Episode 695 - Pop Culture
Jul 7, 2024
Pop Culture, and the way it's always changing… We fall in love with pop culture but it's constantly changing and new pop culture is always being created, which means that as time goes on less and less people will care about the same pop culture as you. And what you were into will become niche and obscure, even though at the time you fell in love with it, it was massively mainstream and all over the place! There are exceptions to this with things that are SUPER popular like Star Wars, DC and Marvel comic characters, Star Trek, and Doctor Who, who's new versions facilitate a life support for the old stuff or sometimes even a revival of it, but they also have an issue where they try and replace their classic stuff with the newer versions.
Topics and Show Notes
The term “Pop culture” stated as a sort of critical description of what was thought of as a low quality, disposable alternative to true culture, but we've long since embraced it and no longer see it as something lessor. Pop culture is simply the universal, current, contemporary culture that we all have access to. The two biggest factors in popculture are time and money: Time, because there's a constant turnover of content, people lose interest in things constantly so we always need new things; and Money, because the more money put into something the bigger it will get in popculture and also the more something can earn (because it's part of a popular concept) the more likely more of those things will be made (i.e superhero movies, Isekai anime etc). Older, previously created popculture still continues to exist but rapidly loses popularity and availability the older it gets. By its nature there is an extreme bias towards the new.
Here we're talking about how massively popular and universal things become niche and unknown. It can revive because mining older popculture to make new popculture is very lucrative and easy, but it's never the same when it does. Even perennially popular things like Star Trek, Marvel and DC constantly change with each new iteration. Companies like Disney re-release their older IPs in their original forms but the purpose of that is to maintain the popularity of their brand (and now the streaming service) to help market their newer stuff. Pop-culture is a ravenous beast that must consonantly be fed with the new and money.
What are some Pop-culture things you love but no one else does anymore?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The Scourge of Ninepoint - A mournful yet extremely respectful funerary sounding tune ramps up quickly into a furiously paced call to action and a desperate race against time!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Snake in the office - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jul/02/featured-comic-snake-in-the-office/
Featured music:
The Scourge of Ninepoint - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Scourge_of_Ninepoint/ - by BonesMcKay, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 675 - Lurv
Feb 19, 2024
It was Valentine's Day last week so let's talk about lurv. Love makes the world go round, love solves all problems, love heals all, love is eternal, love is all you need, all you need is love… Well those are all the typical and utterly meaningless pop culture platitudes but they sound good.
Episode 642 - Gatekeeping
Jul 3, 2023
Gatekeeping can be a pretty dickish practice… but not in every case. Generally we see it as a social pop culture trend where older established fans of something will try and put down new people and discourage them from joining a fandom. This can stifle a fan community and really kill discourse, not to mention shutting out new members and new perspectives which is actually what a fan community needs in order to flourish and grow.
Episode 641 - Bodycast
Jun 26, 2023
Injuries, especially to the head can be extremely bad but people are hit over the bonce and knocked out in popculture all the time. In violent sports like boxing or MMA it's often a goal, it's a common thing in games too, the “KO” is a staple. In TV shows, movies and comics it's seen as a kind way to deal with an enemy, people will even do it to their very best friends to protect them from going through with some scary activity, often knocking them out and tying them up and then taking their place or something. Knocking people out has become so memed that the fantasy version has replaced the real version and it's even influenced how we think about it.
Episode 298 - When death comes
Nov 21, 2016
This Quackcast was based on Tantz Aerine's newspost from two Saturday's ago: Death in comics. We lightly expand t to death in all pop culture in the Quackcast. It's an interesting topic! Not the one we were originally going to do though… We were supposed to all have pizza and interview VinoMas's Princess January, but no one got pizza except me and I gave Vino the wrong time so he didn't show up, hahaha! So that idea… died. Death in comics can be used a whole lot of ways; a promotional technique as in Superman, a way to get rid of superfluous characters, to show gore and a massive body count, to create tragedy and pathos, the create comedy and laughter, and more! We give examples from our own artwork as well as mainstream comics like Maus, Judge Dredd, Superman, When the Wind Blows, nd even great webcomics like Charby the Vampirate. Banes could not show for this Quackcast. He is NOT dead… not yet. Gunwallace is right there back in action and the theme he's given us this week is Ectopiary! It's darkly threatening and vaguely classical, a creeping, scary exploration of dark places.
Episode 297 - fandoms
Nov 14, 2016
In this Quackcast we tackle the topic of fandom. Fandoms can be interesting, fun, helpful, fascinating, inspiring, or even bizarre and disturbing. Fandoms are frequently great resources for information about their subject and can really enrich your experience of whatever you're into. Fandoms are also a hotbed of creative energy- some of our most iconic literature was written by people who started out as ardent fans- even the great H.P. Lovecraft was part of a fandom of Gothic horror fiction along with fellow writers Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. These highly influential writers were influenced by such greats as Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, Edgar Allen Poe, and Lord Dunsany to name a few. And of course Lovecraft and his group went to to influence legions of fans who changed the face of 20th century pop culture. Looking at fandoms gives a cultural roadmap so we can follow influences, where ideas originated, how they changed, how pop-culture was created, and more importantly: they give us great clues about what other stuff we might like to read! No music this week I'm afraid. Mr Gunwallace is dealing with the fallout from a huge earthquake in his native New Zealand.
Episode 248 - Interview with Dario Di Donato of Barbarian Adventure
Dec 6, 2015
Today we interview Dario Di Donato, the creator of the great webcomic Barbarian Adventure! You may recall that Gunwallace did an amazing theme to Barbarian adventure that we played in Quackcast 244, AND the comic was featured a few weeks ago too! Anyway, this time around, Banes, Pitface and I interview the creator of this fine work and he fills us in on his many classic 1980s pop culture sources of inspiration. Dario brims with a positivity, dedication and enthusiasm that is infectious! And you can listen to Gunwallace's dark punky theme to Monster Soup!
Episode 189 - It's YOUR CHOICE...
Oct 19, 2014
It's YOUR CHOICE people, that's the name of the ongoing conic by VinMas who we interviewed on this week's Quackcast! YOUR CHOICE is an interesting comic, both in style and the way it's created; it's a real testemant to physical, hands-on arting about, drawn with pens, pencils, coloured markers, paints etc and collaged over magazine and TV screen images; story and plot are dictated by the whims of fans in its own facebook community, and numerous elements such as characters and situations are drawn from pop culture. VinoMas talks to us about this interesting webcomic project which is a cross between TV soap opera and Postmodern fine art!
