Lana Wilson Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Look Into My Eyes’ (2024), starring Per Erik Borja, Eugene Grygo, Nikenya Hall, Phoebe Hoffman, Michael Kim, Sherrie Lynne and Ilka Pinheiro

September 6, 2024

by Carla Hay

Ilka Pinheiro (pictured at left) and a client in “Look Into My Eyes” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Look Into My Eyes” (2024)

Directed by Lana Wilson

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the documentary film “Look Into My Eyes” features a racially diverse group of people (white, African American, Asian and Latin) who are involved in some way in giving or receiving psychic readings.

Culture Clash: The seven psychics featured in the movie grapple with their own emotional baggage, trauma and self-doubt while they are in the business of comforting others.

Culture Audience: “Look Into My Eyes” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in watching documentaries about human psychology, whether viewers believe in psychics or not.

Per Erik Borja (pictured at right) with a client in “Look Into My Eyes” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Look Into My Eyes” is not a journalistic exposé about people who claim to be psychics. This empathetic documentary about seven self-proclaimed psychics in New York City ignores the reality that con artists can use personal information that people put on social media. This movie is mostly about people wanting emotional validation from strangers. Skeptics might be amused by some of the guessing games and performances that show the so-called psychics fumbling to say things that their customers want to hear. Believers will be enthralled and will be reluctant to question the credibility of the self-appointed psychics. It’s perhaps no coincidence that all of the psychics featured in this documentary are aspiring or failed entertainers.

Directed by Lana Wilson, “Look Into My Eyes” had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The documentary is a series of scenes that alternate between two types of footage: (1) readings that the seven psychics do for their customers, who are not identified by their names in the documentary and (2) interviews and leisure time with the psychics, who talk about their own personal lives. All of the psychics featured in “Look Into My Eyes” claim to be able to see and communicate with the dead.

What the documentary uncovers about these seven psychics is that almost all of them are deeply insecure, emotionally damaged, and struggling with various issues, such as mental health, addiction recovery and/or financial instability. But they are also very good at talking and giving people the type of comfort that these customers are seeking, which is the real motivation for anyone to take a psychic seriously. “Look Into My Eyes” does not have interviews with the clients of these so-called psychics.

It’s open to debate whether or not psychic abilities exist in human beings. The seven psychics in “Look Into My Eyes” certainly don’t do much to remove skeptical doubt that they have psychic abilities because of all the inaccurate guessing that they have in their psychic readings. The documentary also never questions, investigates, or mentions if the so-called psychics could have researched their clients’ personal lives before the meeting sessions.

The seven psychics who are the focus of the documentary are:

Per Erik Borja, an aspiring actor who happens to be openly gay.
Eugene Grygo, an aspiring actor/screenwriter who happens to be openly gay.
Nikenya Hall, a writer who also claims to be an energy healer.
Phoebe Hoffman, a high-school dropout and TV-watching enthusiast whose specialty is mind reading of animal pets who are dead or alive.
Michael Kim, an aspiring actor who says he began having paranormal experiences in the late 2010s.
Sherrie Lynne, an entertainer who hires herself out for events and dresses in stereotypical psychic clothes when she does readings.
Ilka Pinheiro, a social justice warrior who brings her progressive views into her psychic readings.

All of the so-called psychics in the documentary were in their 30s, 40s or 50s when this documentary was made, except for Lynne, who appears to be in her 70s. The male psychics are all soft-spoken, while the female psychics all have outspoken personalities. The documentary gives the most screen time to Grygo and the least amount of screen time to Lynne.

Some of the scenes are kind of pathetic, such as Grygo showing he has no singing talent when he warbles off-key during his singing lessons, or when Lynne tries to scrounge up some business by asking random people if they want to hire her to be a psychic at their next party. Most of these psychics live in cramped and cluttered apartments and directly or indirectly admit that the money they make as psychics is to fund their aspirations to become professional entertainers, either in acting and/or screenwriting, because they don’t want to work in regular “9 to 5” jobs.

Out of the seven psychics, Kim (who speaks in a calm, mediatative voice) is the one who gives the most accurate readings, but he also appears to be the most skilled in figuring out the right things to say to his customers at any given moment. He rarely gets flustered when his guesses are wrong. And that could have a lot to do with his background training as an actor.

