#pop culture studies

[marzipanandminutiae]

quotes by Victorians about the 1920s view of their generation's women

"We are frequently told that the Victorian woman...generally behaved like a pampered and neurotic infant. This is all moonshine. I do not think that I ever saw a woman faint before I came to London in 1869, and not often after then...they enjoyed a hearty laugh, and a good many of them a contest of wits with any man." -Nineteenth Century, a Monthly Review, 1927 (written by a man born in 1850)

"What queer ideas the girl of 1929 has about the Victorian period- they are not a bit true...Marriage was by no means the end and aim of our existence. Oxford and Cambridge claimed quite a few of us after school days were over. We had great ideas about 'life' and what it all might mean to us." -St. Petersburg Times, 1929 (written by a woman born in 1853)

"True, debutantes were chaperoned at balls. But that fact did not prevent them from dancing as frequently as they chose with their favorite partners. The idea that girls in the Victorian era spent their days sewing seams and practicing scales is another fallacy." -Gettysburg Times, July 1, 1927 (quote from the Dowager Lady Raglan, Ethel Jemima Somerset, who lived from 1857 to 1940)

[biglisbonnews]

New Stanford course to examine one (1) Taylor Swift song Stanford students will be able to get their pop music studies on with a class that digs deep into a Taylor Swift song. Datebook: For its winter 2023 quarter, the university is offering a new course called "All Too Well (Ten Week Version)," which offers "an in-depth analysis" of the Grammy-winning singer's 2012 hit "All Too Well."  — Read the rest https://boingboing.net/2023/03/13/new-stanford-course-to-examine-taylor-swift-song.html

[nicholasandriani]

Feb 6th: Dear Diary, Mew gave birth… Pokemon Birthdays and the art of Media History

It’s February 6th, a day like any other, right? WRONG! On this day, a momentous event occurred in the world of Pokémon. On this day, the world was blessed with the birth of one of the most powerful and iconic creatures of all time: Mewtwo. That’s right, folks. February 6th is the day Mew finally pushed Mewtwo out into the world, after what was probably a pretty intense nine months (let’s just…

[psqqa]

yes, yes i know edgeworth’s big wet eyes and loser boy personality have captivated us all, but listen. listen.

phoenix wright

phoenix “genuinely unable to reconcile the girl on the stand with the girl he dated for eight months, a cognitive dissonance so profound it’s ultimately explained by them being literally two different people, but which he first sits with for five years and does not talk about at any point to anyone” wright

phoenix “don’t mention that name to me. i don’t want to talk about it. i don’t want to think about it. i am just going to keep myself in this state of perpetual crisis mode focus on other people’s problems until eventually i die and get to hang out with mia on the astral plane and never have to deal with any of these emotions ever again” wright

phoenix “overnight loses his career and reputation and sense of identity while gaining an adopted, probably pretty traumatized eight-year-old daughter, and rather than leaning on his friends for help, or getting therapy, or taking any time to process any of this, he *checks notes* spends seven years dedicating all his free time and energy to investigating the weird fucking circumstances around it and maintains a friendship with the guy he suspects was behind it all” wright

phoenix "runs across a burning bridge and falls through it, half a day after the game establishes that he is terrified of heights, because his friend is on the other side of that bridge" wright

phoenix “i sure felt surprised. maybe i had my poker face on” wright

phoenix “looking back on it that was actually a pretty dark period in my life” wright

phoenix “don’t ask me how i got started. i don’t remember” wright

phoenix “only you stood still, your eyes calmly watching” wright

phoenix “sometimes, life just sucks” wright

just

phoenix wright

crunchiest man in the world

and all i wanna do is chew and chew and chew on him

[lackadaisycal-art]

Just one more thing...

