Category: Film Studies
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Pop Culture Lens Episode 10: Mad Max (1979)
In the latest episode of our podcast, Christoper and I welcome two of our friends, and friends of the podcast, Joe Belfeuil and Clelia Sweeney, to discuss George Miller’s feature debut, Mad Max (1979). But we don’t stop there, weaving into our discussion all of the franchise, including the most recent one, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).…
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Pop Culture Lens Episode 8: The Last Temptation of Christ
In the eighth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I celebrate the Easter Sunday holiday by discussing the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Not being religious scholars, we focus our discuss on the usefulness and even necessity for artists and audiences to engage in artistic and critical…
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Pop Culture Lens Episode 7: Godzilla (1954)
In the seventh episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and CarrieLynn Reinhard are joined by Joe Belfeuil, of the blog Things That Should Not B, to discuss the classic science fiction film, Godzilla (1954). The discussion compares the original Japanese film with the American adaptation/appropriation that came out in 1956, Godzilla, King…
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Stigmata: Viewing the Church as Bad Guy
A long time ago, in what seems like a much different life, I had a huge crush on Gabriel Byrne. I am not exactly proud of that, but he was one of many actors that I have had crushes on, and is always the case when I have a crush on an actor, I must…
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Podcast Episode #5: Planet of the Apes
In the fifth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I discuss one of my all time favorite pop culture texts: Planet of the Apes. I fell in love with this movie, this franchise — as dorky as it got in the 1970s — because of how many layers of meaning I…
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The Unborn: Exorcism, the Holocaust, and Twins
Comic book fans will undoubtedly recognize the name David S. Goyer. For better or worse, he has become synonymous with Warner Brothers’ cinematic adaptations of their DC Comics titles. Although he gained notoriety as the writer for a Marvel cinematic adaptation, Blade (1998), his most successful writing gigs have been with Christopher Nolan on the…
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The Pop Culture Lens Episode 3: Carnival of Souls
Welcome to 2015, the year of Back to the Future II! And to start off the new year, The Pop Culture Lens podcast presents a new episode that takes us back in time to examine how a film made at the beginning of second wave feminism may still be relevant in this third wave feminism…
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The Pop Culture Lens Episode 2: Freaks (1932)
The second episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast is up and live! In the second episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and CarrieLynn Reinhard are joined by young scholar Clelia Sweeney to discuss the counterculture cult horror classic Freaks (1932). Their guest brings to bear her research on freak shows, reality…
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Deliver Us From Evil: The Danger of Possessing Men
As we have repeatedly seen during this project we are calling Tensions in Exorcism Cinema, there appears to be a narrative made popular by the success of The Exorcist (1973). There is a reason we like to say that the 1973 movie is the one that started it all, even though there had been films…
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From Reaffirming to Challenging Traditions: A critical comparison of The Last Exorcism and The Last Exorcism Part II
Christopher Olson and I presented our first analysis for the exorcism cinema project at this year’s Midwest Popular Culture Association conference. We subsequently wrote the presentation as a paper that would go in a book we are developing. We just submitted the book proposal last night, and now this morning you can read this analysis…
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