Pop DNA

For Rhonda's Birthday Bonus we're talking COWBOY CARTER and THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Why are both of these albums' titles styled in all caps?

Our conversation explores our initial reactions to and top five tracks from each album, as well as some interesting parallels between these two bodies of work. How does Beyoncé break genre boundaries on COWBOY CARTER? How does Taylor explore her relationship with art and fame on THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT? And how do both albums further the cultural discussion of women driving their own narratives?

We also talk about the bigger picture of women in pop music beyond Tay and Bey, and the current pop moment embodied in artists like Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, and Miley Cyrus.

Oh, and we also definitely talk about Kendrick and Drake.

If you thought we were going to let it slide that Depression Barbie's comfort show is the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice, you thought wrong.

We're digging in to some possible literary inspirations and parallels for the Barbie movie, looking specifically at Christian/Catholic creation theology and how much Greta Gerwig may have been influenced by the work of Jane Austen. We also talk about who we would choose if we could recast Ken, and follow up with a coda to our discussion of gender dynamics in Barbie Land from last week.

Further Reading:

We are back from a long, semi-unplanned hiatus, but don't worry, there's still plenty more Barbie to talk about! This week we look at how both Barbie Land and Stereotypical Barbie's perspective in the film explore gender and femininity.

How does Barbie Land fit into the context of women-dominated societies in other fictional works?

How does Barbie as a film both defy and uphold patriarchal beauty standards?

And how does Barbie as a character help us as women and feminine people explore how we can define femininity and identity for ourselves?

Further Reading:

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Ritual of Proof by Dara Joy

What was supposed to be a fun and light chat about video games this week turned into a philosophical discussion of free will as a player of video games, and how this illusion of choice translates into the choices (or lack thereof) of characters in the TV series of The Last Of Us, especially in terms of gendered actions and decision-making. It's still fun, though, we promise!

Further Exploration:

This week we are getting apocalyptic! We talk about why we as humans seem to be fascinated with the fall of civilization or even of humanity itself. From the ancient epic of Gilgamesh to several separate HBO shows, our literature and culture are full of stories about humans at the end of the world.

How does The Last of Us explore the human significance of the apocalypse? And what other works of apocalyptic and zombie fiction can we discuss to contextualize what TLOU might be trying to say about humanity? Works we discuss include:

• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• Revenant myths and legends
• The Last Man by Mary Shelley
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (and the HBO series)
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (and the Hulu series)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
• The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey
• Severance by Ling Ma

Welcome to our first regular episode of 2024! We're kicking the year off with a discussion of the (maybe?) zombie show that everyone was talking about in early 2023.

This week we talk about our first experiences with the world of The Last of Us, discuss the question of whether or not this is in fact a zombie show, and take a quiz to find out which character we are. Then we introduce the ideas we want to explore more in-depth in the next two episodes, such as:

• Adapting video games for other media
• Gender and the male gaze in video games
• Why we love apocalyptic stories
• How other works have explored zombies (or zombie-like creatures)
• ... and more

The Wizard of Oz is a quintessentially American story, and over the 120+ years since the novel's release, the tale and its subsequent iterations have reflected the political climate of particular moments in our culture.

From its inception as an alleged allegory for the late 19th century Populist movement, to the imagery of early women's suffrage in the witches of Oz, to the echoes of FDR's New Deal and the Great Depression in "Over the Rainbow," to The Wiz's positioning within the Black American experience in the 1970s, and even to how the musical Wicked reflects the flawed third-wave feminism of the 1990s.

Further reading:

We're wrapping up 2023 with a look at the beloved 1939 classic musical fantasy film The Wizard of Oz, and its 1900 source novel by L. Frank Baum.

This week we give you a wizard's-eye view of the topics we plan to dig into deeper in the next couple episodes. We'll look at the popular theory of the original novel as an allegory for U.S. politics and economics at the turn of the 20th century, as well as the significance of the song "Over the Rainbow" for Americans during the Great Depression. We'll also talk about Judy Garland's experience making the film and in Hollywood in general, as well as both the movie and book's long-lasting and far-reaching impact on American culture as we know it.

