality. Where Milk was a close-up of the gay politician Harvey Milk, When We Rise is a kaleidoscopic portrait of the LGBTQ rights movement in San Francisco. As he wrote the series, Dustin thought about his Mormon childhood in the south and his relatives in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. He aims for the program to help normalize gay culture for rural America.

"When I was writing Milk, I had me in mind as a 13-year-old kid. When I was writing this I was thinking about my cousins, uncles, and aunts [in the south]," Dustin says. "I'm often frustrated how we can't talk to each other in our 'two Americas.'"

Read more: The Trans Women Who Become Lesbians After Years as Gay Men

In person, 43-year-old Dustin displays both his southern roots and his Hollywood credentials. You can see the muscles underneath his beige sweater, and his high cheekbones highlight both his blonde all-American hair and pale, smooth face. He requests to meet at Laurel Hardware, a gay-friendly West Hollywood restaurant whose exterior resembles a hardware store and looks inside like any other trendy restaurant that has low lighting and wooden tables. He orders chicken schnitzel, a dish he learned to adore on a trip to his current favorite city Berlin, but also an appetizer portion of barbecue ribs. Like a true southerner, he licks the sauce off his fingers.

Dustin credits his storytelling talents to conversations at his Mormon family's dinner table in Texas. When anyone brought up politics, science, or the Constitution, dinner guests would kick the speaker to the side. To get a point across at the Black dinner table, Dustin says, "You want to tell a story... Like country music, it has to be an emotional story. I don't care how tough you think we southerners are, the best stories have to do with family—especially someone in your family. When you get that combination, you have a [winning story]."

Read more on Broadly.

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is open to pretty much anyone willing to call themselves conservative. That category included everyone from Christian fundamentalists to suit-and-tie-wearing think tankers to college kids sporting "Make America Great Again" hats. It included Jordan Evans, a conservative trans woman from Massachusetts who was disappointed with the Trump administration for reversing a policy on transgender bathroom use in public schools. It included Steve Bannon, who once upon a time organized "The Uninvited," an alternative conference for speakers deemed too controversial by CPAC, and now occupies one of the most powerful positions in the White House. This reversal wasn't lost on Bannon, dressed in black and sitting next to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on stage Thursday.

"I'd like to thank you for finally inviting me to CPAC," Bannon said to Matt Schlapp, president of the American Conservative Union (ACU), the organization that hosts the conference.

Schlapp was days removed from famously uninviting Milo Yiannopoulos—a young gay conservative who got famous for being blunter and cruder than others in the movement—after a video of him praising pedophilia resurfaced. Schlapp insisted onstage that CPAC was more open than ever before: "Here's what we decided to do at CPAC with 'The Uninvited': We decided to say that everybody is part of our conservative family."

But those warm feelings evidently don't extend to those sympathetic to the alt-right, that frothy mix of nationalistic and sometimes plain racist beliefs. Though people broadly aligned with the alt-right now occupy positions of power close to Donald Trump—Bannon, for one—this past week CPAC showed that traditional conservatives were still feeling out how to relate to the more populist views of the president and his supporters. The clearest indicator of this was that Richard Spencer, the white nationalist who is one of the most public faces of the alt-right, was kicked out of CPAC after buying a general admission pass and speaking to reporters.

"This is really kind of a battle that's tearing apart the heart and soul of the conservative movement right now, especially in the age of President Trump," said Casey Given, executive director of Young Voices, a group of millennial libertarians, who was at CPAC.

Watch voters confront Republican politicians at town halls:

One of the more telling moments came on Thursday, when Dan Schneider, executive director for ACU, lashed out against Spencer and the alt-right in his talk, "The Alt-Right Ain't Right at All," the only CPAC session to directly address the faction. The six-minute address, was much more sparsely attended than the preceding speech by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The remaining audience was supportive, but not exactly ecstatic as Schneider tore into a group he viewed as not a part of conservatism at all.

"CPAC, we have been slapped in the face," said Schneider, arguing that the alt-right, a "hateful, left-wing fascist group," has taken ownership of name that used to reflect a respected portion of the conservatism movement. "This specific group that has hijacked a once-decent term, they are not us."

Schneider told me the talk was necessary to help clear any confusion from attendees and the media in understanding the evolution of the term alt-right. He also emphasized that a much-publicized conference organized by the far-right National Policy Institute in November showed the fringe group's nonexistent influence among conservatives.

"How many met in that basement in Washington, D.C., a couple months ago? Maybe 200 people? That's puny," said Schneider. "Now, I'm not discounting the fact that 200 people who have hate in their heart can have no impact. That's why I had to give the speech—to help people understand who they are, what they believe and that they have nothing to do with us and that our attendees should have nothing to do with them." He added: "There is to be no confusion about this one entity and the people who lead it—that they are fascists and are never to be associated with the conservative movement."

Even if some in attendance remained skeptical about Trump—who did not really campaign as a traditional conservative—there was a genuine optimism among attendees about what a Republican-controlled government could accomplish. But there were some who were concerned that some of the figures with the highest media profile could damage the conservative cause.

"[Yiannopoulos] was seen as representing an area that most conservatives were uncomfortable with," Chris Wilson, a strategist for Texas Senator Ted Cruz's presidential campaign, told me. "That's going to be a situation where it's very similar to those who classify themselves as communists on the left, and they don't generally get a main speaking position at a Democrat meeting. I think that's quite right and Republicans need to be careful of that."

But even if some conservatives are leery of the alt-right, Breitbart, the media company formerly run by Bannon that he himself once described as the "platform of the alt-right," has risen to obvious prominence. Once largely shunned by establishment conservatives at the conference, the outlet is now a top sponsor and constant presence. Not including former executives and editors like Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, a Breitbart national security editor-turned-White House counterterrorism adviser, seven Breitbart personalities and staff members spoke on or moderated panels, including editor-in-chief Alex Marlow. On radio row, Breitbart had one of the plum spots next to the main ballroom. There was even a prominently-placed Breitbart shop where you could buy shirts, mugs, and everything else that could get stamped with the site's orange B logo.

More traditional conservatives are still trying to process all this. Amanda Owens, the founder of Future Female Leaders, a group for conservative women, says that conservatism at its core is very welcoming, which has made the Republican Party's future with Trump at the helm a little unclear.

"We're having a hard time as a party figuring out which way we go from here," Owens said. "We're polarized in the world right now in terms of the left and the right, but we're also polarized in the conservative movement between more traditional conservatives and the more populist, alt-right type."

The irony, for any conservative cautious about embracing the ideology of Trump and Bannon, is that it's thanks to Trump's populist rhetoric that the Republican Party came to dominate the federal government. If Trumpism continues to be attractive to voters, it may become harder and harder for conservatives to look at the alt-right and say, as Schneider did, that "they are not us."

Follow Timothy Bella on Twitter.

Earlier this week I wrapped production on my first feature film, Jinn. The film began as a collection of images that came to me during a summer living in Washington, DC. It was 2015. I kept envisioning a black girl riding a hot pink bike down a street in South LA. A master of performance, she would stop for a churro, then for extensions at the beauty supply store. I also kept seeing a black woman, her mother, seeking clarity and peace through Islam. I saw her sharing religious interest with her daughter, who was herself immersed in a new world she was trying to understand while simultaneously resisting it.

