We always nerd out, but in this episode we're joined in our geek sesh by the incredibly charming, brilliant and funny Lindy West (she/her) and Meagan Hatcher-Mays (she/her) to discuss (drumroll!) The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As you may already know, Hannah and Marcelle share a love of JRR Tolkien's world and in this episode they finally get to discuss Peter Jackson's adaptation from the early aughts.

The episode begins with an overview of the books' popularity in the middle of the 20th century and their lasting impact on fantasy and science fiction literature, television and film. Hannah then offers some context for the release of The Fellowship of the Ring. Together, we consider the desire by the public to escape in a post 9/11 world and the fantasy of a pastoral utopia! Hannah then offers some theory! We're talking Arcadia people!

This episode is a perfect listen for fans of The Lord of the Rings, as well as anyone who has ever fantasized about knitting in a cottage away from the hustle and bustle of industrialized cities!

Frey, Angelica. “Cottagecore Debuted 2,300 Years Ago.” JSTOR Daily 11 November 2020. https://daily.jstor.org/cottagecore-debuted-2300-years-ago/. 

Huffstutter, P.J. “Not Just a Tolkien Amount.” LA Times 24 October 2003. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-oct-24-fi-frodoecon24-story.html. 

Kruske, Kyle. “Lord Of The Rings’ Hobbiton Shire Set Took A Whole Year To Make.” Screenrant 18 December 2021. https://screenrant.com/lord-rings-hobbiton-shire-set-one-year-build/. 

Lois, Gemma. “‘The Lord of the Rings’: A Thematic Echo Of The Industrial Revolution – Extended Edition.” A Musing Clio 23 June 2025. https://gemmahistory.home.blog/2025/06/23/the-lord-of-the-rings-a-thematic-echo-of-the-industrial-revolution-extended-edition/. 

Sanders, Sam. “Tolkien Acknowledged That Black People Exist in Arda, So Why Can’t Everyone Else?” Vulture 16 September 2022. https://www.vulture.com/article/rings-of-power-black-hobbits-lord-of-the-rings-amazon.html. 

Shanahan, Paula. “Authentic Fantasy: The Representation of the Shire as a Nostalgic Arcadia.” Thesis. Submitted to the Department of Design and Visual Arts in candidacy for the Bachelor of Arts Degree in Design for Stage and Screen, 2023. https://illustro-iadt.figshare.com/articles/thesis/Authentic_fantasy_The_representation_of_the_Shire_as_a_nostalgic_arcadia_Astudy_of_the_visual_and_design_references_within_the_shire_in_the_film_adaption_of_The_Lord_of_the_Rings/25435744?file=45129961. 

Wikipedia, the encyclopedia of the people. 2025. 

For more Lindy and Meagan, check out Text Me Back! — one of Hannah McGregor's all-time favorite podcasts! You can also follow them on Substack here! Be sure to pre-order Lindy West's upcoming book Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane.

To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca.

We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease!

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tune in for our off-week casual conversation! As always, Coach joins Hannah and Marcelle for this Material Concerns episode featuring a very long check-in (shocking!) and an Oops All Oops segment that also goes kind of long (oops!). Plus, if you like tangents, you'll love our chat about Zac Efron's performance of Bet On It in High School Musical 2. Part II of our episode includes Left on the Table (all about Lord of the Rings) and Make It Make Sense (about what Patreon pages we love!).

For Part II, join our Patreon for as little as $54/year! You'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!

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Music Credits:

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode, we jumped right back on the Emerald City Express with third-time guest, Leena Norms (she/her). Leena joined us for our episode Wonka x Antisemitism and Censorship in January 2024 and then again in December 2024 for our episode Wicked x Paratexts. Now she's back to help us make sense of Wicked: For Good. Marcelle leads the episode beginning with a quick conversation about femslash, a subgenre of fan fiction which, broadly-speaking, focuses on romantic/sexual relationships between female fictional characters. Before jumping deeper into the history of femslash, Hannah, Marcelle and Leena discuss the essential question: how gay is this sequel? From there, Marcelle takes us into a conversation about subtext and representation. As always, the episode ends with a perfectly sound thesis and discussion of the movie, the media storm around the film, how Glinda is positioned as a hero, queerbaiting and revolutionary politics.

Follow Leena on Youtube here! Instagram here! And Substack here! You can support Leena's Patreon here!

“Femslash.” Ultimate Pop Culture Wiki. Fandom, Inc. 2025. https://ultimatepopculture.fandom.com/wiki/Femslash.

Hall, Margaret. 2025. “Wicked: For Good Is for the Gelphie Shippers.” Playbill. November 21, 2025. https://playbill.com/article/wicked-for-good-is-for-the-gelphie-shippers.

Russo, Julie Levin. 2014. “Textual Orientation: Queer Female Fandom Online.” The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender. Carter, Cynthia, Linda Steiner, and Lisa McLaughlin, eds. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203066911.

