Kids’ Films, Adult Messages — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #153

Today’s Pret­ty Much Pop fea­tures pan­el of par­ents: your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er, NY Times Enter­tain­ment Writer and Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Lawrence Ware, edu­ca­tor Michelle Par­rinel­lo-Cason and pop-cul­ture philoso­pher Chris Suna­mi. We take on the mass of large­ly ani­mat­ed films by Dis­ney, Pixar, Dream­works, Illu­mi­na­tion, etc. We’ve all watched them with our kids, and many adults devour them even in pref­er­ence to oth­er types of films.

So what’s the under­ly­ing ide­ol­o­gy of this kind of media? What mes­sages are they con­vey­ing, and are these sub­stan­tial or even coher­ent? What ele­ments in these films can adults relate to?

We touch on Puss in Boots, Turn­ing Red, Soul, Trolls, Eno­la Holmes, The Polar Express, tod­dler edu­tain­ment, things we watched as kids, and sto­ries by Roald Dahl, Lewis Car­roll and L. Frank Baum. Our hosts rec­om­mend­ed The Babysit­ter’s Club, The Mys­te­ri­ous Bene­dict Soci­ety, the stu­dio Ghi­b­li films, and the Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events books.

Fol­low us @law_writes, @DaylaLearning (Michelle), @PopCultPhil (Chris), and @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. If you’re not sub­scribed to the pod­cast, you’re miss­ing lots of good episodes, such as our recent post-mortems on Suc­ces­sion and Ted Las­so. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.