This story was not new to me—in many ways I'd been living and crafting this narrative, which deals with African American Muslim identity, for many years. My father converted to Islam in the 1970s, and my mother converted when she married him. Growing up, I heard stories about him selling crates of fish and bean pies on Oakland street corners as a member of the Nation of Islam; later he sold scarves and halal hot links as an Orthodox Sunni Muslim at the masjid with me by his side. I remember being surrounded by African American Muslim musicians, lawyers, rappers, chefs. I witnessed Muslim black girls get their hair pressed, Muslims flirt, and Muslims love. I was scolded for wearing shorts and told that I would need an adult chaperone if I wanted to date. I prayed side by side with Muslim sisters, and loved when my feet touched theirs. I saw people fall asleep during the Imam's Khutbah, then jolt awake to nod, somewhat guiltily, in prayer. Our masjid was large, pink, and intricate, with many rooms and mysteries.

I'm fascinated by these moments but I also recall the moments of disconnection: When I learned that being a Muslim wasn't the norm, when I was told I was going to hell by a friend, when my teenage sexuality trumped Islamic teachings that Muslim women should wait until marriage to be with a man. I wanted to explore that sense of wonder and conflict through two characters who navigate a society that is neither tolerant nor understanding of their transformation.

After completing the first draft of the script, I circulated it to close film colleagues who were drawn to the story. They were also drawn to my main character, Summer, a composite of myself and so many black girls I'd taught and interacted with as a teaching artist over the years. Summer is a shape-shifter, the embodiment of black-girl magic, but with hints of pain that she masks on her popular social-media profiles. While the character of Summer and the world she inhabited seemed to jump off the page, my main challenge during revisions of the script was to make her mother's conversion to Islam believable and tangible. During this time, I enlisted the help of Avril Speaks, a fellow director/colleague with whom I worked on a previous short film, to be a producer. We had no idea how challenging this journey would be.

Upon learning of our low budget, one white male producer asked if we'd be shooting the film on iPhones, and laughed.

After a successful Kickstarter campaign in which we raised over $25,000 and received contributions and endorsements from the likes of Ava DuVernay and Issa Rae, Avril and I began to actively pitch our film to get more financing in order to go into production. During a financing intensive, where indie filmmakers are invited to pitch their films to investors and producers and learn more about film financing, we were met with disinterest and condescension when talking about the film's subject matter. Upon learning of our low budget, one white male producer asked if we'd be shooting the film on iPhones, and laughed. That experience set us up for what was to come—the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion in filmmaking versus a reality that was significantly less rosy. Many filmmakers of color and women just don't have the money to make films, despite a very public push for inclusion and diversity. Systemic barriers to funding, resources, and directing opportunities underscore this reality. We went on to pitch and present our film to over 60 executives, financiers, and production companies at Film Independent's Fast Track film market. One of them would later become a key investor.

I knew that in order to make this film, I would need to dedicate my life to it. So I moved from New York City, left three jobs (much to my mother's dismay), and moved back home to Oakland, where I slept on my father's couch for six months while I planned and strategized, at times certain that it wasn't going to happen. There is nothing glamorous about this part of independent filmmaking—the months of uncertainty and doubt leading up to it, where you're not sure if you'll have enough money to shoot for 18 days, when you're desperately awaiting an email confirmation that a contract was signed, that an investor has indeed deposited funds. All we could do was wait, and have faith that it would happen.

By making a film where a black girl dances, kisses, and reads the Qur'an, I am resisting.

A year and a half after writing the first draft of Jinn, I was in Los Angeles preparing to shoot the film. I was online reading about Trump's Muslim travel ban as I reviewed shot lists for some of the first days of shooting, which began earlier this month. I felt angry, defeated—and alive. I was ready to make something that I had never seen before: a story about my father and my community, about my students and about myself as an insider and outsider to Islam. In one scene, a character, Jade, reads a dua, or invocation, alone in her room at night. It is a dua that Muslims read when they are uncertain or don't know what to do. My father read me the dua years ago when I was conflicted and I added it to the film in one of my later revisions. As the actress read, tears flowed from her eyes and from mine. The conviction and feeling that I associated with that reading was captured in the performance, and it was one of the most transcendent moments I've ever had in a film set—a moment where a director's vision aligns so perfectly to what is being performed and shot. I will always remember that.

Moments like that have kept me grounded when outside pressures and constraints dealing with time and money inevitably present themselves. Jinn is a micro-budget film, but it could easily be a big-budget film due to the amount of scenes, locations, and cast. (The definition of micro-budget isn't set in stone, but film professionals tend to see it as less than $396,000.) Because of this, I worked with my director of photography, Bruce Cole, to find ways to shoot large page counts in the span of days and hours in ways that still evoked the emotion and life of the story and characters. The collaboration between Bruce and I proved integral to the success of the production. On films where money is not an issue, it's normal to shoot two pages a day. On our film, this was not a reality. Most of our locations weren't available to us for more than two days, making it impossible to work a slower pace than what was given. I had to make decisions quickly, and live with whatever came from them. Bruce was passionate about staging, about mise-en-scene and creating impeccable framing. Each time I look at the footage, I am assured that no matter how challenging the production has been, the results are beautiful.

On the set of 'Jinn.' Photo courtesy of Nijla Mu'min

Each day, driving to set, I've thought about what has led me to this film: the warring sides of my identity, the complexity of the Muslim people I know, the destruction that Trump and his regime are waging. While my film is not a direct statement on present politics, its existence is one of resistance. By making a film where a black girl dances, kisses, and reads the Qur'an, I am resisting. Characters like mine don't even exist in the minds of the people who are currently running this country. This I've kept in mind when the stresses of the film seem unbearable, whenever I'm feeling sick or my feet are aching from standing up for 14 hours. Filmmaking is a privilege.

In the spirit of preservation, I've also chosen to shoot in neighborhoods in Los Angeles where some of the last pockets of black community and homeownership still exist in a time of rampant gentrification. My vision has been to capture things and people that are in danger of being erased: black Muslims, black community, a black girl's pure desire. As a director, it's been important for me to allow my black female characters spaces to inhabit the otherworldly and majestic. A scene of Jade, a meteorologist, studying the sky and letting the air dance against her skin, and another of Summer skateboarding and staring into sunset need no dialogue or explanation. They are about existence and being.

I write this having just completed one more of the seemingly innumerable steps to making a feature film. I'm exhausted, broke, and feel like I've been through a war—maybe the best kind you can go through.

Follow Nijla Mu'min on Twitter.

Between 1700 and 1760, London was involved in a passionate but staggeringly destructive love affair with gin, popularly known as "the mother's ruin." The city was positively drowning in the stuff.

By 1730, an estimated 7,000 gin shops (and probably many more if one was somehow able to count the untold illegal drinking dens) were catering to the trade, with some 10 million gallons of the spirit distilled each year. Historical accounts of violence, widespread addiction, and social devastation call to mind the early 80s crack epidemic that hit the US with ferocity.

For many working-class Londoners, gin became more than a drink. It sated desperate hunger pangs, offered relief from the perpetual cold, and was a blessed escape from the brutal drudgery of life in the slums and workhouses. It was a cheap buzz that could be had for pennies on any decrepit street corner stand or in the bowels of some stinking cellar—and it quickly wrecked havoc on inner city London.

Thomas Fielding, a social historian of the time, wrote about the ravages of the trade on what he termed the "inferior people" in his 1751 political pamphlet Enquiry into the causes of the late increase of Robbers:

"A new kind of drunkenness, unknown to our ancestors, is lately sprung up among us, and which if not put a stop to, will infallibly destroy a great part of the inferior people. The drunkenness I here intend is … by this poison called Gin … the principal sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than a hundred thousand people in this Metropolis."

Read more on Munchies.

A 21-year-old Syrian cinematographer whose film has been nominated for an Academy Award won't be at the Oscars Sunday due to unclear circumstances regarding his passport.

Khaled Khatib worked on Netflix Original "The White Helmets," a 40-minute harrowing look at the devastation of Syria's civil war. The film has been nominated for Best Documentary Short at the 89th annual Academy Awards, airing Sunday, Feb. 27.

