The Pop Culture Detective Agency

A series of critical video essays looking at media through a critical lens with an emphasis on the intersections of politics, masculinity and entertainment. Hosted by Jonathan McIntosh

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6 years and 28 video essays to hit a million YouTube subscribers. Thank you!

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In this episode, we discuss the fair use doctrine and why it’s so important for everyone on the internet. We also dig into how fair use interacts (or doesn’t) with YouTube’s content ID system. Two legal experts in fair use join the conversation: Art Neill is the founder and Executive Director of New Media Rights, and Erika Lee is the Assistant Director.

New Media Rights is a clinical program of California Western School of Law that provides legal services to creators, entrepreneurs, journalists, and internet users whose projects require specialized internet, intellectual property, privacy, and media law expertise.

You can listen and follow via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google podcasts, YouTube, or look for Pop Culture Detective: Audio Files wherever you normally get your podcasts.

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Men are not exploited or oppressed by sexism, but there are ways in which they suffer as a result of it. This suffering should not be ignored. While it in no way diminishes the seriousness of male abuse and oppression of women, or negates male respon­sibility for exploitative actions, the pain men experience can serve as a catalyst calling attention to the need for change.

bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

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This new video essay examines some of the underlying ideological implications embedded in Marvel's superhero formula. While the superheroes usually manage to roll back the various apocalypses, they rarely use their superpowers to build a better world.

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This Pop Culture Detective podcast episode features a conversation with award-winning Swedish sci-fi artist Simon Stålenhag. Simon is the creator of narrative art books like Tales From the Loop and The Electric State. We discuss what it’s like for a small artist to be courted by the Hollywood machine. We dig into the meaning and messages in dystopian science fiction. And we talk about the negative implications of AI art generators.

Listen and follow via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or search for Pop Culture Detective Audio Files wherever you get your podcasts. 

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A new video essay is online! Everything Everywhere All At Once is a genre bending multiverse movie but it's also one of the most challenging and subversive representations of masculinity I’ve ever seen in any genre.

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A brand new video essay is finally here! This time we investigate what we're calling "The Harmless Peeping Tom" trope and how it relates to depictions of non-consensual looking in popular media. Learning about consent as it relates to looking (and not just touching) is an essential topic, especially given the reality of social media and the problem of intimate images shared without permission.

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Since we all know that boys (and men) do in fact cry, this video focuses on the relatively narrow set of social circumstances when tears are permissible. 

Help me make more video essays by supporting me on Patreon

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It’s not really a Star Wars story unless there’s a lovable or memorable droid stealing the spotlight. But, when you really stop and think about it, there’s also something profoundly tragic about the role artificial lifeforms play in the Star Wars universe.

 If you’d like to help fund my video essays please visit Patreon.

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Here’s the second installment in our series on the sexual assault of men played for comedy in entertainment. Part one focused on jokes about men assaulting other men. This video examines media in which women are depicted as perpetrators who prey on men or boys.

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Hey we have an instagram now! Follow Pop Detective there for glimpses into our video essay making process as well as movie, game, and book recommendations.

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Tabletop gaming's colonialism problem doesn’t seem to be getting much better, all these are NEW games being shown at the largest board game trade fair in the world this week!

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We at Pop Culture Detective have a bunch of exciting video essays in the works! First up will be part 2 in our mini-series on the Sexual Assault of Men Played for Laughs. After that we'll have episodes on Droids in Star Wars, on the myth that "Boys Don't Cry," and then we'll do a critical video about Colonialism in Modern Board Games. You can see our research collection for that one above. There are a handful of other colonialist tabletop games we'd like to include but our budget for that episode is about maxed out. If anyone feels like donating to that effort, here’s our current wishlist.

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The it Netflix series Stranger Things is a love letter to iconic pop culture media of decades past. But there are dangers in leaning too heavily on nostalgia because media makers can end up reproducing harmful patterns along with their retro aesthetics. This is especially true when it comes to masculinity and romance conventions in entertainment.

Help me make more videos! https://www.patreon.com/popdetective

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On a narrative level The Shawshank Redemption is a movie about the power of hope in the face of extraordinary hardship. But underpinning Andy Dufresne’s story we also find a blistering critique of the prison system and criminal justice policy in the United States.

Help me make more long-form video essays! https://www.patreon.com/popdetective

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Sexual assault of men as comedy is so ubiquitous and so normalized that you may not have even noticed it shows up everywhere. Most popular comedic actors engage in this type of humor. The jokes are typically designed to demean, humiliate, control, or emasculate a male character for being the victim, or potential victim, of sexual violence.

RESOURCES • Black & Pink • Just Detention International • Statistics and facts about sexual violence • How to support male survivors

REFERENCES • Cameron Esposito’s “Rape Jokes” standup special • Terry Crews speaking to the US Congress • List of movies including jokes about men being abused • List of TV shows including jokes about men being abused

SUPPORT THIS PROJECT If you’d like to see more long-form video essays focusing on the intersections of entertainment and masculinity, please help fund this series on Patreon. If you’d rather make a one-time donation you can do that via PayPal.