Episode 676 - Baby it's cold outside, cultural context
Feb 26, 2024
Oh baby it's cold outside… That's a tricky song, well it's not really but a few years ago the silly pop-culture warriors on Twitter started acting as if the song was all “rapey” with the male in the song trying to pressure the woman into sex. The problem was they were absolutely ignorant of the correct cultural context in quite a misogynist way.
Topics and Show Notes
In the era the song came from women could not be seen as openly actively wanting sex so they had to play flirting games like the one displayed in the song. The reason the modern “rapey” interpretation is misogynist is because it strips the woman off her power and agency and casts her as an innocent, sexless child with low intelligence, instead of an adult woman with sexual needs actively participating in a game of flirtation with the man she's chosen.
Understanding cultural context is vitally important if we don't want to come off at idiots. History, geography, and time all blur this context but usually all you need to do to get the right feel for is to take a moment to familiarise yourself with a few other examples of contemporary media and absorb those differences. Rarely do you need to do more than that, but sometimes wider cultural study is needed. The very worst mistake you can ever make though is to look at something only through modern eyes in complete isolation from examples of stuff from the same time and place. At best, you will NEVER properly understand it, at worst you will come out with all sorts of idiotic theories like the Baby Its Cold Outside morons on Twitter.
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Un Re Stop Comics - Quatermass and the Pit! This is some freaky Delia Derbyshire early Doctor Who stuff. Freaky fractured soundscapes of mind twisting terror and wonder. This track sucks you into another dimension where you see with your ears and hear with your skin. You brain will never be the same!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Oh Baby It's Cold Outside lyrics - https://genius.com/Idina-menzel-baby-its-cold-outside-lyrics
Featured comic:
Cometman - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/feb/20/featured-comic-cometman/
Featured music:
Un Re Stop Comics - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Un_Re_Stop_Comics/ - by lagoticspy, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 673 - By their deeds you shall know them
Feb 5, 2024
Here we're fulfilling the promise of Quackcast 671 and examining what the art can tell us about the artist! Can certain themes, an art style, choice of imagery, jokes, humour, character opinions, colour choices or anything else tell us anything about the artist?
Episode 651 - Strong characters of any gender and DD awards stuff
Sep 3, 2023
We're chatting about a couple of things today: the DD 2023 Awards which are in their completion faze now, and “strong” characters of any gender.
Episode 605 - Myth of Freedom
Oct 17, 2022
“Freedom” is the catch cry in so much historical fiction but it's usually an anachronistic piece of nationalist fantasy. You fought for your lord, for pay, your honour, your small region, etc, not for “Scotland” (i.e. Bravehert). Even today it's generally propaganda: e.g. The Invasion of Iraq being called “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and Russia's invasion of Ukraine being all about “freeing” the Russian speaking areas from “oppression”. We alter historical stories to fit with contemporary ideas about ourselves and to give us some form of foundation for our prejudices, motivations and identity. Good examples are the Arthurian legends, Gladiator, Braveheart, The Patriot, Robin Hood, The stories about Christopher Columbus, The 300, and The Woman King.
Episode 603 - Players, Cads, and "fun" boys
Oct 3, 2022
We are talking about the trope of the Cad, AKA the Player. F***boys are their little scrappydoo kid-brothers, we call them “fun” boys for obvious reasons… It's a fun trope which is often exaggerated for comedic effect but actually comes from a very real thing! There are a lot of famous pop-culture versions though like Barney Stinson, Pepe Le Pew, James Bond, and The Continental.
Episode 594 - Grow up! Or don't...
Jul 31, 2022
The Manchild can be a fun character or they can be pathetic. They're a staple of comedies because they're an adult that gets to act immature and childish, without the restraint and responsibilities imposed by adulthood. This can make a great contrast; “The adult man acting like an immature child”, John C Riley and Will Farrel have always done that extremely well, as did Chris Farley back in the 90s. It can be be portrayed as pathetic and sad when the person can't seem to be able grow up or take on any responsibilities. They're often characterised by people with “childish” interests, like the cast of the Big Bang Theory, or with a childlike love of something like sports like Kevin in Kevin can F Himself.
Episode 584 - Drawing gender
May 23, 2022
We start off with the idea of talking about art techniques, tips and tricks we've mastered and could help people with but the cast turned into a discussion about drawing male and female characters- also trans, androgynous, etc. There's an art to representing gender in imagery! It's super important to remember that the way we see gender in art is mainly culture based rather than an innate biological reaction and the perception of gender in art is different according to your cultural background. It's basically a visual language that everyone learns, but as an artist you have to learn to actually “speak” it, and that's not as straight forward as you think.
Episode 583 - Why is it bad?
May 16, 2022
Spoiler- we don't actually talk much about Yu-Gi-Oh! But I feel it's a good example of a pretty bad a so-bad-it's-good story, but bad nevertheless. The idea we're talking about here is that it's useful to look at bad stories and stick with them because they can really help you write better. They're a lot more useful than good stories because you'd rather just enjoy those and it's a bit harder to examine them for technical details, but with “bad” stories the faults stand out strongly. Instead of simply dismissing a bad story or making fun of it, it's more useful and valuable to try and “fix” it: try and work out why it seems bad and think about what would be needed to make it better, then think about how that applies to your own work. Maybe you're actually making many of the same mistakes?
