Star Trek: World-Building Over Generations—Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #42

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | May 7th, 2020

The world-wide Trib­ble infes­ta­tion and Star Trek: Picard drop­ping make this an apt time to address our most philo­soph­i­cal sci-fi fran­chise. 44 years of thought exper­i­ments (with pho­ton tor­pe­does!) about what it is to be human should have taught us some­thing, and Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er along with Drew Jack­son (Eri­ca’s hus­band) reflect on what makes a Star Trek sto­ry, world build­ing over gen­er­a­tions in Gene Rod­den­ber­ry’s land, canon you don’t remem­ber vs. some­thing that just has­n’t been shown on screen, Trek vs. Wars, and step-chil­dren like The Orville and Galaxy Quest.

We have gath­ered a heap of arti­cles for fur­ther cog­i­ta­tion:

For some sug­gest­ed episodes to catch up on, there are lists online rec­om­mend­ing those from the orig­i­nal series and from the fran­chise over­all. There are also fan cre­ations like these orig­i­nal series episodes, a Star Trek musi­cal, and of course the Impro­vised Star Trek pod­cast. For some rel­e­vant words from Rod Rod­den­ber­ry, check out episode 55 of the Mis­sion Log pod­cast.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. 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: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

 

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Soundtrack Composer Craig Wedren (Zoey’s Playlist, Glow, Shrill) Joins Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #41 on TV Musicals

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | April 30th, 2020

Craig was the front-man of the brainy punk band Shud­der to Think from the mid-’80s through the ’90s and has cre­at­ed music for many TV shows and films. He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt due to his involve­ment with the cur­rent NBC musi­cal dram­e­dy Zoey’s Extra­or­di­nary Playlist, which along with Glee, Crazy Ex-Girl­friend, Nashville, Rise, etc. rep­re­sents a new era of musi­cals as main­stream TV.

Why are shows like this being cre­at­ed at this point in our cul­tur­al his­to­ry? These shows all use some nar­ra­tive expla­na­tion for why there’s singing (i.e. the songs are diagetic) instead of just hav­ing the char­ac­ters sing as in a clas­sic musi­cal or a film like The Great­est Show­man or La La Land. Most of these also make heavy use of cov­er tunes and/or par­o­dies in a way that stage musi­cals usu­al­ly don’t. And of course there’s often a heavy use of auto­tune and more star-based cast­ing than is the norm for stage pro­duc­tions.

Some arti­cles to pro­vide an overview of the top­ic:

Note that Craig does­n’t cre­ate the actu­al songs that the cast mem­bers sing for Zoey’s, just the inter­sti­tial music, but he’s writ­ten heaps of songs and is in a great posi­tion to talk with us about every­thing from Cop Rock to Mama Mia. We also touch on musi­cal episodes in Com­mu­ni­ty and Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, karaoke in film, Adam Schlesinger, Stop Mak­ing Sense (also see David Byrne’s mobile band on Col­bert) and a weird Net­flix lip-sync dra­ma called Sound­track,

Lis­ten to Craig talk about his own tunes on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music and watch his dai­ly Sab­bath Ses­sions at facebook.com/craigwedrenmusic or on YouTube. Hear the song he wrote for School of Rock.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. 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: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #40 on #MeToo Depictions in TV and Film

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop, Television | April 22nd, 2020


These sto­ries are all heav­i­ly watched, which means they’re enter­tain­ing: The 2019 film Bomb­shell (about the pre­da­tions of Roger Ailes), Apple TV’s The Morn­ing Show (about a dis­graced anchor), and Net­flix’s Unbe­liev­able (about report­ing rape) and 13 Rea­sons Why (about teen sui­cide result­ing from sex­u­al assault). But what’s “enter­tain­ing” about sex­u­al assault and harass­ment? What makes for a sen­si­tive as opposed to a sen­sa­tion­al­ized por­tray­al?

Eri­ca, Mark, and Bri­an con­sid­er which sto­ries work and why. How much diver­gence from true events is allow­able in Bomb­shell or Con­fir­ma­tion (about Ani­ta Hill)? By hav­ing char­ac­ters inter­pret their sit­u­a­tions (Eri­ca gives an exam­ple from the show Sex Edu­ca­tion), are writ­ers essen­tial­ly telling audi­ences how to feel about their own expe­ri­ences? Should cer­tain depic­tions be ruled out as poten­tial­ly trig­ger­ing, or is it good to “bring to light” what­ev­er ter­ri­ble things actu­al­ly hap­pen in the world? Should shows delve into the psy­chol­o­gy of the per­pe­tra­tor (maybe even treat­ing him as a pro­tag­o­nist), or must the mes­sage be whol­ly and unam­bigu­ous­ly about the vic­tim? 

Art is about risk-tak­ing and cap­tur­ing dif­fi­cult ambi­gu­i­ties; this does­n’t sound much like a pub­lic ser­vice mes­sage. So what respon­si­bil­i­ty to do show cre­ators have to con­sult pro­fes­sion­als about how to present dif­fi­cult top­ics like this?

We drew on some arti­cles to help us look at these ques­tions:

Here’s that weird scene where Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Bil­ly Crudup sing on The Morn­ing Show.

If this top­ic is too depress­ing, check out our episode #39 from last week about what to watch on TV dur­ing quar­an­tine:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. 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: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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The Power of Costuming in Film: Pretty Much Pop #38 with Whitney Anne Adams (Happy Death Day, Great Gatsby)

in Fashion, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 8th, 2020

How does cloth­ing mesh with set design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, sound design, etc. to cre­ate the mood in a film? Whit­ney designed for and dressed leads and crowds on The Great Gats­by, the Hap­py Death Day films and sev­er­al indie flicks. She joins Eri­ca, Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss how clothes on screen relate to clothes in life, design­ing vs. curat­ing, his­toric vs. mod­ern vs. genre, when cos­tumes get dis­tract­ing, her cur­rent TV and film picks for notable cos­tum­ing, and how an inter­est in (or total obliv­i­ous­ness to) clothes affects the watch­ing expe­ri­ence.

Read a few inter­views with Whit­ney about her process:

More arti­cles to make you think about cos­tumes:

Fol­low Whit­ney on Insta­gram @waacostumedesign. She’s also the styl­ist for Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry (i.e. Paper Boi on Atlanta). Some of the indie films she’s worked on that we bring up include Pierc­ing, The Eyes of My Moth­er, and Irre­place­able You.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. 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: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #37

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 2nd, 2020

Why has a chil­dren’s toy become a brand attached to vir­tu­al­ly every media type, part­ner­ing with the most ubiq­ui­tous fran­chis­es, and serv­ing as a pas­time for many adult hob­by­ists who will gut you if you call LEGO a “chil­dren’s toy.”

Bri­an Hirt (our res­i­dent AFOL, i.e. adult fan of LEGO) talks with co-hosts Eri­ca Spyres and Mark Lin­sen­may­er about cre­ative play vs. fol­low­ing the print­ed direc­tions, build­ing purists vs. anthro­po­mor­phiz­ers, LEGO qua cor­po­rate over­lord, the LEGO films and com­pet­i­tive build­ing TV show, and more.

Bri­an’s LEGO designs that we react to are the Man­del­brot frac­tal, baby Yoda, drei­del, and swim­ming pool. “AFOL” is but the first of many LEGO-spe­cif­ic ini­tialisms; see the glos­sary.

Here are some arti­cles we drummed up to pre­pare:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. 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: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Are Video Games an Effective Vehicle for Storytelling? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #35 Featuring Don Marshall

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | March 18th, 2020

Do you play video games for the plot? Giv­en that most peo­ple don’t actu­al­ly fin­ish most games, it would be unex­pect­ed if sto­ry­telling were the most impor­tant ele­ment. On this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by for­mer video game pro­fes­sion­al (and cur­rent TV devel­op­ment exec­u­tive) Don­ald E. Mar­shall to talk through types of plots (lin­ear, “string-of-pearls,” and branch­ing), ways of weav­ing sto­ry into a game, bal­anc­ing game­play and nar­ra­tive, and more.

We touch on Death Strand­ing, Over­watch, The Last of Us, Skyrim, Fall­out, Life Is Strange, Until Dawn, Eri­ca, Bioshock, Tell­tale Games, Jour­ney, Ban­der­snatch, Days Gone, Por­tal, and more. (That casu­al game Mark jokes about is Simon’s Cat Pop Time.)

Some arti­cles and oth­er sources:

You can also read some lists of games that sup­pos­ed­ly have the best plots at Games­Radar, Ranker, and The Gamer.

Don is also a pod­cast­er, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been a host of Geek­sOn and now on The Big Fat Gay Pod­cast. Here’s info about the Wheel of Time TV show. One rel­e­vant Geek­sOn episode is #102.  Here’s info about the Wheel of Time TV show.

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

 

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The Allure of Puzzlement: Pretty Much Pop #34 w/ Adal Rifai on Escape Rooms and Other Puzzling Pastimes

in Games, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 11th, 2020

The com­ic and the trag­ic are well-estab­lished modes with­in enter­tain­ment, but what about the puz­zling? Rid­dles may have been a chief pas­time in days of yore (well, they’re fea­tured in Oedi­pus and The Hob­bit, any­way), but does this way of being enter­tained have a place in today’s age of mass media?

Impro­vis­er and pod­cast­er Adal Rifai joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss his love of escape rooms, rid­dles, and oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for puz­zle­ment. We dis­cuss lat­er­al vs. algo­rith­mic think­ing, group dynam­ics, com­par­isons to impro­vi­sa­tion and triv­ia, rid­dle types, video games, and more. Some puz­zle-rel­e­vant films we touch on include Escape Room, Cube, The Game, and Mid­night Mad­ness.

Some resources we used to pre­pare include:

Adal’s two oth­er pod­casts are Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern and Sib­lings Pec­u­lar. Fol­low him @adalrifai. He per­forms reg­u­lar­ly on Whirled News Tonight at Chicago’s IO The­ater.

Every Pret­ty Much Pop episode includes bonus, post-episode dis­cus­sion, and this time Adal stayed around for a lit­tle more on escape rooms (can they engage all five sens­es?) and quite a bit more on pod­cast­ing, includ­ing the paraso­cial rela­tion­ships that lis­ten­ers may have with pod­cast hosts. This was suf­fi­cient­ly fun that we’d like to share it with all of you, in hopes that you might then want to hear this for all our our episodes by sup­port­ing us at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast (prettymuchpop.com) is curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Updating Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” to Cover Female Action Heroes–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #33

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 5th, 2020

This week’s guest Vi Burlew has arisen, a shin­ing fig­ure clad in mail, car­ry­ing aloft a shim­mer­ing broadsword to bring your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt this top­ic about the hero’s jour­ney.

This gen­er­al plot struc­ture dat­ing back to ancient myth was detailed by Joseph Camp­bell and famous­ly and delib­er­ate­ly plun­dered to cre­ate the plot of the orig­i­nal Star Wars. So how has this evolved with the increas­ing intro­duc­tion of female heroes in recent, large­ly Dis­ney-owned block­busters? We talk Won­der Woman and Cap­tain Mar­vel, antic­i­pate Black Wid­ow and the new Mulan, but also bring in Lord of the Rings, Har­ry Pot­ter, The Wiz­ard of Oz, Lit­tle Women, Jane Eyre, Work­ing Girl, and of course Road House.

What com­pli­cates this issue is that a dis­tinct “hero­ine’s jour­ney” had already been plot­ted in response to Camp­bell by fem­i­nist thinkers at least back to Mau­reen Mur­dock in 1990. The key dif­fer­ence is that while the hero achieves the goal and comes home in tri­umph, the hero­ine then real­izes that there was some­thing self-betray­ing about the tri­umph and requires an addi­tion­al step of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with her ori­gins. This is like if Luke real­ized after destroy­ing the Death Star that he was a mois­ture farmer all along and had to come to terms with that. (Maybe he could actu­al­ly grieve for his dead aunt and uncle and his best friend Big­gs!)

It’s been argued that Har­ry Pot­ter’s jour­ney more close­ly resem­bles that hero­ine’s jour­ney, where­as, say, Eowyn from Lord of the Rings (“I am no man!”) is a more tra­di­tion­al hero. Action films of today may fea­ture female heroes, but when this is done thought­ful­ly (not just by tak­ing an action hero and swap­ping the gen­der with­out fur­ther alter­ation), then film­mak­ers may tweak the struc­ture of the myth to include some gen­der-spe­cif­ic ele­ments and per­haps blend the two types of jour­ney. These new vari­ants that may or may not res­onate in the way that caused the orig­i­nal Star Wars/Campbell for­mu­la to become so pop­u­lar.

Two arti­cles we specif­i­cal­ly cite in our dis­cus­sion are:

For some basics about the jour­neys described by Joseph Camp­bell, Mau­reen Mur­dok, and a dif­fer­ent ver­sion by Vic­to­ria Lynn Schmidt, see the Wikipedia entries on Hero’s Jour­ney and Hero­ine’s Jour­ney.

In addi­tion, The Hero­ine Jour­neys Project web­site fea­tures numer­ous arti­cles about female heroes in media. We also looked at this red­dit thread, which among oth­er things pro­vides some oppos­ing views to those of our guests about the Star Wars fran­chise char­ac­ter Rey.

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

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