Here’s a rare remake worth your excitement: The first trailer for Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” has arrived. 

Coppola gives her own spin on the 1971 drama starring Clint Eastwood, itself an adaptation of Thomas P. Cullinan’s 1966 Southern Gothic novel. Colin Farrell plays a Confederate soldier riding out an injury at an all-girls boarding school in rural Virginia. As he bonds with the sheltered women on the property ― played by the likes of Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, “Pete’s Dragon” star Oona Laurence and “The Nice Guys” breakout Angourie Rice ― things get a little twisted. 

“The Beguiled” marks Coppola’s first theatrical release since 2013’s “The Bling Ring.” It opens June 23.

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This comic has courted quite a bit of attention online.

Last week, when a federal judge put a nationwide block on President Donald Trump’s executive order that banned refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, a doodling duo from Miami found creative inspiration.

Cynthia “Thea” Sousa Machado and Sam Machado, a husband-and-wife comic team, published this cartoon:

The image, called “I Got This,” features Lady Justice stepping in to defend Lady Liberty against Trump. The comic resonated with many after Sam tweeted the image, earning over 27,000 likes and 17,000 retweets as of publication, along with some glowing reviews:

“This was largely Thea’s idea,” Sam told the Huffington Post. “The image came to her when the president’s executive order first encountered difficulty. But we waited to see what the national implications would be.”

When it looked like the judicial branch was going to continue to serve as a check, the couple decided to start drawing it up.

These cartoons help us process all this as much as anything else."
Sam Machado

”Thea loved the idea of Justice holding back President Trump,” said Sam. “As we talked and passed it back and forth, the narrative began to evolve. These cartoons help us process all this as much as anything else.”

The couple, whose comics have dealt with social issues in the past, began producing more political images after the election. One of those shows Trump as a caveman dragging Lady Liberty by her hair into a cave.

“This is image of Liberty under assault was how a lot of Americans felt on so many levels,” Sam told HuffPost.

He also noted that Lady Liberty has been a reoccurring theme for the couple, since Cynthia hails from New York City and the statue reminds her of home.

It’s the very concept of Lady Liberty in stark contrast to the travel ban that sparked the couple’s stunning comic, “I Got This.”

“It hits us in our hearts,” Sam said of the ban. “My father came from Cuba and built two businesses in this country. Thea’s family is Puerto Rican by way of Portugal. We don’t have family from any of the banned countries, but our hearts go to those that do.”

Every Friday, HuffPost’s Culture Shift newsletter helps you figure out which books you should read, art you should check out, movies you should watch and music should listen to. Sign up here.

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The wait is almost over! Disney has announced the opening dates for new theme park attractions based on the “Star Wars” and “Avatar” movies.

A “Star Wars”-inspired area is set to open in 2019 at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, as well as at Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. 

Meanwhile, the “Pandora: The World of Avatar” attraction will open on May 27 ―just in time for Memorial Day weekend this year ― as part of Disney World’s Animal Kingdom. Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the dates during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday.

The Avatar-inspired attraction will include floating mountains, bioluminescent plants, two new rides and shops featuring Na’vi art.

At 14 acres each, the two “Star Wars” ventures will be the largest single-themed land expansions at Disneyland and Disney World. The new attractions will resemble a remote trading post on an alien planet, and will include a ride that allows guests to pilot the iconic Millennium Falcon.

Details are still sparse, but guests can expect to find themselves in “the middle of a climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance,” Iger said in 2015.

The new land will open the same year “Star Wars: Episode IX” is expected to hit theaters.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” will be released in 2019. “Star Wars: Episode IX” will be released in 2019. “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” will be released in 2017.

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The people at Harvard Book Store want readers to remember the victims of the Bowling Green massacre. You know, that massacre that never happened?

Last week, Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to President Donald Trump, used the nonexistent massacre to justify Trump’s highly controversial immigration ban. 

The reads they suggest range in topic, but some of our favorites include:

• 
  

  The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton

  
  


• 
  

  Assholes: A Theory by Aaron James

  
  


• 
  

  On Bullshit: Essay by Harry Frankfurt

  
  

Twitter is loving the new addition to the shop, too.

 Long live Harvard Book Store.

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NEW YORK — Women’s health care should be as permanent as ink on human skin.

Tattoo artists in Brooklyn, New York, discounted their services Wednesday to raise money for Planned Parenthood at a midday party offering music, cheap booze and $40 tats. More than 1,300 people said on Facebook they planned to attend the festivities, organized by a group called Party to Protect.

