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…
Author: Wayne Wise
Call For Comments: Memory Triggers In The Digital Age
From Wayne: I think about memory a lot. I’ve always had a pretty good one, enough so that people comment on it. My ancient mother has lost a lot of her short term memory in recent months, so that’s on my mind. I’m getting old enough to feel nostalgia for stuff. I’ve been going through…
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,…
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: Just WTF is Ergodic Literature?
From Wayne: So there’s this idea I’ve been trying to wrap my head around, both as a writer and a scholar. A while back a friend of my posted about his reactions to the Netflix series The OA, and referred to it as an example of ‟ergodic storytelling.” If you’re like me, your reaction right…
e150. Sexy Cartoons: You Know… for the Kids!
Have you ever noticed how sexy cartoons are? On last week’s Valentines Day show we talked about sexuality in superhero comics and other media. In that case we were largely talking about the kinds of media that really is targeted at adults or at least teens. Comics that are clearly trying to tackle sexual issues,…
e149. Let’s Talk About SuperSex
Happy Valentine’s Day! If you had a podcast devoted to pop culture with a penchant for discussing comics with some bit of regularity and a holiday came up that was devoted to beauty of love and dating and you wanted to do something nice and sweet to commemorate the holiday, what would you do? Obviously…