Global Pulse

分类： entertainment

  • Ben Shapiro-backed ‘propaganda’ film portrays pro-Palestine ‘terrorists’ on campus

    Ben Shapiro-backed ‘propaganda’ film portrays pro-Palestine ‘terrorists’ on campus

    A new action thriller from conservative American media outlet Daily Wire has ignited fierce online backlash just weeks after the release of its official trailer, with critics across social media and the film industry condemning the project as blatant Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian propaganda tied to rising tensions over the Israel-Gaza war.

    Produced by the right-wing media company co-founded by high-profile commentator Ben Shapiro, the film centers its plot on a deeply problematic framing that conflates pro-Palestine student activism with radical Islamic terrorism. Set on a fictional Virginia university campus, the story draws direct inspiration from the peaceful pro-Palestine encampments that spread across dozens of U.S. college campuses in 2024, where students protested institutional ties to Israeli entities accused of complicity in what many global scholars and activists describe as genocide in Gaza.

    The 2-minute trailer, posted to X in late June 2026, opens with a charged montage that weaves together unrelated footage: Fox News segments warning of domestic terror plots, remarks by Senator Marco Rubio referencing “radical Islam”, video of Islamic State executions, footage of the 9/11 attacks, and clips of real student pro-Palestine encampments. As the camera zooms out to the fictional campus, the Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, blares over campus speakers. The trailer then shows a group of students stopping mid-walk to spread mats and prostrate in prayer — a depiction that multiple Muslim commentators have pointed out includes major inaccuracies in how Islamic prayer is performed, seemingly designed for inflammatory effect rather than authentic representation.

    The film’s official logline lays bare its provocative narrative: when “radical Islamic terrorists” hijack a liberal college’s pro-Palestine encampment to impose Sharia law and execute non-Muslims (branded “infidels”), a ragtag group of conservative students, a veteran security guard, and a disgraced Delta Force operative must fight back to save the campus and protect America from within. That Delta Force lead role is filled by Jonathan Majors, the once-prominent Hollywood actor who was found guilty of third-degree assault and second-degree harassment against his ex-girlfriend in 2023. The casting marks Majors’ attempted comeback after he was dropped from high-profile Marvel Cinematic Universe projects, which cut ties to protect the franchise’s commercial standing following his conviction.

    The project is a loose follow-up to Kyle Rankin’s 2020 film *Run, Hide, Fight*, with Rankin returning as writer and director for the new installment. From the moment the trailer and plot details were made public, critics flooded social media to denounce the film’s harmful framing.

    “This is not a brave return to old-school action filmmaking. It is propaganda designed to turn every pro-Palestinian student into a potential terrorist and every Muslim into a threat… They are selling dehumanization as entertainment,” one X user wrote, summing up a common critique. Another commentator compared the work to 2010s Fox News propaganda meant to scare older voters into supporting aggressive U.S. foreign policy, while journalist Laila Al-Arian joked that the film was a clumsy attempt to distract from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza: “How to cover up a genocide. Make a cheesy over-the-top 80s style islamophobic movie with bad acting.”

    Professional film critics echoed these condemnations. Brooke Ivey Johnson of the *Metro* noted that the film’s official synopsis reads like an unedited AI-generated mashup of every current American culture war talking point. The *A.V. Club*, a leading media and culture outlet, labeled the film “brazenly propagandistic” and said it was clearly created to manufacture outrage across the political divide to draw attention.

    Compounding the controversy is the film’s official promotional poster, which depicts a man holding a knife to the throat of a young woman wearing a keffiyeh — the traditional Palestinian scarf that has become a universal symbol of pro-Palestine protests against Israeli occupation. Social media users have mocked the work as a relic of post-9/11 war on terror hysteria, with one commenter writing: “2003 called, they want their propaganda back.”

    While the overwhelming majority of public responses have been critical, the film has found support from a small cohort of anti-Muslim commentators, who have amplified its framing of Muslims as a domestic threat and echoed its calls for preparation for conflict. This alignment has deepened concerns among advocacy groups that the film will exacerbate the already growing trend of anti-Muslim sentiment and hate speech across the United States.

    As of mid-July 2026, Daily Wire has not issued an official response to the widespread backlash against the project.

  • Hollywood director gets two and a half years in prison for defrauding Netflix

    Hollywood director gets two and a half years in prison for defrauding Netflix

    A well-known Hollywood filmmaker behind the 2013 action feature *47 Ronin* has been handed a 30-month federal prison sentence after being convicted last year of siphoning more than $11 million in production funds from streaming giant Netflix.

    Carl Erik Rinsch, 48, faced a potential maximum sentence of 90 years behind bars for his convictions on federal wire fraud and money laundering charges, but received a far shorter punishment consistent with pre-sentencing recommendations. In addition to his prison term, U.S. District Judge Jay Rakoff ordered three years of supervised release following his release, ordered Rinsch to forfeit $11 million in illegally obtained assets, and imposed a $700 statutory fine.

