Pop Songs with Narrative: Pretty Much Pop (#69) Discusses Tunes Ranging from Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” to “The Pina Colada Song” with Songwriter/Author Rod Picott

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 18th, 2020

Plen­ty of songs pur­port to tell sto­ries, and the nar­ra­tive bal­lad of course has a long enough his­to­ry that the two forms cer­tain­ly aren’t alien. But how do our lis­ten­ing prac­tices con­di­tioned by pop music jibe with rec­og­niz­ing and under­stand­ing nar­ra­tive?

Singer/songwriter and short sto­ry author Rod Picott joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about clas­sics by writ­ers like Bob Dylan and John­ny Cash, for­ma­tive night­mares like “Leader of the Pack” and “Escape (The Pina Cola­da Song), bor­der­line cas­es like “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and more. We also con­sid­er how this form relates to musi­cal the­ater, music videos, sound­tracks, and com­mer­cials.

We tried to stick to pop­u­lar songs, but most of us are pret­ty old. You can lis­ten and read the lyrics if you’re not fol­low­ing:

Why these songs? Well, we found a few lists online:

Hear Mark inter­view Rod on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music. Learn more at rodpicott.com.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This time, an update on Rod’s music plus polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion and more.

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.

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Does Every Picture Tell a Story? A Conversation with Artist Joseph Watson for Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #51

in Art, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | July 9th, 2020

Sto­ry­telling is an essen­tial part of Las Vegas artist Joseph Wat­son’s paint­ing method­ol­o­gy, whether he’s cre­at­ing city scenes or pub­lic sculp­ture or chil­dren’s illus­tra­tions. So how does the nar­ra­tive an author may have in mind affect the view­er, and is this dif­fer­ent for dif­fer­ent types of art?

Joseph is per­haps best known as the illus­tra­tor of the Go, Go, GRETA! book series and does online stream­ing of draw­ing ses­sions through Insta­gram and Face­book. On this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop, he joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to explore the pic­ture-nar­ra­tive con­nec­tion and more gen­er­al­ly how know­ing about the cre­ation of an image affects our recep­tion of it, touch­ing on Guer­ni­ca, Where the Wild Things Are, Dr. Seuss, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, and more.

You can browse Joseph’s work at josephwatsonart.com, and you’re real­ly going to want in par­tic­u­lar to look at a cou­ple of the works that we con­sid­er explic­it­ly:

Oth­er sources we looked at in prepa­ra­tion for this dis­cus­sion include:

Fol­low Joseph on Insta­gram @josephwatsonart; also Twit­ter and Face­book.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This week, it includes a par­tic­u­lar­ly philo­soph­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tion of the notion of escapism and how dif­fer­ent that is from so-called seri­ous pur­suits. Is this just a ver­sion of the high-low cul­ture dis­tinc­tion that we large­ly reject­ed in episode one? 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.

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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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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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Sportscaster Dave Revsine (Big 10 Network) Joins Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast to Discuss the Role of Sports in Pop Culture

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports | January 2nd, 2020

How is spec­ta­tor sports dif­fer­ent from oth­er types of enter­tain­ment? Dave Rev­sine (lead stu­dio host for the Big Ten Net­work and for­mer ESPN anchor) joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss the var­i­ous sources of appeal, team iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, exist­ing in a sports-filled world as a non-fan, watch­ing vs. play­ing, human inter­est sto­ries, sports films, and more.

Some of the arti­cles we looked at to pre­pare includ­ed:

The first two links above were part of a series of 2016 edi­to­ri­als in the Wash­ing­ton Post coin­cid­ing with March Mad­ness. As the whole series is def­i­nite­ly worth a look, just fol­low the links at the bot­tom of those arti­cles.

Dave wrote a book you might want to look at called The Open­ing Kick­off: The Tumul­tuous Birth of a Foot­ball Nation. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @BTNDaveRevsine.

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 Stand-Up Comedians Our Modern Day Philosophers? Pretty Much Pop #17 Considers

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | October 30th, 2019

In an age where the aver­age per­son can’t name a liv­ing aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­pher, it’s been claimed that the social role of an indi­vid­ual orat­ing to the mass­es and get­ting them to think about fun­da­men­tal ques­tions is actu­al­ly not per­formed by aca­d­e­mics at all, and cer­tain­ly not by politi­cians and reli­gious fig­ures who need to keep on mes­sage in one way or oth­er, but by stand-up come­di­ans.

This is the premise of the Mod­ern Day Philoso­phers pod­cast, where come­di­an Daniel Lobell inter­views some of our best known and loved comics. How­ev­er, as Daniel has dis­cov­ered in the course of that show, only some come­di­ans are try­ing to express orig­i­nal views on the world. Many are just try­ing to tell good jokes. So do the rou­tines of those more idea-based come­di­ans count as phi­los­o­phy? Or does telling the whole truth (instead of a fun­ny one-side or exag­ger­at­ed take on truth) rule out being fun­ny? 

Daniel joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er (of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast), actor Eri­ca Spyres, and sci-fi author/linguist Bri­an Hirt to con­sid­er ques­tions of authen­tic­i­ty and offen­sive humor.  We look at how philoso­phers and comics can use some of the same com­mu­nica­tive tools like invent­ing new words, irony, and auto­bi­og­ra­phy. We touch on Dave Chap­pelle, Bill Burr, Han­nah Gads­by, George Car­lin, Emo Phillips, Rod­ney Dan­ger­field, Louis CK, Between Two Ferns, Berke­ley, Socrates, Kierkegaard, and more.

A few sources:

Find out about Dan­ny’s pod­casts, graph­ic nov­el, album, and videos at dannylobell.com.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion (includ­ing some out-takes from the inter­view where we got too off-top­ic) 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.

 

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Is Opera Part of Pop Culture? Pretty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

in Music, Opera, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Theatre | October 23rd, 2019

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Opera used to be a cen­tral part of Euro­pean pop cul­ture, Pavarot­ti was as big a pop star as they come. But still, it’s now the quin­tes­sen­tial art-form of the wealthy and snob­bish. What gives?

Guest Sean Spyres from Spring­field Region­al Opera joins his sis­ter Eri­ca along with Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss oper­a’s place in cul­ture (includ­ing its film appear­ances), how it’s dif­fer­ent from music the­ater, the chal­lenges it faces and how it might become more rel­e­vant.

Some arti­cles:

Watch the Shaw­shank Redemp­tion opera scene or per­haps the Pret­ty Woman scene. What Is pop opera? Here’s Ranker’s list of artists. Paul Potts sings that famous song on Britain’s Got Tal­ent. Plus, check out albums from broth­er Michael Spyres. Yes, you can hear an opera-singer sing “Take Me Out to the Ball­game,” but you prob­a­bly should­n’t.

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.

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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.

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