Viewers of “Look Into My Eyes” will see Hoffman talk about her troubled past in her 20s, when she became a shut-in and addicted to cocaine while living with and doing drugs with her father, who also had cocaine addiction issues. Hoffman, who says she is now clean and sober, claims she’s known about her psychic abilities since she was a teenager. But considering she says she also started abusing drugs when she was a teen, it’s hard to know how much of her “psychic visions” were drug-induced. Hoffman mentions that she’s still struggling with social anxiety and other issues, which is one of the reasons why she says she can’t have a “regular job.”

The sob stories continue. Borja gets teary-eyed when remembering how an ex-boyfriend broke his heart. Grygo breaks down and cries when discussing the ongoing emotional pain of grieving over his brother dying by suicide. The documentary doesn’t have the psychics explain if they feel like they were born psychic or if they suddenly developed psychic skills when they needed a side hustle to supplement their incomes.

Coincidence or not, even though these psychics talk about many things in their personal lives, they don’t talk about their marital status or how being a so-called psychic affects their love lives. The psychics in this documentary all come across as being lonely and unlucky in love. Apparently, their psychic skills don’t extend to being able to find the right romantic partner.

Some of the psychics say that they are more attuned to troubled souls than most people are because of their own personal experiences of feeling like an outsider. Kim says he feels a deep connection to a young female client who was born in China and was adopted by Americans but she wants to know more about her Chinese birth mother, who gave her up for adoption. Kim says that he was also adopted by white parents.

Hall talks about being originally from a conservative, religious community in Oklahoma, where she says she felt like a misfit. Hall says she only felt comfortable where she lived when she moved to New York City. Hall also gives a mini-tour of her apartment in a scene that didn’t need to be in this documentary. Viewers really don’t need to know what kinds of figurines and knickknacks she collects when a more interesting story would be her life experiences that led her to make money by claiming to be a psychic.

“Look Into My Eyes” doesn’t reveal much more background information about the psychics except that Kim used to be an actor student at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York City. At the end of the documentary, he has a session with a woman who was a Strasberg classmate and who wants Kim to contact her deceased male best friend, who was also a Strasberg classmate. Coincidence or not? We might never know, but Strasberg gets plenty of free publicity mentions in this documentary.

As for the psychic readings in “Look Into My Eyes,” most of them are not as convincing as these self-proclaimed psychics would like you to think they are, especially in this day and age when it’s so easy to find out information about people by doing an Internet search. People who are skilled in human psychology can see how the readings mainly consist of picking up on visual clues from the customers, such as body language and physical appearance. The psychics start off with vague statements until the customers reveal more information so the psychics can make better guesses.

Some of the readings are laughably bad because they just involve some common sense and guessing. In one of the readings, Pinheiro states the obvious when she does a reading for a young man with blue-streaked hair who wants to know what the future holds, in terms of his career. Her “psychic” diagnosis is that she tells him that he’s a creative type who doesn’t want to work in an office job. You don’t have to be a psychic to know that people who dye their hair blue are not conventional people and probably don’t want to be hired in an office where employees are expected to wear their hair and clothes in a conservative manner.

Even more cringeworthy is a session where Borja makes all the wrong guesses and asks to start over in the session, but he still makes the wrong guesses. In an interview after this disastrous “psychic reading,” an embarrassed Borja admits that he often doesn’t know what he’s doing in these “psychic readings.” The filmmakers of “Look Into My Eyes” should be given credit for putting this major mess-up in the documentary, but it might leave some skeptic viewers feeling unmoved and wondering why someone with questionable psychic skills is being showcased in this documentary in the first place.

Skeptics will never be able to get this question out of their minds when the psychic statements about deceased loved ones are fairly accurate: Who’s to say that these psychics didn’t look up information and photos about these clients and their deceased loved ones before the readings happened? Most obituaries are available on the Internet. The documentary has no information on whether or not these psychics knew the names of these customers before the sessions, which look like appointments, not walk-in sessions. Because “Look Into My Eyes” refuses to address these information, this omission lowers the quality of the documentary.

