By Any Other Nerd

Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes First off, no, I'm not calling to cancel Oedipus, though I do feel like Freud should be canceled for the Oedipus complex, but that's another thought for another time and one to which I am like 87% joking.  So if you're reading this hoping or fearing that I'm taking down a fictional character from millennia-old mythology, you probably want to move on right now.  It's ok--I'll wait.   Last year, before the pandemic (so, like 29 years ago in "pandemic time"), I wrote a blog post where I shared a video by Contrapoints on "Cancelling"  (100 minutes).  Since then, there have been two other pieces of media that I feel have meaningfully build up Wynn's arguments about the nuance of how Cancel Culture is understood and discussed within the US culture at this time.  The first is Lindsay Ellis's episode, "Mask Off"  (100 minutes) where she explores how there was a push to cancel her and she very syst...

Screening Reality: How Documentary Filmmakers Reimagined America by Jon Wilkman My rating: 4 of 5 stars Wilkman provides a fascinating look at the role of film in re-presenting reality. The book doesn't focus on the news but rather the realm of documentaries captured video of important events (e.g. Kennedy assassination), reality television as a genre, and ephemeral content since the birth of film.  What's striking about this book is that the average reader might not realize just how much nonfiction video exists and how much they have been exposed to over the years, but by the end of the book, they'll see a much richer web of such content throughout their viewing engagements.  It's a fascinating and thorough piece of work that brings readers up to the election and few years or so of the Trump presidency; making an argument of sorts, directly and indirectly, that our fascination with film and our inability to come to a clear consensus about h...

Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph Ko My rating: 4 of 5 stars Pulling together posts they have published over the years on Black Vegans Rock, Sisters, Aph and Syl Ko offer up a compelling argument for veganism people of color and other marginalized groups. The crux of their argument is that the willingness for humans to arbitrarily decide who gets human treatment and who gets animal treatment (who is a free being and who is an enslave mass for labor, slaughter, and consumption) means that marginalized groups will always be vulnerable to being "dehumanized" and thus subjected to inhumane treatment. Until people reconsider their relationship with all animals, humans will continue to leave the door open to doing horrific harm to one another. What's powerful about their argument is that they do not just put this in simple terms of veganism--rather they deeply ground their argument in the theoretical and con...

The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific by David Bianculli My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is a pretty comprehensive look at 20th-century television and some of the best and seminal moments of TV history. Bianculli has been writing about television since 1975 and his knowledge and love of the form is quite evident in how he traces the lineage of different shows, writers, actors, directors, etc. He knows his stuff and he's clearly excited to be sharing his life's work with readers. His work moves through each genre, first by defining it and articulating the ground-breakers through the years from inception to (2016) present and then by providing a narrative that strings these together, making sure to highlight particular shows, episodes, controversial (or funny) anecdotes, and other interesting elements. He usually follows these with spotlights of particular key figures in this genre where delves deeper into...

Estimated Reading Time: 4.5 minutes I t's that time of year where the Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA for short) is putting out its annual  call for proposals for the regional conference  at  Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH from Friday, October 23-Saturday, October 24 .   Do you teach pop culture in some capacity in your classroom? Do you teach a course on pop culture?  What ways do you work pop culture into your teaching?   The Teaching Popular Culture area is a bit different than the other areas which are research-focused.  This area more provides some professional development, feedback, and reflection around how we employ popular culture in the classroom.  This is often an under-considered aspect of popular culture studies: how we meaningfully engage with our students on pop culture.   This area focuses on how to teach popular culture, which may include sharing unique approaches...

Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole My rating: 5 of 5 stars Poole's work is a fascinating study of modern horror as part byproduct of World War I. Drawing upon a host of creators in Europe and the Americas, he explores how so much of their work in horror, directly and indirectly, was derived from the devastation, destruction, and violence that came with the war. He links much of the body horror (Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, Nosferatu) with the returning of soldiers from war with missing body parts and scarred bodies; kept alive when they might previously have died, they brought constant reminders of the war for decades to come. Poole's work is quite convincing as he draws on people such as H.P. Lovecraft, Fritz Lang, F. W. Mirnau, Max Ernst, Andre Breton, James Whales, Lon Chaney, Arthur Machen, T.S. Eliot and many others, showing their connections to the war or the ways in which their works channeled the fears...

