Pretty Much Pop #10 Examines Margaret Atwood’s Nightmare Vision: The Handmaid’s Tale

in Literature, Pretty Much Pop, Television | September 11th, 2019

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt take on both Mar­garet Atwood’s 1985 nov­el plus the Bruce Miller/Hulu TV series through sea­son 3. There’s also a graph­ic nov­el and the 1990 film.

We get into what’s need­ed to move a nov­el to the screen like that: The char­ac­ter can’t just remain pas­sive as in the nov­el in order to keep us suf­fer­ing with her past the first sea­son as sto­ry­telling beyond the book begins. We talk about Atwood’s fun­ny neol­o­gisms (like “pray­va­gan­za”) that didn’t make it into the show.

How does race play into the sto­ry, and how should it? Is the sto­ry pri­mar­i­ly a polit­i­cal state­ment or a self-con­tained work of art? Giv­en the bleak­ness of the sit­u­a­tion depict­ed, can there be com­ic relief? How can we have a nom­i­nal­ly fun­ny pod­cast about this work?

Some of the arti­cles we drew on or bring up include:

Plus Eri­ca brings up this video of Bill Moy­ers inter­view­ing Atwood about reli­gion. We also touch on Shindler’s List, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nau­sea, David Brin diss­ing Star Wars as anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic sto­ry­telling, and the many con­ser­v­a­tive dis­missals of the show as hys­ter­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da.

Buy the book, the graph­ic nov­el, or its new sequel The Tes­ta­ments.

You may be inter­est­ed in these relat­ed Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life episodes (Mark’s long-run­ning phi­los­o­phy pod­cast): #181 on Han­nah Arendt and the banal­i­ty of evil, #139 on bell hooks  and her his­tor­i­cal account of con­di­tions for black women not ter­ri­bly dis­sim­i­lar to the ones described by Atwood, #90 inter­view­ing David Brin about the con­nec­tions between spec­u­la­tive fic­tion, phi­los­o­phy, and polit­i­cal speech. PEL has also record­ed sev­er­al episodes on Sartreand Mark ran a sup­port­er-only  ses­sion that you could lis­ten to on Nau­sea in par­tic­u­lar. Also check out Brian’s Con­tel­lary Tales pod­cast #2 talk­ing about anoth­er breed­ing-relat­ed sci-fi sto­ry by Octavia But­ler.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Voice Actor Dee Bradley Baker (Clone Wars,American Dad) Defends Cartoons on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #9

in Animation, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | September 4th, 2019

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-Voicing-Cartoons-with-Dee-Bradley-Baker-400-x-800.jpg



Are car­toons an inher­ent­ly juve­nile art form? Even ani­ma­tion aimed at adults is still typ­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered genre fiction–a guilty pleasure–and the form enables tones and approach­es that might sim­ply be con­sid­ered awful if pre­sent­ed as tra­di­tion­al live action. So what’s the appeal?

Dee’s voice can be heard in sub­stan­tial por­tion of today’s car­toons, espe­cial­ly for ani­mal or mon­ster nois­es, like Boots in the new big-screen adap­ta­tion of Dora the Explor­er, Momo and Appa in The Last Air­ben­der, Ani­mal in the new Mup­pet Babies, etc. He’s also a deep thinker who proud­ly defends car­toons as pro­vid­ing pri­mal delights of humor, jus­tice, and nar­ra­tive mean­ing.

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an engage Dee about his expe­ri­ence as a voice actor (e.g. as Klaus Ger­man fish in a Seth Mac­Far­lane sit-com, fig­ur­ing out what Adven­ture Time was actu­al­ly about, doing all the sim­i­lar-but-dis­tinct voic­es of the var­i­ous clones in Clone Wars, com­ing up with a lan­guage for The Box­trolls, and recre­at­ing Mel Blanc’s voic­es in Space Jamand oth­er Looney Tunes projects), his role in col­lab­o­ra­tive cre­ation,  the con­nec­tion between car­toons and vaude­ville, how live-action films can be made “car­toon­ish,” graph­ic nov­els, car­toon music, and more. We also touch on Love & Robots, A Scan­ner Dark­ly, Lar­va, the doc­u­men­tary I Know That Voice, and the 1972 film What’s Up, Doc? Intro­duc­tion by Chick­ie.

We did read a few arti­cles in prepa­ra­tion for this about the phe­nom­e­non of adults watch­ing kid car­toons:

There’s also a lengthy red­dit thread that we mined for per­spec­tives.