All proceeds for the “Tattoo To Protect Your Parts” event and its after-party will go to Planned Parenthood NYC Votes, an arm of the women’s health care organization that advocates for elected officials to work in favor of reproductive health and rights issues. Organizers hoped to raise at least $10,000.

By 2 p.m., hundreds were already lined up out the door at the Magic Cobra Tattoo Society parlor in Greenpoint, where artists were donating their time. Attendees could choose from a set of pre-designed, female empowerment-themed tattoos, all applied with black ink on their arms, shoulders or legs.

Tattoo artists Todd Woodward, who goes by Woodz; Ashley Strout, who goes by Ol’ Ash; Kati Vaughn and Adam Korothy were scheduled to ink customers. Only about 80 people will be able to get tattoos, but others are welcome to donate and attend the after-party at nearby bar Saint Vitus. 

Eman Rimawi, 32, of Brooklyn, said she was getting a tattoo of women protesting to support Planned Parenthood because “its nobody’s business what I’m doing with my body but my own.”

Rimawi said she’ll take further action with the most proactive of American approaches.

“My plan is to run for office ― that’s my protest,” Rimawi told The Huffington Post. “I’m tired of sitting around complaining about politicians. This is my opportunity to be the change I want to see in the world.”

Rimawi, a Queens native, said she’ll run for City Council to fight for the rights of women and the disabled. She lost both legs to lupus.

Planned Parenthood has been under siege lately. President Donald Trump promised to cut federal money to the organization, and he signed an anti-abortion executive order in January that affects women trying to gain access to reproductive health care worldwide, regardless of whether they’re trying to get an abortion.

HuffPost’s Amanda Terkel reports:

People line up in Brooklyn to get a tattoo in support of Planned Parenthood.

Wednesday’s event was inspired by the American tradition of activism, said Laura Matthei, a Party to Protect organizer.

“We didn’t want to sit around and watch all our rights erode,” Matthei said. “We wanted to do something instead of sitting and whining and crying about it, which sometimes of course I do. Even though we are in a liberal state, there are local and state representatives voting against reproductive rights. We can’t have that. We need to put on the pressure right now.”

Other tattoo parlors also are raising money for Planned Parenthood. A similar event is scheduled at Holistic Tattoo in Los Angeles on Feb. 19.

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What if we treated female scientists the way we treated famous actors, TV personalities and models?

That’s the question General Electric (GE) asks in a new spot celebrating women in science. The video, which was published Wednesday morning, imagines the first woman to win the National Medal of Science in Engineering, Millie Dresselhaus a.k.a. the “queen of carbon science,” as a star.

In the one-minute spot, children dress up as Millie for Halloween, parents name their kids after her and there’s even a Millie emoji. 

The ad is part of a new announcement from GE that the global corporation is committing to hiring more women in technical roles. The company set a goal of helping 20,000 women fill more STEM roles in GE by the year 2020 and obtaining 50:50 representation for all of their tech entry-level positions.

In a press release, the company explained that they’re taking a holistic approach to bringing more women into GE and retaining current female employees.

“Our goal is clear: Attract, grow and retain a GE technical team that reflects the world in which we live,” Lorraine Bolsinger, VP of Accelerated Leadership Program, told The Huffington Post. “From a recruitment perspective, this means doing things like expanding the number of colleges and universities from which we recruit to include institutions with a more competitive gender mix. From a retention standpoint, this includes instituting processes to capture more ongoing feedback from our technology function, expanding access to bias training and continuing our work in delivering innovative benefits to improve the overall employee experience.” 

The ad’s description on YouTube sums up the company’s goal perfectly: “At GE, we’re not just imagining a world where brilliant women are the stars ― we’re helping create it.” 

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Lady Gaga’s recent Super Bowl performance confirmed that halftime shows are most dynamic with pop divas at the center. In fact, life is at its most dynamic when pop divas seize the spotlight, which is as good a reason as any to rank the best of the best’s debut singles. 

The rubric is simple: I’ve selected the 33 greatest female pop stars ― including mainstream crossovers whose roots belong to genres like country and R&B ― and ranked their grand entrances based on each song’s quality and ability to vault its singer into superstardom. Here we go.

Hit Backspace for a regular dose of pop culture nostalgia.

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Educator Kamau Ware is on a mission to educate others about New York’s rich yet rarely told black history.

In light of his passion for pursuing history, Ware created the Black Gotham Experience in 2010, which offers walking tours throughout areas of Manhattan where black people historically played pivotal roles in the city’s development. The Huffington Post Black Voices met with Ware last Wednesday as we kicked off Black History Month with a virtual tour through the city.  

Ware explained that he launched the Black Gotham Experience after he was asked one particular question during a separate tour he led at the Tenement Museum in 2008. 

