The VoxPopcast

e385. Is Flash Gordon a Bad Movie?

It's been a while since we did a "is this a bad movie" episode. But the best way of investigating a "is this a bad movie" is to pick one where one of the hosts is honestly surprised that there are people who don't like the film. That's what we have today. One of Mav's favorite movies from childhood was the 1980 adaptation of Flash Gordon. Mav has seen it so many times that the honest truth is he really didn't know that there were people who didn't love it. So on this episode Mav is joined by Wayne and Flash Gordon IP superfan Neal Jones — who it turns out has never watched this film before — to analyze the film and it's relation to the greater universe of...

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 some absolutely fantabulous period costumes. Hannah and Monica immediately started planning an episode. That was three years ago. We're just getting to it now. But that's perfect, because last week was the season 3 finale and so that just means we have plenty to talk about! So on this episode, we welcome back friend of the show Josh Stroud, so that he Hannah, and Monica can introduce Mav to the Gilded Age and we can...

e383. Revisiting Milkshake Ducks

Way back on episode 47, we talked about Milkshake Ducks. That is to say, the concept of what to do when you suddenly discover that the creator of a beloved media product turns out to be a very problematic individual. Even back then we acknowledged that things were much more complicated than the world liked to make it out to be. But now, as time has gone on and more an more creators are cancelled for various reasons AND we have had pushback and backlash from ... well, let's face it... a post-Trump America, what does cancelling someone for being problematic even look like anymore? Is it even possible. On this week's episode Mav and Wayne are joined by friend of the show Stephanie Siler to revisit the topic of...

e382. How Catch ’em? Exploring the Inverted Mystery

One of the most tried and true genres of fiction is the Whodunnit mystery. The premise is simple, a crime is committed and the reader or audience watches the a detective solve the mystery. They are our eyes and ears. We know only what they know, and we must solve the crime along with the detective. This is not an episode about those. Instead, we want to talk about a related genre, the Howcatchem, aka the inverted mystery. There are a surprising amount of entries int he pop culture landscape about crimes where the audience is fully aware of details of the crime that the detective is not. Often, we may even see the crime committed in the opening scene. On this crossover episode with the Protagonist Podcast, Mav is...

e381. It’s Clobberin’ Time! Fantastic Four’s Impact on the Summer of Superheroes

For the past couple of years, the general sentiment seems to have been that superhero movies are becoming... well... kinda bad. But, as we spoke a couple weeks ago with the new Superman movie, things have been looking up a bit this summer. But something odd has been happening. For some reason, the general vibe among superhero movie fans has sort of been hanging the future of the genre on the new Fantastic Four movie. This is sort of weird because arguably there's never been a good Fantastic Four movie before. In fact, some might argue that all of the previous recent attempt have been distinctly bad! And yet, we had high hopes as well. So what did we think? Well, on this episode Mav, Hannah and Wayne are joined...

From Mav: One of my most favorite things to do as an academic is presenting at conferences. Part of this is just because being an academic means presenting your research. That’s a big part of the job. But for me, conferences are the most fun because it means linking up with other people with similar…

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