In a media landscape driven by monetizing nostalgia, reboots and remakes are inevitable. Often this involves taking a new cast to offer a modern take on the property. However, there's something a little different that has become common place in the last few years. The "aged up reboot". This is a curious phenomenon where a show isn't rebooted, so much as continued, acknowledging the passage of time. On this week's episode, Mav, Hannah and Wayne are joined by returning guest Sandy Eckard to examine this phenomenon and its long history throughout media from X-men 97 to Andor to The Brady Bunch and many more. Listen and let us know if you have some other examples in the comments below. Citations and Links: This episode’s Call For Comments Donate to the...
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e180. So, You Say You Wanna Host a Pseudoacademic Pop Culture Analysis Podcast (with Drinking and Swearing)
Oddly enough, for a show that is devoted to talking about pop culture, one of the things we don’t talk about so much is podcasts. In a way, podcasting might very well be the epitome of pop culture in the current cultural moment… and also… we are one! So, on today’s very special meta episode,…
Call For Comments: Let’s Talk About Film Unions
From Monica: When a movie ends, do you stay for the credits? Not the cutscene at the end, Marvel. But do you actually read the scroll of names that represent the hundreds of people who worked to bring that project to theaters? Or, if you tuned in at home, the nature of television flow means…
Call For Comments: All of the Marvels
From Wayne: As a comics retailer for twenty-three years, one of the questions I was asked most frequently by new readers of Marvel Comics was, ‟Where do I begin?” It’s a fair question. With decades of history, thousands of characters, and tens of thousands of pages of intertwined stories and continuity it can be more…
e178. Pop History vs. Public History
How do we learn history? The easy answer is to say we learn it from history books, but is that true? How many of us ever read a history book after 10th grade? It’s more likely that we get the majority of our history either from museums or from historic entertainment… things like Hamilton… or,…
CFC: Improv in the Living Room
From Mav: Way back in April — which granted, wasn’t actually that long ago, but in the world of COVID, feels like a lifetime — we did a show about how stand-up comedy works in a world where everyone’s socialization is socially distant. Since that time, the world got a little better and then a…
e175. Game Studies: Ludology vs. Narratology
We don’t talk about games as much as we should on this show, but arguably they’re one of the most enduring mediums of popular culture. They’re certainly one of the most popular. There’s much comparison of modern video games to movies. This makes sense… if we want people to consider games to be a legitimate…
CFC: Pop vs. Public History — Why Do We Love Nonfiction?
From Monica: I want to talk about Seabiscuit. Being an archetypal precocious horse girl, at age 9 Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit (1999) was the first nonfiction book I remember reading. It was the first time I was conscious of the popular weight attributed to the New York Times bestseller list, and for once my childhood interests…