90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality by Allison Yarrow My rating: 5 of 5 stars Yarrow's jaunt down the 1990s through the prism of gender is so much better than any CNN documentary. She delves into how gender was represented in media and culture throughout the 1990s from Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place to the sexual scandals of Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton to the female music icons (Gwen Stefani, Courtney Love, Fiona Apple, Britney Spears, and others) to the murder trial of OJ Simpson and Marsha Clark. It's a cornucopia of reflections around the many different issues that arose and as someone who grew up in the 1990s, I appreciated this renewed look at how gender played out in politics, pop culture, and even education. It helped me understand some of the more problematic assumptions or thoughts that I had at the time and where they came from. Yarrow's skill is in her multipronged approach of given the context of e...

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture by A.D. Jameson My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a delightfully interminable Star Wars fan, this book triggered all the feels. Jameson provides a personal and cultural history of geek culture since the emergence of Star Wars in the 1970s. He marks Star Wars as the birth of geek culture's rise to pop culture dominance in TV, film, conventions, and much more. Throughout, he explores the pivotal ways in which Star Wars and other major geek-entities (comic books, RPG tabletop gaming, fantasy books, etc) played pivotal roles in making geek culture more mainstream culture. Of course, within that, he acknowledges the tension between those who are hardcore fans of the cultural product in its "original form" (whatever we want to mean by that) and in its various adaptations, remakes, deviations, etc. He has a very strong bone to pick with Peter Biskind and his film and cultural histories, believi...

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes A good friend whom I trade insightful YouTube channels and videos with texted me, "Natalie's new video was so good, I became a patron."  That's an impressive endorsement.  So, as soon as I had some opportunity for screentime, I held back my desire to continue watching the latest season of The Magicians (Harry Potter for adults...sorta) on Netflix and fought my urge to watch the new season on Amazon of The Expanse (but seriously, you should all check out that show), to watch this 100-minute extravaganza . If you haven't encountered Contrapoints yet, you definitely need to go over to YouTube and watch some videos.  Contrapoints is a YouTube Channel run by Natalie Wynn that focuses on breaking down complex elements of our culture into digestible, entertaining, and intriguing pieces. She does this often through character dialogue (herself dressed up as different people of different viewpoints, debating one another).  She layers t...

Dear Luke, We Need to Talk, Darth: And Other Pop Culture Correspondences by John Moe My rating: 3 of 5 stars Moe's collection of fictional pieces by fictional characters or ridiculous takes on real-world events is delightful and amusing for those looking to get their pop culture geek on. He tries to hit all corners of the nerd-universe with pieces on alternatives and rejected proposals for SuperBowl half-time shows to the diary of the shark from Jaws to a series of frustrating phone calls between War Horse and his agent to online reviews of different fictional bars (from Cheers to Moe's!). Not all pieces are effective, especially for those who might not be fans of that particular pop culture but when he hits, readers can expect to appreciable laugh. I enjoy the playfulness of a book like this where the author takes the reader on a tour of the pop culture that in some way (just by the fact that he chose these particular icons of pop culture) is relevant or mean...

This is my fourth essay that I've written for the Brattle Theater and like the others, I appreciate the shape that it has taken and the ways I have improved my writing (with hefty help from the editor--thank you, Jessie!) when discussing films. If you want to see those previous ones, then you can check them out: Disoriented Drives: Intimacy and Distance in Hitchcock's Vertigo Monster in the Celluloid Closet: Historical Re-Presentation in Gods and Monsters This place is weird": Jim Henson's Liminal Films for Children and Adults. In this essay, I take a look at The Apartment (1960) and explore how we make sense of it through a modern lens.  While we often watch and think about films in the context in which they were made, does that mean we should continue to encourage the watching of them and if we do, how much of that critical lens should e frontloaded into the viewing?  These are questions I'm clearly grappling with in this essay and things I found challe...