“I was challenged by a child while giving a tour at another museum and they asked me at the end of the walking tour where the black people were basically in the 1800s,” Ware told The Huffington Post last week.

“I felt like that was a very important question to be asked by a young girl who was more or less just curious about how come she doesn’t see the black experience represented in museums and in media and in books or in classrooms,” he continued. “And so I began doing my research [and] came out with a way to share that information.”

Ware said this research led him to realize that certain landmark occurrences in black history like the Transatlantic Slave Trade bore significant roots in New York City. He went on to construct and lead nightly tours to impart his knowledge of the slave trade, the Reconstruction Era and much more. 

Ware currently hosts a trilogy of tours: “Other Side Of Wall Street”, “Caesar’s Rebellion” and “Citizen Hope,” all of which span the history of black people in New York from 1609 to 1883. 

The Caesar’s Rebellion tour, which focuses on the first armed black rebellion in 1712, the unison of free and enslaved black people and other historical black events, is typically divided into two parts but Ware gave HuffPost a preview of the tour, which can be seen in the clip below: 

“One of the biggest misconceptions that people have about slavery in the North is that it was small, it was minimal,” he said.

Yet, according to an article published by Newsweek, NYC once had the second highest slave population, next to Charleston, South Carolina. WARE, who is currently working on a graphic novel under the Black Gotham brand, says he is committed to offering new ways to tell New York’s lesser-known black history. 

“New York City is named after James Stuart, Duke of York who was a major slave trader before he became the king,” Ware said. “You got to understand that New York is critical to understanding the black diaspora’s experience.”

To learn even more about New York’s hidden history, watch the full video below: 

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What book spurs you to keep fighting, even in moments of adversity? Let us know in the comments!

Every Friday, HuffPost’s Culture Shift newsletter helps you figure out which books you should read, art you should check out, movies you should watch and music should listen to. Sign up here.

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”When my family came to New York, the first thing they wanted to do was go to the Statue of Liberty,” artist Edel Rodriguez explained in an interview with The Huffington Post.

Born in Cuba, Rodriguez immigrated to the United States when he was 9 years old, feeling pressure from Fidel Castro’s autocratic regime. Lady Liberty, he recalled, was there to greet him, a profound symbol of hope and acceptance for many who uprooted their lives and resettled on American soil. 

In the wake of President Trump’s executive order prohibiting citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, Rodriguez conjured a simple and blistering image of that welcoming symbol. In his illustration, Trump wields the Statue of Liberty’s decapitated head in one hand, a bloody knife in the other. The image, which appeared on the cover of Der Spiegel on Feb. 4, not so subtly draws a comparison between the leader of the free world and the terrorist group he hopes to eliminate.

“Clearly, lately, what’s associated with beheadings is ISIS, so there’s a comparison,” he told The Washington Post. “Both sides are extremists, so I’m just making a comparison between them.”

Rodriguez began drawing when he was a kid, sketching in his aunt’s pharmacy where he could find ample paper, pens and supplies. When he came to the United States, drawing became a universal language that served him well. “I didn’t speak English,” he said, “so it was a way of communicating with people. I was the art kid.” 

Elements of his Cuban upbringing, Rodriguez believes, are evident in his artistic style, which is reminiscent of the graphic political posters he encountered growing up. But such influences, he said, are difficult to separate from the impact that artists like Picasso and Matisse have had on his style. 

Rodriguez started drawing Donald Trump during the primaries, attempting, in his way, to caution others of his dangerous potential. “It was a warning,” he said. 

“Having grown up in Cuba, and grown up with a bombastic dictator, I see things in Trump that remind me of Castro. I felt like I was in the position to warn people about falling in love with someone with that sort of charisma. The drawings were not for personal pleasure or a release of any kind of energy. It was a call to say: ‘Hey, pay attention.’”

One such drawing consists of melting orange skin, yellow hair and the sole facial feature: a mouth. “He talks so much, that’s why,” Rodriguez said. “Meltdown” graced the cover of Time in August 2016. Its sequel, “Total Meltdown,” hit stands in October. 

The artist believes images have a power that words do not ― the ability to communicate to anyone, regardless of their language, background or level of education. “I want to make images that can reach someone with a Ph.D. and someone who is an immigrant laborer who doesn’t speak English.”

Especially nowadays, Rodriguez expressed, when people seem to read little and pay attention to detail even less, art can speak volumes. “Images can grab people’s attention,” he said. “They can tell a complicated story in a simple way. You have an impact. It may be a small impact, but it is an impact. Hopefully, you make people want to look further into an issue.”

