Episode 724 - America's Plutocratic classism
Jan 26, 2025
Is there a culture of plutocratic classism in the USA? I'm inspired by Trump's America and how people think that people like Elon Musk and him are above the law because they're rich, while conversely the lowest rank in society are the homeless and the poor. But what do I mean by “Plutocratic classism”? A plutocracy is a society where people's position is determined by their wealth, classism is our tendency to discriminate based on social class, put that together and you have people determining social value by how much money a person seems to have.
Topics and Show Notes
Gunwallace joins us for this Quackcast, replacing Banes while he has a sabbatical, he along with Tantz Aerine and myself examine this idea from an outsider's perspective. Gunwallace like me comes from an extremely egalitarian society where the idea of obvious classism is frowned upon. Australia and New Zealand were countries created by people leaving the classist aristocratic society of Great Brittain so that they could make something of themselves outside of that rigid system where class was determined by family name, accent, where you grew up, where you went to school etc. In our countries any sort of obvious classism is seen as extremely vulgar and worthy of social attack. Of course aspects of it still exist but it's bellow the surface. Tantz Aerine's Greece has been through a number of changes, coming from aristocratic origins as well as modern communist influences. It means we all have an external view on this subject.
Plutocratic classism is a vision of the world that shows up all over American media, classically with something like Trading Places with Dan Akroyd and Eddy Murphy, even another Eddy Murphy film, Coming to America, Illustrates that beautifully. In the former a homeless black person and a wealthy white stock trader and made to switch places in society (mainly their level of wealth swaps), and they're subsequently treated extremely differently. In Coming to America an African prince comes to the USA and disguises himself as a poor person, the way he's treated changes dramatically. As the story progresses he meets various people at different social economic levels: the well-off middle-class small business owner father of his girlfriend in particular, as well as her rich ex, and all these people are treated as being on different rungs of the social class ladder depending on heir wealth.
It's seen in very common tropes like the “dead hooker” jokes, the way homeless people are constantly shown as expendable trash, and the way people who live in trailer parks are looked down upon in American media, it's pure plutocratic classism. This shows up in American pop-culture media constantly. While the wealthy are seen as ersatz aristocracy and their children are viewed as scions, princes and princesses.
Have you noticed this trend in American pop-culture media? Do you agree that it exists both in fiction and reality or is this all just communist bulsh1t that I'm blathering on about?
Gunwallace was kind enough to give us a theme inspired by Ghats - A hypnotically relaxing track that builds up the pizzazz level with a synth trumpet band. From a quiet spa retreat to a full on Vegas show! Get a lot of those sexy showgirls!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Ghats - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jan/21/featured-comic-ghats/
Featured music:
Ghats - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ghats/ - by Flumpy Tripod, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
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Episode 681 - Swords and armour
Apr 1, 2024
Today we're talking about swords and armour, the reality of those things and their use in fiction. I've always had a bit of an interest in swords since I was a little kid because I loved them in fairy-tales, comics and fantasy: The Three musketeers, puss in boots, Zorro, the Narnia books, Robin Hood, Errol Flynn movies, King Arthur, Conan, Asterix and more. Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Episode 625 - Designing Women
Mar 6, 2023
Character design is a fun process but not without its challenges. Do you design the character or their story first? I've followed both of those approaches, they have pluses and minuses. On one hand when you create the character first that can make it a real passion project, you make a cool character and then create a story for them to live in and be themselves. But that can also lead to Mary Sues, wish fulfillment and self inserts, which makes for a weak story. Creating characters to fit a story can sometimes lead to using a lot of stereotypes and ending up with fairly generic and bland characters, which can make for a dull story. So it's best to use a bit of balance and judgment.
Episode 622 - Whaddaya take me for?
Feb 12, 2023
This is when the writer leads you to think something big has happened in the story, like a character dying or falling in love or winning a big prize or something, only to have the character alive in the next part, or the prize or love never mentioned or addressed- this is “schmuck bait”. The writer gets you invested and excited for something but cops out, leaving the audience frustrated and cynical. This was common in older episodic things where the episodes are intended to be seen in any order, so the writers couldn't have continuing arcs and development across a season. It's also common in bad writing where the writer builds things up a lot for an events but then loses their nerve or just doesn't posses the skills to properly resolve things.
Episode 586 - Working with disability
Jun 6, 2022
How do you keep on with your creative output when something happens to you? When you lose function or are impaired in some way, how do you adapt or relearn so you can keep on as you were before? Maybe you can't and have to change to another medium that's a better fit for your abilities? Comic creator Bravo1102 once talked about how he moved from drawing to using action figures to make his comics partially because of his eyesight. My own eyesight has suddenly started to go bad and I'm having to adapt to that, and Tantz tells us how her deteriorating eyesight forced her to work digitally.
Episode 585 - Adaptation
May 30, 2022
Adaptations of one thing into another is an interesting process. What's lost, what's gained, what modifications do you have to do to make it happen? As webcomicers we do it all the time in many ways, we have to adapt our influences into ideas, adapt those to stories, and adapt those to images and comics, which isn't trivial! It's often quite difficult to transform the written word into narrative sequential art- what portion of the writing gets directly turned into images, what's cut, and what becomes dialogue? For me about 20% is cut, 78% becomes art and 2% becomes dialogue or captions.
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 579 - 2022DD Awards begins!
Apr 18, 2022
The DD Awards have come around again and now it's time for you to join in! To start with there's the red carpet event! Simply draw your characters showing up to the awards ceremony, submit it to Tantz and get on board with the awards! There's a link bellow… The DD Awards are a fantastic community even that we've been running on the site for years and years. It's a great way to get more eyes on your comic and increase your community presence. All you have to do is join in, create comic pages on the awards theme featuring your characters in the various events and things and you're part of it. Like most awards ceremonies it's not really about who's best or most popular or whatever, it's about participation, making your work visible to people, raising your profile, and getting eyes on you! To that end the red carpet event is up first, get in on that and make a start with the awards!