Introducing Baudrillard by Chris Horrocks My rating: 4 of 5 stars Chris Horrocks and Zoran Jevtic set out to explain the range and complexity of Baudrillard's works mixed with specs of biography through a mixture of exposition, quotations, and largely, reproduced or augmented images. The book (or graphic novel or mix-media, depending on one’s definition) is ambitious in its attempt to explain Baudrillard solely within his words and direct sentiments or that of other critics while simultaneously playfully mixing in images of and depictions of his discussion and Baudrillard, himself. The book begins with several pages raising the question of who is Baudrillard and why is he important before switching into a short one-page biography that glosses over largely the first 37 years of his life, from his birth in Algiers to studying at the Lycee and his intellectual forefathers (Satre and Lefebvre). From there, the book hops about and often sprints through a series of topics that it...

So a few months ago, I did an article for The Brattle Theatre's blog on Vertigo that examined the role of driving . I rather enjoyed the process of writing a film essay and recently, I had another opportunity to do so recently and this one was on Gods and Monsters. I don't know if it's because I better understand the editorial process at Brattle or because I felt more confident and comfortable with this film or because I just hit upon something that spoke to me more coherently, but I found the process of writing one much easier and it came together much more coherently (at least for me--please let me know what you think!).  I mean, I've certainly talked about films on this blog, including my top 100 films series or when I explored horror tropes within the film, The Orphan , or even the two pieces I wrote about seeing movies at the Cabot ( Catching a Classic at the Cabot and Cabot Offers Magical Experience ).  However, I feel like I was able to write a film essay th...

As some of you know, I've been teaching a popular culture course online for years now at North Shore Community College.  It started as a face-to-face course back in or around 2009 or so and then transitioned to an online course in Spring, 2012.  Since then, I've only taught it online and have had continually looked to update it and change how I approach it with each passing year.  Image Credit: Robert Huffstutter This past spring, I was the recipient of a Course of Distinction award from Massachusetts Colleges Online for my course .  As a result, I had to do a presentation and also video tour of my course .  I figured I'd include them in this post since I'm also discussing my presentation on Saturday, October 20 at the Northeast Popular Culture Association 2018 conference . I've also been a part of NEPCA for a long while now and will be soon stepping up to be the Executive Secretary of the organization.  In recent years, I took on the Area Chair ...

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson My rating: 3 of 5 stars Like many other of his books, Johnson takes what we think are sometimes disposable threads of history and crafts them to help us consider how ephemera can help us understand who we are as humans. Thus, he uses things such as coloring in clothes to illustrate how trading pattern changed and gave way to empires as well as how taverns produced the third spaces that gave way to political revolutions and the idea of public space. Each artifact he looks at (spices, music, games, etc) unpacks powerful ways such things have significantly changed the modern world. His point isn't necessarily to pay homage to the spice rack or worship the almighty chessboard but rather to help us understand that the flights of fancy imbued with such things as games or music are part of what makes us human and drive us; that is, our non-essential human elements can direct us in powerful ways that produce important (and ...

It's been a while but we're back with The Weekly Pop!   You can catch up on previous episodes below or on YouTube.  Enjoy and let me know what you think!   Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6 Episode 7 Episode 8 You can watch  this episode on YouTube  and  all the other episodes  as well.  (Also, feel free to subscribe to my channel on YouTube as well). Episode 9:  The Trojan (Race) War So, it’s been awhile since my last episode.  Life got in the way and well, that’s all I got.  But I’ve had a couple episodes in that I’ve been thinking about so we’re getting down to this first one! So I want to talk about Troy: Fall of a City today because it gave me all the feels and also, a lot of frustration.  This was a BBC production that dropped on Netflix in April of 2018. Tales of The Iliad and The Odyssey always fascinate and excite me.  I enjoy these stories a...