If we appeared in your Spotify Wrapped this year, we'd like to say thank you, thank you, thank you, sincerely, for all your support. We hope you're having as much fun as we are.

Following up on our conversation from last time, this installment in our discussion of The Hunger Games looks at the vulnerability of children in both Panem and the ongoing attacks on Palestine, the troubling parallel between the Capitol citizens of Panem and we in the privileged Western world in our parasocial relationships with those respective children, and how these traumatic events will affect the human psyche and our ways of dealing with vulnerabilities.

This is another hard discussion, so again, listen with that in mind, and please continue to call your elected leaders, protest, share and post, and take care of yourselves.

Further Reading:

With a new installment of The Hunger Games film franchise hitting theaters this month, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to revisit the series, and we brought a friend!

Jac Frost (known as @jacfrostisreal on TikTok) joins us for an intro to the deep-dive discussions we're planning on the books by Suzanne Collins and their film adaptations.

Our conversation focuses on the ways our current world is reflective of Panem, from the ever-growing class and economic divides in our society, to the level of surveillance and control the state already has access to into our everyday lives, to the happening-as-we-speak genocide of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli government and military. This does get pretty heavy, so if you're not in a place to hear it, please take care of yourself, but also contact your elected officials to call for a ceasefire.

We wrap up our Wednesday series with a deep dive into the character's emotional landscape. The therapy sessions that Wednesday is compelled to attend are not a healthy depiction of mental health care, so let's talk about that! Let's also talk about whether or not romance was really necessary to Wednesday's story (it wasn't), and whether romance storylines in media in general are underappreciated (they are).

Come back next week for a spooky Addams Family-themed bonus episode!

Further reading:

This week we're talking about the ways the titular Wednesday explores her identity throughout the series, from finding other weird kids at Nevermore Academy, to differentiating from the Addams Family ethos.

Further Reading:

Wednesday is both a piece of Addams Family media and a Tim Burton work, so we're looking at the intersection of those two origins.

We take a trip down memory lane to look at how Wednesday and the rest of her family have been portrayed in various media over the decades, from the original 1930s comics by Charles Addams, all the way up to its current iteration in the Wednesday Netflix series.

Then we talk about Tim Burton's aesthetic influences, distinct style of storytelling, and how he brought those things to Wednesday.

Further Reading:

It's full-on Spooky Season at Pop DNA and we're celebrating with a discussion of our favorite spooky teen, Wednesday Addams!

In part 1 of this series, we talk about some of our initial thoughts on the Netflix show Wednesday, our relationships with the Addams Family franchise, and how we feel Wednesday fits into this 85-year legacy.

We wrap up our series on Abbott Elementary with some thoughts on how the show pays homage and stands out from older network sitcoms, Quinta Brunson's inspirations for the series, and a more lighthearted look at teaching and the veteran teachers who have shaped all of our lives.

Further Reading:

This week we're digging into some of our favorite characters on Abbott Elementary!

We take a look at our favorite terrible boss Ava, with a psychological analysis of supervisor-employee relationship patterns, and how Ava's management style stacks up to other fictional bosses like Michael Scott or Don Draper.

Then we explore Janine and Barbara's unique found family mother-daughter dynamic, a type of relationship we don't often see in media, despite the many "reluctant father figure/teen girl daughter figure" duos that seem to be everywhere in pop culture.

Further Reading:

This week we look at how Abbott Elementary reflects popular opinions on the public education system, and how it portrays the experience of teaching as a profession. We also dip into the hot-button issue of charter schools, looking at a more nuanced discussion of this debate than we see presented on the show.

Further Reading:

Happy Season 6 to Pop DNA! To kick off September we're going back to school to talk about Abbott Elementary!

To set the stage for this four-part series, and the whole podcast for the foreseeable future, we discuss the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, how they affect Abbott Elementary, and why we should all be aware of the issues involved.

