e292. Monstrous Women and the Horror Gaze

On this week’s not exactly Halloween special episode, Mav, Wayne and Monica are joined by returning guests Dr. Michael Chemers and Dr. Samantha Langsdale, two experts in the field of monster studies to talk about their recent conference at the Center for Monster Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. Sam and Mike share…

Call for Comments: Is Sucker Punch really a bad movie?

“To be frank, the people I’ve run across who’ve come to me and said ‘Sucker Punch is my favorite movie’ are normally angsty teenage girls.” -Zack Snyder, 2023 From Monica: In 2011, I was a deeply depressed femme goth who was assaulted by a man, subsequently realized I was gay, tried coming out, and was…

e229. She-Hulk: Sensational & Savage

It is pretty much impossible at this point to not have some MCU content in the current release. Between the films and the TV shows, they are a ubiquitous part of the cultural zeitgeist. So much so that we can’t really cover them all on our show anymore. However, some of them definitely seem worth…

Call for Comments: She-Hulk is Sensational… you just don’t know it yet!

From Monica: I know….we’ve only had one episode air so far and usually over at VoxPop we wait on this kinda thing. We’re also usually big champions of “adaptations don’t need to hold a deep reverence for adhering to their source materials.”  But this time around, I think we should do things a little backwards.…

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…

e199. Nancy Drew & the Hidden Staircase to Pop Culture Immortality

Nancy Drew may be one of the most enduring figures in American Popular culture. First premiering in 1930, she predates Superman, Donald Duck, the Lone Ranger, two US states, FM radio, and the ball point pen. And yet — outside of her devoted fanbase — does not seem to garner the same respect of many…

e185. The Wicked, the Witches and the Witch-ish

Halloween season continues and so it’s time for another special episode. One of the most enduring pop culture figure is probably the witch. Witches appear through the ages in media. From the Weird Sisters of MacBeth to the good and bad witches of Oz to to Arthur Miller’s the Crucible, to Samantha of Bewitched to…

e166. So… What is the Male Gaze Anyway?

Sometimes academic terms bleed over into the popular lexicon and gets used by people almost as second nature without anyone really bothering to think about what it means. “The Male Gaze”, is one of those terms. It gets used in both academic and popular pop culture criticism, but often without definition. There’s simply a vague…

e149. Let’s Talk About SuperSex

Happy Valentine’s Day! If you had a podcast devoted to pop culture with a penchant for discussing comics with some bit of regularity and a holiday came up that was devoted to beauty of love and dating and you wanted to do something nice and sweet to commemorate the holiday, what would you do? Obviously…

e142. Deconstructing the Queen’s Gambit

If anything has characterized pop culture in the year 2020, it’s streaming media. From Hamilton to Tiger King, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the essential elimination of out-of-the-home entertainment, we as a people have been absorbing a great deal of content from our couches through the magic of streaming. This is a world made for…