Category: Film Studies
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Updating Exorcism Cinema List
A year ago, Christopher Olson and I published a book on the representation of exorcisms in cinema. Possessed Women, Haunted States: Cultural Tensions in Exorcism Cinema (November 2016) was a comprehensive analysis of films across time and culture for the common themes surrounding who was the possessed and who was the exorcist. This analysis concluded…
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V for Vendetta and Resisting Fascism
In the thirty-ninth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I present a special episode as they compare and contrast the graphic novel V for Vendetta and its film adaptation. In this episode, we discussed how the two versions of the story reflected on the social, cultural, and historical periods in which…
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Carpenter’s The Thing and Politics of Paranoia
In the thirty-fifth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I welcome friend of the podcast, and unofficial third host, Joe Belfeuil to discuss the influential horror film that is John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). In this episode, the three discuss how the narrative and craft of the film has inspired a…
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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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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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The Pop Culture Lens on Frank Sinatra
In the twenty-eighth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I welcome back friend of the podcast and unofficial fourth co-host Clelia Sweeney to discuss the classic iconography of Frank Sinatra. In this episode, the conversation considers how Sinatra’s identity changed through the various stages of his career, but also how those changes…
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