The pet psychic sessions have the least credibility. It’s not that difficult to tell someone who lost a pet that the pet is speaking and asking the grieving pet owner to be in a better emotional place. You don’t have to be a psychic to tell someone whose pet has been missing for years that the pet is probably dead. The dubious psychic part comes in when the “psychic” says that the dead pet who went missing is now speaking and wants the pet owner to know that the pet is not suffering anymore. And you just know the pet owner will start to cry.

As a so-called pet psychic, some of Hoffman’s psychic readings sound more like pet training tips that she could’ve gotten from watching pet shows on Animal Planet or any of the National Geographic channels. For example, in one of Hoffman’s sessions, she has a woman customer who is concerned about her Boston Terrier named Dottie, who is unruly and resistant when Dottie has to walk on a leash. (The dog is not there during this “psychic reading” session.) Hoffman’s answers to this client consist of basic dog psychology and training advice—in other words, things that a famous dog trainer such as Cesar Millan could’ve easily said too—and he doesn’t claim to be psychic.

Even though “Look Into My Eyes” has a lot of flaws and omitted information, it’s still a compelling look at people’s willingness to believe that there is life after death and that a connection with deceased loved ones is still possible. Instead of debunking these psychics, this documentary is more interested in showing how people who are troubled in some way will seek out counseling from strangers. Psychics, whether genuine or not, are unofficial therapists and counselors. And if people want to pay others to get this type of therapy in order to feel good, then people should have the freedom to do so, as long as they don’t think they’re getting conned and ripped off in the process.

A24 released “Look Into My Eyes” in select U.S. cinemas on September 6, 2024.

Review: ‘Miss Americana,’ starring Taylor Swift

January 31, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Miss Americana”

Directed by Lana Wilson

Culture Representation: This very filtered documentary about singer Taylor Swift takes an inside look at her life as a multimillionaire celebrity whose inner circle and career team are almost exclusively white, with a few African Americans who have brief appearances as employees or video collaborators.

Culture Clash: The movie gives Swift’s perspective on conflicts she’s had with her critics over her image, her feud with Kanye West, her love life, her 2017 sexual assault trial and her outspoken liberal views on politics.

Culture Audience: “Miss Americana” will obviously appeal mostly to fans of Swift, but the movie should also interest people who like behind-the-scene stories of entertainment celebrity culture.

Taylor Swift in “Miss Americana” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Miss Americana,” a completely sympathetic documentary about Grammy-winning superstar Taylor Swift, could have been subtitled “The Emancipation of Taylor Swift.” The main narrative of the film is that she’s all grown up now, and she’s no longer afraid to speak her mind and go public about her liberal political views. While she undoubtedly gets candid in the film about many issues she’s faced in her life, and it’s ultimately a feel-good portrayal of Swift, the documentary (directed by Lana Wilson) has a lot of glaring omissions. The biggest one is that it completely ignores the massive public feud that Swift has with music moguls Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun—a feud in which she’s publicly accused them of using their “toxic male privilege” (Swift’s words) to try to take away power from her and other artists.

What viewers of “Miss Americana” will get are several visual montages (on stage and off stage) of Swift’s career over the years, starting when she was an unknown 12-year-old singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania trying to break into country music, to being a Nashville-based, polished 15-year-old aspiring country star, to becoming one of the best-selling female music artists of all time. There’s the expected footage of her on stage, backstage, on the sets of her music videos, and in the recording studio, including showing some of the songwriting process for her 2019 album “Lover,” with cameos from songwriter/producer Jack Antonoff and Panic! At the Disco’s Brendon Urie.

Swift has transitioned from being a country singer to a pop star. It’s a transformation that could have happened because her musical tastes have evolved, but she also admits in the documentary that any changes she makes to her image are mostly because female artists feel more pressure than male artists to constantly reinvent themselves to remain relevant.

The beginning of the film shows Swift (who’s famously a cat fanatic) playing the piano while one of her Scottish Fold cats walks all over the piano. Swift then shares some of her childhood diaries, and comments: “My moral code, then and now, is to be good. The main thing I tried to be is a good girl. I was so fulfilled by approval, that was it. I became the person everyone wanted me to be.”

It’s a story that people have heard many times from people who were child stars: They’ve been so programmed to get approval from the public that they can lose their true identities and self-esteem in the celebrity machine. There are too many tragic stories of former child stars who’ve been unable to cope with growing up and becoming less popular as they get older. It’s an underlying fear that Swift admits that she has, because she’s constantly seeking approval from fans and she feels pressure to maintain a certain level of popularity. She’s also well-aware that there’s an age double-standard for female entertainers, who are more likely than male entertainers to be cast aside by the industry once they’re over the age of 35.

The documentary clearly shows that Swift (who turned 30 in December 2019) is very good at marketing herself, and it’s a skill that she learned early in her career. There’s a clip of her on stage in 2003, shortly after her country breakthrough single “Tim McGraw” was released, where she mentions the local country radio station and charmingly asks the audience to contact the station to play the song. The movie also makes a point of showing how Swift avoided going public for years about her political views after she became old enough to vote. Her standard response back then was that she was just a singer and people wanted to hear her sing and not tell them how they should feel about politics.

Swift’s songs are very autobiographical; she’s famous for writing songs about her love affairs and breakups. And because she’s dated a lot of famous men (mostly musicians and actors), her love life has already been thoroughly dissected by fans and the media. The documentary includes a montage of media coverage about her love life and how people’s perceptions of her have been affected by the media coverage.

British actor Joe Alwyn, whom she’s been dating since 2016, is briefly shown in the documentary, as he hugs Swift backstage after one of her concerts. Alywn is not shown speaking on camera, but there are some clips of candid off-stage cell-phone footage of Swift where it’s obvious that Alwyn is the one filming it, such as a clip where Swift is singing and then mouths the words “I love you” to the person filming. All that Swift will say about her romance with Alwyn is that she’s in love, and they both decided that they wanted to keep their relationship private. She doesn’t even say his name in the documentary.

What she does reveal in the documentary that hasn’t been made public before is that she’s had an eating disorder for years and is in recovery, but it’s still a struggle for her. She first mentions her eating disorder in the film when she says she no longer looks at photos of herself every day because it can “trigger” the feelings of insecurity that she has about her body. She then goes on to describe that for years, she thought it was normal to starve herself and feel the physical effects of extreme hunger. She now says that she has healthy eating habits and is comfortable if she’s “a size 6 instead of size 00,” but she says the relentless public scrutiny about her physical appearance can still deeply affect her.

Over the years, Swift has openly talked about how the person she is closest to is her mother, Andrea Swift, who is shown several times in the documentary as a constant companion to her daughter. That strong family support is clearly one of the main reasons why Swift has not become a casualty of fame. Andrea Swift’s cancer diagnosis (which Swift has talked about in other interviews, as well as in this documentary) is something that Swift says has had a profound effect on everyone in the family, and it’s why Swift places family and friends as the highest priorities in her life.

Much has already been said and written about the feud between Swift and Kanye West. In the documentary, Swift says that the notorious incident that started it all did long-lasting damage to her self-esteem. That incident was when West got up on stage and interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech after she won the prize for Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, and he shouted that Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video (which was nominated in the same category) “was one of the best videos of all time.”

Although West was universally slammed for that stunt, and he later made several public apologies, Swift says that at the time she was on stage during the incident, she thought the audience booing was meant for her, not West. She says in the documentary that it was the first time she felt so much negativity from an audience while she was on stage, and it was a “formative experience” that took her down a “psychological path, not all of it beneficial.”

Swift is a celebrity who became famous right when social media became part of the culture, so she’s experienced the highs and lows of social media on a learning curve. On the one hand, Swift is one of the most popular celebrities on social media, with followers that total in the hundreds of millions. On the other hand, when she does something that’s considered controversial, that huge level of attention can turn quickly against her.

The documentary mentions the enormous backlash that she received when West’s wife Kim Kardashian released a secretly recorded video of Swift talking to West over the phone and giving West the go-ahead to mention her in his 2016 song “Famous,” which had not been released yet at the time the conversation happened. The song lyric that mentioned Swift turned out be very derogatory and called her a misogynistic name. After the song was released, Swift claimed that she didn’t know her name would be used in that way, while West and his camp said she did know in advance. That’s when Kardashian released the video.

The documentary makes a point of showing how Swift was virtually bullied by West’s fans, including viral footage of an audience at one of his concerts chanting a derogatory statement about Swift. But the documentary does not mention how some of Swift’s fans on the Internet can be just as vicious in showing hate for people who dare to criticize Swift. Several celebrities who have clashed with Swift have talked about how her most fanatical fans can be bullies. Her public feuds with other celebrities (such as Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber and ex-boyfriends Calvin Harris, John Mayer and Joe Jonas) are not mentioned in the documentary, probably because Swift is no longer feuding with them.

Whichever side you believe in the controversy over “Famous,” Swift reveals in the documentary that all the hate she received from “cancel culture” was the main reason why she took a year-long hiatus and came back to the spotlight with her 2017 album “Reputation.” There’s some footage of Swift writing songs that ended up on the album, as well as a scene that shows her disappointment when she gets a call from a handler informing her that the album didn’t get any Grammy nominations in the major categories. (Don’t feel too sorry for Swift. She’s already got several Grammys, including two Grammys for Album of the Year.)

The movie also covers the lawsuit that made Swift go public about being sexually groped by a radio DJ, who later sued her because he was fired over that incident. Swift countersued for $1, to prove that he did grope her without her consent, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with blaming her for the crime he committed. Her $1 counterclaim was her way of telling the world that this issue wasn’t about the money for her. Swift famously won the lawsuit and became an advocate of the #MeToo movement.

In the documentary, Swift makes it clear that her #MeToo experience was the biggest catalyst to her political awakening and her decision to no longer remain silent over the progressive political issues that she wants to publicly support. One of the best parts of the documentary is showing what happened behind the scenes when she made the major decision to give her first political endorsement.

Swift says she was constantly told for her entire career “not to be like the Dixie Chicks,” the female country trio that lost a lot of fans in the early 2000s, after the group spoke out against Republican politics and the war in Iraq. But Swift’s #MeToo experience and the subsequent lawsuits opened her eyes to social justice issues, and she decided for herself: “The next time there’s any opportunity to change anything, you’d better know what you stand for and what you want to say.”

Her decision to go public with her political views didn’t sit well with several members of her team, who told her that she would be making a big mistake. In the movie, the objectors are shown to be all middle-aged men (including her father), who tried to scare her by saying that they were concerned that she would get more death threats and would lose half of her audience if she came out as a political liberal. But Swift firmly did not back down, even though there was some expected fear of the unknown.

The movie shows her apprehension and excitement that she and publicist Tree Paine had together in the moments before she posted her endorsement of Phil Bredesen (a Democrat) over Marsha Blackburn (a Republican) in the 2018 race for Tennessee U.S. Senator. Not only did Swift endorse Bredesen, but she also publicly slammed Blackburn for voting against laws that support rights for the LGBTQ community and female victims of violence. Ultimately, Blackburn won the election, but Swift says she’s hopeful that in future elections, the younger generation will vote to sway politics in a more progressive and inclusive direction.

As Swift says in the movie: “I feel really good about not feeling muzzled anymore. And it was my own doing. I needed to learn a lot before I spoke to 200 million people. But I’ve educated myself now, and it’s time to take the masking tape off of my mouth forever.”

While Swift is obviously a positive inspiration in many ways, as this documentary makes very clear, there are still aspects of “Miss Americana” that aren’t entirely candid. One of the biggest criticisms of Swift is that she has a tendency to portray herself as a victim when things don’t go her way. No one is expecting her to be perfect, but there’s a limit to Swift being honest about her life for this documentary.

Although she admitted to having issues about eating and her body image, not once does she admit to doing anything mean-spirited or cutthroat in her life. There’s no mention of any friends or lovers she might have tossed aside, no remorse or regret about not treating a loved one better, no acknowledgement of less-than-wonderful things she’s done to rivals or former business associates. In reality, no one gets to her level of success by being nice to everyone. In the documentary, the only mistake she admits to making is not being politically outspoken in 2016 for the U.S. presidential election.

For a “behind the scenes” documentary about an artist who’s risen to the top of the music industry, it’s very unrealistic for Swift to not acknowledge any experiences that she might have had with illegal drugs, alcohol, diet pills, prescription medication or even nicotine. If you were to believe everything that’s presented this movie, those things just don’t exist in Swift’s world. The worst “vice” that Swift shows on camera is uttering a few curse words. The documentary might look “revealing” to many people who don’t know what really goes on behind the scenes in the entertainment industry, but for those who do know what really goes on, it’s very obvious that “Miss Americana” is very white-washed indeed.

