Call for Comments: I Can Cry If I Want To, or, Sentimentalism and Popular Culture

(Repost! This is a repost of an earlier posted blog that was lost in a server crash and upgrade) From Hannah: A few weeks ago, I found myself in the theater watching the newest film in a long line of sentimental Christmas films: Last Christmas. Based solely on the previews and genre, I knew the…

Call For Comments: Hey Virginia, is there still a Santa Claus?

(Repost! This is a repost of an earlier posted blog that was lost in a server crash and upgrade) From Mav: Back when we asked for suggestions for future episodes, one of the ones that came up (suggested by John Darowski) was to talk about Santa Claus in Popular Culture. As we get closer to the…

e84. Comics, Sci-Fi, Fantasy: What is Geek Culture?

Live from MAC Charity Con 2019. Comic book conventions stopped being about comic books a long time ago. In fact, the comic book subculture stopped being about comics a long time ago. Today, it’s more “geek culture” and it includes comics, sci-fi, fantasy, role-playing games, and many other things. But somehow, there are many pop…

e83. 🙂Watching Watchmen😵

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen is one of the most popular comic books of all time. It’s been a best seller since 1987, has never been out of print, has been adapted into a movie, video games, role playing game, and now a TV show. It is the single comic book appearing on Time…

e82. Love, Politics and Jane Austen

Usually our show looks at pop culture produced in the relatively recent past. However, that’s not what “popular culture” really means. Really, what this show is about is looking at massive cultural influences and analyzing how and why they happened. And some of that media was produced at longer periods in the past. And some…

Call For Comments: FantasySci-FiSuperheroGeekiness and MAC Charity Con

From Mav: Next weekend, Wayne and I will be returning to MAC Charity Con at Mt. Aloysius College in Pennsylvania to tape a live show (I’ll also be doing a solo talk there about the male gaze and how superhero and fantasy costumes are depicted… that’s right… we’re going to talk boob armor!). First of…

Call For Comments: Good Stuff We Hate

From Mav: Back on the Pop Culture Etiquette episode, Hannah and her boyfriend Josh mentioned in passing that they don’t like the movie The Shining. The rest of us quite predictably told them that they were wrong and somehow they consider to live amongst us today rather than having been stoned to death. That said,…

e81. Stephen King and Horror

It’s Halloween. And in classic podcast fashion that means it’s time to do a theme episode. Halloween is about many things, but one thing it’s about is horror. Horror movies. Horror books. And the master of horror, is Stephen King. Or at least that’s what everyone says… for some reason… But why? What makes Stephen…

Call For Comments: Watching Watchmen

From Mav: When I was a kid a very special comic came out. Something that immediately seemed different from everything else before. Something that seemed to change the whole game. That comic was Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen. Everyone felt it. Every comic fan knew that it was something special. It became a New…

e80. Irredeemable Characters

A couple of weeks ago, the movie Joker was released in cinemas. Even before it came out, there was a lot of concern and controversy about the tone and message behind the movie. Would it cause violence from copycats? Isn’t it just an homage to classic films by Martin Scorsese? Are those problematic too? Does…