The Cultural Gutter

going through pop culture's trash since 2004

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

“Uncanny Avengers, X-Men, Rick Remender, and Oppression Comix”

“[T]he X-Men are a lot of things to a lot of people, but one of the most important things they are—I’m talking top two, right after “sexy people with cool powers”—is an oppression metaphor. You cannot escape this. It is built into the X-Men’s DNA….The oppression metaphor is a vital piece of the engine that [...]

Idie’s New Hair Cut

At Digital Femme Online, Cheryl Lynn thinks about Idie Okonkwo’s change from an afro to a pixie cut in Wolverine and the X-Men, and is sad that ” no other character is willing to address what is a glaring problem with this child in regards to her mutancy and her appearance is difficult to accept. [...]

“Remember, You are the Future that Nobody Wanted!”

Professor Xavier answers all your questions about your changing body in The “What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Mutants. (via Comics Alliance)

The False Consciousness of the X-Men

Matthew Yglesias says “Magneto Was Right”:  “The mutant pride message is a radical one. It’s too radical for those whose WASP male privilege in their non-mutant lives makes them instinctively want to identify with existing power structures. But a mutant who’s also a Jew, or a woman, or a racial minority, or has had blue [...]

Dr. Roger Corman, Ph.D. x 2

On the occasion of Dr. Roger Corman, Ph.D. receiving his second honorary doctorate, PopcornBiz interviews the good doctor and looks back over Corman’s career in B-film. 

Chris Claremont, In Summary

Jason Powell looked at every issue of Chris Claremont’s run on the X-men. Every issue. (Sorry about the previously missing link).

Unlimited Fear, Limited Controls

Michael Thomson talks about the traps and dangers of survival horror and gaming: “There’s no limit to fear of the unknown, but as soon as an enemy is quantifiable the boundaries are drawn. Fear will eventually become supplanted with frustration or, worse, tedium.”

Saturday Morning Happy Hour

police academy 80.jpg

Racial epithets. Topless women. Speeches interrupted by blowjobs. Steve Guttenberg. Doesn’t seem like fodder for a Saturday morning cartoon show. But in the late 80s the film Police Academy, which subjected viewers to such adult situations, spawned an animated series of the same name. Running for two seasons, the series featured the original franchise’s characters–Mahoney, [...]

Where X-Men Have Gone Before

Wolverine snikkts at Spock!  Gladiator punches the Enterprise!  Star Trek/X-men is crazy! 

X-Men: Occult Heroes

Bully for The League of Paranatural Persons, aka, “Old Timey X-Men!”

How to Spoil a Game

In Sanitarium, you have a godlike view of the nuthouse.

You wake up in a centuries-old asylum. Your face is in bandages and your memory is in tatters, only coming back to you in black and white cinematic flashes. As you walk around and talk to people, you solve puzzles and unearth the mystery of your identity, travelling to different places that may only exist [...]

  • Of Note Elsewhere

    A video interview with the Batman of Brampton, Ontario, Canada.

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    “[O]n Saturday night, when you were probably enjoying the discothèque with the other sophisticates, it was finally on: Deadly Spa.” More Deadly Spa here. (via @bethlovesbolly)

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    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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