A few weeks ago Mav and Monica did a very special show where three of Mav’s current students from his “Introduction to Popular Culture” class where the students joined us to explain their view of one of their favorite movies, Disney’s Teen Beach Movie and both its cultural relevance and its usefulness as an academic…
Category: Sex and Gender
e411. Is The Cannonball Run a Bad Movie? (Ok, we know it is… but does it have to be?)
So every once in a while we like to do an episode of the show called “is this a bad movie?” The funny part is that usually when we pick movie for that series, we know it’s a movie that many consider good, but that we feel like we have a chance to convince people…
e410. Teen Beach Movie: Metaphor, Methodology, Memories, and Millennials vs. GenZ
Sometimes an episode idea comes out of nowhere. Recently, Mav overheard several of his students discussing a movie from their childhood before his morning class. After he laughed at their description, the students challenged Mav to do some “homework” and watch the movie. He agreed, and incorporated the movie into his lesson the following week.…
e408. Wonder Woman: Boundaries, Bondage, and Breakthroughs
Wonder Woman is almost certainly one of the most enduring characters in all of pop culture. She’s certainly the most famous female superhero of all time. But we would argue that she’s significant even beyond that. Why? Well, let’s talk about it. On this week’s show Mav, Wayne and Monica are joined by returning guest…
e391. Manga-101: Why is Manga?
It’s always weird and oddly exciting when we discover that we have a hole in the things we’ve covered one the show. And in fact, It’s actually quite surprising that we’ve been doing this show for 391 episodes and haven’t devoted an episode to manga before now. Sure it’s come up in discussions about comics…
e389. Boycotts and their Cultural Impact
So… America is in a weird place right now. Frankly, we could say that just about every week these days. But this last couple of weeks it’s been even more so than our (new) normal level of crazy. A couple of weeks ago, right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk was murdered while performing his college campus…
e384. From Vanderbilt Glam to Oscar’s Shades: The Gilded Age Deep Dive
In 2022, a show premiered on HBO that was perhaps tailor made for us. The Gilded Age was a 1880s period drama from the creators of Downton Abbey with sexual and gender politics, racial dynamics and a treatise on the invention of class dynamics, all thrown together with a collection of Broadway’s finest actors in…
e380. Monica in Paris: The Tropes of Study Abroad
Eagle eyed (eared?) listeners might have noticed that it’s actually been a little tricky to get Monica booked on the show for the last couple of weeks because of a time zone issue. She’s currently living in Paris on a research fellowship for her dissertation. This means that she’s basically doing the bulk of her…
e368. PCA 2025: The Presentations!
If you’ve been listening to the show for the past few weeks then you know that this month has been our special series of PCA episodes, and this might very well be the episode that you’ve been waiting for. We all went the Popular Culture Association International Conference in New Orleans, but how did the…
e367. Live from PCA 2025: Unpacking Mainstream Sexuality
It took 367 episodes, but it finally has happened! In this special live episode of the VoxPopcast, host Christopher “Mav” Maverick is joined for the first time (in person) by his full panel of co-hosts: Wayne Wise, Hannah Lee Rogers, Monica Geraffo, and Katya Gorecki. The full team broadcasts from the 2025 PCA/ACA conference in…