The narrative here is that bad things keep happening to Swift (stalkers, intrusive paparazzi, tabloid media, haters on the Internet), and she always finds a way to triumph and overcome it all. That is, except for the battle that she lost against Borchetta and Braun, which is not mentioned at all in this documentary. It’s obvious that Swift and/or the documentary’s filmmakers didn’t want to put anything in the movie that would weaken Swift’s “female empowerment” image that she wants to have.

In July 2019, Swift went on the Internet to post a lengthy rant accusing Borchetta (the founder of Big Machine Records, her former record company) of unscrupulously taking her pre-2019 song catalogue and selling it to music manager Braun, whom Swift considers an enemy because Braun was West’s manager during the worst of Swift’s feud with West. Swift claims that she and her management/publishing team (which includes her father, Scott Swift) weren’t given a fair opportunity to buy these master recordings of her songs. Borchetta vehemently denies the accusation, and says that Swift had a chance to buy the songs but she didn’t agree to the deal that was presented. The “he said/she said” fight blew up to such an extent that many celebrities jumped into the fray by either taking Swift’s side or the Borchetta/Braun side.

For all of Swift’s preaching about female empowerment in this documentary, it’s odd that she and this movie’s director have cut out this chapter of her life that Swift has tried to present as part of her fight against male sexism. She used the feud as a platform to speak out about not only male sexism but also artists’ rights and what kinds of contracts artists sign that could have long-lasting effects on their careers.

Swift has presented herself as an outspoken advocate for artists’ rights before (her push to get Spotify to pay reasonable artist royalties is one example—something that’s also not mentioned in the movie), so it’s a major setback in her life and her career that one of her enemies now owns the vast majority of her songs. The fact that this life-changing experience wasn’t even acknowledged in the documentary indicates how much of a public-relations showcase “Miss Americana” is instead of a complete behind-the-scenes look at her life.

The documentary seems to want people to forget that Swift’s feud with Borchetta/Braun ever happened, even though she was the one who took the feud public in the first place and ended up getting a lot of backlash from people who think she misrepresented herself as a victim in this situation. Rather than being fully honest and sharing what she learned from this undoubtedly painful experience, Swift probably told the filmmakers directly or indirectly not to put it in the movie. Let’s be real: Even though she’s not listed as a producer of “Miss Americana,” she obviously had a lot of creative control over this documentary, based on what they chose to show and what they chose not to show.

Also absent from the documentary is any mention of Swift’s attempts to become a movie actress, which have resulted in her appearing in flops such as 2014’s “The Giver” and 2019’s “Cats.” Anything that makes Swift look like a failure or someone who made a really bad career decision is essentially shut out of the documentary. Instead, “Miss Americana” ends with Swift winning Video of the Year at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards for “You Need to Calm Down,” her platform to show her as an ally to the LGBTQ community. The award show took place on August 26, 2019—several weeks after she started feuding with Borchetta and Braun, so there was plenty of time to include the feud in the movie.

Another thing the documentary makes clear is that even though Swift talks a lot about female empowerment, her team is led by men, while women are mostly relegated to traditionally female roles, such as publicist, backup dancer, makeup artist and hair stylist. There are several scenes in the movie where Swift is the only woman in the recording studio. Why not hire more female musicians, producers and engineers? Swift has the power to do that, so there’s really no excuse.

Beyoncé has an all-female touring band of musicians (and so did Prince), so there are artists who are actually doing something about breaking barriers for women in the music industry. It remains to be seen if Swift will take a lot of her talk about female empowerment in the music industry and actually be an agent for change. If she ever wins Album of the Year at the Grammys again, we’ll see if she’s surrounded by a diverse group of people on stage who would share the award with her, instead of the same men who constantly get preferential treatment in the music industry.

For now, “Miss Americana” shows that Swift wants to spread a progressive political agenda and she wants to be praised as a symbol for female empowerment. But if she really wants to empower more women in the industry, she can start with the people she hires to make music with her and who she puts in charge of her business interests, instead of blaming other people for being the problem.

Netflix premiered “Miss Americana” and released the movie in select U.S. cinemas on January 31, 2020.