The artist has received a great deal of backlash from Trump supporters since his image went viral “These threats and stuff, this is not what democracy is about,” he said. “I’m okay with a conversation. I’m okay with people telling me they support Trump. But when you start calling people names, it’s not what this country is about at all. That’s what living in Cuba was about.” 

Realistically, Rodriguez does not expect to change the opinions of those who voted for Trump simply through showing them his work. Instead, he hopes to give those opposed to Trump’s agenda the tools to resist. “I think the one thing I can do is mobilize people that are already feeling a certain way, but don’t know what to do,” Rodriguez  said.

“My work encourages people that are a little afraid. When they see what I do, and all the stuff that comes at me, they might say, ‘Wow, that guy has some guts. Maybe I should get some too.’”

Rodriguez puts all of his work online in the hopes that such people will download them and use them to protest, organize and continue to create. Seeing his work pop up among crowds in the Women’s March, airport protests against the executive order, and the recent LGBTQ protest at Stonewall Inn in New York brings Rodriguez great pride. 

“My contribution is that my work gets used by people who don’t know how to say something visually,” he said. “There are people who want to march, they want to say something online, they don’t know what to do because they’ve never made a poster. This gives them something to share. That, to me, is everything.” 

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Harriet Tubman’s upcoming biopic has found its leading star.

Deadline reports the Tony Award-winning actress Cynthia Erivo has been cast to portray the late civil rights activist in the forthcoming film, “Harriet.”

Produced by Charles King’s media-holding company, MACRO, and directed by Seith Man, the motion picture will chronicle the life of the abolitionist who escaped from slavery in 1849 and eventually led hundreds of slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad. Later during the Civil War, Tubman went on to serve as a nurse, a cook, and a spy for the Union army.

Despite her London-bred roots, in 2015 Erivo told The New York Times that she shares a lot of the same experiences as the American characters she plays.  

“I don’t think it’s different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America,” she said. “We all collectively share in a pain of displacement, and not feeling like we quite belong in places.”

Erivo’s forthcoming role follows her 2016 Tony win for Best Lead Actress in a Musical for Broadway’s revival of “The Color Purple.” Next year she will star opposite of Viola Davis in Steve McQueen’s developing big screen thriller, “Widow.”

Production for “Harriet” is set to begin later this year.

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So many of pop culture’s celebrated stories begin and end with the pursuit of a romantic relationship. After seasons’ worth of near misses and underhanded flirting, we expect to see our favorite on-screen ‘ships sealed with a kiss.

“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” did just that at the end of its first season, leaving Rebecca Bunch, played by show co-creator Rachel Bloom, in the arms of her longtime crush, Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III). Of course, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is not a typical show. The way Rebecca so clearly articulates what is often implied at the end of romantic comedies — “I just knew you were the answer to all my problems,” she tells Josh, rendering the notion absurd simply by saying it aloud — implies that the two characters’ lives from here on out will not be a parade of shared spaghetti dinners and horseback rides at sunset.

So often, a romantic relationship is the end-all, be-all. The problems are solved, our two faves are hand-in-hand and the credits roll, allowing us to imagine the rest of Joey and Pacey’s or Noah and Allie’s relationships continuing on, conflict-free, for the rest of their days. Most entertainment products make it seem like starting a relationship is the hardest part, but they rarely tackle the humdrum days in a long-term commitment, nor the realization that the hit of bliss from true love is all one needs to be happy.  

Dramatic, on-and-off-again courtships belie most on-screen hookups — after all, for viewers, the pursuit and questioning is infinitely more interesting than the supposed prize of a healthy pairing. The show here takes a hard turn from most romantic television offerings by avoiding an implicit endorsement of this unhealthy behavior. Instead, it strips it bare, exposing the chaos of Rebecca and Josh to reveal the very human wishes to be loved and feel “normal” while dealing with all of one’s inevitable baggage. It all comes to a jaw-dropping head at the season finale, which I won’t spoil here, but is certainly not hidden if you Google something like “crazy ex-girlfriend.”

Though Rebecca “got” the guy at the end of Season 1, she and Josh do not take a backseat in their happy, normal coupledom as wackiness rages around them, à la Jim and Pam on “The Office.” And here is why “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is so valuable in its second season. The show reminds everyone watching of an important truth: A loving relationship alone is woefully inadequate for erasing one’s insecurities and deep-set problems. 

This sounds like a grim premise, and it might be in incapable hands. However, Bloom and co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna, along with the rest of their team, manage to skewer tropes and tackle topics like abortion and mental health without ever getting too heavy-handed. (The songs might help with that.)

