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 665 - Eyes
Dec 10, 2023
This week our talk is an art one: eyes! We talk about how to draw them, adding meaning and expression, the way different cultures use them, different styles for doing eyes, reflection, shadow, focus and a million other things!
Episode 649 - Gendered clothing
Aug 21, 2023
When you're drawing people in a webcomic one of the common ways to indicate gender is by outfits, but why are clothes gendered at all and is that a constant?
Episode 640 - Aliens
Jun 19, 2023
We base our images of aliens in comics on aliens in TV shows and movies mostly, because those are the ones we all know. But movie aliens have been generally based on humans because it's less expensive, easier to come up with a costume and makeup for an actor, and it's also easier to make those aliens relatable. “Aliens” even THINK the same as we do, have the same motivations, wants, needs, prejudices, opinions… Almost 100% of the time aliens in media are US, just a weird version of us: distorted reflection.
Episode 629 - Reevaluation cast
Apr 3, 2023
Have you ever watched a series devotedly then lost touch with it for some reason for a while and then gone back to it a couple of years later and tried to get into again but this time you look at it with a very different perspective? Or maybe you loved a movie when you were young and decided to watch it again as an adult to see if it holds up?
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 624 - Comic panel creation
Feb 27, 2023
HPKomic is a great guy, he's been on DD since almost the beginning. He alternates the Friday newsposts with me, he focusses on the intricacies of comic panels. This time he asked people to talk about their own processes though and I thought this would be a good topic for a Quackcast! So on this comic podcast we're finally talking directly about making comic pages, who would've thought?
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.
