Well, the US presidential election happened. And you’ve probably heard a ton about it. But we’re living in denial here at VoxPopcast so we’ve decided to pretend it’s still Halloween! Actually, before the election occurred, we recorded an episode dealing with the concept of creepy kids in horror. You might recall we talked about creepy…
Category: Movies and Film
e342. Creepy Dolls and the Freudian Uncanny
Happy Halloween! As has been our tradition, we wanted to make sure we marked the season with a special episode or two highlighting the concepts of horror. On today’s episode, Mav, Wayne and Monica are joined by friend of the show and Director of University of California at Santa Cruz’s Center for Monster Studies, Michael…
e338. Fandom and Identity: The Evolution of Beloved Characters
What does it mean to be a fan of a character? There have been millions of different interpretations of Batman and the character of Wolverine as he appears in Marvel comics films bears surprisingly little in common with his original comic book impetus. In this episode, Mav and Wayne Wise are joined by guests recent…
e337. Umm… So, is this like a Reboot?!? Or Something?
A couple weeks ago, Mav was watching a football game and he saw a commercial for a new TV show, Rescue: HI-Surf. It appeared to be an action procedural about lifeguards. As he watched it, he was entranced, but couldn’t help thinking to himself “isn’t this just Baywatch?” But alas, the show seemed to want…
e336. So, Why Pop Culture?
In all the years we’ve been doing this show we’ve worked under a very basic assumption: Everyone involved as a host, guest, or listener presumes that the pseudo academic discussion of popular culture (with drinking and swearing) is an important activity. We certainly feel that way, and chances are if you’re a regular listener you…
e335. Prequels Unraveled: Stitching Gaps or Snagging Cash?
In today’s nostalgia driven, franchise driven, pop culture world sequels are obviously big business. But what do we do when sequels become too boring (and we can’t get the original cast of a film back)? Prequels are obviously the answer. But why? Is there any value to prequels or are they nothing more than shameless…
e333. Twisters, Titanics, & Terror: Deconstructing Disaster Narratives
If one of the the primary functions of books and movies is to help us escape from the adversity of day to day life, then why do we have so many of them that are basically about what if our modern problems became not only inescapable, but became the absolute worst case scenario of themselves…
Call for Comments: Disaster Narratives
From Hannah: Perhaps it’s because of Twisters (it’s really good, actually), but I want to talk about disaster narratives. We’ve kind of done this before, when we talked about end of the world stories. But I don’t think they’re necessarily the same — we know in disaster films like Twister and Twisters and Geostorm and…
e332. The 4th Wall Bounce: The Reflexivity of Media and Culture
So here’s a weird question for you… in a TV show like Batman, do the regular people know the phrase “dynamic duo?” In the movie Amazing Spider-Man Peter Parker uses the theme song from the 1960s Spider-man cartoon as his ringtone… but what song does he think that is? If two TV shows cross over,…
Call For Comments: On Bouncing Off the Fourth Wall
From Mav: A couple weeks back, my friend Mikey Wood made a Facebook post about writing a superhero story and that in said story he had characters use the colloquial phrase “dynamic duo” NOT to refer to Batman and Robin. He then questioned whether that reference made sense in that world. Because would the phrase…