    The case centers on an unfinished science fiction series Rinsch was developing for Netflix, initially codenamed *White Horse*. Prosecutors laid out evidence that the streamer had allocated roughly $55 million in total production funding for the project, with $11 million earmarked specifically for final completion work that Rinsch had requested. Instead of directing those funds toward series production, Rinsch diverted the full sum into a personal bank account, prosecutors proved at trial. Within just a few months, half of the stolen funds had been lost through high-risk personal investments, including large bets on volatile cryptocurrency. The remaining money was spent on extravagant personal purchases, prosecutors confirmed, including a Rolls-Royce luxury automobile and high-end home goods such as a six-figure mattress.

    During Rinsch’s one-week criminal trial held in Manhattan, multiple top Netflix executives took the witness stand to confirm that the streamer had only committed to producing one season of the sci-fi project, which Rinsch never delivered. In an unusual step for a criminal defendant, Rinsch testified in his own defense, arguing that the situation amounted to a misunderstanding and that he believed the funds were intended to keep the project on hold and retain key staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Prior to his sentencing, Rinsch publicly apologized to the court and formally accepted full responsibility for his criminal actions. In a statement following the sentencing ruling, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton emphasized the broader meaning of the court’s decision, noting that the sentence sends a clear deterrent message that financial fraud against entertainment industry partners will not be tolerated.

    Separately, reporting from *The New York Times* has shed light on Rinsch’s declining mental stability in the period after he signed the high-profile Netflix deal. According to friends and former colleagues, the director grew increasingly erratic, claiming he could predict natural disasters including lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions, and espoused unfounded beliefs about a “secret transmission mechanism” behind the spread of COVID-19.

  • The Ring and Lilo & Stitch actress Daveigh Chase died of Aids

    The Ring and Lilo & Stitch actress Daveigh Chase died of Aids

    The entertainment industry is mourning the loss of Daveigh Chase, the versatile former child star whose career spanned beloved horror, animation and television projects, who passed away on June 16 at the age of 35. Conflicting details around her cause of death have emerged from official records and official statements, alongside disclosures about the struggles she faced in her later years.

    According to a Los Angeles County Medical Examiner report obtained by media outlets, Chase’s death was attributed to complications from AIDS, with chronic polysubstance use listed as an additional significant underlying condition. The case is currently marked as open by the examiner’s office. However, Chase’s long-time manager John Ryan Jr. previously told BBC News last week that the star died from sepsis following a battle with meningitis while receiving care at a Los Angeles hospital.

    Further context about Chase’s life before her passing was shared by her father, John David Schwallier, who told *The New York Times* that Chase had been experiencing homelessness and living in Los Angeles with her boyfriend in the period leading up to her death.

    Chase’s entertainment career began exceptionally early: she started performing at age four, and landed her first credited Hollywood role at seven, a small guest spot on the hit 1990s sitcom *Sabrina the Teenage Witch* led by Melissa Joan Hart. She stepped away from full-time acting in 2015, closing out a three-decade career that included many iconic pop culture roles.

    Her breakthrough came in 2001, when she was cast as Samantha Darko in the cult classic psychological drama *Donnie Darko*, a role she reprised in the 2009 standalone follow-up *S Darko*. Two years later, she cemented her place in horror film history as Samara Morgan, the menacing long-haired ghost at the center of *The Ring* — the American remake of the iconic Japanese horror classic about a cursed videotape that kills all who watch it within seven days. Chase’s haunting performance, which featured the iconic scene of Samara crawling out of a television screen, earned her the 2003 MTV Movie Award for Best Villain.

    The same year *The Ring* hit theaters, Chase took on another career-defining role: voicing Lilo Pelekai, the adventure-loving Hawaiian girl obsessed with Elvis Presley, in Disney’s animated blockbuster *Lilo & Stitch*. Her warm, heartfelt performance earned her an Annie Award for Outstanding Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production, and she returned to voice the character in multiple subsequent franchise spin-offs. Chase also added another major animated credit to her resume, voicing the lead character Chihiro in the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning Studio Ghibli classic *Spirited Away*, and later had a multi-season recurring role on the hit HBO cable drama *Big Love*.

  • Heat forces yodelers at annual Swiss festival to sing in fountains

    Heat forces yodelers at annual Swiss festival to sing in fountains

    BASEL, Switzerland — When Europe’s unforgiving June heat wave pushed temperatures in this northwestern Swiss city to a sweltering 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) this weekend, participants of the 2025 Eidgenössisches Jodlerfest turned the city’s historic fountains into unexpected, refreshing rehearsal spaces, creating the most iconic image of this year’s national yodeling gathering.

    Drawing roughly 12,000 performing artists and close to 200,000 spectators from across the globe, this year’s festival marks only the second time Basel has hosted the national event, with the last appearance stretching back to 1924. What makes this gathering even more historic is its timing: it is the first national yodeling festival held since Swiss yodeling was added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity this past December, a distinction that fills Swiss communities at home and abroad with immense national pride.

