Call For Comments: What makes a documentary? You can’t handle the truth.

New this week on HBOMax, The Staircase is the narrative dramatization of Netflix’s 2004 docu-series The Staircase Drunk History, An American Classic From Monica: This semester I taught my first undergraduate class. It just so happens to have been on documentary film, which probably wasn’t the thing you’d expect from VoxPopcast’s resident fashion historian. But…

Call for Comments: So Everyone Is into Multiverses Now?

From Mav: So, we’ve talked on the show before about this weird cultural moment we live in where suddenly all culture is geek culture. Cool kids now play Dungeons and Dragons, superhero movies are somehow the bulk of American box office, and the news treats today, May 4th, like it’s an actual legitimate holiday instead…

Call For Comments: Pouring Some Gritty On It

From Mav: I’ve had this idea rolling around in my head for a bit. It started to really formulate back when we had our “Pour Some Sexy On It” episode. There, and in its Call for Comments, I talked about the concept of making a show (especially an IP reboot property) more seemingly mature and…

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…

e206. Return of the Oscars Preview – 2022

If you’re a movie fan then you might know that the Oscars are coming up next weekend. In fact, you probably even know if you’re not a movie fan. The Oscars are weird. Every year they’re a big deal for Hollywood… except really, does anyone care? The Oscars have been bleeding viewers lately, with last…

Call For Comments: Why do we fill out Oscar ballots?

Dune, West Side Story, The Power of the Dog, and Belfast are all nominees for the 2022 Academy Award for Best Picture From Monica: The 2022 Oscars are upcoming on March 27th, so we’re doing a good old-fashioned predictions episode. But as I sat down to fill out my ballot, I also found myself in…

e205. Why Do We Love Batman?

If you’re a regular listener of this show then you no doubt are aware that the Batman was released in cinemas last week. At the current moment, it is in fact the number one movie at the box office worldwide. And of course, that was to be expected. Everyone knew that it would be a…

Call for Comments: Hey, Are Y’all Talking About Batman?

From Hannah: How have we gone over two hundred episodes without dedicating an episode to talking about Batman? (Indeed, the Eternals of all superheroes got their own episode before we decided to focus on Batman.) From Mav: I mean, we didn’t. Episode 54 was totally all talking about Batman! Just none of you were on…

e202. To Kill a Mockingbird… and a Maus — Censorship & Book Banning

Every once in a while the world of weekly pop culture and the world of literary academia collide so totally that the world notices even outside of our show. Last week was one of those weeks. A school board in Tennessee voted to remove Maus, the critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize winning Holocaust memoir graphic novel,…