e228. Investigating the Style Cycle

We’ve all heard complaints that the current pop-culture fad du jour is getting repetitive. For instance, right now, it’s superhero movies. People are constantly complaining about “the MCU formula” where “all the movies look the same, they all have the same plot, and they all make all the same jokes.” Whenever some other company makes…

e218. Does the Bechdel Test Fail the Bechdel Test?

A funny thing happened last week. The internet got into a minor scuffle about whether Fire Island, a film about gay men, was sexist because it failed the Bechdel Test, by not having substantive roles for women… because it was a movie about gay men. For those who haven’t seen the film… which frankly, is…

e211. #PCAACA22: The Presentations

Regular listeners of our show will know that the last couple weeks we have devoted to #PCAACA22, the annual conference for the Pop Culture Association. Two weeks ago, we devoted the show to our planning workshop. Last week, you got to hear us meet with other conference attendees to talk about how it went at…

e209. PCA2022 Conference Paper Workshop & Preview

This week we’re going to try something a little different on the show. We’ve been mentioning in the past few weeks that we several of the hosts and our most frequent guests are all gearing ups for our big annual pop culture academia conference, PCA. In the past, we’ve had shows where we presented our…

e188. The Eternals and the MCU This Year (so far…)

Somehow, we went the entire year of 2020 just… without a Marvel movie. Phase three ended and there was a real life global pandemic and then… there just weren’t any MCU films. For the first time in over a decade, they were just gone! This year, they came back… BIG! in fact, there’s been three…

Call for Comments: WTF Is Up With Eternals?

From Hannah: Marvel’s newest movie — Eternals for those of you who don’t care about the MCU — debuts this weekend. And it’s making headlines for being first in a lot of things in terms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (some way more important than others). Critics don’t seem to love Marvel’s latest entry, at…