The Cultural Gutter

the cult in your pop culture

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

Heroine Addict

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Apparently, once I get started on archetypes, I can’t stop. So having touched on the archtypes found in stories and in heroes, I’m going to have to complete the trifecta. Theories about the nature of the modern Romance heroine are legion. She’s a placeholder. She’s an expression of modern femininity. She’s an aspect of human [...]

Holding Out For a Hero

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I recently read a column by Ilona Andrews about heroes, which A) though light-hearted was also informative, and B) I immediately decided to steal use as a springboard for an article of my own.< There’s a lot of discussion as to the role of the hero in modern Romance. Is he a placeholder for the [...]

Alpha Bits

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It kind of goes without saying that the Romance genre is full of tropes and archetypes (though just to be clear: the happy ending is not archetype, but architecture).  Some come in plot form: the rags-to-riches story, for instance, a modern take on the Cinderella mythos.  Sometimes they pertain to character:  the driven career woman [...]

  • Of Note Elsewhere

    Kate Elliott asks, “How much sex is too much sex in your science fiction and fantasy?” (Thanks, James!)

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    NPR’s Monkey See blog shares a look at Adventure Time. “Adventure Time insists on emotional honesty.” (via @profmdwhite)

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    Recent shenanigans The Cultural Gutter has been involved in: The lost Drive-In Mob Movie S.P.E.C.T.R.E. on Monster Island; a transcript of the Shaitani Dracula tweetalong organized by The Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit; and the ongoing Twitter game/story, “Tonight On Mad Men.”

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    At Vern Reviews The Films Of Cinema, Outlaw Vern offers “one Seagalologist’s perspective on the ‘vulgar auteurism’ debate”: “The practitioners are trying to bring recognition to artists who they think are marginalized, but they’re accidentally creating a ranking of ‘vulgar auteur’ beneath ‘actual auteur.’ And that also shines a spotlight on the idea’s most glaring weakness: even the most establishment of the critical establishment have always worshipped directors who were at some point considered lowbrow–Hitchcock, Fuller, Peckinpah, DePalma.”

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    Pornokitsch finishes determining essential epic fantasy, with statistics, graphs and lists of their selections. Nice to see Homer in there.

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    David Simon shares the best deleted scene from the fifth season of The Wire. (via @pornokitsch)

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