    Unlike the brighter, more upbeat yodeling styles associated with Austria and the Tyrol region, traditional Swiss yodeling is defined by slower, melancholic melodies and layered emotional expression, deeply rooted in the country’s distinct regional dialects. This year’s festival brought together yodelers from far beyond Switzerland’s borders: Freddie Conquer, a member of the local host club Jodlerclub Echo Basel, moved to New Zealand as a child and joined a transnational Swiss-Kiwi yodeling club to stay connected to his cultural roots before returning to Basel.

    Over three days from Friday to Sunday, the city’s cobblestone streets hummed with performance. Impromptu yodeling sessions spilled into local restaurants, where diners quickly shifted from initial surprise to enthusiastic participation. One folk band cooled their toes in fountain water while running through their sets, as onlookers clapped along and splashed their hands in the flowing water to beat the heat. In central Basel’s Petersplatz, on-call seamstresses stood by throughout the event to quickly repair tears or damage to participants’ traditional Alpine folk costumes, ensuring performers were ready for their moments on stage.

    The festival featured competitive events across three distinct traditional Alpine disciplines: yodeling, alphorn playing, and flag-throwing. The alphorn, a centuries-old instrument originally used by Alpine herdsmen to communicate across mountain valleys, stretches up to 3 meters (10 feet) in length and relies entirely on natural harmonics — no valves or keys to adjust pitch. “Everything is down to the mouthpiece, hearing the note in your head, and then using your lips to shape the pitch. The higher the note, the harder you have to blow,” explained Pierre-André Karlen, an alphorn player who rehearsed on a local school lawn ahead of the competition.

    By Sunday morning, competitors gathered outside Basel’s town hall to wait for final competition results. Members of Jodlerklub Balfrin from the Valais canton town of Visp nervously scanned the result sheets before bursting into loud celebration after earning a rare perfect score, one of several awarded across the competition’s categories. As the closing parade wound through Basel’s medieval old town, with colorful flags carried through the streets, members of Jodlerklub Muttenz rode past cheering crowds on a vintage tractor, followed by a procession of alphorn players. Even as thick heat made carrying the 3-meter instruments and wearing heavy traditional costumes a physical burden, every performer wore a wide, unwavering smile, celebrating a historic weekend for one of Switzerland’s most beloved cultural traditions.

  • Gender-bending is now part of menswear. Paris runways show how mainstream it has become

    Gender-bending is now part of menswear. Paris runways show how mainstream it has become

    The just-concluded Paris Men’s Fashion Week told a quiet but transformative story: even in a season dedicated to menswear, women are now an inextricable, intentional part of the narrative, reshaping long-held boundaries around gender and clothing. Across runways, the industry’s shift toward gender-blurred design is no longer a niche provocation—it is a core feature of one of luxury fashion’s most high-profile global events, reflecting both changing cultural attitudes and deliberate commercial calculations.

    Co-ed runways have become the norm across major houses this season. Women walked alongside men at Amiri and Ami, while at Vetements, female models led the presentation of most “menswear” looks, with Hollywood icon Sharon Stone closing the show in a dramatic pair of thigh-high leather boots. Even outside the show space, the trend is on full public display: last year, pregnant pop icon Rihanna made history as the face of Pharrell Williams’ debut Louis Vuitton menswear campaign, featured on a massive Paris billboard posing with her visible baby bump and a full armful of the brand’s signature handbags.

    Fashion insiders emphasize this shift is not a sudden revolution, but the culmination of decades of gradual change. “It’s not something completely new,” explained Joseph McBrinn, an art historian at Ulster University. Women have appeared in menswear presentations for so many seasons that industry veterans barely bat an eye today. Even as Gen Z’s mainstream audience is only now embracing gender-bending style—a trend David Bowie pioneered back in the 1970s—fashion has long operated ahead of popular cultural discourse. Over recent decades, McBrinn noted, the industry has moved “from very binary understandings of gender and fashion to something which is today very fluid,” a shift that directly mirrors how younger generations conceptualize gender identity.

    This blurring extends beyond casting to the very design of the clothing itself. Even at brands that maintained an all-male cast for their presentations, like Issey Miyake’s IM Men line, the entire collection read as inherently androgynous. This season’s menswear designs borrowed openly from womenswear tropes: for Dior, where Jonathan Anderson became the first designer to oversee both the brand’s men’s and women’s lines, male models walked the runway in strings of pearls, soft pink garments, and sheer blouses tied with delicate bows at the collar. Anderson told reporters the collection explored how he “connects with the feminine.” At Saint Laurent, which opened this season’s Paris Men’s Week, male models bared their chests in form-fitting second-skin tops, wore leather-cut briefs, and sported transparent shoes pulled directly from the brand’s women’s runway.

