Call For Comments: MAC LIVE show and the antihero?

From Mav: Even though we haven’t recorded this next week’s show just yet (we’re doing it tonight, so you still have a chance to throw in some comment on Monsters, so check that Call for Comments) we’re already planning another one. This Saturday, I will be appearing at MAC Charity Con in Mt. Aloysius, PA.…

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…

Call for Comments: Cat Ears and Lingerie?

From Mav: It’s October, and so we are continuing our string of Halloween themed, or at least Halloween adjacent shows. This week we want to explore something that I’ve actually used as a debate topic when I teach freshman comp. Sexiness and Halloween costumes. Or specifically, are Halloween costumes getting too sexy? Remember that part…

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…

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:…

Episode 25: Sex and the Disney Princess

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…

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…