Call for Comments: Impossible Bodies and the Spectacle of Violence

From Mav: We often watch action movies and talk about how realistic or unrealistic the fights are. Everyone always says “oh, I love John Wick. The action is so realistic!” No it’s not! In real life, fights are really kind of boring. At least most people would probably think they are. In real life a bar…

Call For Comments: Sex, Gender and Fan Fiction

From Mav: I have a fascination with fan fiction. In particular, I have a fascination with the way fan fiction has a history that complexly entangled in issues of sex and gender. I wrote about the porn and fanfic connection a bit on my personal blog a couple years back, and I even had some…

Episode 8: Academia & Viral Social Justice

Earlier this month Duke University appeared in the news amid a minor controversy where a school administrator was offended by the rap music playing in a campus coffee shop and complained resulting in the employees (an African American woman and a Caucasian man) on duty getting fired. Later in the same month an African American…

Episode 7: Comic Con Culture

Live from 3 Rivers Comicon! Comic book conventions began in 1960s as small specialized gatherings of science fiction fans clubs who met to trade magazines. Over the past several decades they have grown to become a staple of the the media landscape with their unique own culture: vendors, media releases, artist signings, cosplay contests, panels…

Call for Comments: Hegemony, Gatekeeping and Ivory Towers

From Katya: On May 4th, the Vice President of Student Affairs at Duke University, Larry Moneta, walked into a coffee shop. Unfortunately, this is not the beginning of a mediocre joke but a chain of unacceptable decisions resulting in the mistreatment of campus workers. [caption id="attachment_428" align="alignright" width="300"] Young Dolph[/caption] Inside the shop, Joe Van…

Episode 6: Sex & Drugs & Riverdale

When we started this podcast, one of our first goals was to make sure we did and episode about the CW reboot of Archie comics, Riverdale. The show reimagines the classic Archie characters in a adolescent soap opera world of mixed genres: hardboiled detective, film noir, goth horror, teen romance, erotic thriller. To us it is…

Episode 5: Infinity Franchises & Cinematic Universes

It’s the obligatory Avengers: Infinity War episode! Well, sort of. Infinity War is, as one might expect, the biggest movie in the world right now… and by certain metrics, the biggest movie of all time. So of course, every podcast has to talk about it. This week, Mav and Wayne are joined by Nicole Freim…

Call For Comments: Teenage Wasteland: the adolescent sex narrative

I love the show Riverdale. I didn’t think I would. By all rights it should be absolutely horrible. I imagine that the pitch for the show went something like this… there where was a meeting where a 90 year old executive called in a producer and said: CW Exec: So all these comic book properties…

Episode 4: Losing My Religiosity?

Never argue about politics or religion on the internet! Well, really, they’re the same thing. But so are arguments about atheism. And comics. And sports. And movies. And unix text editors. It’s not really religion; it’s religiosity! Wayne and Mav are joined by Danny Anderson of The Sectarian Review Podcast to discuss the way in…

Call for Comments: Movie Franchising and Cinematic Universes

Don’t worry, there are no Avengers: Infinity War spoilers in this post. That said,  I’m pretty sure that international podcasting law requires that all shows talk about the movie next week in some way shape or form. Somehow podcasts devoted to knitting are going to have to come up with a way of discussing patterns…