Call for Comments: IFTFY??? I think you mean GTFO!!!

From Mav: I saw an article a few weeks ago that has been kicking around in my head ever since. The idea of “IFTFY” or “I fixed that for you”. I think might be bullshit! Maybe… The more I think about it, the more I realize I need to talk some of the concept through…

Call For Comments: On Multiple Readings and Variant Interpretations

From Mav: I was having an interesting conversation with friend-of-the-show Andrew Darowski the other day about the idea of multiple readings. For those who don’t know, in addition to the Protagonist Podcast, Andrew is host of a podcast called Disney Animation Minute Essentials where he and his wife Kestra step through classic Disney films one…

e169. The Subtle & Sophisticated Highbrow Culture of The Fast & The Furious

Movies are back! After a year and a half of almost total dormancy, movies came back to the American box office, and filmgoers were welcome with the very sophisticated and cultured experience of F9: The Fast Saga, the latest installment of Fast & Furious franchise. Many are joking about it, but many others are just…

Call for Comments: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love F9

From Mav: I’m a guy who loves movies. I really love going to the movies… A LOT! Not being able to go out to the movies was actually one of the things I missed most during the last year and a half of lockdown. I remember a time early on when Chris Nolan decided that…

e166. So… What is the Male Gaze Anyway?

Sometimes academic terms bleed over into the popular lexicon and gets used by people almost as second nature without anyone really bothering to think about what it means. “The Male Gaze”, is one of those terms. It gets used in both academic and popular pop culture criticism, but often without definition. There’s simply a vague…

Call for Comments: She’s Not Like Other Girls! Introducing the Fanboy Gaze

From Mav (with Matt Linton): We’ve talked a lot on our show about Laura Mulvey’s theory of the “the male gaze”. In short, the male gaze describes the tendency of narratives to position female characters primarily as objects of desire to be consumed by male protagonists and readers. It argues that regardless of the reader’s…

Call for Comments: The Male Gaze and its Discontents

From Katya: This week we’re revisiting the Male Gaze. I know we’ve been here before but we have a string of guests coming up offering their own spin on various “gazes” and related subjects so we thought it was worth a revisit. (If you’d like to check out our previous conversations, check out some of…

e163. The Secret World of American Girl

Pop culture fandom is defined by a hierarchy dedication. It’s easy to watch nine Star Wars movies; how much of the Expanded Universe do you know? Anyone can watch a couple dozen Marvel movies, but “the real fan” has bagged and boarded Silver Age originals! Sure, maybe you’ve sat through all 11.5 hours of LOTR,…

e151. Yet More Bridgerton! and other good things

A few weeks ago when we did our Bridgerton recap show we found ourselves with way more to talk about than we could possibly fit in a single episode. That happens a lot, really. And as we often do, we said back then that we’d have to do another episode and discuss more Bridgerton. Well,…

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,…