Pop DNA

He's just Jon and he's enough! (Jonough?) This week we're talking about men in Westeros, exploring how masculinity is constructed in the world of Game of Thrones. Questions we discuss include: How do medieval European ideals of masculinity inform this world's gender expectations? What is the relationship between violence and masculinity, or perceived masculinity? How do family systems and relation...

In part two of our series discussing Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, we look at how women navigate the world of Westeros. Questions we explore include: How do women gain, lose, and use power in this world? How does power relate to femininity? How are the expected gender roles of Westerosi society shaped by the realities of the world? Characters we discuss include Cersei Lannister, Daenery...

Welcome back! We're riding our dragons to King's Landing for a six-part series on A Song of Ice and Fire and all its connected works, including the TV series Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. This week, we're just getting our feet wet with a look at our first introductions to George R. R. Martin's work, our thoughts on the main ideas of the series, and an overview of Martin&...

We wrap up our summer book-to-screen club series with the science fiction classic that inadvertently sparked a thousand sandworm popcorn bucket memes. Our discussion topics include Dune's influence on and connections to other staples of the science fiction and fantasy genres such as Star Wars, Wheel of Time, and A Song of Ice and Fire; how the recent Villeneuve films interpret certain aspects...

Continuing our discussions of classic American novels, this week we read Alice Walker's The Color Purple! We talk about how the novel explores girlhood and relationships between women, the Black experience in the early 20th century, and finding the joy in life even through darkness. We also look at the 1985 and 2023 films and the stage musical, and how these adaptations interpreted the themes...

Welcome to our 2024 Summer Series! This summer we decided to read some classic American novels with recent film adaptations, and we're starting with Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. We talk about our personal experiences with the novel, how we see this work in the context of American literature, and how the 1994 and 2019 film adaptations explore the book's themes. We also answer the age-...

For Rhonda's Birthday Bonus we're talking COWBOY CARTER and THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Why are both of these albums' titles styled in all caps? Our conversation explores our initial reactions to and top five tracks from each album, as well as some interesting parallels between these two bodies of work. How does Beyoncé break genre boundaries on COWBOY CARTER? How does Taylor explor...

If you thought we were going to let it slide that Depression Barbie's comfort show is the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice, you thought wrong. We're digging in to some possible literary inspirations and parallels for the Barbie movie, looking specifically at Christian/Catholic creation theology and how much Greta Gerwig may have been influenced by the work of Jane Austen. We also talk about wh...

We are back from a long, semi-unplanned hiatus, but don't worry, there's still plenty more Barbie to talk about! This week we look at how both Barbie Land and Stereotypical Barbie's perspective in the film explore gender and femininity. How does Barbie Land fit into the context of women-dominated societies in other fictional works? How does Barbie as a film both defy and uphold patriar...

Hi Barbies! We have sooooo much to talk about in this three-parter, so we squished some background discussion of fashion dolls and the cultural mythos of Barbie into this first episode. We also have some thoughts on the Barbenheimer phenomenon, the Barbie movie as a capitalist product, and our own experiences playing with Barbies as children. Then we give a brief overview of some other topics we w...

What was supposed to be a fun and light chat about video games this week turned into a philosophical discussion of free will as a player of video games, and how this illusion of choice translates into the choices (or lack thereof) of characters in the TV series of The Last Of Us, especially in terms of gendered actions and decision-making. It's still fun, though, we promise! Further Exploratio...

This week we are getting apocalyptic! We talk about why we as humans seem to be fascinated with the fall of civilization or even of humanity itself. From the ancient epic of Gilgamesh to several separate HBO shows, our literature and culture are full of stories about humans at the end of the world. How does The Last of Us explore the human significance of the apocalypse? And what other works of ap...

Welcome to our first regular episode of 2024! We're kicking the year off with a discussion of the (maybe?) zombie show that everyone was talking about in early 2023. This week we talk about our first experiences with the world of The Last of Us, discuss the question of whether or not this is in fact a zombie show, and take a quiz to find out which character we are. Then we introduce the ideas...