[celestial-depths]

Poor Things and Born Sexy Yesterday

(spoilers for Poor Things)

I stumbled on a discussion on whether Bella Baxter from the movie Poor Things (2023) is a representation of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope coined by video essayist Pop Culture Detective, who defines it as a mostly fantasy and sci-fi adjacent trope of a regular human man falling in love with a beautiful, otherworldly woman who, through some plot quirk or another, has no knowledge of social norms and no sexual or romantic past. Even though he is brutally average, he is able to win her love simply because he is the first (human) man she connects with and thus everything that's basic about him is impressive to her. Some examples of the trope given by Pop Culture Detective in his video essay are Leeloo from Fifth Element (the physically grown yet mentally child-like alien creature who falls in love with a taxi driver in a wifebeater) and Madison from Splash (a clothes-aversive mermaid who thinks that Tom Hanks is the most enchanting man in the world). I love Pop Culture Detective's work, and the Born Sexy Yesterday video essay was a cultural reset in my personal history. I saw the video when it premiered six years ago, but it has never fully left my mind, so of course I immediately thought of it when I saw Poor Things a couple of weeks ago. The movie certainly touches on the same themes that the Born Sexy Yesterday is made of. However, I think that the movie is an intentional subversion and a satire of the trope rather than a sincere execution of it.

The main character of the movie Bella Baxter starts out as a grotesquely literal version of the trope, as she is literally a newborn in the shape of a conventionally attractive woman who is being actively shielded from the influence of the outside world. She has the brain of a baby salvaged from the fresh corpse of a deceased pregnant woman, planted inside the skull of the reanimated body of the aforementioned woman as an experiment done by the unorthodox doctor Godwin Baxter. He keeps her locked inside his house and controls every aspect of her life, so when he invites the young doctor Max McCandles to join his research, McCandles is served what is essentially the perfect Born Sexy Yesterday experience: an exclusive access to a beautiful and naive young woman who is in a prime position of being groomed into whatever her keepers wish her to become.

Or so they would think.

A sincere Born Sexy Yesterday would be fully fascinated by this power dynamic and probably leave her here to be romanced by McCandles for the rest of the film. The audience would be expected to assume McCandles's perspective and indulge in the fantasy of falling in love with the untainted woman who has neither the life experience nor the critical thinking skills needed to question him.

But, fortunately, the movie doesn't remain here. After the first act, the movie switches its point of view from McCandles to Bella and starts putting her experiences to the forefront. She starts developing interests that absolutely do not align with the wants and needs of the men around her, and she begins to learn things that clash with the essence of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope. Soon, she has grown into a headstrong, independent, sexually experienced, intellectually curious woman who had zero interest in entertaining the whims of men and who intends to live fully for herself and herself alone: an absolute antithesis of the clueless and subservient blank slate the trope would require her to be. My reading of the film is that it's an intentional satire and an autopsy of the BSY trope and the gender politics that gave birth to it. It criticizes the men who entertain fantasies like it by making them look like absolute losers, urging us to ponder on what the hell is wrong with these creeps who see nothing wrong with drooling over a woman who is mentally a toddler instead of their intellectual equal.

The movie also reads as a critique of how women are socialized into a patriarchy. Godwin treats Bella just like a possession of his. Her body and her life are completely under his control from the moment she is "born" (another act in which neither Bella nor the woman she was born from had any say in), which isn't dissimilar to how a lot of fathers view their daughters. He wishes to keep her under constant supervision until the end of her life, until she protests and gets him to change his mind. When he asks McCandles to marry her, the two men treat the proposed marriage as a contract between the two of them rather than as a contract between McCandles and Bella herself. Again, this isn't too different to what marriage between men and women has meant throughout history.

McCandles is romantically interested in Bella even though he is fully aware of the fact that she is mentally a child. He seems to be looking forward to starting a sexual relationship with her after they are wed, as if the seal of marriage would make the intellectual disparity between them any less iffy. This bears resemblance to the way men in the real world prey on young girls with little to no sexual experience and whose brains are not fully developed because they're easier to control than grown women. I don't think that McCandles's hypocrisy is lost on the film. He agrees to marry Bella almost in the same breath as expressing his desire to keep her safe from other men, as if his desire to bed a person who is intellectually at the level of a five-year-old was any better than theirs.

When Bella chooses to leave Godwin's house to explore the world, the two men immediately replace her with a new experiment, showing that they were never truly interested in her as a person. They wanted the eternal baby, the thing that they can cage and control, and not the person who can think and learn and disagree with them. This exemplifies how disposable women are when they no longer serve their limited purpose in a patriarchy, and how replaceable people are when they are primarily viewed as bodies to be used. (Sidenote: I do think that Godwin and McCandles eventually learn to appreciate Bella for the person she is and that they both grow to be better people by the end of the film, but I still attest that these two are total creeps at least by this point of the movie.)

