Category: Film Studies
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The Pop Culture Lens Podcast Goes Live!
Christopher Olson (of the blog Seems Obvious to Me) and I present a new podcast, The Pop Culture Lens, where we discuss the media of the past through the lens of today to understand how relevant it is to our modern lives. You can follow the podcast on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, or get the…
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5 Things People Believe About Demons, Exorcisms and The Spirit World
As All Hallow’s Eve approaches, and the dark veil between the land of the living and the land of the dead lists, we in the Western world turn to concerns of all things supernatural. But it is not just Halloween that propels people to be worried about how the spiritual plan can impede in this…
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Legion: Or, the Exorcism Movie that Makes Me Sad for Roddy Piper
I recently came to be interested in professional wrestling. For awhile there — as in most of my life — I thought wrestling to be beneath me, an entertainment that degrades those who do it and those who watch it. I was wrong: there are many layers to this sports entertainment, and it is quite…
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Feminist Tensions in The Last Exorcism and The Last Exorcism Part 2
At the Midwest Popular Culture Association‘s 2014 conference, Chris and I presented the first analysis from our exorcism cinema project. The presentation is titled: Feminist tensions in exorcism cinema: Case study analysis and comparison of The Last Exorcism and The Last Exorcism Part II. What follows are the notes for the presentation, which constitute an…
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Sir Anthony Hopkins Performs an Exorcism in The Rite
Sir Anthony Hopkins is one of those interesting actors. Best known as an incredible actor throughout his entire career, sometimes he will do movies that are, for lack of better words, slumming it – doing a movie for a paycheck. Freejack. Alexander. The Edge. The Wolfman. Red 2. To be fair, I cannot really blame…
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Valhalla Rising and the Demythologization of Male Violence
In a reworking of some analysis from his Master’s thesis, Christopher J. Olson presents his analysis of Nicholas Winding Refn’s existential film Valhalla Rising. In his analysis, Chris argues that Refn portrays a violent version of masculinity in order to critique globalized popular culture’s tendency to portray men in such rigid and limited ways. Read…
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![[REC]2: When Possession Becomes Infectious](https://playingwithresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/6a00e54ee7b6428833015433923575970c-500wi.jpg?w=500)
[REC]2: When Possession Becomes Infectious
If you are not aware of it, then I should warn you — we are kind of in a period where zombie fervor has some what taken over American pop culture. We’ve been in this period for awhile now, over a decade in fact, tracing back to movies like Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later… (2002),…
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Oldboy: A case study in intercultural adaptation theory
Christopher J. Olson makes a compelling argument for how adaptation theory needs to take into account different cultural contexts when texts are adapted from one culture into another. His analysis of the three primary versions of the Oldboy text serve to illustrate his call for an intercultural adaptation theory. Read all about it in: Oldboy:…
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Amityville II: The Possession and Incest
So…this movie. The Amityville Horror (1979) has had a long lasting cultural impact, spawning a remake in 2005 and numerous sequels, prequels, sidequels, TV references, and more. Based on a true story, and another example of a supernatural occurrence investigated by the Warrens (of The Conjuring fame), the original film focuses on a family where…
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The Humanity in the Planet of the Apes
I remember coming to the Planet of the Apes not through the original movies but through other cultural products. There was the musical rendition on The Simpsons. There was the end of the neighborhood in Spaceballs. And I am sure there were others. I was, after all, not born when the series started, and given…
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