It's a new year, which means it's time for us to talk about our favorite movies and TV (plus a little theater and music) of 2023! We also discuss how the Hollywood strikes affected how we view media, and how the theme of girlhood seemed to be a throughline in a lot of the media we loved this past year. We talk about a few of our disappointments as well, and then look ahead to what we'r...

The Wizard of Oz is a quintessentially American story, and over the 120+ years since the novel's release, the tale and its subsequent iterations have reflected the political climate of particular moments in our culture. From its inception as an alleged allegory for the late 19th century Populist movement, to the imagery of early women's suffrage in the witches of Oz, to the echoes of FDR&#...

We're wrapping up 2023 with a look at the beloved 1939 classic musical fantasy film The Wizard of Oz, and its 1900 source novel by L. Frank Baum. This week we give you a wizard's-eye view of the topics we plan to dig into deeper in the next couple episodes. We'll look at the popular theory of the original novel as an allegory for U.S. politics and economics at the turn of the 20th cent...

Following up on our conversation from last time, this installment in our discussion of The Hunger Games looks at the vulnerability of children in both Panem and the ongoing attacks on Palestine, the troubling parallel between the Capitol citizens of Panem and we in the privileged Western world in our parasocial relationships with those respective children, and how these traumatic events will affec...

With a new installment of The Hunger Games film franchise hitting theaters this month, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to revisit the series, and we brought a friend! Jac Frost (known as @jacfrostisreal on TikTok) joins us for an intro to the deep-dive discussions we're planning on the books by Suzanne Collins and their film adaptations. Our conversation focuses on the ways ou...

Happy Halloween! As a coda to our Wednesday series, we decided to watch an iconic movie from our childhoods and talk over it! Tangents include the research Rhonda did about the house in Practical Magic before we visited the town where it was filmed for Galentine's Day, the summer camp Erin worked at one summer that reminded her of Wednesday's summer camp in really uncomfortable ways, and t...

We wrap up our Wednesday series with a deep dive into the character's emotional landscape. The therapy sessions that Wednesday is compelled to attend are not a healthy depiction of mental health care, so let's talk about that! Let's also talk about whether or not romance was really necessary to Wednesday's story (it wasn't), and whether romance storylines in media in general ar...

This week we're talking about the ways the titular Wednesday explores her identity throughout the series, from finding other weird kids at Nevermore Academy, to differentiating from the Addams Family ethos. Further Reading: Nevermore Academy website Nevermore filming locations The All Ghouls School on TV Tropes Children's author Chris Priestly on the appeal of the special school in fiction...

Wednesday is both a piece of Addams Family media and a Tim Burton work, so we're looking at the intersection of those two origins. We take a trip down memory lane to look at how Wednesday and the rest of her family have been portrayed in various media over the decades, from the original 1930s comics by Charles Addams, all the way up to its current iteration in the Wednesday Netflix series. The...

It's full-on Spooky Season at Pop DNA and we're celebrating with a discussion of our favorite spooky teen, Wednesday Addams! In part 1 of this series, we talk about some of our initial thoughts on the Netflix show Wednesday, our relationships with the Addams Family franchise, and how we feel Wednesday fits into this 85-year legacy. We also take the quiz to find out which character we are,...

We wrap up our series on Abbott Elementary with some thoughts on how the show pays homage and stands out from older network sitcoms, Quinta Brunson's inspirations for the series, and a more lighthearted look at teaching and the veteran teachers who have shaped all of our lives. Further Reading: Abbott's "Revitalization" of the network sitcom Quinta Brunson on Abbott's "c...

This week we're digging into some of our favorite characters on Abbott Elementary! We take a look at our favorite terrible boss Ava, with a psychological analysis of supervisor-employee relationship patterns, and how Ava's management style stacks up to other fictional bosses like Michael Scott or Don Draper. Then we explore Janine and Barbara's unique found family mother-daughter dynam...