The Overthinkers answer listener email, touching on ethnic stereotypes in sitcoms, OTI muse Tilda Swinton, what’s so reliable about the Starship Reliant, how to Overthink something not worth Overthinking, and book recommendations from listeners.
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Oh, I’m in Seattle.
couldn’t ‘Big Bang Theory’ fall into the same category as the “stereotypical sitcom”? I mean you have four nerdy boys and the cute girl across the hall whom they interact with and you never see any of the other tenants of the apartment complex. The sterotype would be the whole nerd culture and how smart people generally don’t have great social skills but their hearts are in the right place.
@Fenzel: is the ‘Little Mermaid’ piece about how phallic the movie is? If not then there should be a post by either you or mlawski about that.
@Megan
The Little Mermaid is only phallic insofar as much as it is a long, floppy strip that gets tucked in its case and put away when nobody is watching or playing it.
ZING.
Oh, and also, because when boys enjoy The Little Mermaid, they usually do it by themselves in their rooms with the doors locked out of fear they will be discovered by their parents or friends, resulting in embarrassment.
DOUBLE ZING.
The triple zing involves going past the Little Mermaid in the Disney Animated Film Catalog in chronological order and finding the Rescuers Down Under, but I’ll spare you guys that one.
PARALEPTICAL ZING.
thanks for answering my question, that was not the answer i expected. regarding sitcoms and cartooning, there is another argument from understanding comics that fits nicely with the points pete was making. as an image becomes more iconic, it can represent more and more things. a photo can only represent an individual person, but a smiley face could be anyone. As a result, iconic characters are easier to relate to. sitcoms use stereotypes to facilitate the audience identifying with the show’s stars.
Oh, and to further the little mermaid/phallus debate, there was a sort-of scandal about a subliminal penis on the cover of the little mermaid.
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/mermaid.asp
“thanks for answering my question, that was not the answer i expected.”
If I had to sum up what we’re aiming for in the podcasts in one sentence, it’d be this.
Well ACTUALLY >.>
The Defiant was so named because it was built to defy the Dominion invasion of the Alpha Quadrant.
La la la~