Mile Wide Club

What does a horror movie series from the aughts have to say about dealing with the inevitability of death.... and teens? Can death itself shoot you with a gun? What makes a horror movie funny? Jacob deNobel returns to the MWC to discuss all that, and some 'relatability', too.

MWC takes another trip to Nostalgia City with the premier card collecting anime of your youth! Shel discusses Clamp tropes, romantic destiny as queer fatalism, the magical girl as a trans experience, and, of course, how the original version is superior to the American rebroadcast.

From caricature of Kant to their present, well, omnipresence, the Moomins are an exemplar of unsaccharine familial love. This MWC covers all things Moominvalley, including Grace's deft takes on children's agency, Tove Janssons' love life, FST's lingering Snufkin- related attachment issues, #FullMoominCommunism, and how winter is a mistake no matter where you are.

What do you do with a synthpop album that doesn't get gender quite right? How do you determine if an artist 'communicated' clearly, poorly, or not at all? Thomas articulates a creator-focussed metric for trying to understand ambitious work, and FST proposes that everything is a text, including people. TWs apply for discussion of genitals, crude language around genitals, discussion of (what is imo) transphobia in a song, mild PoMo bullshit

Season 2 of MWC starts with more of a Babadook vibe. Mary Houston, of Masters and Movies, "where social worker meets film critic" (mastersandmovies.com), and I talk about mental illness and parenting in movies, and most especially in everybody's favorite movie about a bad man with a tophat.

What's the deal with parenting? What's the deal with Connecticut? What's the deal with infantilizing women as a romantic gesture in media, specifically in media which otherwise sells itself as empowering to women? Charlie takes me, and you, on a guided tour through the awful world of Star's Hollow, via a very personal account of growing up watching Connecticut's Worst Women.

Anemone, Gina, and Aurora joined me to talk about a melancholy, sparsely orchestrated western.... digimon movie? It's true! Hear about how it's kinda like the end of Evangelion (really) and other less memeable musings on childhood, liminality, what tropes a bunch of American kids associate with children's anime, and more.

It's another manga! This time, we look at memory, mediocrity, misery, and massive robots in Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys. This comic is potentially fascinating as a document about a particular turn-of-the-century imagining of the past and the future in Japan, but we don't know anything about that, so we talk about robots and being disappointed with capitalism.

Paradise Kiss is a shojou manga about growing up, love, the patriarchy, fashion, disappointments, and, on occasion, disappointing fashion. Love and the patriarchy are always disappointing. This one is extra long, because 1. I could not stand to cut out Juliet's anecdotes about her grandmother's 'sexy picture of Colin Firth' and 2. I am infinitely fallible. Enjoy Juliet's insights on women in comics!

Jon and I talk about 'representation in media,' identifying with characters like and unlike ourselves, 'queersploitation', crystal gems controversies, and more. What does it mean for queer people to be 'safe' in a story? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We tried our best.

Lana and I take the red pill. Wait, no, Lana and I take ON the red pill. We talk about the faux-scientific language, forums as texts and productive of texts, who has and who has not been promised a rose garden, and why misogyny is real and oppression of men isn't, SORRY NOT SORRY. cws for brief and vague but recurring mentions of abusive relationships and consent violations in the context of MRA 'ideals'

Time for some #discourse! Daniel and I talk about Cakes da Killa's debut album, The Eulogy, as queer music, black music, maybe 'niche' music? What does it mean to make work mostly accessible to people who identify with you, is this the artist's choice or the audience's responsibility, and what does this have to do with art? CW: mention of other people mentioning sex, mention of racism in the music industry, mention of student loans, hack jokes about Daniel's skinny jeans.

Bolivar and I talk about what we think the difference is between Zelda and World of Warcraft, digress through a fan made Shrek game, slander Undertale, and try to re-evaluate that one ctrl-alt-del comic. You know the one. CW: mention of loss of pregnancy in fiction, mention of mental illness, mention of Shrek.

In this, our most fourth episode to date, we discuss Anhk Morpork's assimilation of minorities into the metropolis via the police force as equal opportunity employer, how Vimes is LITERALLY in love with the city, and more! Is it ever okay to like a cop? Probably not, but we like detectives. TW: we talk about cops a lot, also allegorical racism on the Disc. We mention fictional police brutality on the Discworld in passing, and allude to actual police brutality IRL.

If you've ever wanted to hear the Fast and the Furious dissected by two people who take Dom and Brian's romantic history together as 100% canon, this is your moment! Jacob deNobel and I talk genre, the joys of moving bodies in space, and how franchises evolve in the Fast and the Furious and Step Up.

Jeremy Hawkins, a comedian and artist, graces us with thoughts on genius, ethics, sincerity and how to love art according to Only Lovers Left Alive. Plus, Mountain Dew Jokes. content warning: extended discussion of fictional character considering suicide, suicide as a theme in relation to ‘art’ in this movie.

Arielle Soutar (@HowlingArielle) took some time out from being a comix and coding superstar to talk about remembering Fury Road, the role of remembering in Fury Road, and how it challenges the conventions of masculine toughness in action heroes which the earlier Mad Max films helped define!