    Beneath the aesthetic shift, however, industry experts point out that commercial incentives are a major driving force behind the move toward blended gender presentations. Saint Laurent, for example, has not only reimagined its menswear aesthetic: the brand has publicly targeted doubling its menswear sales by 2030, according to industry reports. Many major fashion houses have merged separate men’s and women’s shows into single co-ed presentations, a shift that by the late 2010s moved from a radical statement to a standard calendar strategy—equal parts creative experimentation, logistical convenience, and bottom-line calculation.

    Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, argues that economic logic is often the underpinning of merged runways, not just ideological commitment to gender inclusivity. “I don’t think having men and women on the same runway means a greater belief in nonbinary genders,” she said. “That’s really more of an economic thing.” Hosting one show cuts costs in half, consolidates media attention around a single major event, and allows designers to tell a unified creative story—a particularly attractive advantage for a luxury fashion sector that has faced a period of slowed growth in recent years. The commercial logic is further reinforced by consumer behavior: women have long been major buyers of menswear, a trend that led men’s brand Ami, founded in 2011, to add a womenswear line to its offerings just years after launch.

    The history of gender fluidity in fashion stretches back far longer than modern terms like “nonbinary,” experts note. Yves Saint Laurent introduced women’s tailored menswear-inspired suits back in 1966, Bowie blurred gender lines through his performance style in the 1970s, and Jean Paul Gaultier sent male models down the runway in skirts in the 1980s—decades before mainstream discourse caught up to the idea. Veteran fashion critic Suzy Menkes traces the trend even further back: centuries ago, Menkes pointed out, men regularly wore some of the world’s most dramatic, precious, and glamorous jewelry, without any question that such garments were suitable for male dress. It was only in the 20th century that the boundaries of acceptable male fashion narrowed dramatically, setting the stage for today’s gradual reopening of those boundaries.

    Yet experts note that the erosion of gender lines has not been equal across the board. Sixty years after women in men’s tailored suits became widely accepted, a man wearing a skirt or heels is still widely framed as a transgressive act. “Women’s bodies are still consumed in ways that men’s bodies are not,” McBrinn explained. Men who cross traditional gender lines, he added, “can still be seen as deviant.”

    This tension plays out against a volatile broader cultural context: the rise of combative online masculinity, the spread of “manosphere” influencers, and a growing wave of anti-transgender legislation across many Western countries. Just a few years ago, clothing brand J.Crew sparked intense conservative backlash when it marketed a pink sweater to male consumers, even as major luxury brands including Dior and Paul Smith regularly featured pink garments on their menswear runways. Ironically, the controversy drove sales: industry reports show that sales of pink men’s apparel rose 17% year-over-year during the 2025 spring-summer season.

    Some experts warn that the current openness to gender fluidity could face a backlash amid shifting cultural tides. Openness to androgyny in fashion has crested in previous eras—the 1920s, 1970s, and 1990s, Steele noted—only to recede each time. “Everything is moving to the right,” McBrinn said. “Fashion may go back to being much more entrenched within gender binary” within the next five to 10 years, he warned.

    Against a global backdrop of rolling back legal protections for LGBTQ+ people, with transgender people at the center of cultural and political fights, the question of gender in fashion extends far beyond the runway. “We are seeing tremendous backlash internationally against trans people,” Steele said. Ultimately, she argued, runway shifts matter less than the everyday changes visible in workplaces, public spaces, and family gatherings. Public acceptance grows when people see androgynous clothing worn by friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in daily life. Slowly but surely, what once read as a radical statement is becoming just another part of everyday fashion: increasingly, they are just clothes.

  • Thousands of Vespas swarm Rome’s historic center to mark iconic scooter’s 80th anniversary

    Thousands of Vespas swarm Rome’s historic center to mark iconic scooter’s 80th anniversary

    On a sun-drenched Saturday in June 2026, the historic streets of Rome echoed with the distinctive soft putter of more than 10,000 Vespas, as enthusiasts from every corner of the globe gathered to celebrate eight decades of Italy’s most beloved two-wheeled icon. The parade wound past the ancient arches of the Colosseum and the weathered ruins of the Roman Forum, turning the Eternal City’s cobblestone lanes into a rolling tribute to a design that has transcended transportation to become a global cultural symbol.

    Devotee traveled thousands of miles to join the celebration: the Associated Press spoke to attendees from across continental Europe, northern England, San Francisco, Australia’s Gold Coast, the Philippines and beyond. For one weekend, high-performance Italian automotive marques like Ferrari and Ducati took a backseat, as the compact, charming Vespa claimed the spotlight as the star of the city. For Natalie Dunand, a French retiree marking her own 61st birthday at the event, the draw of Vespa runs deeper than mechanics. “The passion for Vespa is for the Italian style, freedom, the ’60s,” she said. “I love it.”

    The story of Vespa begins in post-World War II Italy, born from unexpected necessity. Piaggio, once a leading aircraft manufacturer, saw its Pontedera factory reduced to rubble by Allied bombing. Forced to pivot away from aviation, the company shifted gears to develop an affordable, accessible mode of transport for a war-torn nation, rolling the first scooter off production lines in 1946. From its earliest days, the scooter was designed with intentional inclusivity: Piaggio marketing executive vice president Davide Zanolini explained that women were among the brand’s core initial target audiences. The scooter’s low frame and step-through design allowed riders to wear long skirts without exposing their legs, a detail that shaped Vespa’s signature elegant curved silhouette. “The shape, the elegance. This very charming attitude of Vespa is much more of a lady than a man,” Zanolini told the AP.

    It didn’t take long for the scooter to conquer Italy, and then the world. By 1950, an Associated Press report noted Vespas were so ubiquitous in central Rome that their collective “staccato exhaust racket” made the downtown sound like the Indy 500. “Scooters darting loudly around Rome are said to impress motor-minded Americans as strongly as St. Peter’s or the Colosseum,” the 1950 article read. Global stardom arrived in 1953, when Gregory Peck gave Audrey Hepburn a iconic ride through Rome’s city center in *Roman Holiday*, cementing the Vespa’s reputation as a symbol of Mediterranean romance and adventure. The scooter has since appeared in dozens of films, from *The Talented Mr. Ripley* to Pixar’s 2021 animated hit *Luca*. Often compared to the Volkswagen Beetle for its timeless, approachable design, the Vespa has a universal ability to draw smiles from onlookers even 80 years after its launch.

    In the days leading up to Saturday’s parade, the city was flooded with Vespa aficionados, who gathered in groups in matching branded t-shirts and filled public squares across Rome. Outside Rome’s Stadium of the Marbles, rows of Vespas spanning eight decades of production were lined up for display, ranging from pristine original 1940s models to modern limited-edition releases. Some were decorated with flowers and stuffed toys; others carried personal mementos from their owners’ cross-continental journeys. Dunand brought her West Highland terrier, who rode along on the back, clipped short to cope with Rome’s summer heat. A Japanese enthusiast from Tokyo swapped his local club banner with an Italian Vespa group, while a German attendee showed off a tattoo of the Vespa logo paired with the iconic phrase “La Dolce Vita” on his calf.

    For many enthusiasts, the appeal of Vespa lies in its simplicity compared to larger, higher-powered motorcycles. Many riders trade in bulkier bikes for the nimble, lightweight automatic Vespa, which operates with a simple hand-twist accelerator. “You get on, twist, go. Doddle. Easy,” explained Andrew Walton, a 59-year-old truck driver from Newcastle who bought his first Vespa nearly 20 years ago. Walton rode for eight days from his home in northern England, taking a ferry to Rotterdam, following the Rhine through Germany and along Austria’s Romantic Road, before cruising down the Italian coast to reach Rome.

    After Rome’s mayor cut the opening ribbon for the celebration’s Vespa Village at the Stadium of the Marbles, crowds streamed in singing, chanting and waving national and club flags. Thousands headed straight for the official merchandise tent, where limited-edition helmets emblazoned with “80 Years of an Icon” were the most sought-after item, alongside a full range of branded goods from jackets and hats to blankets, water bottles and umbrellas. A photo retrospective traced Vespa’s cultural history, from classic mid-century shots of couples picnicking in Mediterranean meadows and seaside getaways to unexpected feats, like explorer Soren Nielsen’s 1963 trip to the Arctic Circle on his Vespa. Piaggio also displayed its private collection of pristine rare Vespas, drawn from 80 years of production.

    Today, Zanolini confirmed, Vespa has sold nearly 20 million units worldwide since 1946, and is available in 110 countries. While the brand remains niche in the United States, it has a strong following in Florida and California, and is growing in popularity in markets like Austin, Texas. Burke Sandman, whose family owns a century-old car dealership in Indiana, caught the Vespa bug nearly 20 years ago, after buying his first model for its sidecar. He became an official dealer after discovering there were no local resellers in his region, and has since moved more than 1,000 Vespas across the U.S., keeping 15 for his personal collection. “No one ever says anything bad about a Vespa. You know, it’s crazy,” Sandman said from the celebration in Rome. “Everyone that trades other brands for a Vespa, they never go back. It’s just something about it. And everyone likes Italian stuff. I get a lot of people that come back from Europe, and they’ve got the bug.”

  • Hit South African show gets the world talking about polygamy and cheating

    Hit South African show gets the world talking about polygamy and cheating

    When the opening credits of Netflix’s breakout hit *The Polygamist* roll, audiences are immediately plunged into a charged, tense moment: the funeral of Johannesburg tycoon Jonasi Gomora, where the carefully constructed facade of his life shatters before viewers’ eyes. Standing front and center as chief mourners are not one, but two of his secret wives, flanked by a third spouse and a long-hidden mistress — all dressed in mourning black, while his public-facing social media influencer widow stands out in a striking white ensemble. What unfolds from this explosive opening is a 22-episode non-English drama that has not only dominated streaming charts across Africa and beyond, but also ignited fierce global conversation about polygamy, infidelity, and intergenerational trauma in modern African families.

    Adapted from Zimbabwean author Sue Nyathi’s 2012 novel of the same name, the Zulu-language series traces the toxic, tangled dynamics of Gomora’s household over five years, unspooling the secrets and betrayals that led to the emotional confrontation at his funeral. Produced through a partnership between streaming giant Netflix and South African production house Stained Glass TV, the series counts two daughters of former South African president Jacob Zuma — a well-known public polygamist with deep roots in Zulu traditional culture — among its executive producers. Gugu Zuma-Ncube, one of the Zuma sisters leading the project, opened up about how her own upbringing shaped the show’s raw, authentic storytelling.

    “A lot of the scenes that you see in the show are taken directly out of our lives. I famously come from a very polygamist family… [so] I brought that in,” Zuma-Ncube told the BBC. She added that the production team was completely caught off guard by the overwhelming global response to the series, which far outstripped even their most optimistic expectations. Within its first week of release on June 12, *The Polygamist* claimed the number one spot on Netflix’s viewing charts in both South Africa and Kenya, cracked the top 10 in Nigeria and Mauritius, and climbed to number four on the streamer’s global list of most-watched non-English series, racking up two million views worldwide. Its popularity extended far beyond the African continent, too, earning top spots in Trinidad and Tobago, Romania, and the Dominican Republic.

    For Zuma-Ncube, the pan-African embrace of the series carries extra weight amid rising continental tensions sparked by recent anti-migrant unrest in South Africa. Beyond geographic reach, the series has struck a surprising emotional chord with diverse audiences, particularly women navigating unfaithful relationships and people raised in fractured family structures. It is the charismatic, ruthless patriarch Jonasi, masterfully portrayed by South African actor Sdumo Mtshali, who has emerged as the show’s most divisive figure, splitting viewers and critics alike.

    Critics and everyday viewers have condemned Gomora as a manipulative serial cheater and narcissistic opportunist, whose secretive, duplicitous approach to multiple relationships has laid bare normalized social ills plaguing modern South African society. Letlhogonolo Mogale, a 35-year-old viewer from South Africa who binged the series shortly after release, told the BBC that the show’s unflinching portrayal of broken family dynamics hit particularly close to home, even though she does not come from a polygamous background. “What stuck out for me personally was how broken families are and how broken society is,” she said. Unlike the culturally rooted, consensual polygamy recognized under South African law and practiced in many traditional Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Venda communities, Mogale argues that the series depicts a coercive, hidden form of polygamy that warps every relationship in the household — a dynamic she says is rarely discussed openly. The show also confronts overlapping public health and social issues, including HIV transmission risks in plural unions (a particularly pressing topic in South Africa, where 13% of the population lives with HIV), gender-based violence, and intergenerational trauma.

    Not everyone has reacted positively to the series, however. The show has drawn vocal criticism from defenders of traditional polygamy, most notably Kenyan civil servant Geoffrey Mosiria, who has amassed a large social media following calling for *The Polygamist* to be banned entirely in Kenya. Mosiria, who grew up as the youngest of 22 children in a happy polygamous household, argues the series paints a misleadingly negative picture of the practice, which he says builds strong community bonds and is a common cultural norm across parts of Kenya. “Polygamy is the best way to find love,” he told the BBC, adding that the show’s plot will only fuel unnecessary distrust among married couples.

    Prominent South African film critic Phil Mphela pushed back on this criticism, noting that the series is not an attack on cultural polygamy as an institution, but rather a character study of one man’s selfish, harmful behavior. He also framed *The Polygamist* as a pivotal turning point for African television, noting that while South Africa has long produced world-class content, the series’ global breakout marks a major milestone for authentic African stories reaching and resonating with international audiences. “It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing because these stories are supposed to evoke something within our society,” Mphela said.

    The series’ runaway popularity has already had ripple effects beyond the streaming space: demand for Nyathi’s original source novel has surged, prompting the author to issue a public warning this week about pirated counterfeit copies being sold in Nairobi bookstores. “Please don’t buy pirated copies. I am working day and night (like Michael Jackson) to make sure the book becomes available in the East African region. Copyright infringement is a crime and a violation of my rights,” she wrote on Instagram.

    A-list celebrities from across the globe have also weighed in on the viral hit: Nigerian Afrobeats star Davido tweeted simply, “Yo JONASI is WILD,” while Emmy-winning host and actress Sherri Shepherd joked on Instagram, “I thought Crazy Rich Asians was something, but crazy rich Africans is a whole ‘nother level.” Academy Award-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson replied to Shepherd’s post, admitting the show had her in a “chokehold” and that she binged the entire first season in a single day. The show’s popularity is so intense in Kenya that local matatu minibus taxis have already been redecorated with Jonasi’s face and name to capitalize on the hype.

    As Netflix and the producers celebrate the show’s unprecedented success, fans across the world are already demanding a second season. When pressed for details on future installments, Zuma-Ncube remained coy, telling reporters: “I think ultimately what we’ll be guided by is serving the story and serving the audience… [but] who knows where we end up.”