And then there's the supreme loser of the movie: the sleazy lawyer Wedderburn, who slithers into Bella's life and convinces her to run away with him. He is the darkest example of the kind of person who is drawn to inexperienced women like the ones represented in BSY movies - a predator who finds pleasure in the prospect of getting to corrupt and consume an innocent. He intends to take advantage of Bella and abandon her once he's gotten his fill only to find himself choking on his prey, who turns out not to be the malleable, naive creature he thought her to be.

This is the point where I think the movie goes from simply critiquing the BSY trope and everything it represents to successfully subverting it. The characters who embody the BSY trope don't really evolve. The movies they appear in are not really interested in their inner worlds and individual experiences beyond whatever serves the interests of the male protagonists. These characters are projections of male fantasies, so there really isn't a way for them to exist without centering men. This is not the case with Bella, who quickly grows into her own woman who is only tangentially interested in the men around her.

The bright side of Bella's condition is that she isn't just unaware of the ways of the world, but that she's also unaffected by the years of patriarchal conditioning that most normal women are burdened with. She literally has no shame, no internalized misogyny, no history of crushing blows to her sense of self-worth, and no looming knowledge of societal norms society. She has skipped the part in life where she is constantly bombarded with demands to make herself smaller and more palatable, to hate herself, to think of her body and the way it finds pleasure as something disgusting and abnormal, to treat other women as competition, and to think of herself as so much less important than men that she must pursue their validation beyond all else. Because of this blessed defect, she is free in a very rare way.

Wedderburn absolutely cannot handle that. When Bella first gets to know him, he paints a flattering picture of himself as a proud social deviant who gleefully eschews the rules of polite society. However, when faced with the actually deviant Bella, who flatly refuses to obey and center him, Wedderburn is revealed to be a phony. He is not a genuine libertine. He does not want to live in a truly free world with a free spirit like Bella, because he is a pathetic, insecure little man who only likes women in scenarios where the power balance is stacked against them. In my opinion, this is a direct shot fired at the BSY trope and its average enjoyers: if your ideal woman is someone who is many steps behind you in terms of mental capacity and experience, you are quite pitiful and would not stand a chance in an equal playing field.

It's hilarious how Wedderburn loses his mind when Bella starts exhibiting the kind of behavior he himself has proudly displayed earlier in the film: having multiple sexual partners, keeping sex and feelings separate, not falling in love with him or treating him like he's special, dropping him once she's had enough of him, and generally living life in an unconventional way. Again, the movie is pointing out the hypocrisy in men who fetishize inexperienced women while bragging about their own sexual conquests.

The part in the movie where Bella becomes a sex worker delivers the final blow to whatever is left of the BSY trope in her story, because the trope relies on sexual exclusivity and the fetishization of virginity. By having many partners and gaining lots of sexual experience out of her own free will, Bella stops fitting the ideal of the untouched woman who can be deflowered and exclusively possessed by the male protagonist. Also, through the conversations between Bella and the other sex workers, the movie finds another way to address the politics behind certain men's sexual fantasies of women - such as pointing out that some men enjoy sex with women more the less the women themselves enjoy it. It's a stray observation that the movie doesn't get deep into, but it has its place in the tapestry of the general theme of what desire reveals about people.

Finally, there's Alfie, who gives Bella (and us) an idea of the kind of life Bella's "mother" lived - as well as the kind of life Bella herself might be living had she grown up the normal way. It seems hellish. She'd be living under the tyranny of her awful husband, under a constant threat of violence, under absolute bodily control. Alfie wants to impregnate her against her will and to mutilate her genitals to deprive her of pleasure, and there's nothing that she could do about it because he is her husband and thus legally allowed to lord over her. She sees a terrifying glimpse of the role even privileged women like her have in this world: objects who exist solely for the pleasure of the men who own them. I would venture to say that the same description lies in the underbelly of the BSY trope.

I am happy that the movie doesn't take its sweet time to revel in the horror of this part of the story like so many other movies that address the oppression of women do. Instead, Bella stays with Alfie just enough time to say a hard and a well-informed no to his bullshit before getting on her merry way.

