From Mav: So a few weeks ago I made a random observation on Facebook about the upcoming Crow movie. Basically, I argued that if you were really and truly upset with the redesign of Eric Draven then you were being old and out of touch. Because the weird androgynous goth mime that barely made sense 35 years ago would be non-sensical as a character design if this were a new character today. The Crow is a counterculture superhero. And if he really had his origins in 2024, then he SHOULD look more like Twenty One Pilots than Nine Inch Nails. You don't have to like it... but that's how it is. Just like in 1995, we were updating the look of the X-men from what they looked like in the...
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Call For Comments: A Think Piece on Thought Experiments
From Mav: A few weeks ago, I started one of those conversations we’ve all been a part of on social media. I made a Facebook post where I postulated that Luke Skywalker was a fucking psychopath who just likes doing murder. Of course, this is a variation on a thought experiment that Star Wars fans…
e155. Introduction to Ergodic Texts and Reading
What does it mean to be an ergodic text? That’s a complicated question. For one thing, the very meaning of the word “text” can be variable to different people, but we at VoxPopcast tend to use the literary nerd definition. We call all pieces of media that we consume, enjoy and scrutinize “texts” regardless of…
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,…
Bad (?) Things We Love (or at least find interesting): Part II
From Hannah: Almost a year ago, the Voxpopcast team attempted to get you to see the inherent value of our …. questionable … entertainment choices in the episode we titled Bad Things We Love. We were perhaps a little Kantian in our notions of taste — at least at first. But the range of material…
e153. Seeking a Game for the End of the World
Do you remember the before times? The long, long ago. Do you remember a time where you used to have real live friends that you used to be able to do stuff with? Maybe you held a weekly game night where you got together and… well, you mostly probably hung out and drank beer and…
Call For Comments: Can We Cancel Cancel Culture Culture or Can’t We?
From Mav: So this is a weird one. We had this idea a few weeks ago that we would do a show on “cancel culture” after Gina Carano was publicly fired from The Mandalorian. But we didn’t get to it. For one thing, everyone else in the world was dumping think pieces left and right on her. For…
e152. Obviously it’s the WandaVision Show
Somethings are inevitable and predictable. Water is wet, gravity pulls us down, and this show was going to have to talk about WandaVision. That was clear even before the series premiered. However, we didn’t know just how big a cultural phenomenon it would become. Who could have expected while reading the 1982 Bill Mantlo comic…
Call for Comments: Gaming in the time of COVID
From Hannah: Fairly early into the pandemic last year, it felt like almost everyone was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. (We actually did an entire episode on the relationship between cozy games and what was going on it the world.) In fact, the Nintendo Switch felt impossible to find for most of 2020. And the…