This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #8 Discusses Spider-Man: Far From Home and the Function of Super-Hero Films

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | August 28th, 2019

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt final­ly cov­er a cur­rent film, and of course use it as an entry point in dis­cussing the social func­tion of super-hero films more gen­er­al­ly, how much real­ism or grit­ti­ness is need­ed in such sto­ries, whether to repeat or bypass the ori­gin sto­ry, ever­last­ing fran­chis­es, the use of mul­ti-vers­es as a sto­ry­telling device, exag­ger­at­ing the poten­tial in a sto­ry of new tech­nolo­gies that the audi­ence doesn’t real­ly under­stand, and more.

We touch on oth­er bits of the Mar­vel Uni­verse and the oth­er Spi­der-Man films, the orig­i­nal Amaz­ing Spi­der-Man #13 com­ic that intro­duced Mys­te­rio, The Lion King, Watch­men, The Boys, Star Trek, Elec­tric Dreams, the Rob Lowe “John Smith’s Bach­e­lor Par­ty” scene in Austin Pow­ers, the recur­ring hench­man in Spi­der-Man (actu­al­ly Peter Billings­ley, i.e. Ral­phie in A Christ­mas Sto­ry), and the Exiles com­ic (a Mar­vel team that trav­els between mul­ti-vers­es).

Some arti­cles we looked at for this episode include:

This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Actor Jonathan Joss (King of the Hill, Parks & Rec, Magnificent Seven) Discusses Indigenous American Representation on Pretty Much Pop Podcast #7

in Pretty Much Pop, Television | August 21st, 2019

Jonathan built his career play­ing 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can Indi­ans on horse­back and is best known for his voice act­ing as John Red­corn III in King of the Hill (start­ing sea­son 2) and then for his recur­ring role as Chief Ken Hotate in Parks and Recre­ation. Eri­ca Spyres, Mark Lin­sen­may­er, and Bri­an Hirt talk to him about those roles plus act­ing in The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en, True Grit, and his cur­rent role as Sit­ting Bull in Annie Get Your Gun (also fea­tur­ing Eri­ca) cur­rent­ly run­ning at the Bay Street The­ater in Sag Har­bor.

Jonathan talks about Hollywood’s record and progress in por­tray­ing indige­nous Amer­i­cans, his own strug­gles to get native views reflect­ed in the works he’s par­tic­i­pat­ed in and the dif­fer­ences between act­ing on stage vs. film and TV. When is an anachro­nis­tic work too far gone to update it, and is it even legit­i­mate to try?

A few rel­e­vant clips from King of the Hill: “Hank asks John Red­corn about tool,” “John Red­corn makes a toast,”, “John wants his son back,” and “Big Moun­tain Fudge­cake.” Here’s the Car­toon Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry video that Bri­an brings up.

Here’s John as Chief Hotate in Parks and Recre­ation play­ing Jere­my Jamm (John Glaser) like a fid­dle.

Here’s the scene from True Grit (2010) where Jonathan’s char­ac­ter gets hanged.

Here’s Jonathan talk­ing at Indege­nous Com­ic Con 2017 about rep­re­sen­ta­tion and act­ing, and here he is doing a fake pan­el.

The actor in the film Min­utes that Mark refers to is come­di­an Tatan­ka Means. Jonathan brings up native author/activist John Trudell, and Eri­ca brings up the play Tribes about the deaf com­mu­ni­ty.

You may be inter­est­ed in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life’s episode on Amer­i­can Indi­an phi­los­o­phy and the vary­ing reac­tions to it.

This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #6: Why Adults Might Play Video Games

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | August 14th, 2019

Eri­ca Spyres, Bri­an Hirt, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er are joined by Ian Maio (who worked for mar­ket­ing for IGN and Turn­er in e‑sports) for our first dis­cus­sion about gam­ing. Do adults have any busi­ness play­ing video games? Should you feel guilty about your video game habits?

Ian gives us the lay of the land about e‑sports, com­par­ing it to phys­i­cal sports, and we dis­cuss the chang­ing social func­tions of gam­ing, alleged and actu­al gam­ing dis­or­ders, dif­fer­ent types of gamers, inclu­siv­i­ty, and more. Whether you game a lot or not at all, you should still find some­thing inter­est­ing here.

We touch on the King of Kong doc­u­men­tary, Grand Theft Auto, Over­watch, The Last of Us, Bor­der­lands, Super Mario, Cup­head, NY Times Elec­tron­ic Cross­word Puz­zle, and more. Be sure to watch the Black Mir­ror episode, “Strik­ing Vipers.”

