Call For Comments: Inertia and Media Addiction

From Mav: There’s something I’ve noticed about fans of the TV show The Walking Dead. They hate it. Seriously… most people I know who watch the show pretty much acknowledge that they’re not really enjoying it anymore, they’re just watching it because… they do. They have been watching it and they continue to. I’m not a fan…

e35. SPOILERS! (and Mystery Boxes)

Ever since the rise of the Internet we have all lived in constant fear of all of our favorite movies, books, TV shows and every other media being spoiled by some jerk who just wants to be the first to ruin everything for everyone else… or maybe he’s just an idiot. It doesn’t matter… once…

e33. Thanksgiving Politics

If you live in the United States, it was Thanksgiving last week, and that means spending time with family. And lately, it seems that a big part of spending time with family for the holidays is discussion politics…. in detail… disgusting, gross, bloody, racist, misogynist detail… with your drunk uncle who got all of his…

e30. Monster Mash 2: Breaking Twilight

Way back in August we recorded our first Monster Mash episode where we discussed the place of the Monster and the Monster Hunter in popular culture. That was a great conversation that went all over the place and we swore right then that we would pick it up at a later time. For our final…

Episode 29: Sexy Halloween

“In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” At least, that’s what Mean Girls would have us believe. The…

Call For Comments: The Return of Monster X

From Wayne: (Deep resonant voiceover): ‟In a world where podcasts have virally assimilated human consciousness, an intrepid band of scholars attempt to dissect the Monster that we have all become.” In August we recorded an episode of VoxPopcast on the topic of “The Monster and The Monster Hunter” with our guests Michael Chemers and Heather Duda. The…

Episode 28: Slashers and Final Girls

What’s your favorite scary movie, listener? Well, chances are if the answer isn’t something super obvious and popular, Mav probably hasn’t seen it. That said, he’s fascinated with the basic concept of horror movies, especially slasher ones and since Halloween is fast approaching, it seemed like a good time to educate him on why the…

Episode 27: La Mort de l’Auteur

In 1967, literary critic and semiotician Roland Barthes wrote an essay called “La mort de l’auteur” that is in many ways foundational for the field of literary studies. It describes the way that literary interpretation works — both why and how. Since we do a lot of that on this show, figured it would be…

Episode 26: The Secret Lives of Puppets

Last week David Reddish, a former writer for Sesame Street, announced that he’d always thought of Bert and Ernie as gay… and the internet exploded. Some people were happy… some people were sad… and some people just asked “why does anyone care?!?!?” Well, that’s what this show is for. Wayne and Mav are joined by Josie…

Call For Comments: The Death of the Author and the Birth of the Critic

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:…