Episode 229 - Media Criticism

It's episode 229 and time for us to talk about Media Criticism. We talk about what counts as media, the challenges of writing about emerging forms of media, how we interact with criticism, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray 🦇 | Jam Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

• The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men by Manuel Betancourt
• Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean by Douglas Wolk
• Marvel Age of Comics: Doctor Strange: A Decade of Dark Magic by Stuart Moore, narrated by Jason Lasky
• Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games edited by J. Robert Lennon and Carmen Maria Machado
• Culture Creep: Notes on a Pop Apocalypse by Alice Bolin
• Pop Classics #15: Ugh, as if!: Clueless by Veronica Litt
• Selected Amazon Reviews by Kevin Killian
• We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film by Tre'vell Anderson
• The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin
• Why I love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature edited by Becky Siegel Spratford
• Bad Indian Bookclub: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds by Patty Krawec

Other Media We Mentioned

• Parasite Eve
• Clever Girl: Jurassic Park by Hannah McGregor
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
• 33 ⅓
• The Importance Of Being Earnest | Official Trailer | National Theatre Live
• Lady Sings the Blues
• Video Essayists Answer Your Assumptions (with hbomberguy‬, ‪D'Angelo Wallace, and Mina Le, ft. Spencer Agnew)

Our Favourite Video Essayists/Reviewers/Reviews

• Action Button
• Amanda the Jedi
• Any Austin
• Dungeon Chill
• Every Frame a Painting
• Folding Ideas
• I Finished a Video Game
• Jacob Gellar
• Jenna Stoeber
• Jenny Nicholson
• hbomberguy
• Lindsay Ellis
• Matt McMuscles: The Worst Fighting Game
• Matty Bites
• Princess Weekes
• ReRez: Just Bad Games
• Ryan Hollinger
• Super Eyepatch Wolf
• T1J
• Todd in the Shadows
• The WWE's complex "Black" history by F.D Signifier
• Extremely Overdetermined Adventure Game Tier List | Part 1: Re-ranking the Top 20 by Innuendo Studios and Questing Refuge
• Jam's list of top 10 video essays about media I've never seen

Links, Articles, and Things

• The Times Literary Supplement
• Bubbles Zine
• The Comics Staple
• Libro.fm Audiobook Listening Copy Program

20 Media Criticism Books by BIPOC Authors:

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers' Advisory Podcast chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
• Indigenous Celebrity: Entanglements with Fame by Jennifer Adese and Robert Alexander
• We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film by Tre'vell Anderson
• The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin
• Black Music by Amiri Baraka
• The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men by Manuel Betancourt
• New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi and K-Pop by Fatima Bhutto
• Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood by Donald Bogle
• Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television From Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond by Bethonie Butler
• Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada by Karrmen Crey
• Original People, Original Television: The Launching of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network by Jennifer David
• Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Video Games are Changing Our World by Marijam Did
• Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema by Karen Han
• Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me by Aisha Harris
• Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World by Wil Haygood
• The Creative Gene: How Books, Movies, and Music Inspired the Creator of Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid by Hideo Kojima
• Our Gang: A Racial History of the Little Rascals by Julia Lee
• Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship by Lori Kido Lopez
• The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema From Fodder to Oscar by Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris
• Music Is History by Questlove
  

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Join us again on Tuesday, April 21st it's time for our Spring Media update!

Then on Tuesday,  May 5th, we'll be talking about Sapphic horror (as suggested by tmauch)