Sources for this episode:

This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Please go check out Mod­ern Day Philoso­phers at moderndayphilosophers.net and See You on the Oth­er Side at othersidepodcast.com.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Lucy Lawless Joins Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #5 on True Crime

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | August 8th, 2019

Lucy Law­less (Xena the War­rior Princess, cur­rent­ly star­ring in My Life Is Mur­der) joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to think about the true crime genre, of both the doc­u­men­tary and dra­ma­tized vari­ety. What’s the appeal? Why do women in par­tic­u­lar grav­i­tate to it?

We touch on Mak­ing of a Mur­der­er, Ser­i­al, The Stair­case, Aman­da Knox, Ted Bundy Con­ver­sa­tions with a Killer, I Love You Now Die, Mom­my Dead and Dear­est (dra­ma­tized as The Act), Amer­i­can Crime Sto­ry: The Peo­ple v. O.J. Simp­son, My Favorite Mur­der, Case­file, Crime Talk with Scott Reisch, True Mur­der, and Amer­i­can Van­dal.

Sources for this episode:

Here’s an arti­cle about Lucy’s new show and her love of the true crime genre. Watch the trail­er.

Get more at prettymuchpop.com. Sub­scribe on Apple Pod­casts, Stitch­er, or Google Play. Maybe leave us a nice rat­ing or review while you’re there to help the pod­cast grow. Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is pro­duced by the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Net­work. This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #4 — HBO’s “Chernobyl”: Why Do We Enjoy Watching Suffering?

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | August 2nd, 2019

On the HBO mini-series Cher­nobyl. Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt first get into the var­i­ous degrees of loose­ness in something’s being “based on a true sto­ry.” Does it mat­ter if it’s been changed to be more dra­mat­ic? We then con­sid­er the show as enter­tain­ment: Why do peo­ple enjoy wit­ness­ing suf­fer­ing? Why might a dra­ma work (or not) for you?

We also touch on Game of Thrones, The Killing, God Is Dead, It’s Always Sun­ny in Philadel­phia, Big Lit­tle Lies, Schindler’s List, Vice, Ip Man, and more.

Some of the arti­cles we looked at to pre­pare:

Our Lucy Law­less inter­view will be out next week! Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is a mem­ber of the The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Net­work.

Get more at prettymuchpop.com. Sub­scribe on Apple Pod­casts, Stitch­er, or Google Play. Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is pro­duced by the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Net­work. This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Pretty Much Pop #3: CONFORM with Yakov Smirnoff

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | July 29th, 2019

Is media try­ing to brain­wash us into being ALL THE SAME? Are the excess­es of the mob scar­ing us into con­for­mi­ty? And does this in turn keep us from being actu­al­ly cre­ative, with healthy rela­tion­ships?

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt muse on cul­tur­al homog­e­niza­tion and a few sci-fi takes on forced same­ness and then bring out our first celebri­ty guest, beloved come­di­an and now psy­chol­o­gy Ph.D. Yakov Smirnoff, who tells us about grow­ing up in a repres­sive soci­ety and his fears that polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and a lack of appre­ci­a­tion for the “rec­i­p­ro­cal oppo­sites” nec­es­sary for authen­tic com­mu­ni­ca­tion is lead­ing us in that direc­tion. We con­clude with a bit of host-ful response.

We touch on Cat’s Cra­dle, Aladdin, Rosanne Barr, The Twi­light Zone, Bri­an’s wear­ing a Cubs hat in Mis­souri, and per­form­ing com­e­dy in the U.S.S.R. as well as var­i­ous sen­si­tive audi­ences here. Will you not join us and dress as Devo every day?

Here’s that arti­cle that comes up on Kurt Von­negut Jr.‘s terms “karass” (vol­un­tary, organ­ic group­ing) and “gran­fal­loon” (inher­it­ed, basi­cal­ly mean­ing­less group­ing).

No, we are not a pol­i­tics pod­cast, but some­times when we reflect on the dynam­ics involved with our being enter­tained,  pol­i­tics is hard to avoid! You may enjoy lis­ten­ing to The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life (Mark’s phi­los­o­phy pod­cast) dis­cuss Adorno on the Cul­ture Indus­try, or per­haps their dis­cus­sion of the world of tech­no­log­i­cal unem­ploy­ment.

Get more at prettymuchpop.com. Sub­scribe on Apple Pod­casts, Stitch­er, or Google Play. Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is pro­duced by the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Net­work.

Fol­low Yakov:  @Yakov_Smirnoff. Not enough Yakov? Well, of course there are scads of YouTube clips and oth­er pod­cast appear­ances that he’s done that you can check out with a mere web search, but if you want to hear EVERY SINGLE WORD he said to us, we did post an entire­ly unedit­ed ver­sion of the inter­view for $5 sup­port­ers at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast