Finally! Here's part two in our video series on the sexual assault of men as comedy in entertainment. As you'll recall part one focused on humor involving men sexually assaulting or harassing other men. This video examines media in which women are depicted as perpetrators who prey on men and boys.
This episode took longer than normal to complete because the topic required a rather complex, nuanced, and sensitive ...
2020-01-30 12:36:57 +0000 UTC
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Time for a brand new video essay! In this episode, I take a deep dive into why The Shawshank Redemption remains so popular 25 years after its theatrical release, and examine how the film functions as a critique of the modern prison system in the United States.
Next up will be part 2 of my series on the sexual assault of men played for comedy in Hollywood. That episode will cover some of the worst movies I've ever had the misfortune of researching and will focus on media where women are ...
2019-07-01 05:04:44 +0000 UTC
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After a ridiculous month-long fair use battle with Warner/Chappell over a few seconds of music in two short movie clips, both of my video essays are finally back on YouTube. Thanks to the non-profit organization New Media Rights for all their amazing legal help!
Increasingly big media corporations have been claiming re...
2019-03-26 01:17:44 +0000 UTC
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You may have noticed a couple video essays disappeared from our YouTube channel yesterday. Don't worry, we are working to get them back online.
Here's what happened. On March 8th 2019 Warner/Chappell music issued two bogus "infringement" takedowns. One over 11 seconds of background music in a clip from The Hot Chick and the other over 8 seconds of background music in clips from Groundhog Day. As a result my two video essays "Sexual Assault of Men Played for Laughs" and...
2019-03-10 00:13:59 +0000 UTC
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It's finally finished! This is my longest and most complex video essay to date. It took a ridiculous amount of work and tons of time watching really really really bad movies. Just a heads up, this one does come with a content warning for discussion of, and media clips referencing, rape and sexual assault.
This video is part 1 of 2 and focuses on humor involving men sexually assaulting or harassing other men. I'll be examining media in which women are depicted as perpetrators in an...
2019-02-11 22:16:02 +0000 UTC
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A brand new Pop Detective video essay is here! The Last Jedi is a movie that's deliberately designed to defy fan expectations. Nowhere is this subversion more evident than in the way the film handles its three male heroes.
The surprising character arcs for Poe, Finn, and Luke (especially as they relate to women) are part of the reason for the intense fan anger directed at the movie. In this video I argue the extreme fan backlash speaks to an underlying anxiety rooted in deep-seated insecuritie...
2018-09-01 04:54:17 +0000 UTC
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It took a long time, but it's finally here! I watched and took notes on over 60 movies for this one, and it covers some serious topics around domestic abuse.
Abduction as Romance is a media trope where a man kidnaps or imprisons a woman, and she eventually falls in love with him. Abduction as Romance is one of a series of popular media tropes where violence against women and abusive ma...
2018-06-20 23:33:09 +0000 UTC
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Since I often discuss the negative impacts of entertainment on this channel, I thought it would be nice to do an episode focusing on more positive media. So in this video I highlight 5 movies about empathy and solidarity from the 1980s that had a profound impact on me and my values growing up. The cinematic moments that left the biggest impression on me were unapologetically sappy and sentimental. As you might imagine none of these movies are referenced in Ready Player One and Hollywood isn't ex...
2018-04-01 05:02:30 +0000 UTC
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My Stalking For Love video essay is finally here!
Stalking For Love is a popular media trope where invasive stalker-like behavior is presented as an endearing or harmless part of romantic courtship. The hero will often go to extraordinary lengths to coerce, trick, or otherwise manipulate his way into a woman's life.
Next month I'm going to switch gears to something more positive. I'll be making a more personal video essay focusing on 1980s children's movies that p...
2018-02-28 17:36:12 +0000 UTC
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Normally only backers pledging $5 or more to help support this project get access to my pre-production scripts. However I've decided to open the script for my video essay on masculinity and the Jedi Order to everyone because this script is significantly longer than the final video. During the video editing process some things are inevitably cut. Typically this happens because of time...
2018-01-04 21:39:56 +0000 UTC
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It's finally here! My long-form video essay focusing on masculinity according to the Jedi in George Lucas's six Star Wars films is now on YouTube. I've been working on this one for the better part of three months. I hope you all enjoy it!
This essay was written and produced before The Last Jedi was released. Remarkably, elements of my argument dovetail with some of Luke's dialog in the new movie, though I offer different and more detailed reasons why the Jedi Order is harmful.
<...
2017-12-31 19:42:01 +0000 UTC
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Pixar’s Wall-E is a masterpiece of animated filmmaking about two adorable robots falling in love, though I’d argue it also serves as an excellent example of sociological storytelling.
Social systems are one of the most important and most misunderstood concepts in my work on media and masculinity. So in this video essay, I use Wall-E's Axiom star-liner (and the board game Monopoly) to illustrate how social systems operate in our culture.
Next month will be an exciting one,...
2017-11-01 04:56:56 +0000 UTC
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I was recently interviewed about this project by author and USC Cinema Arts professor Henry Jenkins. The following was originally published on Jenkins's website Confessions of an Aca-Fan in three parts. I'm crossposting the whole interview for you all here.
1) “Buffy vs. Edward” helped to establish...
2017-10-23 22:22:04 +0000 UTC
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Here it is! My 2nd and final video about geeky manhood and the Big Bang Theory.
The Big Bang Theory delights in poking fun at its male characters for their geeky obsessions but I argue there's something even more pernicious going on just under the surface. Beyond the mocking of geekdom, the show is relentless in making fun of its male leads for not being 'real men." In their quest to "prove their manhood" the four geeky guys then end up being complicit in many of the most harmful aspects...
2017-09-29 20:50:49 +0000 UTC
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Here it is! The first of two critical video essay about the most watched show on television. The Big Bang Theory provides a perfect lens through which to deconstruct a popular media trope I like to call the Adorkable Misogynist.
Adorkable Misogynists are male characters whose geeky version of masculinity is framed as comically pathetic yet still endearing. Their status as nerdy “nice guys” then lets them off the hook for a wide range of creepy, entitled, and sexist behaviors...
2017-09-01 01:12:32 +0000 UTC
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I’ve been asked hundreds of times about whether or not I think Diana’s origin story in the new Wonder Woman movie fits into the Born Sexy Yesterday trope. So I thought I’d take a few minutes to offer my thoughts on this question. [Mild spoilers to follow].
The short answer is not really, but I can see why the question comes up so often as there are definitely strong echoes of the trope in Jenkins...
2017-07-21 19:10:13 +0000 UTC
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This video series primarily focuses on film and television, but every once in a while I like to check-in on the world of video games.
Interactive media has the incredible potential to deliver a wide range of immersive, emotional experiences, yet year after year the gaming industry seems to fall back on one underlying theme -- kill or be killed. This year I did a statistical breakdown of all the games featured at Electronic Entertainment Expo press conferences. I found that 82% of all new title...
2017-07-01 01:58:16 +0000 UTC
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As a cultural critic, I watch a ridiculous number of movies, always on the lookout for more positive Hollywood representations of masculinity. I usually walk out of the theater disappointed but occasionally the stars align and I find myself pleasantly surprised. That’s how I felt after seeing Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. Newt Scamander, the protagonist of this Harry Potter spinoff, is a refreshingly atypical male hero for a fantasy adventure blockbuster. This episode...
2017-05-29 19:47:00 +0000 UTC
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Here's the latest in my series of trope lists that collect examples of movie where non-consensual male behavior towards women is framed as harmless or romantic.
Stalking as Romance is a popular Hollywood convention in which stalking behavior is framed as a romantic gesture. Typically the stalker is a man who has a crush on a woman (though occasionally the genders...
2017-05-19 18:52:46 +0000 UTC
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This video essay is about a gendered sci-fi trope that has bothered me for years but didn't have a name, so I gave it one: Born Sexy Yesterday. The trope isn’t really about female characters, at its core the convention is all about men’s fear of experienced women. This one took an extra long time to make because I'm defining a new media pattern and also because I included clips from over 25 sources to back up my argument. Hope you all enjoy it!
Audio Fix
As ...
2017-04-27 18:09:57 +0000 UTC
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I’ve started creating lists of movies that include troubling tropes having to do with masculinity. The intention is that each list is part of my research and will eventually become a full fledged video essay on the topic. I'll be adding more lists each month but I've begun with 3 common Hollywood "romance" conventions.
• The Goodhearted Peeping Tom: A t...
2017-04-09 22:50:56 +0000 UTC
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Finally finished my in-depth video essay focusing on the troubling romance scenes in Harrison Ford's most famous movies. I highlight four sequences in which Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Rick Deckard disregard basic ideas of consent and ultimately force themselves on their love interests. Although each movie attempts to frame his actions as sexy or romantic, predatory is a more fitting description.
This is a longer video, clocking in at 17 minutes. All told, it took over a month to complete. Sin...
2017-03-31 19:45:47 +0000 UTC
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I wanted to give you all a quick update on this project. I've just gotten my voice back after battling a bad flu for most of February. While I couldn’t record videos during that time, I took the opportunity to write scripts and research clips.
To give you a brief window into my creative process I thought I’d share my project wall (pictured above) where I plan out future video essays. Pink cards are ideas for videos about positive masculinity trends in media. Blue cards are ideas for ...
2017-03-02 02:18:16 +0000 UTC
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New video highlighting on something that's bothered me since I first saw JJ Abrams' Episode 7 on opening weekend. The Force Awakens does what no other film in the long running Star Wars franchise has even done before: it humanizes Stormtroopers. Strangely the filmmakers seen unaware of the profound implications their new narrative has for the rest of their cinematic universe.
2017-01-30 20:18:11 +0000 UTC
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Why wasn't Donald Trump's blatant and unashamed misogyny a deal breaker for voters? I argue it has a lot to do with the ways pop culture media normalizes sexism. Sitcoms are especially good at makes jokes out of acknowledging sexist behavior but it's almost always framed as mostly harmless.
I’m trying a new video format with this one. It's often referred to as videographic critique and focuses on editing together footage from many different sources combined with voice over. This format...
2017-01-20 03:25:34 +0000 UTC
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The Cartoon Network series Steven Universe is an adventure show about a boy with interstellar super powers but in many ways it’s also a coming-of-age story about a young man growing up and trying to find his place in the world. In this episode we discussing how Steven’s empathic superpowers function as a subversion of traditional boy hero tropes.
[This is a re-post for any folks who are not yet backing the project]
2016-11-20 22:47:10 +0000 UTC
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You may have bumped into the term toxic masculinity during your travels around the internet. It usually shows up in connection with particularly abusive male behavior, but what does it really mean? In this episode we take a closer look at the term using Biff from Back To The Future as our example.
2016-10-17 21:50:07 +0000 UTC
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This is the first in a series of videos exploring what Steven Universe has to say about men, boys and masculinity. This episode covers representations of emotional expression, and highlights the ways in which crying, affection and fear are framed on the show.
[Please note: Patrons should post comments in our supports only discussion thread]
2016-07-16 00:26:02 +0000 UTC
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