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The same-day release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has sparked a frenzy on social media in recent weeks. But as cotton candy plastic pop meets death, destroyer of worlds on Friday 21 July, it’s worth pointing out that, incredibly, this has happened before. Fifteen years ago on 18 July 2008, dark versus light had another box office showdown, when Nolan’s The Dark Knight was released on the same day as Abba-inspired musical sensation Mamma Mia! Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Of course, social media was a very different beast back then. We can only dream of what the meme machine would have churned out with Christian Bale’s foreboding Batman and Amanda Seyfreid’s bride-to-be Sophie. Or what about Heath Ledger’s terrifying Joker and Pierce Brosnan’s smooth-as-you-like Sam Carmichael? The Dark Knight won the opening weekend by some distance, bringing in $158.4m in ticket sales compared to $27.7m for Mamma Mia! However, the Abba extravaganza clawed back some ground in the end, earning $611m in total, though still far less than The Dark Knight’s $1bn. Of course, theatre fans will point to the resounding success of Mamma Mia! the musical, which is the second-most successful production of all time with $4bn in total revenue, only lagging behind The Phantom Of The Opera. And beyond the numbers, news outlet Vulture even positioned the event as a good versus evil, light versus dark battle “for the soul of America” ahead of opening weekend. Sounds familiar, right? “It’s tempting to look at this weekend, in fact, as a mandate on how Americans feel about the state and future of our great nation,” the publication wrote at the time. “Is America optimistic? Do we essentially view ourselves as attractive, tan actresses frolicking on the beach to ABBA songs? Or is the soul of America chaotic and violent, like the deranged anti-hero whose electrifying presence animates The Dark Knight?” Twitter users tried to give the 15-year-old film pairing the Barbenheimer treatment. One person wrote: “Just realised the dark knight/mamma mia release day could have been called “Abbatman”. Why wasn’t I on Twitter in 2008?” It’s too early to say which of Barbie or Oppenheimer will come out on top on their opening weekend – though analysts have predicted a win for the former. But with the films hitting cinemas on 21 July, we don’t have long until we find out. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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A Louisiana professor has been accused of using his students to fulfil a self-described “clown fetish” by painting their faces or asking them to paint their own. Joseph Tokosh would regularly post about his fetish on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Reddit and YouTube, while working as an assistant geography professor at Nicholls State University in Louisiana. In March, Mr Tokosh resigned from his position just before student journalists exposed his behaviour in their student-run newspaper, The Nicholls Worth. Sally-Anne Torres, managing editor for the newspaper, reported that six students had come forward to claim Mr Tokosh would offer them bonus points in class if they allowed him to paint their faces. A post on a Reddit forum also surfaced where Mr Tokosh, under the username Joeography, shared photos of several women wearing white face paint. In another Reddit post, seen by USA Today, Mr Tokosh wrote: “I have a facepaint fetish and convince the cute girls in my classes to let me paint their faces.” Before Mr Tokosh resigned from the university in late March, a few students had already reported his behaviour to campus police. Bradley Price, a student who took Mr Tokosh’s East Asia class online, alleged that the professor had set an assignment where all students had to paint their faces and take photos of themselves. “You had to send in multiple pictures of how you did it from multiple angles and also write down the process of it. The relevancy he gave it was that it was a Japanese style of makeup; it was for students to get a better understanding of their culture,” Mr Price said, according to USA Today. Mr Price said he completed the assignment by getting a female friend to help him and submitted it to Mr Tokosh. The professor came back and told Mr Price he would get bonus points if he could convince his friend to also paint her face. After learning about Mr Tokosh’s clown “fetish”, Mr Price said he was “disgusted”. “I feel frankly disgusted and disappointed that Nicholls couldn’t do a proper background check on this professor because this is unacceptable,” he said. “How could this have got past any reasonable check?” Mr Tokosh did have a police report on file before arriving at Nicholls State University, after pleading no contest to a theft charge at Kent State University in 2017 for entering a colleague’s office and taking a USB drive. The police report also detailed another incident of face paint fetishism. A Kent State student, who was 18 at the time, had reported seeing a post by Mr Tokosh on a Facebook group meant for new students to meet each other. In it, he had allegedly made a cash offer to anyone who would agree to let him paint their faces. The student said she agreed as she was in need of more money and had an interest in movie makeup, according to USA Today. Mr Tokosh then allegedly offered to pick her up and take her to the geography department at the university to paint her face. She told police she had stopped responding to his messages after becoming uncomfortable with the situation – which then caused Mr Tokosh to become annoyed and refuse to leave her alone. The student then filed a police report about the professor. “I felt like the school would want to know about it,” she said, according to USA Today. “I thought maybe they could prevent anything bad from happening since other girls would go with him.” However, she said that there was never a follow-up by campus police. Following that incident, the professor tried to defend his actions in a video interview with student-run KNSU TV at Nicholls. He said the face paint assignment was for students to “actually come up with their own face paint and makeup design inspired by a culture, and they implement it”. He left Kent State University following the theft charge. In a statement to Fox News Digital, a Nicholls State University spokesperson said about the latest allegations: “Nicholls State University is proud that our student journalists brought this situation to light. We take the safety and security of our student population very seriously. “Once this was brought to the university’s attention, we acted appropriately to remove Joseph Tokosh from the classroom and did not renew his contract. He is no longer affiliated with Nicholls State University.” Read More UNC shooting updates: Students demand gun control with powerful newspaper front page after Chapel Hill attack Mother convicted of killing malnourished baby by giving him cow’s milk could have life sentence commuted Louisiana woman arrested for stabbing grandfather in face because he asked her to take a shower

Logan Paul took to X to claim that he will destroy Dillon Danis' entire life

Disagreements between Donald Trump and special counsel Jack Smith over when the trial should start in the federal election subversion criminal case brought against the former president will be at the center of a hearing Monday morning at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC.