There’s no shortage of movies, TV shows, comics and other media that are “gritty reboots” of older series or property. Sometimes these are official reboots, like the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica or like Riverdale, the greatest show on television. Other times, these are conceptual reimaginings, sharing a thematic inspiration but being given the gritty treatment.…
Category: Violence
Call For Comments: Is This The Darkest Timeline?
From Mav: It’s 2020, and the world is on fire. We all know how bad things have been. Some of the things are obvious, longterm, and we’ve done shows on them before. Some of them are new: There’s a deadly pandemic that has killed over 213,000 people in the United States (and over a million…
e125. It’s the End of the World as we show it…
It’s 2020 and the world is ending… or maybe it’s not… or maybe it ended months ago and we just can’t tell anymore. Honestly at this point it’s pretty much just impossible to tell. With what seems like one disaster after another shaking the planet, we decided to take a look at apocalypse and disaster…
e119. Copaganda II: Going Rogue
A few weeks ago, we released an episode about “copaganda.” On that show we started out talking about the TV show Paw Patrol and internet calls to have it and other cop shows cancelled in the wake of the #DefundThePolice movement and heightened scrutiny on law enforcement in the United States (Note from Mav: And…
Call for Comments: Copaganda II: Going Rogue!
From Hannah: Our initial episode exploring copaganda (media that reinforces police-positive narratives) covered a lot of ground, but we majorly focused on media geared toward children and families — such as Paw Patrol, Zootopia, and Artemis Fowl — and shows whose underlying premise argue that the police should serve their communities (Brooklyn Nine-Nine is perhaps…
e117. Post-Release Censorship and the Disney Vault
There was a weird story that broke a few weeks ago when people discovered that episodes of the 2012 teen sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place had “censored” the cleavage of the mother on one episode by placing a blur over the actress’s chest on the Disney+ streaming service. After some investigation, it turned out that…
e116. Copaganda, Cartoons, and You
One of the most interesting side effects of the recent #BlackLivesMatter protests sparked off by the George Floyd murder has been the #DefundPolice movement gaining national attention. Obviously that’s a big complicated issue that goes beyond shouting hashtags online (or probably should). Some jurisdictions are beginning to take the call seriously, but in the meantime…
e47. Milkshake Ducks & Problematic Artists
It seems like it happens every day lately. Your favorite writer, comedian, singer, actor, sports star, politician or whatever suddenly hits the news because it turns out he’s a racist, rapist, sexist, homophobe, murderer or otherwise deplorable person. Particularly in the #MeToo era, we’re seeing this more and more with the likes of Bill Cosby,…
e40. Favourite RoyalTV (and movies)
In an interesting and rare moment, two period dramas about European royalty, The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots, are at the top of the US box office right now. Well, maybe not the top… they’re #12 and #14, but that’s still pretty damn good for historical fiction. They’re never going to be blockbusters. And yet, there’s been historical…