In an episode of the podcast “Off Camera with Sam Jones,” Bloom explained, “We kind of go by the old adage, ‘When the emotion is too strong to speak, you sing, and when the emotion is too strong to sing, you dance.’” The musical numbers, she continued, allow a deeper look at the perspective of the character who’s singing, as well as a chance for the writers to comment more directly on tropes. (She gives the example of the rapper in Season 1’s “Sexy Getting Ready Song,” who realizes “I gotta apologize to some bitches” after he sees the intensive “patriarchal bullshit” rituals women undergo to get ready for a date.) 

Season 2 opens with Rebecca clinging to Josh’s “love kernels,” keeping the idea of their connection alive in her mind thanks to his sparse, vaguely praising comments like, “Those jeans are cute.” It’s the perfect send-up of a mostly unrequited relationship, where one party is way more heavily invested in the other. 

“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” explores the many dysfunctions that arise when you mix humans and love, but instead of quirky archetypes, the characters drawn here are a lot more nuanced than that. While following the mostly central twosome of the season, the show doesn’t look down on either Rebecca for subjecting herself to a lopsided affair, nor Josh for taking advantage of it.

It’s a rare show that can feature our protagonist as a “sexy fashion cactus” and reveal refreshing truths about modern relationships in one go. We’d never imagine a universe where that was possible, along with killer Spice Girls parodies, a Frankie Valli–inspired narrator who also represents the Santa Ana winds, or the Ed Sheeran–esque “Let’s Have Intercourse” — all featured in the show’s second season — but we’re happy to stay here for as long as Rachel Bloom and co. will have us. 

You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Sign up to receive it in your inbox weekly.

Follow Jill Capewell on Twitter: @jcapejcape

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Terra Lopez was catcalled for the first time when she was in high school. What started off as a seemingly light attempt at flirtation resulted in her being followed home. Now, 15 years later, Lopez is hoping to give men an idea of what this kind of terrifying experience feels like.

The Sacramento-based artist and lead singer of Rituals of Mine released her project, “This is What It Feels Like,” on February 3. It’s an audio art exhibit in which participants walk through a dimmed hallway to the sound of men catcalling them, with varying levels of harassment and objectification. Perhaps most jarring is that Lopez interviewed 100 women for the project ― and all of the recorded catcalls are words that the women have actually heard.

The catcalls range from “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “Can I come with you?” to the more terrifying and explicit threats, like “I’m gonna fuck you,” and “I wanna rape you.”

Lopez told the Huffington Post that she wanted to pursue the project in order to take women’s demeaning experiences and turn them into something empowering. 

“I don’t want women to feel hopeless or helpless anymore,” she said.

For this reason, she made the exhibit open to anyone who wants to attend ― but specifically encouraged men to do so. 

“For me, really the exhibit was intended for men,” she told HuffPost. “I definitely made this as an educational tool for men.”

The response to the project has thus far been powerful. Lopez told HuffPost that many men have left the exhibit in tears, with a newfound empathy for what many women experience daily. 

“The men are just stunned,” she said. “The coolest thing I think I’ve heard is that a lot of men have said ‘I’m going to step it up. I’m going to tell my friends next time they’re doing that to knock it off and I’m going to change my own behavior.’”

The exhibit has also resonated with women participants, but not because catcalling is new for them. Rather, Lopez said, women are grateful that men can now experience what they are used to going through so regularly.

“It’s pretty crazy how different men and women are reacting to this because this is women’s lives every single day,” Lopez said. “This is nothing new to them, but for men it’s definitely eye-opening.”

Lopez hopes that the project will continue to educate men, and motivate more men to step up and speak out against the harassment of women. 

The exhibit debuted less than a week ago, an more than 4,000 members of the Sacramento community have participated in “This is What it Feels Like.” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg even participated, and told Lopez that the project was “jarring” and “incredibly important.” He wants to work with her to expand the project, and she’s hoping to take it to Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.  

Ultimately, Lopez said, she hopes the exhibit “will start to shift our culture and change our perceptions as to how we treat women day-to-day.”

“This is What it Feels Like” will be running at ArtStreet in Sacramento through Februrary 25. Check out photos from the exhibit here. 

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Noëlle Santos wants the the Bronx to get lit, with literature. 

The afro-boricua launched a crowdfunding campaign via Indiegogo last month in hopes of opening The Lit. Bar in her borough. The Bronx was left with no bookstores after the Barnes & Nobles at the Bay Plaza Shopping Center recently closed.

Santos envisions her business as both a bookstore and a wine bar, “a social hub for people to come together and talk about social issues,” she told PIX11 News. “That’s something amazon cannot provide.”

The way Santos sees it, The Lit. Bar is an opportunity to change perceptions about her community.   

“Lit like literature, Lit like drunk. Lit with passion to kill stigmas... and prove, once again, that the Bronx keeps creating it,” Santos says in one part of her campaign video, above. “And we are worthy, that we are more than just sneaker stores and we support the arts, so I stand here today and ask you to open your hearts and help us show the world what many fail to see: that the Bronx is no longer burning, except with a desire to read.”

And the 30-year-old Human Resources professional and blogger says her bookstore will reflect the diversity of her neighborhood. 

“When you come into a neighborhood like the South Bronx, where most of our population is Hispanic and African-American, you need your stores, your community centers and your organizations to reflect the people that actually live there,” she told The New York Times.

Santos won second place in the New York Public LIbrary’s New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition last year, which came with a prize of $7,500.

The boricua bookworm has already raised over $39,000 via Indiegogo, and she’s hoping to meet her $100,000 goal in the month that’s left of the campaign. The entrepreneur got a big boost after filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted about The Lit. Bar on Feb. 3. Santos told DNAinfo.com he gave her campaign $5,000. 

The Lit. Bar will be a lot more than bookstore as far as Santos is concerned, she feels the space will serve a higher purpose. 

 “When you think about the South Bronx you don’t usually think about wine and intellectuals reading,” Santos told PIX11 News. “It’s really a movement to break those Bronx stereotypes.”

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Social action organization Global Citizen somehow just made Adele’s hit song “Hello” even better. 

In a new video published Thursday morning, Global Citizen re-imagines Adele’s “Hello” as a call to Congress to protest President Trump’s executive orders. The video features an Adele look-a-like wearing a fur coat belting out tunes with the wind in her hair, singing into a phone... the lyrics are just a bit different. 

“Hello, it’s me. I was wondering if you had some time to support refugees,” the woman sings into a flip phone. “We can go over everything. Like how they aren’t terrorists, they’re only frightened folks in need.”

The chorus is possibly the best part: “Hello from the other side! If I have to, I’ll call a thousand times! Til you listen to us, we’ll never leave you alone. But when I call Paul Ryan, he never seems to be home.”

Simply put: It’s perfect.

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Is it possible to truly let go of your individualized sense of self and coalesce with the universe? Yayoi Kusama is certain it is.

For the past 70 years, the masterful artist has worked to construct three-dimensional worlds ― technically finite yet aesthetically fathomless ― that invite others to join her in shedding the ego and bathing in the infinite everything. 

A traveling exhibition spanning Kusama’s staggering career is headed to Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum this month, bringing six of Kusama’s “Infinity Rooms” with it. The show “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors,” celebrates the genius and vision of a woman who has struggled with mental illness for much of her life, transforming her nightmarish memories and persistent maladies into art. 

At 10 years old, while living in Japan, Kusama began experiencing hallucinations ― “flashes of light, auras or dense fields of dots” ― which filled her with anxiety and dread. She confronted her obsessive delusions by giving them concrete form, ushering them from fantasy into reality by painting the abstract images everywhere she could.

“I would cover a canvas with nets,” Kusama writes in her autobiography Infinity Net, “then continue painting them on the table, on the floor and finally on my own body. As I repeated this process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infinity. I forgot about myself as they enveloped me, clinging to my arms and legs and clothes and filling the entire room.” 

The artist was brought up in Matsumoto by a purportedly absent, womanizing father and a violence-prone mother. “There were some very dark, unhappy moments in my childhood, which art helped me heal considerably,” she explained in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Through art, I was also able to enter into normal society, but up until then I was haunted by suicidal impulses.” 

In 1958, Kusama moved to New York, eager to escape an environment she saw as “too small, too servile, too feudalistic and too scornful of women.” She became enmeshed in the art scene, forging close relationships with Donald Judd and Joseph Cornell. For decades, however, Kusama failed to get the same critical recognition as her male contemporaries, most often only being acknowledged for work that was blatantly sexual or extreme. 

The pieces that were often pegged “erotic” by critics and scholars were, in reality, quite the opposite. Performances dubbed “Happenings” consisted of live interventions by Kusama and a team of collaborators. Sometimes they would be nude, painted in polka dots to best find harmony with the earth and moon and sun. Or, they’d don outfits coated in soft, drooping phalluses that resembled rotten potatoes.

Both variations stemmed, like most of Kusama’s work, from her obsessive fears and delusions, which often revolved around sex and men. Discussing a collaged photograph that similarly grapples with sexual phobias, Kusama said: “Polka dots symbolize disease. The couch bristled with phalluses. The macaroni-strewn floor symbolizes fear of sex and food, while the nets symbolize horror toward infinity of the universe. We can not live without the air.”

