Pop DNA

Welcome to our 2024 Summer Series! This summer we decided to read some classic American novels with recent film adaptations, and we're starting with Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

We talk about our personal experiences with the novel, how we see this work in the context of American literature, and how the 1994 and 2019 film adaptations explore the book's themes. We also answer the age-old question: are you a Meg, Jo, Beth, or Amy?

Join us next time for a discussion of Alice Walker's The Color Purple! Follow us on Instagram for very infrequent and halfhearted posts.

Theme song: Swings and Roundabouts by Hey Pluto

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.

Listen to our Women in Pop playlist here.

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:

Barbie Land as Garden of Eden

Rolling Stone Greta Gerwig Interview

For updates on Rhonda's book, follow here

Pop DNA is taking a brief break, and we will be back in early May with a Bonus Episode! Stay tuned!

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

Sci-Fi Movies About All-Female Planets Have a Hidden Agenda -- video essay from Slate

Barbietopia and Feminist Futures: Next Steps on the Heroine’s Journey -- essay by Ivana Milojević

What ‘Barbie’ teaches us about the beauty of growing old -- article by Steve Lopez

Justice for Weird Barbie -- article by Natalie Michie

Books to Read After Watching Barbie -- post by Rhonda

Does anyone want to run our Instagram account? lmk

Hi Barbies! We have sooooo much to talk about in this three-parter, so we squished some background discussion of fashion dolls and the cultural mythos of Barbie into this first episode. We also have some thoughts on the Barbenheimer phenomenon, the Barbie movie as a capitalist product, and our own experiences playing with Barbies as children. Then we give a brief overview of some other topics we want to dive into in our next two episodes and take a quiz to find out which Barbies we are (but, as happens quite often, the quiz was wrong).

This month we're talking about:

Follow us on Instagram I guess but don't expect too much.

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:

GamerGate coverage by Aja Romano

Tropes vs. Women in Video Games video series by Anita Sarkeesian

Playing As/Against Violent Women paper by Stefan Schubert

Our episode on femininity and power in fantasy media

Our episode on The Chronicles of Narnia where we discuss Susan and Lucy not fighting in the battle

Vulture piece on patriarchy in the world of TLOU

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:

Follow us on Instagram for more about the literature and commentary we reference.

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:

Take the quiz here.

Follow us on Instagram if that's the sort of thing you like to do.

It's a new year, which means it's time for us to talk about our favorite movies and TV (plus a little theater and music) of 2023!

We also discuss how the Hollywood strikes affected how we view media, and how the theme of girlhood seemed to be a throughline in a lot of the media we loved this past year. We talk about a few of our disappointments as well, and then look ahead to what we're excited for in 2024.

2023 Stuff We Talk About:

Barbie

M3GAN

The Little Mermaid

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret

Succession

The Bear

Ted Lasso

The Last of Us

Shrinking

Theatre Camp

Polite Society

Quiz Lady

The Buccaneers

Somebody I Used to Know

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story

You People

The Artful Dodger

Merrily We Roll Along

Lessons in Chemistry

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Mandalorian

Ahsoka

Renfield

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

A Haunting in Venice

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:

Populist symbolism in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Matriarch Behind the Curtain

The American dream of "Over the Rainbow"

The Wiz as a Black American journey

Wicked as a feminist work

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