To celebrate Erin's (slightly belated) birthday we're deep diving into the most perfect television show ever created that also has a character named Bus Rat.

Questions we discuss:

What does the character of the camera represent within the narrative?

What does the final scene of the series tell us about Fleabag's relationships with her loved ones, herself, and whatever the camera represents?

Why don't any of Fleabag's boyfriends have actual names?

Are we in our Fleabag era?

ICYMI, we presented at Virtual JaneCon! Here's the audio from our talk, "Jane Austen: Queen of Comedy."

We dive into Austen's influence in modern TV comedy, from parody and satire on shows like Succession and Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, to the striking comedic parallels between Sense and Sensibility and Schitt's Creek!

We're wrapping up our Summer "Camp" series with a loving look at two science fiction/space opera movies that are really historical romances in space!

Topics of discussion include Eddie Redmayne's love of character voices (and also how he auditioned for the role of Kylo Ren!); the fact that Star Wars has always been a little bit stupid, which is part of its charm; and how the lavish costumes in both movies really accentuate the fact that they are both historical romances in space, because if there's one thing about a historical romance, it's gonna have gowns.

Further Reading:

In this meta horror commentary edition of Summer "Camp" we are talking about The Blackening and The Cabin in the Woods!

Discussion points include how The Cabin in the Woods has aged over the past decade-plus and how we feel about its messaging now, The Blackening's unexpected hopefulness and positioning within both the meta-horror and the Black film spaces, and how both films take a classic, even cliched, horror premise and turn it on its head.

We also talk about this particular type of horror setting and why it's so pervasive in the genre, as well as our favorite types of horror settings.

And of course, we spend way too long talking about the things we've been watching, but this time we have two weeks to catch you up on!

Further Reading:

CONTENT WARNING: this episode contains discussions, though NOT graphic descriptions, of sexual assault and violence against women, rape and rape culture, trauma, and women’s loss of bodily autonomy as portrayed and commented upon in these films. If these topics will not be a good experience for you to hear about, please take care of yourself and skip this episode. We'll see you next time!

We're calling this the "feminist body horror" edition of Summer "Camp" and looking at two modern classics within this subgenre: 2009's Jennifer's Body and 2007's Teeth. We look at the parallels between these two films, both in their commentary on women's bodily and sexual agency within patriarchal culture in the movies themselves, and in how the films were received and perceived by pop culture audiences. We also looked into the mythos of the "vagina dentata," the archetype explored in Teeth, and into how Jennifer's Body star Megan Fox was treated by the media and culture at large in the years surrounding the release of the film, and we are here to talk all about these topics and more!

Further Reading:

Welcome "camp"ers to Pop DNA Summer "Camp"! To kick off our summer series all about our favorite campy movies, we first give a brief explainer of what we mean by "camp." We quote Susan Sontag and it's very professional. Then we look at two movies that portray creepy sentient dolls that turn murderous, the original 1988 classic Child's Play and the instant classic that sparked a million memes, M3GAN.

Further Reading:

Wrapping up our Taylor Swift series, we decided to look at Swift's relationship with her fame and her fandom, and how both fit into the broader context of how we talk about famous women.

From the way our society likes to mock teen girls and young women and the art they like, to the cycles of public opinion we see around female pop singers like Lizzo, Britney Spears, Beyonce, and Swift herself, we've got a lot of internalized misogyny to unpack. We also look into the psychology of parasocial relationships and the Taylor Swift conspiracy theories that fans were right about. And, yes, we do talk about the Matty Healy thing (briefly).

Further Reading:

Did you know that we're kinda theater kids? And also huge literature nerds? And that Taylor Swift is both of those things, too?

This week we look at the theatricality of Swift's tour shows, specifically with the set and costume design of the Eras Tour, and how those elements help tell the story. Then we dive into the literary sensibilities of the albums Folklore and Evermore, viewing these works as collections of short stories about, in Swift's own words, a "mythological American town."

We also acknowledge the deeply upsetting news of Swift's publicized connection with a certain problematic person, leaving space for how we as fans and consumers of her art can feel about that news and the real harm done to specific communities. We will discuss this further next week.

Further Reading:

This week we're diving in to the evolution of Taylor Swift, and we've got graphs!

Over the course of her 17-year career, Swift has evolved as an artist and as a public figure, with distinct "eras" emerging in her music and aesthetic. We take a look at her early career as a teen country music artist, her transition to pop, and her deepening explorations and fine-tuning within both genres to find her current adult artistic voice.

Find the timeline and word cloud images we discussed on our Instagram, and maybe hang out a bit.

Further reading:

It's Rhonda's Birthday Bonus, so she roped Erin into talking about Twilight! As long-time listeners know, Rhonda is contractually obligated to bring up Twilight at regular intervals, and after this episode her quota will be met for quite some time.

In our scholarly and insightful discussion, we talk about every Twilight consumer's burning question: Team Edward or Team Jacob? We also talk about our personal experiences with the books and movies, theorize about what makes the series so compelling to so many, and even (casually) dip into the literary history connected to Twilight.

We also acknowledge the problems with the series, including racism against Indigenous people and internalized misogyny, and talk about whether we think the recently-announced TV adaptation will be able to sufficiently address those issues.

Further Reading:

We wrap up our series on A League of Their Own this week by discussing romance!

Erin gives us a rundown on the documentary A Secret Love, which chronicles the real-life love story of Rockford Peach Terry Donahue and her lifelong partner Patricia Henschel. Then Rhonda deep-dives into the reference made to Pride and Prejudice in the first episode of the show, and how this reference foreshadows or contextualizes the romance storylines.

Further Reading:

We're continuing our discussion of A League of Their Own with a look inside the real All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and a few of the real women who played in the league over its 12 seasons. We also analyze how accurately the movie and TV series portrayed the realities of the league.

Check out our recommended reading list below for our sources and further background on the history.

Recommended Reading:

It's officially baseball season and we're celebrating with a deep dive into the 2022 Amazon original series A League of Their Own, and the 1992 movie that inspired it! We open it up with a look at our first experiences with both the film and the series, and then do an overview of what we plan to explore in more depth this month.

Topics include the true history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and the real Rockford Peaches, as well as the real-life queer love stories that may have inspired the TV show's romance, plus how references to literary classics like Pride and Prejudice and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn offer parallels to the story, and more.

This week we're very excited to welcome our guest Natania Barron, author of the Arthurian-based Queens of Fate trilogy, to talk about the film The Green Knight, the character of Gawain and his many iterations, nerdy medievalist Easter eggs, the enduring and transcending relevance of Arthuriana, and so much more!

This week in our discussion of The Green Knight, we look into readership and audience reception of the source text, the film, and other recent fantasy fiction. Medieval readers (or listeners) of Sir Gawain's story would have understood references and symbols in the text that many modern readers and viewers miss--what are some of these references?

We also talk about the persistent myth that everyone in Medieval Europe was white, and how this racist myth has affected modern audiences' perceptions of the film's casting choices. This leads into current broader popular culture discussions around the casting of actors of color in other fantasy media, such as House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power.

Further Reading:

Wrapping up our series on To All The Boys, we look at how psychology and long distances affect the relationships in the films as well as in real life.  Erin of course dips into her psychology expertise to talk about the vulnerability cycle in relationships, and how we see this play out especially in Lara Jean and Peter's story. And Rhonda breaks down some of the locations used in the films, from the Pacific Northwest, to Seoul, to NYC, looking at how setting informs the characters and story.

Further Reading: 

This week in our To All the Boys discussion, we look at how ideas and themes in the films are reflected in the real world. We research some other works and the life of Jenny Han, author of the books the films are based on, as well as how the idea of "soulmates" is expressed in literature and pop culture, especially teen romcoms. How have Han's experiences shaped her stories, and her role in the adaptations of her stories, and how has the idea of one perfect soul mate for everyone impacted how we view romance and romantic stories?