I think Poor Things is such a great example of taking a trope and exploring its implications in a way that goes beyond just pointing it out or parodying it by simply repeating it.

[mllebleue]

In academic circles, such as popular culture studies and media studies, superheroes are indeed considered as a SFF subgenre.

don't remember if I've asked about this before (tried searching the blog and found nothing) but does a story with superheroes and supervillains count as sci fi? if so, I'd like to suggest Hench by Natalia Zina Walschotts.

hello! this is now queued.

there’s some variability depending on the origin of the superheroes’ and -villains’ powers, but anything where there’s some kind of pseudoscientific explanation for it (e.g., mutants, industrial accident, aliens) I would generally consider to be sci-fi.

[nirrvana]

medieval chappell is my favorite chappell ⚜️⚔️

[hunxi-after-hours]

"Nevertheless, to maintain popularity and financial success, xuanhuan writers often walk a fine line between creative storytelling/dreaming and market demands. This tension between creative exploration, subversion and commodification underscores the complex nature of xuanhuan fantasy fiction as both a product shaped by commercial considerations and a catalyst for unsettling dominant narratives through the creation of alternative worlds...Underneath xuanhuan's beautified oriental spectacles, these grassroots reimaginations of tianxia reflect a crisis in contemporary society, one that cannot be satisfied by official nationalism and patriotism."

—Cui Qian, "Reinventing Tianxia Coming-of-Age in Xuanhuan Fantasy Fiction," Digital China: Creativity and Community in the Sinocybersphere

[angelsdean]

I am having too many thoughts abt Dean and Hatchet Man tonight. I don't know if i can articulate them rn but I will try.

I am thinking so many things, like how David Yaeger was just a normal mechanic before he was killed (by his friends??) in a prank gone wrong. How the name Yaeger means "hunter" and Dean is a hunter. How in Mint Condition, Dean is also paralleled with another character who's first name starts with a "D", Dirk Winchell (sidenote: I always knew abt the Dirk parallel but I did not realize until looking it up today that his last name is so close to Winchester!)

And I am thinking about how Hatchet Man is basically a vengeful spirit of a once innocent human (David "Hunter" the mechanic) who didn't deserve to die, but now in death has gone the way of many victims of violent deaths and become crazed and vengeful. And I'm thinking about Dean saying his favorite movie in the franchise is All Saints Day Four: Hatchet Man Lives. And how Season Four of SPN starts with Dean's resurrection (he lives!). Thinking about Dean telling Dirk, "Ah well, growing up it was a… it was always nice to check out once in a while. I like to watch movies where I know the bad guy is going to lose." Yet throughout the episode we see Dean FANBOY over Hatchet Man and clearly root for him while watching, excited when he's on screen hunting down the people that wronged him. Like if Hatchet Man is "the bad guy" he clearly isn't losing because he keeps coming back. And Dean specifically likes the one where he Lives.

I see it two ways, simultaneously, because both can exist together. On the one hand I think empathy boy Dean empathizes with Hatchet Man on some level, and perhaps sees shades of himself in David Yaeger. On the other hand, I think these movies provide that element of escapism from his real life that Dean craves. In the Real World, Dean would have to hunt someone like Hatchet Man. He would also be on the receiving end of the hatchet which is not so fun. Hatchet Man in Real Life is scary and dangerous and a danger to other innocent people. But on TV it's all fake. Dean can revel in the suspense and the thrill of it. When it's a movie he "like[s] it when they run." Whereas in real life he's either the one doing the running or he's trying to save others being chased by vengeful spirits (as we literally see play out later in the episode).

Sam doesn't understand why Dean watches these movies when "our life is a scary movie." But I think that's precisely why Dean enjoys these movies. Not just because the bad guys often lose but because even when they don't, even when they keep coming back, Dean is still not responsible for them, not responsible for keeping everyone safe, not the one being chased. He can "check out" and "escape" into these fictional world where there are no expectations placed on him, where he is not a character in the story, where he can simply be a spectator, an audience member. It's not on him to save the town from Hatchet Man, for once.

[thorough-witness-enjoyer]

Just stopping by to say I miss Te’Qal 💔 Justice for the Qugu and Te’Qal, I’m sorry the Witness hates to see cephalopods prosper

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 4 thoughts

i thought this episode sounded interesting! the plot was kinda: wasn't it fucked up when the vietnam war happened? and i was sitting here like, yeah, quite famously it was pretty fucked up. still, an interesting exploration into trauma and the american role of imperialism

the first thing i wrote was "a lot of people in this show fall asleep watching the tv but personally i have never done that". am i immune to the Curse or something?

so this guy who is a sleep doctor sees a fire and he calls the fire department right away, and everyone is evacuating, and we see a dude in the hallway with a suspicious smile and an even more suspicious scar across his neck. i am used to the episode structure by now, so i knew this was our mystery man of the week.

but the firemen get to the burning fellow's house and there is no fire! despite it looking so real to him that he actually burned to death... it's not there! well huh! must be our mystery man can psychically project fire

cutscene to mulder's place and it again looks like an entirely new set for his apartment. again, i ask, i'm not crazy, right?? can someone else confirm that this is an entirely different space than what we saw before?

(i hope we don't see scully in a new space as well- i thought her apartment was so cute in s1)

he gets a newspaper and a tape of the call dropped off at his door so he runs to skinner and begs with his big sad wet eyes to please let him take the case. and skinner is like maybe. but go transcribe a bunch of wiretaps first. so THAT is why he's always listening to weird stuff!

BUT WAIT! who enters our fair scene...? but a NEW CHARACTER? he is a guy who looks like he crawled out of a frat house where he majored in lacrosse and business... he introduces himself as alex and says that this is HIS case... mulder is PISSED he's all "i work alone >:(" but he can't shake the dude off... hmm.

(i recall seeing a post about people slash shipping mulder with a character in s2- i saw this post way before i started watching the show, so i only noted it in my passing interest of fandom history- and i'm wondering if this is the fellow they were referring to. in the same post i saw mulder in a speedo which i guess we'll get to in time)

scully's back at the academy!!! teaching another autopsy class! boy they must have a steady stream of bodies coming in for this. but an urgent call is coming from a "george hale" and she leaves class to go answer...

and it's mulder!!!!! he has a code name!!! he asks her to fly up to new york and do an autopsy and she's like "i'm in class til 4:30" and he's like "that's fine, we'll wrap it up for you and you can come up at 5!" and she sighs and. agrees.

now. again. this was shocking to me. mulder cannot have anyone else draw his blood or do an autopsy it HAS to be his friend scully. and she WILL get on a flight and do it. this is SICK and TWISTED how she will do anything for him.

mulder was being a real jerk to alex and alex said "i don't appreciate being ditched like a bad date" and to my shock and dismay i found myself agreeing with this new character... mulder WAS being unreasonable... i mean we knew he's been moody lately but this was downright hostile

(mulder walks in while scully puts an organ into a scale) "spleen or pancreas?" "stomach" <- LMAO his ass did NOT pass anatomy!

and they're all so smiley and happy to see each other when. scully sees this man behind him. and her smile fades SO fast.

(he tries to shake her hand but given that her hands are covered in stomach she wisely brushes him by. it may have seemed like a diss but i assume he doesn't want gore on his hands)

alex is GAGGING over the body (me too) so mulder gets realllllll close to scully to block out his amateur hour buffoonery...

(y'all need to not be that close and looking at each other in such a manner in front of a dead guy... or do it more for my sake)

she's whispering that it seems his body believed he burned to death despite there being no burns on him!

we see another guy with a same scar on his neck as the first!!! he knows the first guy and it seems initially that their reunion is wholesome... until preacher (scar man one) admits to killing the sleep doctor... and then things get... wild

"holy fuck", i mumbled to myself while also writing down the same phrase in my notes, as a blood soaked family appeared in the room, shooting the character we just met for his crimes. that escalated with an extreme quickness. it was clear that whatever traumas he had inflicted upon others in vietnam were being returned in equal measure via the psychic force of this preacher character

then we go back to mulder and alex, who i thought was handling mulder's hater energy quite well, all things considered. but little did i know what was to come...

so sleep doctor, the guy who just died, and preacher all knew each other... interesting... they were stationed at basic training together...

we get a visual on mulder's new source after deep throat's passing! he says he has no desire to be there, and that their mutual friend deep throat died for what he believed in, which he does not want to do. which is of course totally fair. at the end of the day the FBI is just a paycheck for some of these folks.

the sleep doctor was revealed to be doing experiments to make super advanced soldiers who don't need sleep so maybe that gives you the power to kill people magically. we can't really rule it out.

preacher then makes two cops kill EACH OTHER with his sorcery

back to scully cam <3 she's got her glasses on at the computer <3 she's got little yellow earrings in that look like flowers <3 and she thinks its so cool that they cut part of this guy's brain out and now he hasn't slept in 24 years... nerd

they're on the phone with each other and it is SO SAD because why. why can't they just be together! it's not fair. she says it sounds like his new partner is working out and he's like yeah he's okay...

"must be nice to not have someone poking holes in all your theories" "yeah, no idea how i put up with you for so long" and they're smiling into the phone while saying this

now, i won't lie. this scene, of all the scenes, was the first to bring tears to my eyes in the course of my streaming this show. because now we have seen what they'll do for each other and they're TAUNTING me by dangling it in front of my face. and i cannot stand it. i feel sick at the thought.

anyway back to mulder and his new partner. who i feel is too good to be true because he's willing to believe spooky mulder's theories. but they found another guy who also had the sleep surgery and he tells them that they went on a rampage committing atrocities in vietnam which was. very heavy for the alien show. but it is something that americans often pretend just didn't happen so i thought it was interesting that the idea of accountability was being explored in fiction.

so there's one more guy involved with the sleep surgery, and he's coming into town, so alex and mulder have to sprint down to the station and try and find him. they're really giving it a sprint, too. mulder is a track star. don't think i've forgotten

and mulder does see the guy they're looking for but preacher is behind him and shoots mulder! he falls to the ground! no, i yelled to my screen! not another bullet in mulder!

... but he gets up. the whole thing was a trick of preacher! it never actually happened!

alex is like dude wtf. and this is where he says "i want to believe" and this where i made the very astute note "i don't trust this guy, sorry"

so finally they find preacher still alive, and mulder tells alex to help out his victim, while mulder runs off to find him. mulder sees how much pain he is in, and tells him that maybe his pain can lessen if he testifies about what was done to him, and it seems they've come to an understanding...

until alex enters, pulls his gun up, so preacher also pulls his gun up, and alex and shoots him! preacher is dead

mulder looks deeply upset by this. he tells alex that he did the right thing, but you can tell he doesn't believe it in the slightest. i would venture to guess that this is when all the trust he had begun to place in alex vanishes. he seems entirely deflated at the unnecessary loss of life.

he goes back to the car and notices someone stole the secret files that his informant gave him, and he punches the car. this is simply too many L's for one day, and i sympathize.

but scully's freaking out too, because her office was broken into and all her stuff looked through! so what in the name of hell is going on here?!?!? ah, i realize, it is this alex fool... "i know ur related somehow" i wrote ominously in my quotes

and boy, i was right! the narrative the writers were going for was not lost on me! because remember skinner's old sidekick the cigarette guy? and how they had a sort of breakup moment? well, alex is reporting to him, and they have the file he stole from mulder!!!!!

alex says that scully is a "big problem" to which i say: keep talking like that, you overgrown varsity jock, and you're gonna have a big problem with my fucking hands catching your throat

anyway, interesting episode. i didn't want to like alex and then i did because i felt bad for him for being subjected to mulder's attitude and then i hated his guts by the end and reluctantly admitted to myself that mulder's crankiness was justified. i hope he won't stick around for long but i have a feeling he will.

also, they need to stop taunting me by dangling a real mulder and scully reunion in front of my head and then ripping it away. i had TEARS! in my eyeballs! i was sighing wistfully! it was sick!!!!!! this is my free time i'm spending here pining after these fools! it's me, the fan, asking for fan service!!!

[yeoubbi]

finally comfirmed all my summer courses so heres the schedule!

for context: im studying at Korea University in Seoul for a 6 week semester abroad.

Period 1 - North Korea: History, Society, Politics

Period 2 - Media & Popular Culture in South Korea

Period 5 - Beginning Korean 1

im very interested to see how the class on North Korea will be, i have started some of the recommended reading as well as doing my own research & finding friends in the class and looking forward to it. definitely not a course i could ever find/take at a university here at home.

media & pop culture also super excited for bc i want to dive deeper into studying pop culture, performance art, fandom spaces and more within the realm soso bad

korean 1! i do have some korean learning and time in the country under my belt already but ive never taken an actual class (my speaking is very casual/informal bc of who/where i learned from lol) i feel like i definitely have missed or not fully understood a lot of grammar in the past also so i wanna kind restart the learning process w more structure :)

if anyone has questions abt the classes/program/study abroad/ etc lmk and ill do my best to answer !! excited to be back and motivated and study the things i love after a pretty difficult spring semester

[devilsskettle]

i think some of the popularity that meta horror has garnered is a little bit disingenuous tbqh even though i do like some of the movies that have come out of the subgenre, people don’t realize that the foundation of the slasher genre was established in the 60s/70s and a lot of the 80s movies that have become so classic were already riffing off of the tropes established by those movies before full fledged meta took off. the idea to make friday the 13th was sparked by the commercial success of halloween. the original script for slumber party massacre was a parody of the genre and the movie retains much of that humor which is referential to past slashers by nature. + it intentionally uses typical slasher tropes around gender and sexuality to bring forward the concerns of teenage girls. is that not something that meta horror is frequently touted as doing? child’s play is like a slasher, “except —” which is what a lot of meta horror comedies do now (“slasher except it’s a possessed doll” is not that far off from “slasher except it’s freaky friday” and whatnot). this isn’t to say that scream isn’t foundational to what the slasher genre evolved into or that contemporary meta slashers aren’t doing something interesting but i also think they tend to lean towards cynicism towards the movies they’re deriving their themes from + they’re not even as different as they think they are from “classic” 80s movies that already are borrowing from classic slashers which in turn borrowed from even older horror (for example, in halloween, laurie is watching the thing from another world from the 50s which was adapted into the now classic john carpenter’s the thing in the 80s). and of course many of these older horror movies were adapted from literature which also inspired more literature. like the shelley/byron/polidori scary story writing contest is now legendary but also you don’t get the shining without the haunting of hill house (and you don’t get the haunting of hill house without turn of the screw, for example) and the shining is probably one of the most referenced movies by other media of all time. horror has always been an intertextual genre let’s stop pretending it didn’t become “self aware” until 1996

[briefcasejuice]

unfortunately i have the kind of autism that makes people have to explain things to me/i have to bounce my ideas around with people who know things before thoughts become anything for me

[repurposedmeatlocker]

I gotta make a post about this. It will drive me insane otherwise. But I really REALLY like the way in which Beavis and Butt-Head incorporates the music video commentary segments within the context of the actual show.

On one hand, it is indeed a way for musicians and creators to be promoted, albeit in a satirical and tongue-in-cheek way, through the banter of two ignorant fifteen year old boys. But this does not mean these segments are floating around unrelated. Actually, the commentary segments are completely intwined within the world of the show. They are not just used as opportunities to make pop-culture references and trash the musicians, but as a jumping-off point for Beavis and Butt-Head to get into off-topic tangents. Ranging from simple questions to sparse recollections of their home-life. I can't say this definitely since I haven't exactly been keeping track, but it appears to me that most of the sparse information out there about their moms and family come from statements made during these segments. Then there are also all those moments during music videos where they aren't even paying attention to what is on-screen and instead are doing stuff like looking at magazines, trying to cook, fighting, falling asleep, etc.

This all is such an odd yet interesting window into their lives, and how much it revolves around their television. I don't think this is unintentional at all. The characters are first introduced in the pilot, as being parked in front of their TV getting off on a woman advertising exercise equipment. Mike Judge is indeed making some kind of commentary here regarding the modern dependence on TV and cable television (especially in the context of the 90s when the show came out). At the same time though, I don't feel like this is a completely mind-numbing experience in the case of Beavis and Butt-Head. In fact, I find their interaction with the programs on television extremely "active" whether it be actually constructing opinions about what they are watching (even if it rarely is more complex than 'this rules' or 'this sucks'), or deciding to do something based off of seeing it advertised or talked about on TV. When you think about it, most of the plots of the show use the television as a catalyst for the episode's plot, which just ties the TV to the show as a whole even more.