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To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease!

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this Material Concerns episode, we debrief Halloween and an Okay, Hear Me Out segment quickly gets into a conversation abut boundaries and control. If you want more, head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease for Part II! It begins with a quick convo about Harry Potter (if you believe it!) before moving into Consumer Retorts and Make It Make Sense! Tune in to hear Coach get scolded for not voting before taking a nap.

And don't forget, if you join for as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!

***

Music Credits:

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy SWEET NOVEMBER! In this episode, we're talking about LOAD-BEARING MAN Keanu Reeves. What do we mean when we say load-bearing? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out! Tune in for a conversation about Reeves' extensive and varied catalogue of (at least) 76 films! You'll learn all about Marcelle's admiration for this celebrity whose star image is colored by the public's sense of his "goodness." We talk feminism, masculinities, and Tanya Horeck's brilliant essay, “‘Too Good for This World:’ Keanu Reeves, God of the Internet." Happy listening!

Horeck, Tanya. 2022. “‘Too Good for This World:’ Keanu Reeves, God of the Internet.” Celebrity Studies vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 143–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2063395. 

“Keanu Reeves.” Wikipedia. 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keanu_Reeves. 

Middlemost, Renée and Sarah Thomas. 2022. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Keanu Reeves as Palimpsest.” Celebrity Studies vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 137–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2063394.

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To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team!

Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.

*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both.

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We recorded this Material Concerns on Halloween and BOY DOES IT SHOW! Enjoy a chaotic convo about costumes, dragons and Game of Thrones. Let us know what you think about the new segment in the comments!!

Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II! For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!

***

Music Credits:

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're throwing it back to the 1996 cult classic film The Craft just in time for Halloween! We begin with a conversation about Hannah and Marcelle's teenage witch phases (of course they both had them), before digging into the filmic landscape of the 90s. Hannah argues that The Craft's interest in girlhood and power was a catalyst that paved the way for pop culture to come, like Buffy and Charmed and Practical Magic. Hannah then draws on Stacy Gillis and Rebecca Munford’s “Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism" and Jessica Rosenberg and Gitana Garofalo’s “Riot Grrrl: Revolutions from Within" to help understand the resonance of film. If you too went through a witch phase, or indeed are still a practicing witch, then this episode is for you!

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Works Cited

Bastién, Angelica Jade. “The Profound, Enduring Legacy of The Craft.” Vulture 27 October 2017. https://www.vulture.com/2017/10/the-craft-its-enduring-legacy.html. 

Gillis, Stacy, and Rebecca Munford. “Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism.” Women’s History Review 13.2 (2004): 165–82. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1080/09612020400200388

Heywood, Leslie and Jennifer Drake, eds. Introduction. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 

Jacobs, Matthew and Julia Brucculieri. “Relax, It’s Only Magic: An Oral History Of ‘The Craft.’” Huffpost 20 May 2016. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-craft-oral-history_n_5734f7c9e4b060aa7819d362. 

Walker, Rebecca. “Becoming the Third Wave.” Ms. Magazine January/February 1992.

***

To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team!

Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.

*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both.

Music Credits:

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Another Material Concerns, another long check in! Followed by Creature Report and Mailbag Sampler (Spreadsheet Sampler??).

Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II! For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!

***

Music Credits:

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

~ This episode contains some spoilers about The X Files ~

This week we dive into beloved television series, The X Files (1993-2002), with Leigh Dyrda! Leigh (she/her) is an academic whose research interests include EcoGothic, a field that probes the eerie overlap of ecocriticism and Gothic. We figured Leigh would be a perfect guest to dig into this show about alien-human hybrids, monsters that defy taxonomical definition, and cancers courtesy of government microchips.

In our first segment, Marcelle explains the show was distinctly of its time. She considers its popularity in relation to the backdrop of Clinton era politics, post-Watergate government distrust, television viewing practices of the 90s and the early days of the internet. She then leads Leigh and Hannah through some theory. Drawing on Charles Soukup's 2002 article, Television Viewing as Vicarious Resistance: The X-Files and Conspiracy Discourse, Marcelle examines the way the show's mytharc and monster-of-the week narratives allowed audiences to feel as if by watching the show, they were "doing something."

If you're a fan of The X Files or you've never really watched it, no matter. Come for the theory, stay for the thesis — and let us know what you think in an Apple Review or a comment on Spotify!

***

To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team! Thanks again to all of you who have already made the leap to join us there!

***

Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.

*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both. Materialist critique is interested in the question of why a particular cultural work or practice emerged at a particular moment.

Music Credits:

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Another Material Concerns episode — this time with a cold open! Because why not? In this episode, we begin with a check in, jump into Oops All Oops and end with a new segment — Patreon Party! It's a ball!

Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II featuring Okay, Hear Me Out and Coach makes Marcelle and Hannah do some improv! For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!

***

Music Credits:

“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020

Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.