Khatib was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles Saturday for the event on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul—he'd received a U.S. visa specifically to attend. But according to an internal Trump administration correspondence seen by the Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security blocked his entry due to "derogatory information," which can range from terrorist connections to passport issues.

In a statement released on Twitter Saturday, the White Helmets say the Syrian government canceled Khatib's passport.

In a phone interview with NBC News published Sunday, however, Khatib said the US government revoked his visa.

According to documents seen by the AP, Turkish officials told Khatib he'd need a passport waiver to enter the United States. DHS reportedly did not issue him one.

Read more on VICE News.

Election Day 1920 gave us one of the most violent, horrific stories in the history of American democracy. And unfortunately, despite the lives lost and the unimaginable racism that precipitated the carnage, it's a tale that has largely been left untold.

It all happened in Ocoee, Florida, on November 2, when wealthy, land-owning blacks within the rural community wanted to cast their ballots in the election between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox. The violence began with a white lynch mob hanging one black man and it culminated with an even larger mob terrorizing and torching the homes of an entire community of blacks. In the end, some historians estimate that as many as 500 blacks were forced from their homes. These people ran for their lives after being given an ultimatum: die or flee. Today, this bloody snapshot of American history is referred to as the Ocoee Massacre.

The 1920 election was special because it was the first time women were enfranchised to vote. Black women's organizations were mobilizing all over the country, according to Paul Ortiz, Ph.D., director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. African-American servicemen also had a strong case for wanting to vote, having served valiantly for this nation in World War I. Not only in Ocoee, but other parts of Florida stood to gain a great deal from having an influx of black votes, because those citizens could elect representatives who would address the many ways the state had lagged in social indicators such as schools and roads.

And yet, the opposition to black voting was immense leading up to the election. It helped fuel the resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan throughout the South. The KKK responded to voter registration drives for blacks in Florida by holding their own hostile demonstrations in cities like Miami and Orlando, threatening the the kind of violence and terror that they ultimately perpetrated in Ocoee with impunity.

This photo is from Miami, Florida in the 1920s, where the Klu Klux Klan launched a 'scare parade' designed to frighten black voters from voting. Bettmann / Contributor

The tragic chain of events is said to have begun with Moses Norman, a wealthy and debt-free black resident of Ocoee, who was known for leading local voter registration efforts. Unfortunately, like other blacks across Orange County, Florida, when Norman went to the polls on the morning of Election Day, he was turned away by white enforcers.

As Melissa Fussell writes in the William and Mary Law Review, "Should any black citizen attempt to vote, the officials would challenge their eligibility, and the only person who could verify their eligibility would be far away. Orange County Judge Bigelow went out of town in order to allow white backlash should the black citizens try to vote."

But Norman, was smart. He rode to Orlando to speak with another judge about possibly filing a lawsuit against those infringing on his rights. After visiting the judge, he came back to the polls, where he confronted the enforcers, demanding to either cast his ballot or get their names so he could report them. This lead to violence.

Some accounts say that Norman managed to flee to city completely, while others say he went to his friend July Perry's home, another landowning black man in Ocoee who had been helping with the voter registration effort. It has been said that July Perry had voted early in the election to avoid being challenged at the polls. Thanks to the efforts of Perry and Norman, local whites were now worried about the boldness of local blacks; they wanted to make an example out of them, so Perry's home became a target.

Armed with guns, a white mob descended upon Perry's property. A shoot-out between the family in the home and the mob on the outside ensued, with Perry managing to hit two of the white men, forcing the white terrorists to regroup. The mob returned later and captured Perry. They took him to a jail in Orlando, where he was snatched up by a mob yet again. Perry was lynched the following day, according to several sources, including Jason Byrne's Florida History blog.

A black home set on fire by an violent white mob in Rosewood, Florida—three years after the Ocoee Massacre took place.

Drunk off the violence and lusting for more blood, the white mob turned it's wrath on to two black areas of Ocoee. The mob set fire to rows of black-owned homes, black churches, and black school houses. The blacks in the community tried to fight back, using firearms in shootouts, but the mob prevailed and went about torturing anyone who remained. One black man, James Langmead, refused to leave. For his valiance, according to Fussell's account, he was castrated.

"One woman, heavily pregnant, had stayed in her home because she did not think she could run fast enough to escape the deputized whites," writes Fussell. "Her mother, unwilling to leave her alone, perished with her in the flames. One man hiding in a barn tried to escape when the mob set fire to it, but ran back inside to his death after the mob shot at him."

As many as 500 blacks were removed from their land. After the violent riot, the Klu Klux Klan set an embargo around the town to ensure that none of them could come back to their homes. In the meantime, the whites seized their property, sometimes with deeds requiring that the land "never be conveyed to Negroes" again.

The brutality of the Ocoee Massacre is just one example of the long quest African American's have had in this country to participate in democracy. We see this same extreme oppression from the birth of this nation through the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, right up to this very day.

While the right to vote is "guaranteed to all of us as citizens," Jennifer Clark, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice's Democracy Program said to me, "you consistently see those in power craft it in a certain way."

Although murder and coercion are not tactics used to stop the black vote today, what we see now comes in the form of anti-voter fraud efforts that arguably end up acting as voter suppression laws, and a chipping away of the Civil Rights laws that helped blacks cast their ballots at the polls without taxes or arbitrary tests. According to Clark, since 2010, anti-voter fraud laws have seen a real uptick. Clark also believes the US Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder has left many black voters vulnerable because it gutted the part of the Voting Rights Act designed to be a check on states like Florida, who have a history of discrimination at the polls, by making them get federal permission when they enact new laws that might have a racially discriminatory effects.

According to Clark, who represents a plaintiff on the infamous Texas photo ID case, credible studies show that there's no national voter fraud crisis. Instead, these actions are driven by partisanship and racism. But that hasn't stopped the most strident forces of the Republican Party from supporting voter ID laws or tinkering with polling places, making it harder for minorities and the poor to actually vote. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2016 that the Texas ID law actually had a discriminatory impact on African-Americans and Latinos. Later this month, another hearing is scheduled to determine if the State of Texas intentionally sought to discriminate.

"The same people who denied us the right to vote never gave up," the Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of RainbowPUSH, and a two-time candidate for president told me. His own efforts forced the Democratic Party to award primary votes proportionally, paving the way for Barack Obama to be a viable presidential candidate.

"There is no evidence of voter fraud. It's control, and you control the vote by denying it," said Jackson, noting that the Great Migration of blacks to the North, whom he called "refugees," was fomented by the Ocoee-style terror they experienced in the South. Because those people couldn't cast a ballot, they voted with their feet and moved to places where they could more easily participate in democracy.

While the obstacles facing black voters may persist to this day, so does July Perry's spirit of resistance and self-determination. Looking back on what happened at Ocoee on Election Day 1920 can help us see how far we've come and also why it's so important to continue to fight for the rights that people like Perry gave their lives for.

Lead Photo Caption: A gathering of the Ku Klux Klan in 1923 in Homestead, Florida. The Imperial Wizard of the Klan is somewhere in the group. Bettmann/Getty Image

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The two most striking initiatives of the new Trump administration are policies that many people assumed Donald Trump would never go through with, despite his campaign rhetoric: The wall on the southern border and the travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. Both have been advanced by executive order, both have been widely opposed, and both are unlikely to work.

Expert after expert has concluded that neither the wall nor the Muslim ban are likely to achieve their stated purposes. A wall is simply not the most effective form of border security. Even Trump's own Homeland Security secretary has said a "physical barrier will not do the job." Likewise, banning people from Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States is unlikely to prevent terrorism, and could actually backfire by feeding the jihadi narrative that the United States is an enemy of Islam.