Kusama returned to Tokyo in 1973 for health reasons, and has lived primarily in a psychiatric facility there since 1975. She continues to make art for eight hours a day, while also undergoing medical treatment. She is now, at 87 years old, regarded as one of the most famous living artists in world, and the most expensive living female artist on aggregate. 

While Kusama has worked in painting, performance and sculpture, her “Infinity Rooms” remain by far the most worshiped aspect of her oeuvre. Perhaps their popularity stems from the fact that they make for good selfies. Or, more likely, the artworks’ photogenic nature stems from Kusama’s prophetic understanding of human nature. 

Her dizzying installations, which alternately feature polka dots and twinkly lights and pumpkins and soft phalluses, feature mirrored walls that collapse the boundaries of the enclosed space, beckoning the viewer into an echo chamber. There, she is both a person and an image, proliferated into infinite, mirrored projections that both affirm the self and erase it. 

It’s an experience not dissimilar to scrolling through the selfies stashed on your phone, examining the moments when you do not resemble yourself. It appeals to that contagious, contemporary desire to “go viral,” while hinting at the mental instability, the literal virus, at the seed of the desire to be everywhere and nowhere at once. 

“I’ve always been interested in the mystique that a mirrored surface presents,” Kusama said. “In my mirror rooms, you see yourself as an individual reflected in an expansive space. But they also give you the sensation of cloistering yourself in another world.”

You can experience this other world in the flesh ― and beyond it — this month. 

“Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors” will be on view at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden from Feb. 23–May 14, 2017; the Seattle Art Museum from June 30–Sept. 10, 2017; The Broad in Los Angeles from October 2017–January 2018; the Art Gallery of Ontario from March–May 2018; and the Cleveland Museum of Art from July–October 2018. 

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At 41, eternal ray of sunshine Drew Barrymore says she’s never been “angry or bitter or depressed” ― not even for a day. Somehow, despite a turbulent childhood under the limelight of a famous Hollywood family and a hard-partying adolescence that resulted in two rehab stints by age 14, Barrymore has landed on this rose-colored analysis of her experiences.

Today, the Golden Globe winner and mother of two daughters turns her jagged flowering into messages of optimism. Her Instagram feed actually is, in large part, rainbows and flowers. Amid advertisements for her wine and skin-care brands, you’ll find the hashtag #girlpower, evidence of her frequent charity work and a parade of smiles. The tone of Barrymore’s adult life, as evidenced when I met her on the set of her new “Come As You Are” campaign for Crocs to talk about the 20th anniversary of “Scream,” has been one of inspiration. And she’s well aware that, given the “intense” contemporary political climate, we desperately need some inspiration. 

“There’s so much happening in the world to distract you or bring you down or scare you or confuse you or overwhelm you,” Barrymore said. “It’s just important to balance that out with a positivity and hope and uplifting. I also just like an all-ages party and an all-economics party.” 

That timbre has defined the bulk of her filmography, especially after Barrymore launched her own production company, the aptly titled Flower Films, with producer Nancy Juvonen in 1995. Flower Films’ first project was 1999’s “Never Been Kissed,” which Barrymore and Juvonen followed up with more romantic comedies and female-centric movies like “Charlie’s Angels,” “He’s Just Not That Into You,” “Whip It” and “How to be Single.” Their latest is “Santa Clarita Diet,” the now-steaming Netflix zombie comedy (zom-com?) that became a “safe space” for Barrymore last year during the throes of her divorce.

“We all want a happy ending and we all want to believe,” Barrymore said of her film and advertising choices, which in recent years included an award-winning role in HBO’s “Grey Gardens” and a turn in 2015’s underrated gal-pal cancer dramedy “Miss You Already.”

“It doesn’t matter if you have to struggle and fight to get there,” she continued. “It’s not a perfect journey, but at the end of the day people want to love each other and support each other. It could be a rom-com, it could be ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ I think I like goodness. I don’t like depressing things.”

Sitting in a dressing room at the Crocs set on a Manhattan soundstage, a playful Barrymore went on to insist the “hard times” of her past are nothing but positives. Again, this came from the woman who did cocaine at age 12, posed nude on the covers of Interview and Playboy magazines, and flashed David Letterman in one of the most famous “Late Show” appearances of all time.

It was “Scream,” a movie without the happy ending she now seeks, that catapulted the second phase of Barrymore’s career. The shock of her character’s death, 13 minutes into the movie, confirmed that Barrymore was the cast’s biggest star. From there, 1997’s “The Wedding Singer” launched the actress’ peppy rom-com rebranding, softening Barrymore’s bad-girl image and igniting her leading-lady bankability.

