For the last several weeks the hosts of VoxPopcast have been preparing for a conference. Well, that was this week! Last week you heard our conference workshop where we tried to help each other with our ideas. Next week., we’re going to bring you the papers themselves so you can see what we did. But…
Category: Politics
e202. To Kill a Mockingbird… and a Maus — Censorship & Book Banning
Every once in a while the world of weekly pop culture and the world of literary academia collide so totally that the world notices even outside of our show. Last week was one of those weeks. A school board in Tennessee voted to remove Maus, the critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize winning Holocaust memoir graphic novel,…
CFC: Why Even Really Care About Banned Books Anyway?
From Mav: So, I guess we need to talk about “the Maus situation.” If you live in my world then it’s pretty impossible to escape the news from last week that Art Spiegelman’s Maus was “banned.” Between the fact that it’s a comic, that it was a politically motivated book banning, that there are issues…
e181. Entertainment and Other Unions — IATSE Solidarity
Over the past year, our viewing consumption habits have changed a lot. We spent months indoors streaming everything — including new release films — largely through new media platforms like Netflix and Disney Plus. These new production models have drastically changed box office results, profit models, and production budgets that reverberate across the industry —…
Call For Comments: Let’s Talk About Film Unions
From Monica: When a movie ends, do you stay for the credits? Not the cutscene at the end, Marvel. But do you actually read the scroll of names that represent the hundreds of people who worked to bring that project to theaters? Or, if you tuned in at home, the nature of television flow means…
e158. Superhero Thought Experiments
Have you ever had one of those pointless internet arguments about the philosophical righteousness of Batman, Superman, Rorschach or Luke Skywalker? Or maybe you’ve spent hours arguing about how time travel works based on old Fantastic Four comic books. And I’m sure many of you have tried to defend the value of some superhero movie…
e154. Can We Cancel Cancel Culture Culture? (or can’t we?)
Every day another celebrity “is cancelled” for any number of problematic reasons. Typically, the celebrity responds by claiming they’ve done nothing wrong and blaming “cancel culture” gone wild. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen not only politicians and actors supposedly cancelled as as well as children’s toys and books. Looking at the news,…
CFC: How do TV ratings work and why do we care?
June 14, 2022
From Mav: So if you’re keyed into conservative media this week — and I get that most of our listeners aren’t, but I like to keep up on the whole political spectrum… even the crazies for work — you might have seen a very weird talking point making the rounds. Random alt-right news sites are…