So why spend so much time and energy on promoting policies likely to fail? The answer is that Trump's White House seems less concerned with the results of initiatives than the image those initiatives project.

To unpack that, we have to talk about group status. Psychologists have shown that humans have a deep desire for esteem and respect, and it's a desire that carries over to the group level. We all seek the social recognition that comes with being part of high status groups, be it a well-regarded profession, the fan base of a champion sports team, or a country's dominant ethnicity. Groups, therefore, are always seeking to increase their position in the status hierarchy.

Trump, on the campaign trail and as president, has made clear that he does not speak for all Americans. Rather, he speaks for one group, the group that put him in the White House: whites, to put it bluntly. And now he is acting on behalf of his base to raise the status of white Americans relative to other groups. The wall and the travel ban may not, by themselves, thwart terrorist attacks or block illegal immigration—but Trump's executive orders have already succeeded as symbols of status. They clearly identifying who belongs in America and who America belongs to.

As such, they have less in common with well-calculated national security policy than they do with policymaking in countries split by deep ethnic, national, or religious divisions. In these societies, which I have studied for many years, politics often amounts to the continual jockeying between groups for higher status. As a result, heated political battles emerge over symbols, markers of which group is more legitimate, dominant, and worthy.

Take Northern Ireland, a society defined by the rivalry between Protestants and Catholics, where two of the toughest, most emotional current political issues are flags and parades. The debate over flags boils down to which flags can be flown where and when. The issue crescendoed in December 2012 over a vote by the Belfast City Council to no longer fly the Union Jack over City Hall 365 days a year. The decision to only hoist the flag on designated holidays—which is the standard policy in Britain—enraged many Protestants, who feel an allegiance to the United Kingdom. Many Catholics, who feel no such allegiance, would have preferred the flag didn't fly at all. Lowering the flag sparked months of protests, some violent, as thousands of Protestants took to the streets in anger.

The second intractable issue in Northern Ireland is over where certain parades are allowed to march, and in particular, whether Protestant parades are allowed to march near Catholic neighborhoods. Many Catholics find the parades, which celebrate Protestant culture and history, aggressive and deeply offensive, and do not want to see or hear them near their homes and churches. Protestants insist that their rights to free speech and free assembly outweigh the complaints of Catholic residents, and no one has yet found a solution that satisfies both groups.

In Quebec, the Canadian province divided on linguistic lines, the contest between Francophones and Anglophones plays out in places like businesses' outdoor signage and restaurant menus. According to the Charter of the French Language, the 1977 law that made French the official language of Quebec, French is accorded certain rights and privileges, including the requirement that all signs for a business must be in French. Businesses are allowed to have English on their facade too, but if they do, the French must be more prominent. In late 2016, new rules went into effect that even require businesses with non-French trademarked names, such as Walmart and Burger King, to add French signage.

Finally, South Africa, a country deeply divided by race, was disrupted by protests for a month in 2015 over a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a colonial leader and supporter of white supremacy and British imperialism. Black South Africans successfully demanded that the University of Cape Town remove the statue. While some white South Africans supported the statue's removal, others responded by defending monuments of other white colonial leaders.

From the outside, these disputes can seem petty or even ridiculous. But the arguments are about what those things symbolize: Who is on top and who on bottom, who deserves honor and who does not, who is a citizen and who is a subject. (Issues that are of course also central to the arguments over the US's own disputed symbols, especially Confederate flags and monuments.) At their heart, these political debates are about which group gets to express itself in shared public spaces, which, in turn, is about who "owns" the state.

The same is true of the border wall and the Muslim ban: They are about status, legitimacy, and ownership. Debates over their effectiveness are beside the point because, fundamentally, it's not about safety or security. These polices are meant to address whites' perceived decline in relative group esteem and worth. Of course, white Americans as a whole continue to have an advantage in nearly every aspect of society, but many of them still feel that their rightful position of respect has been usurped by others. The wall and the ban are the Trump administration's way of stating that white Americans are back where they belong, atop the country's ethnic status hierarchy, and that Muslims and migrants from Latin America—and more generally all non-whites—are subordinate and unwelcome.

Whatever Trump's personal beliefs, he is governing so far as an ethno-nationalist president, meaning he's crafting policy not intended to benefit the country as a whole, but only "his" segment. When he says he is going to "take our country back," that is what he means.

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Live TV, ladies and gentlemen. In what will go down as one of the biggest gaffes in Academy Award history, veteran actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land had won Best Picture. The actual winner was Barry Jenkins' Moonlight—a critical darling few thought the Academy would actually give the top gong to.

As the La La Land cast and crew took the stage, producer Fred Berger's victory speech was interrupted by a very sheepish looking Beatty. Co-producer Jordan Horowitz cut in, telling the shocked crowd, "Moonlight you won Best Picture... This is not a joke." He welcomed Moonlight up on stage to collect the award.

Trying to lighten the mood, host Jimmy Kimmel shouted, "Warren, what have you done?" as the Moonlight cast made their way on stage. Beatty defended himself, clarifying he and Faye Dunaway had been handed the wrong envelope, which read "Emma Stone, La La Land."

Watch the whole thing play out below:

It was the first big shock in a night that played out very much to plan. La La Land, which was nominated for 14 awards, took out Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Actress for Emma Stone. Damien Chazelle also won Best Director—the youngest person to ever get the award at just 32 years old.

Moonlight, which was nominated for eight awards, ended up going home with three: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali, and, evidently, Best Picture. The night's other big awards went to Casey Affleck, Best Actor for Manchester By the Sea, and Viola Davies—who took out Best Supporting Actress for her role in Fences.

(Top photo: An EDL supporter at a rally in Manchester. Photo by Chris Bethell)

According to a poll released by YouGov last month, nearly a fifth of people in the UK define themselves as English as opposed to British, up five percent from 2015. This comes in the wake of a decision to leave the European Union, driven in large part by English voters, at a time when UKIP's new leader, Paul Nuttall, has promised his party will seek to challenge Labour by espousing this newly reawakened English nationalism. "The next big issue that's going to come up in British politics beyond Brexit is Englishness," he told the Telegraph.

Englishness as a standalone identity has always struggled to articulate itself. During the 20th century it was largely subsumed into Britishness. England's cultural behemoths, from The Beatles to the Sex Pistols, emerged draped in Union Jacks rather than St George's flags. It was Britpop and Madchester; never "the English Invasion". Aside from a tournament once every two years, when the four nations split up to experience their own footballing disappointments, English people tend to identify themselves locally – as Cornish or Scouse, say – instead of under any kind of shared nationhood.

Britishness, meanwhile, is going from strength to strength. In recent years it's been reborn as a brand – the cult of Keep Calm and Carry On sold to shy-Tory 20-somethings who think the Queen is "cute". Bolstered by the 2012 Olympics, this is a cuddly, meme-friendly national identity of Very British Problems and "21 Things British People Miss When They Move To America". This deeply privileged universe of Marmite and umbrellas has allowed Britishness a place in the new millennium, repositioning the Union Jack as a symbol of complaining about weather rather than the banner of colonisation and genocide.

Englishness was never so fortunate as to enjoy the support of Buzzfeed, so it sulked and festered on fringe Facebook groups and in dilapidated pubs, indulging in images of Knights Templar and statements of vague intent. Passion. Pride. Belief. No Surrender.

In addition, Englishness has long struggled to define itself against the competing national characters of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It's an oft-trod line of argument among beleaguered Englanders that "Welsh people are allowed to celebrate St David's day, but if we celebrate St George we're told we're racist!" While this suggestion of a discriminatory disparity is largely imagined, it is true that Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have all become increasingly influential political characters in their own right, leaving England gasping for meaning. Talk of parliamentary devolution has all too easily conflated England with London, and as such misunderstood Englishness as an assumed, self-confident, dominant identity – a misunderstanding that fails to appreciate the suburban stretches and satellite towns in as much need for definition as the Scottish highlands.

This struggle with the neighbouring Kingdoms is embodied nowhere better than within the ranks of the SNP. As Labour continues to prove as popular among Middle-Englanders as Gaspar Noé films, the SNP led by Nicola Sturgeon are now such a vocal presence in the House of Commons they recently bid to become the official opposition to the Conservative Party. As was demonstrated during the 2016 general election, in posters that depicted Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond's pocket, Scotland is a rival now far more than a partner. When the SNP aren't campaigning for their own independence, they are moving to oppose the Brexit they never voted for in the first place. They fly their flag and extol their virtues defiantly, which has sent England into an existential crisis – for if the Union falls apart, what will become of the shapeless patch of rock in the middle? Scotland has forced England to manufacture a reactionary identity of its own.

Photo by Garry Knight via Flickr

The English patriotism of 2017 doesn't fly a flag. Instead, it complains loudly about not being allowed to fly one. It is not the sound of throats rattling in common song; rather, it's the drone of MPs debating whether or not England should have its own national anthem. It's the call to reinstate crowns on pint glasses. It is a national identity built on strongly worded letters of complaint and LBC phone-ins.

The New Englishness doesn't give a shit about Bowie's death, or Corrie, or Steve McQueen, or Glastonbury, or Daniel Day-Lewis, or Danny Dyer, or Adele, or Wiley, or Wetherspoons, or Marcus Rashford, or the NHS. It is, instead, a celebration of everything it hates, defined by all the wrong it sees. The New Englishness is a tabloid patriotism of outrage and injustice, far more comfortable working in negative space than it is in celebration. It is anti-EU, anti-political correctness, anti-Muslim, anti-Scottish independence, anti-vegan, anti-globalisation, anti-Corbyn, anti-speed limits in pedestrian areas, anti-urban development of the greenbelt, anti-gastro pubs and anti-Gary Lineker.

Tellingly, England's newly awakened patriotism is also old. The results of Viceland's census of 18 to 35-year-olds strongly indicated that young people don't care about nationalism, with a quarter of respondents registering themselves as 0 out of 10 in terms of how patriotic they are. YouGov has published statistics which follow a similar model, revealing in 2015 that patriotism significantly declines with each generation. It is the old, then – the same old who drove Britain out of the European Union – who are at the beating heart of England's new patriotic zeal. They have no interest in contemporary England; their passion comes instead from a longing for the past, and a conviction that they are somehow being censored from revelling in it. In a strange turn of events, declaring love for Queen and country has become an anti-establishment sport.

Declaring love for Queen and country has become an anti-establishment sport.

Then again, none of this should be that surprising. England's culture has flown the nest, and its superstars have become global products. David Beckham and Adele might sound like they come from London, but their audience is international, and their brand glossy and Americanised. We have prime ministers concerned with coming across like presidents, a BBC trying its best to engender international appeal and a Premier League that more closely resembles an international real estate conglomerate than it does a football table. Globalisation has created a vacuum ready to be filled by the EDL, the Daily Express and legions of columnists, talk-show hosts, fringe politicians and other "common-sense" polemicists. They birthed a hollow, fearful national spirit based on the urge to protect England from immigration and the PC brigade.

Of course, nationhood – as the Scottish have shown – doesn't have to be dangerous. Even if you don't believe there is magic in the soil, or that being born an Englishman is to win the "lottery of life", there is no harm in recognising the shared traits and ephemera of the place – revelling in the windscreen wiper rhythm of lay-by sandwiches, cheap-sounding house music, badly-fitted leisurewear and drinking in parks for weeks on end during the summer months.

Sadly, the New Englishness celebrates none of these things. It is a national pride that simply wants to be noticed – a self-aware patriotism that lionises the idea of England without ever substantiating its qualities. It is nothing but a bumper sticker, a campaign banner, a defence mechanism and a political tool.

Depressingly, we're going to be hearing a lot more about this English patriotism over the coming years. UKIP are likely to make England's awakening their "Make America Great Again" as they pick up seats in the forgotten corners of the nation, like nightclub crawlers preying on the broken-hearted. The Conservatives will have no problem aping this in order to stay afloat, and many Labour MPs are calling for Labour to rediscover the socialist patriotism carved out by Orwell in the 1940s. It would be a mistake to dismiss this renewed patriotic fervour as racist or backwards, but that doesn't mean we should blindly accept this facsimile of pride as a positive thing.

If the New Englishness is the fightback of forgotten communities, then it is a national identity borne out of an inherently political place – a volksgeist of resentment – not a cultural or a spiritual one. All it can promise is the past, and there can be no hope or glory in that.

@a_n_g_u_s

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America and Britain Are Being Hit by the Same 'Whitelash'

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(Top photo: screen shot from the video for "Everytime". YouTube / Jive Records)

It's been ten years since Britney Spears shaved the hair off her head, leaving her scalp and her soul bare to the world. Ten years since she made her exterior match what she was feeling inside. Ten years since she attacked a paparazzo's car with a broken teal umbrella in a fit of rage, when we can only assume she was trying to reclaim her privacy and, in turn, herself.

To mark the tenth anniversary of Spears' momentous breakdown, on the 18th of February Lifetime released the unauthorised biopic, Britney Ever After. Eight seconds into the trailer, actor Natasha Barrett (who plays Britney) has already got out the shears. The Britney shears. And so, right at a moment when Spears seems to be relatively stable, her breakdown is dredged up all over again.

That year – 2007 – was a dark time for Britney: she had lost custody of her two sons and was put under a conservatorship which signed her life and fortune over to her father and her lawyer. The legal framework for conservatorships is usually reserved for extremely ill people, and it basically stripped Spears of the right to make any decision in her own life, or access her immense fortune.

A 2016 New York Times article revealed, shockingly, that Britney is still under this conservatorship, and that it may last her entire life. The extent of it is far-reaching; Britney basically cannot make any choices for herself. From the article:

"Ms. Spears cannot make key decisions, personal or financial, without the approval of her conservators...Her most mundane purchases, from a drink at Starbucks to a song on iTunes, are tracked in court documents as part of the plan to safeguard the great fortune she has earned but does not ultimately control."

She seems contented enough, though, with a plush residency at the biggest theatre in Las Vegas, her kids back by her side, a coy Instagram presence and rave reviews for her most recent album, Glory. She has, by all the usual criteria, come back. Her story has become one of survival, resilience and redemption. But, we have to ask, redemption for whom? Redemption for Spears, or redemption for us?

It was us, after all, who destroyed her. She didn't crumble in isolation or simply of her own volition; she overdosed on fame and we were complicit in that. We made her the single most watched human being on the planet and then, gleefully, watched as she nearly died from overexposure. We celebrated her ascent to celebrity and then punished her for attaining the very perfection we demand.

As Sady Doyle, journalist and author of the book Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock and Fear, says: "To see the impossible, sexist ideal of Britney Spears become human, in front of us – someone who went to 7/11 for snacks, or had bad relationships, or gained weight during a pregnancy, or just didn't always wear makeup at every hour of the day – was so shocking that people wanted to punish her.

As it became clear that Britney was probably dealing with substance issues and mental illness, all of our revulsion for "crazy" women – and for women who are stereotyped as "crazy" when they dare to have feelings or flaws in public – just poured out onto her at once. We wanted her to be perfect, or be nothing. We wanted to idealise her, or annihilate her. There was no in between.

A ruthless 2008 episode of South Park summed up exactly that: Spears tries to kill herself, survives, walks around with the top half of her head missing and is finally sacrificed to the gods for a good harvest.

South Park/Comedy Central

This was possibly always her fate: a woman destroyed by the very people who loved her, for the brazen act of being female, beautiful, successful and human all at once. Pop culture scholar Dr Marc Brennan says that the tragedy of Spears was, at least in part, to do with her being female:

"The world's fascination with her breakdown could be read as an opportunity to witness the destruction of artifice – something that many would argue was the embodiment of Britney Spears and possibly American popular culture more generally. To the more sympathetic, the narrative provided a cautionary tale of the perils of fame and celebrity. Britney to me is emblematic of how women are 'tamed'. Since her breakdown, she has been controlled by a court-approved conservatorship. This is something that it is unparalleled with male entertainers. If there is a moral to this story, then it is one that reminds us of the unequal rights between men and women in our society."

Where male stars would have been able to continue their careers as damaged, fallible human beings, Spears had to be contained and returned to the form in which we first worshipped her. That's why she's still gyrating on stage in lingerie: her flawless physical form is the only way we can measure that she's "OK" again.

She has, as Dr Brennan said, been "tamed". She has had huge commercial success since her 2007 breakdown (Glory got some of the best reviews of her career, including Rolling Stone comparing her to David Bowie), yet in the public consciousness she is still treated like a 2000s relic. Compare Spears to her contemporaries from that first round of fame – people like Beyonce and Justin Timberlake. They've become nuanced mega-stars where Britney is somehow staid, still being judged on her mental health as much as her performances.

She is a celebrity divided; part of her is present here in 2017, and another is stuck in her pre-2007 image. She is still being punished for what we did to her.

@kateileaver

Daniel Wu did not expect to be the star of AMC's Into the Badlands. Starring in the show would require him to take on complex fighting scenes. And in his 40s, he wasn't sure if his body would be up for it.

"I was like, I'm 40 now and I've already done my martial arts thing. I'm not sure if I want to get back into it again," Wu told me over the phone from South Africa, where he's filming the upcoming Tomb Raider film.

At the time, Wu was set to serve as an executive producer for the show because of his martial arts experience. After all, he had already appeared in Hong Kong action films such as Tai Chi Hero and Naked Weapon while in the U.S., he also had roles in The Man with the Iron Fists and Warcraft. But when actor after actor auditioned for the lead role of the mighty warrior Sunny, no one except him seemed right for the part. "[The producers] were like, 'We looked far and wide and we're either finding great actors who don't know any martial arts, or martial artists who don't know acting. You're one of the few people that can do both. Can you consider doing this?'"

Despite his initial reservations about taking the role, Wu gave the part a second chance. He worked out and trained every day until his body got back into shape. When he saw the results, he decided to commit.

Into the Badlands, which begins its second season on March 19, is loosely based on the Chinese tale Journey to the West. The show takes place in a post-apocalyptic world controlled by feudal barons. Wu plays the skilled lethal fighter—a "clipper"— Sunny, who also has a mysterious past. During the series, he yearns for a future free from his unpredictable and dangerous boss. Along for the ride is an orphan with special powers, M.K. (Aramis Knight), who repeatedly crosses Sunny's path. Together, the two develop a teacher-student relationship and embark on a journey in search of enlightenment.

When the show first premiered in 2015, it received generally positive reviews, with praise especially directed at its fighting scenes. Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter called the show "a bloody, fun and entertaining non-zombie counterpart to The Walking Dead." Maureen Ryan of Variety compared the series to "classic Samurai films and kinetic action fare churned out by Hong Kong maestros of furious fists."

The show's success has given Wu, now 42, recognition among American audiences. But for those who are fans of Asian cinema, he's already a familiar face.

Born and raised in California, Wu travelled to Asia in 1997 to witness the Handover of Hong Kong. At the time, he had just finished university with hopes of coming back to the US to become an architect. But one day, while at a bar, Wu was asked to star in a television commercial. That opportunity led to Wu's first role in a film called Bishonen, where he played a gay police officer. "Once I was on set, I fell in love with the whole process. I was like, 'I gotta keep doing this.'" It was then that he realized that he needed to stay in Hong Kong longer. So, after starring in films like City of Glass and Young and Dangerous: The Prequel, Wu was soon signed on to Jackie Chan's production company JC Group.

As a Chinese kid in America, Wu would often watch Kung Fu movies starring Chan, Bruce Lee and Jet Li. In fact, it was those three actors who inspired him to take up martial arts. "I started learning Kung Fu because of the movies. When I was seven years old, I saw Jet Li's first movie Shaolin Temple, and I was like, 'I gotta learn that stuff,'" Wu said. "Being Chinese-American in California, I also felt a connection to my culture doing that stuff. That's what made me want to learn it."

Poster for New Police Story (2004). Courtesy of Emperor Motion Pictures.

Wu's ability to do martial arts has served him well on-screen in Asia. He went on to star in action-packed films like New Police Story, House of Fury, and Gen-X Cops. With his success overseas, it wasn't long until people started to encourage him to try and make his way back into the US.

However, getting roles back home was harder than he thought.

"I went to the States and I went for meetings but nothing really came of it. Obviously 10-15 years ago, I don't think America was diverse as it is now in terms of what you're seeing on television," Wu said.

"I thought, 'OK, forget it. I got a career going on in Asia. I'm not going to worry about the States.' The United States is my home, but if they're not offering me a career there because of my race, then what am I going to do about it?"

Wu continued to act mostly in Asia, taking on a number of different roles to avoid being stereotyped as a martial artist. He played romantic leads, cops, and violent criminals. But in the end, it was his martial arts experience that helped him get back to the US with Into the Badlands.

As an executive producer, Wu played a vital part in making sure the fight scenes in Into the Badlands looked authentic. To ensure this, Wu brought in Hong Kong stunt choreographer Huan-Chiu Ku (AKA Master Dee Dee) and director Stephen Fung to help with the fight scenes.

"The only way you can get this done is with a Hong Kong team because you got to work fast. We have eight days per episode, and there are two fights per episode," Wu said. "I don't think a lot of Western teams could pull it off. Hong Kong teams are used to that."

The authenticity of the show's fight scenes could also be attributed to the cast's grueling workout schedule. Before shooting, Wu trained every day for four to five months. After that, the cast took part in "Fight Camp," which includes eight to nine hours of intensive training every day for five weeks. There, they covered everything from sword fighting, acrobatics and martial arts such as taekwondo and wushu.

But training for the show is only part of what makes the action on the show so convincing. For Wu, who grew up practicing wushu, there's also an art to making the fights look good on-screen.

"To be a screen martial artist, you need to know all the aspects of martial arts, plus weapons, plus tumbling and gymnastics to be a really good mover," he said. "I've seen really good on-screen martial artists who have never learned martial arts. They just happen to be really good, athletic people and they understand how it needs to look on-screen and are amazing at it."

But while many watch Into the Badlands for the action, the show also breaks new ground with an Asian-American male lead. On the show, Wu's character is complicated; he has a good heart, but is one of the most brutal killers alive. A former assassin, his character struggles to break away from his dark past.

Wu says the role allows him to play someone he's never been before: the antihero. "Most of the characters I've played are more straight, clear-cut, good guys or bad guys. This character, he's got a really dirty bad past but he's trying to become good," he explained.

The complexity of Wu's character is groundbreaking, according to Keith Chow, the founder of pop culture website The Nerds of Color. He says Asian actors are often stereotyped into martial arts roles with little depth to their characters. "Ultimately, they're there to be the mentor to teach the white guy, like Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi is kind of a trope, the wise old Asian man who teaches the white hero to be heroic," he said.

While Wu does indeed play a martial artist on Into the Badlands, Chow says the role of Sunny has many layers. In the past, he adds, Asian actors have mostly been depicted as one-dimensional. Moreover, they're often portrayed in a non-romantic way.

"There was a point in the 90s where you had a bunch of Hong Kong movie stars come [to America]. Chow Yun Fat had a couple of movies, Jet Li did a couple of movies," Chow said, adding that this took place after the success of Rush Hour, which starred Jackie Chan. "They would definitely desexualize the male action star. Usually in western action movies, the hero kisses the girl at the end, but Jet Li gets a chaste hug. There was a barrier to how you could depict an Asian action star."

Madeleine Mantock and Daniel Wu in Into the Badlands. Courtesy of Patti Perret/AMC

In Into the Badlands, Wu gets to play the romantic lead. His character Sunny gets involved in an interracial relationship with Veil (played by Madeleine Mantock), which fans of the show praised online with the Twitter hashtag #ColorMeBadlands. "I think it's amazing that it just so happens to be an Asian male with a black girl on the show," said Wu, "I don't think that's ever happened on television before."

Chow says the role of Sunny is a rarity in Hollywood. Often times, Asian Americans actors are asked to play "the nerd, the Fu Manchu, the dragon lady, the perpetual foreigner and the martial artist." In Into the Badlands, however, "Daniel Wu['s character] has a love life and he has complicated feelings. He's the deadliest assassin, but he's also kind-hearted," Chow said. "Usually, Asian characters have been defined solely by their ability to do martial arts. They've never been able to be beyond that."

The role of Sunny is one of a handful of action roles given to Asian American actors in recent years. Right now, a live-action Mulan film is in the works with plans to feature an all-Asian cast. Another show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, also features Asian American talent like Ming-Na Wen and Chloe Bennett.

This is certainly a shift from stereotypical and whitewashed portrayals of Asian characters in the past. In Breakfast at Tiffany's, Mr. Yunioshi (portrayed by Mickey Rooney) was accused of yellowface for wearing makeup and a prosthetic mouthpiece to look like a caricatured version of a Japanese person. In Sixteen Candles, the character Long Duk Dong (played by Gedde Watanabe) was also criticized for being racially insensitive to Asians when his stilted English was used for comedic effect. And more recently in the film Cloud Atlas, Jim Sturgess' character takes the form of an Asian man—to which Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) president Guy Aoki responded to by saying,"It's a double standard: White actors are allowed to play anything–except black characters–and have the dominant roles; Asian male actors are non-existent. And Pacific Islanders are played by blacks."

And, the fight for more diversity still persists today. In a recent episode of comedian Bobby Lee's podcast TigerBelly he talks about his experience running into The Walking Dead star Steven Yeun at an audition for a role that only had five lines because of the few opportunities offered to Asian actors in the business. In another opinion piece, actor Justin Chon recounts his experience at an audition where he was asked to perform with "an Asian accent. And, of course, there's the new film The Great Wall, which has been accused of casting Matt Damon in a "white savior" role.

Wu acknowledges however, that there has been a lot of progress in television and film when it comes to including more diverse actors. With Into the Badlands as an example, Wu says producers consciously made the roles open to people of all races: "Producers just have to cast more diverse," he said. "When you become race-specific, you almost can't avoid stereotypes in some ways. So, you have to fight against that."

Wu says he also didn't realize how progressive his character was until the show came out. "I didn't really think about it because I've been in Hong Kong for 20 years for my career where I didn't think about race at all because everybody was Chinese in movies," he explained. "Being one of the few Asian American leads on a show on television, there's only a handful. When I looked at it from that perspective, I go, "Wow. That is quite progressive.'"

But even though Wu is proud of his involvement with Into the Badlands, he says he's being careful not to be stereotyped into martial arts roles. "America may know me as Sunny, the martial arts actor… but I've done over 70 films in Asia that range from being a nerd to being a company boss to being a gangster," he said, before adding that he'd like to film a comedy next.

As for his advice for other actors? Wu says they should keep fighting for more diversity. "As an actor, you're much more passive about the whole selection process. So, all you have to do is be strong and turn down the roles that you think are not right for you and go for the roles that you think are really great," he said.

"It's a sacrifice, and it's really hard to do when you're trying to make a living off of it. But, you also have to stand your ground as well."

Follow Samantha Lui on Twitter.

Over the weekend two more memes happened – please update your calendars accordingly – and now we have to go through them both so we are not left behind, languishing in history, backwards Neanderthals who throw rocks at the sun and don't know what "Pepe" is. The first meme is "What in Tarnation", which is just a Texan slang sentence that always ends in the word "tarnation" w/ an accompanying picture of a Stetson, because I don't fucking know, alright, I don't understand, it's a fucking hat, I don't get it. And the second meme is pictures of a Shiba dog w/ the caption "zoom in on the nose" and there, on the nose glisten, almost imperceptibly, are Comic Sans instructions that send you around the photo on a wild goose chase that normally ends in an affirmation – "~remember u are beautiful~" – or whatever the opposite of that is – "~ya trash~" – and that is the other meme. These go into the pile with Salt Bae, Hurt Bae, Blinking White Man and Roll Safe Tapping His Head as the Memes of 2017.

Another thing happened at the weekend, and that was the Oscar ceremony for all the films. This is pertinent because, arguably, this is one of the last of these ceremonies where the old guard maintains balance before being couped to death by the new: inevitably, in circa 15 years, we will on the last Sunday in February be watching The Academy of Meme Awards, where the stars – On Fleek Girl; Jay Versace; Whichever YouTubers Are Not in Prison For Sexual Harassment Crimes; The "Cash Me Ousside" Girl who, now reformed and wholesome, is on par with the artist we currently know as Beyoncé, where wind from a source unseen ripples her flowing dress, and her two adorable angel children, in tiny tuxedos, claw their little hands at her holy hem – walk the red carpet, bowing their heads reverently to the horde of showbiz reporters, murmuring sweet nothings about who they are wearing and how they hope the people nominated opposite them in every category actually win on the night. And Hollywood actors – those slowly extinct beasts – will sit at home and get 1K+ retweets for saying "YASSSSSSSSS!" every time their unproblematic fave wins an award. Jimmy Kimmel does a classically anodyne turn as host. The world keeps turning.

So we all agree now that 2017 is a watershed moment in memes crashing into the traditional media, and that inevitably they will eventually take it over. We all agree about that.

But before we go out into that good night we have to compile and rate all of the memes that emerged from last night's aforementioned awards ceremony, shuffle them through our fingers, really get a feel of them. These are curious memes: it's hard to tell, at this early stage, which of them will burn out to be forgotten within days, and which will endure for months, endure forever. We can pretty much guess, though. Come on. We're not dumb. Here are the memes you need to know, and the memes you need to don't:

NICOLE KIDMAN CLAPPING

HOW MUCH AM I GONNA CARE ABOUT THIS MEME IN SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS TIME? 5/10

Well, see, this one could go either way. The thing with memes of people clapping in unusual, alien, all-the-way-fucked-up ways is there is always a numbers tweet in remembering it. Right now, the fact that Nicole Kidman claps like one of those women in the Guinness Book of Records with long, curled, gnarled up old six-feet-long fingernails; clapping like that fingernail woman is gently trying to kill a slow-moving bee: that's fun, but it's not life-changing information. This is like the first time you ever saw that Michael Gove clapping tweet: it didn't become relevant until he went full bumbling evil post-Brexit, and then we rolled out the clap reminder, and his house of cards collapsed beneath him. Essentially: we don't need the information that Nicole Kidman clapping looks like two spoons trying to fuck, unless Kidman goes evil and we need to spotlight the fact that she's flawed to remind us that she's human, and then it will become a meme again. Schedule it in for eight months' time: a "reminder that Nicole Kidman can't clap" tweet, with this .gif attached, and you'll get 16K+ retweets. I'm calling it.

BEATTY YOUR ENTHUSIASM

HOW MUCH AM I GONNA CARE ABOUT THIS MEME IN SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS TIME? 1/10

The big mix-up at last night's Oscars – that, due to Best Actress winner Emma Stone's card being left in the Best Picture envelope, the award was briefly given to La La Land over the real winner, Moonlight, with chaos ensuing throughout – was sort of the first major watershed moment of 2017: it's too early in the year, truly, to get a taste of it, to get a real read on the mood and shape 2017 is going to take, but "Faye Dunaway giving the wrong Oscar out because someone fucked up an envelope" feels already like it's the analogy that will be used to sum the year up. "Are we all not," I will write, in December of this year, as I pump out some wrap-it-up content before I take my extended Christmas break, "are we all, not, all of us, Faye Dunaway, with the wrong envelope at the Oscars, giving the statue to La La Land instead of Moonlight?" In a way, it feels too obvious.

So I think it will go the other way: Dunaway's Steve Harvey moment, like Steve Harvey's Steve Harvey moment, will go largely forgotten, lost to the annals of history until someone else fucks up a major award again and mis-presents it to someone else.

But Warren Beatty, taking the envelope, slowly announcing the lead up to the winner, checking again, and again, agonising over it a few more seconds… then palming it off to Dunaway to instead make the fuck-up on live TV? Icon. Icon. Iconic. Give the ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm to him. I would literally watch hours of TV of Warren Beatty charmingly fucking up at life. I would quit my job to watch that show.

JACKIE CHAN WITH PANDAS

HOW MUCH AM I GONNA CARE ABOUT THIS MEME IN SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS? AT ONCE 10/10 AND 0/10

Jackie Chan bringing two panda toys as his plus-one to the Oscars actually transcends being a meme, because it's one of the most important things to ever happen in history, meaning it busts out from the circular frame within which memes operate – they are born, ascend rapidly, burn out faster, then fade to nothing – and becomes something More; becomes a central tenet on which the legend of Jackie Chan is built. Jackie Chan has broken every bone in his body at least a thousand times and is still one of the most placid, cheery dudes on the planet. Jackie Chan could kill me a hundred different ways before I could even throw one punch at him, but he still sort of rocks the vibe of "the dinner lady you run to for a hug when you are sad or have hurt yourself" (*1). Jackie Chan – panda ambassador – has bought two soft toy pandas to the Oscars to raise awareness of pandas. Jackie Chan is too pure for this world. He is too pure to be a meme. Jackie Chan is an angel. I love you, Jackie Chan.

'SUICIDE SQUAD' WON AN OSCAR

HOW MUCH AM I GONNA CARE ABOUT THIS MEME IN SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS? 7/10

Suicide Squad, as best I can tell, is something that happened when a load of Hot Topic T-shirts decided to get together and make a film, and for some reason Will Smith is in it. It won an Oscar last night. Not a good Oscar – best makeup, or something, which I didn't even know was an Oscar until today, so big-up Suicide Squad for putting it on the map – but yeah. Suicide Squad is an Oscar-winning film. And this is always going to be pertinent. Hey: don't let the dickheads get you down. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't achieve your dreams. Suicide Squad just won an Oscar. You can do anything.

RYAN GOSLING WHISPERING SWEET GOSLING NOTHINGS TO A SHOCKED-LOOKING CIVILIAN

HOW MUCH AM I GONNA CARE ABOUT THIS MEME IN SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS? 0/10

For some reason Jimmy Kimmel was allowed to present the Oscars and so he did that Jimmy Kimmel thing where he slowly brings his hands together every time a camera is on him and kind of chuckles, "Heh: those real people, right?" and then cuts to a VT where people on the street or whatever are saying dumb real people things, and dressing badly and having double chins, the real people, because looking distantly at real people is about the only joke Kimmel's got. Anyway, he bought a load of real people from a Hollywood bus tour and let them in, in their ill-fitting shorts and caps, and all the actors and singers and models sat and politely clapped at them, as the real people just unashamedly got their cameraphones out and started taking photos and videos of them all. When the class war inevitably reaches an apex and the rich put the poor in zoos to observe, this is kind of what it will look like.

Anyway, here's a photo of Ryan Gosling meeting one of the real people last night, and considerately whispering close to introduce himself, because he is a Nice Boy, Ryan Gosling, and is already basically a meme with a wry smile anyway, so this was memes colliding:

How much are you going to care about this photo in, like, another 40, 45 minutes? Not at all. You will never be able to recall this, not even if terrorists put a car battery on your junk, in anything more than a week. Drink this moment in, because you are doomed to forget it. It is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

TARAJI P. HENSON DOING THE IRL CONCEITED MEME

HOW MUCH AM I GONNA CARE ABOUT THIS MEME IN SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS? 10/10

This is the one. This is the winner. I didn't even know a human face could shape itself in a way to convey such contempt. I feel judged for asking a question I didn't even ask. I can't watch this .gif loop too many times without my heartbeat raising like it did when I was a kid and I knew I was in trouble. This is the Oscars meme we are all going to take away from this. Get used to this being used as a reaction .gif. Get used to this usurping every other reaction .gif. There is no better face that's ever going to be pulled. Thank you, the Oscars 2017, for this gift.

@joelgolby

(*1) There are exactly two dinner lady personality types: the nice dinner lady who is cuddly and nice and has a covert pocket in her body-warmer with sweets in it, and if you feel sad or have a cry or you have grazed your knee down you can go to her and she will cuddle you and nuzzle her close to her fleecied breast and shush you and tell you everything will be OK; and then you have fucking full evil, The-Actual-Devil-has-come-up-from-hell-and-decided-to-spend-20-minutes-at-break-and-an-hour-at-lunch-blowing-a-whistle-at-you-and-being-a-dick types. There is no other dinner lady type. Dinnerladies can only be angels or demons. There is no room for nuance in between. Jackie Chan is the good dinnerlady.*

* Related: I would fully watch a film starring Jackie Chan called The Good Dinner Lady. Imagine it as sort of a Kindergarten Cop/ Mrs. Doubtfire mash-up: Chan, in an effort to get closer to his estranged grandchildren, goes deep undercover as a school dinner lady. There he slowly struggles to win the kids over – they do not trust him or truly believe he is cool until, after a mishap in the kitchen, he has to distribute the dinner trays at lunch time, which he does by karate kicking them with unerring accuracy across the room (soundtrack: "Who Let the Dogs Out?" by the Baha Men). After a cheery opening act, Jackie Chan then unearths a dark conspiracy – the school headmaster (Danny McBride), in cahoots with the local mafia chief (Ruby Rose), is funnelling funds through the school or selling off reading materials or something. Jackie and the kids are the only people who can foil this dastardly plan, for some reason, and so, over a series of montages, Jackie Chan teaches them all karate. Also the school janitor (Kevin James), unaware Jackie Chan is a quiet 62-year-old man, is extremely horny for him.

Listen, I haven't worked all the details out, which is why I am selling this film spec for less than my usual rate, so if you want it please wire £500,000 to Joel Golby c/o VICE. At one point Jackie Chan kicks Jason Statham (gang member posing as a stepdad) so hard in the nuts that he loses his British accent. DJ Khaled does the end credits rap. Someone please make this film.

@alice.zoo

Previously:

Cockfosters

Edgware

Morden