Do you watch reality shows? No really. You can admit it. We won’t tell. We want to let you in on a secret. We actually watch some. In fact, we watch a bunch of them. And like… we’re smart! in fact, being smart is sort of the entire point of this show. And yet, we…
Category: Television
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…
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…
e324. Unpacking Bridgerton Season 3: Penelope, Queerness, and Fandom Reactions
It’s that time again… we’ve had another year of Bridgerton and of course we had to analyze it. Think about it, it’s a show about British regency society. In some ways this might be the most cultured and sophisticated thing we ever do. Also, there’s a lot of sex. On this week’s episode of VoxPopcast,…
e319. X-men ’97 Revisited: Superheroes, Sacrifices, & Saturday Mornings
There’s an argument that the current wave of superhero dominated content that pervades popular media doesn’t begin with the MCU but with X-men the Animated Series, a cartoon that ran from 1992-1997 and is a formative touchstone for many millennial viewers who have come of age today. This argument may be somewhat backed up by…
CFC: Is Rebooting a Film Worse Than Covering a Song?
From Mav: So a few weeks ago I made a random observation on Facebook about the upcoming Crow movie. Basically, I argued that if you were really and truly upset with the redesign of Eric Draven then you were being old and out of touch. Because the weird androgynous goth mime that barely made sense…
e313. PCA2024: Adapting X-Men
On this week’s special epsiode we take one last look at this year’s Popular Culture Association conference in Chicago with a look at papers from one of the panels in the Comics Studies group. Mav is joined by Joseph and John Darowski who will be appearing with him in the upcoming book Adapting X-men from…