Just about any parent in American who has a five year old girl knows about the Disney Princesses. Between Frozen, Tangled, Moana, and the others, the “House of Mouse” has stumbled upon a multi-billion dollar industry from films and toy sales alone, and far more when adding in other merchandising sales. However, there may be…
Month: September 2018
Episode 24: Genre in General
At best, “genre fiction” often seems to be taken as synonymous with “popular” or “exciting”. At worse, it is often used a pejorative meaning “low brow” or “garbage”. But what is genre anyway? And why is the word used that way? Wayne and Mav are joined by a returning Hannah to sift through a discussion on…
Call For Comments: Sex and the Disney Princess
From Mav: There’s an article that appears in the textbook I use when teaching Freshman Composition 101 that I find quite fascinating. It’s called “Little girls or little women? The Disney princess effect” and was written by a woman named Stephanie Hanes in 2011 and is reprinted from the Christian Science Monitor. I use it to…
Episode 23: Comic Studies-301: Course Syllabus
When everyone knows that you are a comics geek, it turns out people ask you quite often “so what should I be reading?” When your job is literally “be a comics geek” or moreover “teach other people to be a comics geek” then you get this question pretty much constantly. Since Wayne and Mav are…
Call For Comments: Genre, in General
From Wayne: We all have our favorite genres in our choice of entertainment. I like superheroes and science fiction and some kinds of Horror. I’ve recently discovered an affection for Thrillers. I used to think I didn’t like Crime stories, but that has changed. I don’t read a lot of Romance books, generally speaking. When I…
Episode 22: Monuments and Memories
A couple of weeks ago, a protest at the University of North Carolina resulted in the toppling of “Silent Sam” a statue that stands at the university to commemorate Civil War era Confederate soldiers. A week later, another protest at the site resulted in police using mass pepper spray on the student population. Confederate monuments…
Call For Comments: The Death of the Author and the Birth of the Critic
September 28, 2018
From Mav: In the last couple weeks, we’ve done a couple shows that have dealt with interpreting the non obvious sexual subtext in children’s media (Disney Princesses and Sesame Street Muppets). Obviously, we don’t think that those things are front and center. That’s why we said subtext. But that leads us to an obvious question:…