Today, she might as well be a spokesperson for peace and love. That evolution is best evidenced in the shift between Barrymore’s two memoirs. In 1991’s Little Girl Lost, co-authored with journalist Todd Gold, Barrymore recounted her drug exploits in brazen detail. By the time she penned a second book, last year’s Wildflower, her idea of tell-all stories had more to do with road-trip antics and discovering the importance of familial stability despite her fatherless childhood. “‘Memoir’ seems heavy to me, and I want this to be light,’’ Barrymore wrote in the book’s preface. She used exclamation marks liberally, just as her character on “Santa Clarita Diet,” a show that satirizes the exploitations of macabre zombie stories like “The Walking Dead,” probably would. Hard times be damned. 

“Those only made me stronger and more absolutely grateful in understanding there is a different side to the coin,” Barrymore said. “So whenever you’re on the good side of it, be thankful. When you’re on the bad side, get yourself on the good side. And if you’re on the bad side and you put yourself there, take responsibility. Get to the good, stay in the good, fight to stay in the good. Happiness is a choice. Happiness is lovely, but the choice part is the empowerment. The fight to stay focused, eyes on the prize, goodness, goodness, goodness. I like the fight. If you’re going to struggle, struggle to be happy.”

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If you’d like a vivid glimpse at black history, look no further than W.E.B. Du Bois’s striking, hand-drawn illustrations about black life in America after the end of slavery.

The graphs, recently digitized by the Library of Congress, originally went on display as part of the “Exhibit of American Negroes” at Paris’s Exposition Universelle in 1900. Organized by Du Bois and fellow black intellectuals and activists Booker T. Washington and Thomas J. Calloway, the exhibit’s aim was to highlight the triumphs and harsh realities of the black experience in the United States. 

Du Bois created well over 60 infographics that displayed a rich amount of data (compiled by Atlanta University) that tracked everything from the amount of property owned by blacks in the United States, the number of freemen versus slaves during and after the institution of slavery, and the rate of education amongst blacks in America. The data offers a dynamic glimpse of the progress made by African-Americans in the wake of slavery, in spite of major institutional roadblocks. 

DuBois wrote in 1900 that the exhibit, which also included hundreds of photographs and portrait of African-Americans, aimed to be “an honest straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people, picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by themselves.”

View some of the striking graphics below:

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It’s not easy to find your bearings when you’re a neurosurgeon thrust into a magical land involving alternate dimensions and a martial-arts sensei named the Ancient One. See for yourself in this exclusive deleted scene from “Doctor Strange,” in which Daniel Drumm warns the the titular superhero that he is in way over his head. 

The clip hails from the movie’s Blu-ray, which is out Feb. 28.  

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Hot on the heels of his off-Broadway triumph, Drew Droege will try a queer cult classic on for size. 

The actor-comedian returns to the stage Friday as the star of Charles Busch’s 1999 comedy, “Die, Mommie, Die!,” at the Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles. Billed as a “Greek tragedy on acid” and a campy tribute to midcentury Hollywood melodramas, “Die, Mommie, Die!” follows Angela Arden (Droege), an aging Hollywood star who murders her husband and attempts to find happiness in the arms of a young lover. As is the case with most of Busch’s satirical work, however, not everything is what it seems, and gender-bending, bed-hopping and pill-popping abound. 

Droege, who was last seen in the hit solo comedy “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns,” in New York and Los Angeles, told The Huffington Post that the “batshit crazy” play tackles issues like homophobia and ageism in Hollywood that still feel relevant today. Best known for his viral YouTube impersonations of actress Chloë Sevigny, Droege said he felt an instant kinship with Busch, citing the actor, playwright and drag icon as a personal influence. 

“Before ever seeing him perform, I felt like I knew him,” he said. “I, too, have always identified with leading ladies in films, but have never considered myself a drag queen... He also created his own career instead of waiting for someone else to figure out what to do with him, which certainly inspired me to do the same.”

In an effort to put his own stamp on the character of Angela Arden, however, Droege has avoided watching the 2003 film version of “Die, Mommie, Die!,” in which Busch starred alongside Natasha Lyonne and “Beverly Hills, 92010” hunk Jason Priestley.  

“I don’t think it’s possible ― or wise ― to be completely different from Charles in a Charles Busch show, but I do want to put my spin on it at the same time,” he said. “I definitely play around with some word pronunciations because, like Joan Crawford, she is glamorous yet uneducated. But his script is so funny that I don’t want or need to do that too much.” 

“Die, Mommie, Die!” begins previews at the Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles on Feb. 10, with an opening night set for Feb. 17. Head here for more details. 

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