Further reading:

Love letters and romance novels are two of the most prominent genres of writing that inform our cultural ideas about love and romance, and both feature prominently in To All the Boys. Lara Jean is an avid romance reader, and even has fantasies inspired by common romance novel tropes, and of course the entire premise of the first book and movie revolves around Lara Jean's love letters. 

This week we dive into both of these forms of writing, the history behind them, how society has viewed them (and those who read and write these genres), and how we see these attitudes reflected and subverted in To All the Boys. It's a perfect discussion for Valentine's (or Galentine's) Day!

Further reading:

All February long we're talking about our favorite Netflix teen romcom movie series, To All the Boys I've Loved Before (sorry, Kissing Booth)! In part one we talk about our initial experiences with the movies, the source of comfort they were during quarantine, and get into the topics we plan to discuss in more depth throughout the month. Themes include:

• the history of love letters
• romance novels and romance readers
• self-efficacy in teen romance
• and more!

We wrap up our Stranger Things discussion with a look at some of the literary inspirations for the show, such as the work of Stephen King and the Choose Your Own Adventure children's book series, as well as the interweaving of Dungeons and Dragons-style narrative storytelling with the ability for players to choose their own path. 

Part 2 of our Stranger Things discussion dives into the DND lore, especially the monsters (because that's Erin's brand), from which the show draws inspiration (or even straight-up copies, it's a little murky). We also look at Stranger Things as a piece of nostalgia media, and discuss why viewing the past through such a rosy lens can be dangerous, especially when considering how the political and social messaging reads to a modern audience.

For further reading:

Happy New Year! In this bonus episode we discuss trends we noticed in the media of 2022, as well as themes and through lines that emerged in our favorite works. From the more abstract like exploring characters' vulnerability as a strength, to themes that are almost genres in themselves, like Rich People Nonsense™. We also look ahead to things we're excited to watch in 2023, and give a quick peek at what's on the itinerary for Pop DNA this year!

Erin's Best of 2022:

• A League of their Own
• The Woman in the House…
• Couples Therapy
• Along for the Ride
• Reboot
• Paper Girls
• NOPE
• The Lost City
• Marry Me
• Bob's Burgers
• Better Call Saul

Rhonda's Best of 2022:

• Everything Everywhere All At Once
• The Invitation
• The Batman
• Catherine, Called Birdy
• Glass Onion
• Fire Island
• The Menu
• Andor
• House of the Dragon
• Severance
• Abbott Elementary

Books:

• Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne
• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
• B*tch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke
• The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages by Katherine Harvey

As we wrap up our final Narnia episode we're asking the big questions: Was C. S. Lewis sexist? Or can we draw any feminist or female-empowerment messages from his work? What does feminism even look like in the context of a fantasy world where children go into battle with talking animals?

We also look specifically at The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a World War 2 story, exploring the story an as allegory for what was happening in the "real" world at the time it takes place.

This month we are talking about the best children's fantasy book series, The Chronicles of Narnia (and you can fight us on that). For our first glimpse into the wardrobe we share our first experiences with the series, favorite fan theories, and thoughts on various adaptations. We also definitively decide which order the books should be read, and preview the topics we plan to explore in the next two weeks of the series. Get your hot cocoa and your Turkish Delight, kick back, and get ready to go to Narnia with us!

Recommended Reading:

One of our favorite things about The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window is that its long, ridiculous title is a perfect encapsulation of the genre it parodies, right down to the use of the words "girl" and "woman." The genre of course is the domestic noir thriller made popular in the past decade which we discussed last episode. 

But why is this genre so gender-coded? Why all the girls? What relationship does the genre have with other female-dominated literary movements, such as the mid-century gothic romance? And how do male-authored entries in the thriller genre, such as the works of Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King, differ from this newest iteration?

Recommended reading: