Author: CarrieLynn D. Reinhard
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Pop Culture Lens on Hello Kitty
In the thirty-third episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I welcome friend of the podcast Norma Jones to discuss the venerable pop culture brand that is Hello Kitty. In this episode, Norma and I position Hello Kitty not only as a pop icon but as a heroic…
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Pop Culture Lens on Robots, Anthropomorphism, and Ethics
In this video, part of the new YouTube Channel for The Pop Culture Lens, you will hear an excerpt from a lecture I gave on robots. In this excerpt, I discuss the nature of robots and how it intersects with the concept of anthropomorphism. I make the argument for why such anthropomorphism, and zoomorphism, occurs,…
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Fourth Wall and Professional Wrestling
In this brief essay, I want to share an idea I have had about how the concept of audience interaction helps to define sports entertainment as existing at the intersection of sports and entertainment. Audience interaction with content (what I have written about here as content interactivity) is the idea that the audience member (either…
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Pop Culture Lens: It’s a Wonderful Life
In the thirty-second episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and CarrieLynn Reinhard welcome friend of the podcast Kadee Whaley to discuss the classic Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). In this episode, the three discuss the nature of the Christmas genre, as represented in this Frank Capra film that has become…
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The Pop Cultures Lens on Sherlock
In the thirty-first episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I welcome friend of the podcast, and Sherlockian, Malynnda Johnson to discuss the indelible nature of famous British detective, Sherlock Holmes. In this episode, Malynnda shares her extensive fan-based knowledge of the classic private investigator as the conversation considers the influence Sir…
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Gendering Robots: A Class Discussion
The next research project I hope to work on looks at how people make sense of robots. I am particularly interested in how people apply gendered assumptions and attributions to robots or artificial agents, and how apply those assumptions then impact how people engage with robots. In a sense, robots have become another medium as…
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Exorcism Cinema Book Published
Here it is! The Tensions in Exorcism Cinema project began in 2013, when my partner Christopher J. Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I watched the film The Possession and noted how common it seemed for women to be the victim of possession who needed to be saved through exorcism. We wondered, is that true of…
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The Pop Culture Lens: Being John Malkovich
In the thirtieth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I conclude the Halloween season by welcoming friend of the podcast, and fellow podcaster, Jim Laczkowski to discuss the existential film, Being John Malkovich (1999). In this episode, our conversation considers how the film portrays insecurity, which is…
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The Pop Culture Lens Discusses Videodrome
In the twenty-ninth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and myself welcome the Halloween season and friend of the podcast Salvatore DiSalvatore to discuss the body horror film from David Cronenberg, Videodrome (1983). In this episode, the conversation considers how prescient and thus still relevant this thirty-three year-old…
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The Exorcist on Fox
Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I have been working on a project analyzing the portrayal of exorcism in cinema for the past several years. That project is about to reach fruition with the publication of our book Possessed Women, Haunted States: Cultural Tensions in Exorcism Cinema from Lexington Books this November 15th (https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498519090).…
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