  • The Bhojpuri singers fighting vulgar tag on one of India’s oldest languages

    The Bhojpuri singers fighting vulgar tag on one of India’s oldest languages

    A haunting century-old Bhojpuri folk song performed on a hit Indian music platform has become a viral overnight sensation, igniting a long-overdue reckoning with harmful stereotypes that have obscured the language’s rich, layered cultural heritage for decades.

    When 29-year-old folk singer Udit Utpal, hailing from the rural Saharsa district of India’s northern state of Bihar, took the stage for *Coke Studio Bharat* — the Indian iteration of the global popular music franchise that amplifies underrepresented regional sounds for cross-South Asian audiences — to perform *Kachaudi Gali* alongside acclaimed vocalist Rekha Bhardwaj, the track quickly amassed millions of views. Beyond launching Utpal’s national career, the unexpected breakout hit has drawn renewed attention to Bhojpuri, a language spoken by tens of millions across northern India and a global diaspora stretching from the Caribbean to the South Pacific, yet one long reduced to harmful, one-note stereotypes in mainstream Indian culture.

    For most modern Indians, Bhojpuri is synonymous with a commercial entertainment industry dominated by crude, sexually charged lyrics and misogynistic tropes. On film and television, Bihari characters and accents are routinely pushed into one-dimensional roles: comic sidekicks, impoverished migrant laborers, or unrefined rural outsiders. This persistent caricature has completely overshadowed Bhojpuri’s centuries-deep literary and folk canon, which includes thousands of folk songs, epic poetry, theatrical works, and oral storytelling traditions rooted in the lived experiences of Bihar’s people. For decades, regional folk artists have worked to preserve these traditions, but their work has been largely eclipsed by the language’s more visible, negative mainstream image.

    For Utpal, changing that misperception has become a life’s mission. Growing up moving across different regions of Bihar for his father’s government job, he absorbed local folk melodies from childhood; in his early 20s, he began diving deeper into the work of iconic Bhojpuri playwrights and poets like Bhikhari Thakur and Mahendra Misir, who shaped the state’s folk artistic identity. A defining throughline of Bhojpuri folk music, he learned, is the experience of migration — a theme that has shaped Bihar for centuries, from the forced colonial labor systems that shipped Bihari workers across the British Empire to the modern pattern of outmigration to India’s wealthy urban centers for work. *Kachaudi Gali* itself embodies this history: it tells the story of a colonial-era woman mourning as her husband leaves to fight in a distant British war, cursing the empire that tore him from her and even imagining taking up arms herself.

    “It hurts when you are deeply connected to the music of your roots, yet others perceive it poorly,” Utpal told reporters. “I really want to change that. I want people to realise that Bhojpuri and Bihari music have much more depth than the stereotypes suggest. I want them to hear the stories the music conveys.”

    To make these stories accessible to new audiences, Utpal shares detailed contextual explanations of the history and cultural meaning of every song he posts to social media, pairing short performances with reflections on colonialism, migration, and the legacies of Bhojpuri’s greatest artists. It was this commitment to context that caught the eye of Khwab, producer of *Kachaudi Gali* for *Coke Studio Bharat*, who discovered Utpal a year ago through an Instagram video of the singer performing the track in his village.

    “Utpal is obviously a brilliant singer, but when I read his explanation of the song’s history, I literally sat up in bed. I knew then that something significant had to come from this,” Khwab recalled.

    For the *Coke Studio* reimagining, Khwab crafted a production that balances modern pop polish with uncompromising respect for the song’s traditional roots: all core traditional instruments — including shehnai, tabla, dholak, harmonium, and dotara — were recorded live, rather than relying on synthesized backing tracks. “It’s about preserving what might be lost while creating something fresh. I wanted others to realise that folk music can be cool too,” Khwab explained of the project’s mission.

    Utpal’s folk revival is not the only effort to rewrite mainstream narratives about Bhojpuri: hundreds of kilometers away, independent rapper Sanket Shikriwal is challenging stereotypes from an entirely different angle, blending Bhojpuri language and themes with jazz, spoken word, and hip-hop to create a completely contemporary sound that bridges Bihar’s rural past and India’s digital present. Where Utpal’s work centers recovering forgotten traditional heritage, Shikriwal’s thrives on creative collision: his verses weave together village childhood memories with references to Franz Kafka and John Coltrane, pairing stories of migration with modern internet culture, and creating an ongoing conversation between past and present, village and city.

    His music often uses raw street language and profanity to express social agitation, a choice he says is no different from the profanity long accepted as a tool for commentary in global hip-hop or even mainstream Punjabi music, which has grown into one of India’s most successful cultural exports under artists like Diljit Dosanjh and Sidhu Moosewala. Shikriwal argues that Bhojpuri is held to a double standard: other regional genres are allowed to experiment and work through raw emotion, but Bhojpuri is constantly expected to sanitize itself to prove its respectability.

    “The question isn’t whether Bhojpuri can be made respectable. It’s why Bhojpuri speakers are always expected to prove that they are,” Shikriwal said. “What I hope for is not a sanitised version of Bhojpuri culture, but a more confident one — secure enough to define itself on its own terms. I want people to look at Bihar and see philosophers again. We call it the Land of Buddha, yet we treat its people with such disrespect.”

    For Utpal, the viral success of *Kachaudi Gali* is already a sign that change is coming. Millions of listeners across India and beyond have connected with the song’s raw, centuries-old story of grief and resistance, proving that audiences are hungry for the full, unfiltered story of Bhojpuri culture. “It was a reminder that one of India’s most widely spoken languages is still waiting to be heard on its own terms,” Utpal said.

  • Canada eligible to join Eurovision competition

    Canada eligible to join Eurovision competition

    The world’s biggest live music competition, the Eurovision Song Contest, is opening its doors to a new North American contender: Canada. This historic change comes after the country’s national public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada, secured full membership status in the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) – the non-negotiable requirement for any nation that wants to compete in the iconic annual contest.

    The shift follows months of coordinated work between the Canadian government and the public broadcaster, dating back to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 2025 national budget. Since taking office last year, Carney has prioritized deepening political and economic connections between Canada and European nations, and adding Eurovision participation was framed as a key cultural pillar of that outreach strategy. By November, the Carney administration confirmed it was collaborating with CBC to explore the logistics of entering the competition, and the 2025 budget allocated C$150 million (£80 million) to the public broadcaster to support this and other cultural initiatives.

    While Canada will be the latest non-European nation to join the contest’s lineup, it is far from the first. Israel and Australia have been regular competitors for years, and Morocco made a single appearance in the 1980 contest. EBU Director General Noel Curran welcomed the change, noting that adding Canada’s unique cultural voice to the Eurovision community strengthens the entire event.

    Interestingly, Canadian talent has already left an indelible mark on Eurovision history decades before the nation gained formal eligibility. In 1988, Quebec-born global superstar Céline Dion claimed the contest’s top prize when she competed on behalf of Switzerland. That unexpected victory became the launching pad for Dion’s decades-long, record-breaking career that has made her one of the best-selling artists of all time. Other Canadian artists have followed in her footsteps, representing competing European nations: Acadian singer Natasha St-Pier from New Brunswick represented France in 2001, and Montreal-born performer La Zarra represented France at the 2023 contest.

    With full membership now confirmed, Canada is on track to field its first official national entry when the next Eurovision Song Contest kicks off next year, marking one of the most significant changes to the competition’s participation rules in recent memory.

  • Artist bids goodbye to Danish postal system

    Artist bids goodbye to Danish postal system

    In a thoughtful creative project that bridges art, nostalgia, and shifting communication norms, UK-based paper artist Gillian Taylor has crafted a unique hanging daisy art installation using letters collected during the final days of public letter delivery from Denmark’s national postal operator PostNord. The exhibition, titled *Med Venlig Hilsen* — Danish for “With Kind Regards” — is currently hosted at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton, southwest England, bringing together contributions from friends, strangers, and letter lovers across two countries.

    Taylor, who hails from Cockwood, Devon, has longstanding connections to Denmark, where she spent a significant portion of her career. Her project drew submissions from dozens of participants: Danish close friends who shared her fondness for handwritten correspondence, as well as complete strangers who jumped at the chance to contribute personal memories of receiving and opening handwritten letters. Many contributors took the opportunity to send their letters as a deliberate act of preserving the dying tradition, even adding their own small artworks to the envelopes and using up old collections of postage stamps that would otherwise go unused.

    The end of letter delivery in Denmark marks a major milestone in global digital adoption. In 2025, PostNord announced it would cease all residential and commercial letter delivery services starting that December, shifting its entire operational focus to parcel delivery. The company justified the change by noting Denmark has ranked among the world’s most digitally advanced nations for years, with email and instant messaging apps now dominating personal and professional communication far more than traditional posted letters. The transition was so abrupt that one of Taylor’s friends attempting to mail her a letter on the official final day discovered the local public post box had already been removed. They ultimately had to route the letter via a courier through Austria, a journey that took two full months to reach Taylor.

    When assembling the installation, Taylor transformed the submitted correspondence into delicate hanging daisies: the postage stamps from each letter form the bright central core of each flower, while cut-up pieces of the letters and their envelopes make up the soft petals. Taylor explained her choice of the daisy was twofold: not only is it the official national flower of Denmark, but it also carries a universal symbolism of hope that fits the project’s tone.

    Reflecting on the exhibition’s broader message, Taylor noted that the project has already sparked renewed interest in handwritten correspondence among attendees and contributors. “Lots of people have gone away and written letters as a result of this because they realised that if we don’t use our own postal service then we might lose it as well,” she said. Taylor added that while the end of Denmark’s national letter service feels like a mournful turning point, she wanted the installation to carry an optimistic message. “This project has made me think about the way I communicate with old friends,” she said. “Although this is a really sad moment, I’m an optimistic person and I like to offer that hope for the future — that we will return to those more personal ways of communicating.”