@gvaughnjoy
UCL PhD in Christmas Film History • MA in Comic Books • MPhil in Demons • Creator of https://blackwhiteandread.com/ • Author of Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy (2025) • Wife of My Favorite Person • she/her
I wasn't going to review Jurassic Park (1993), just see it in cinemas with some friends. But then there was a kid in front of me experiencing it for the first time, and I realized I would give just about anything to hear John Williams's score again for the first time in context.
I can't stop thinking about this
STOP. YES.
It's so sick that our Secretary of Defense is the bully from a B-list 80s teen movie whose dad is threatening to buy the town's ski lodge and turn it into upscale housing and the only way to stop him is to have the school's new kid underdog beat him with a trick move everyone said was impossible.
We kept it quiet for the first few years but then made it public when we launched our website together. I'm glad we bring you joy!!
It's so sick that our Secretary of Defense is the bully from a B-list 80s teen movie whose dad is threatening to buy the town's ski lodge and turn it into upscale housing and the only way to stop him is to have the school's new kid underdog beat him with a trick move everyone said was impossible.
American Studies power couple innit?
AW.
HELL YEAH. Congratulations!!
This morning I was thinking about the time I got tipsy in 2022 and wrote a long Twitter thread about the Paramount Decrees being repealed and leading to this exact situation and it went mega viral and 7 million people saw me drunk history my way through hating late stage capitalism and The Rock.
This morning I was thinking about the time I got tipsy in 2022 and wrote a long Twitter thread about the Paramount Decrees being repealed and leading to this exact situation and it went mega viral and 7 million people saw me drunk history my way through hating late stage capitalism and The Rock.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing it! I'm very glad it resonated with you.
I enjoy revisiting movies with fresh eyes. This is a fantastic piece that gave me a new way to appreciate my favorite dinosaur movie
Oh yea 100%.
I wasn't going to review Jurassic Park (1993), just see it in cinemas with some friends. But then there was a kid in front of me experiencing it for the first time, and I realized I would give just about anything to hear John Williams's score again for the first time in context.
I absolutely love that. Thank you for sharing this!
(I know some people like to see what others think of a film after they've formed their opinions. This is obviously not about that approach. Seeking out film reviews and criticism is different from watching YouTube videos explaining the plot of a film you just watched.)
"Unbridled convenience rots the soul" is such a perfect way to summarize how I feel about AI and other tech/cultural developments in the last ~10 years.
Why do you need a YouTube video to explain the ending of a film?? It doesn't matter what other people think it meant, what did YOU make of it??
Even *if* machines could do these jobs better than humans, why would we want them to? If we outsource intellectual curiosity and critical thinking to machines, what is left of the human?
As one of my students frequently tells me, “unbridled convenience rots the soul”
How I see it is AI will exacerbate bad and underdeveloped theory and conclusions, especially of marginalized groups. You can’t AI your way into understanding and properly researching Black politics, for example. What you can do is come up with harebrained ideas and potentially harmful conclusions.
CFP: Sounding Things: Props, Material Culture, and Accessories in Popular Music
Abstract Deadline: May 1, 2026
Abstract Length: 350–500 words
Editors: Kate Galloway, Paxton Haven, and Mike Levine
Full call here: drive.google.com/file/d/1mfyd...
Leaving Substack, where we had both built up communities with thousands of followers, was incredibly hard, & restarting our own site even more so. Please check it out, subscribe for free, & support the phenomenal work @gvaughnjoy.bsky.social has done to create this space! 🗃️
blackwhiteandread.com
& happy Theodore Seuss Geisel Day! I can't imagine a better Memory Day nominee to celebrate my Dad, whose amazing reading of McElligot's Pool was one of the first moments this young AmericanStudier fell in love with books.
memorydaycalendar.blogspot.com/p/march-nomi...
Nominative determinism has never been more determined
I've been organizing special conference events to celebrate scholars with various achievements (grant awardees, recently published authors) and I think I've found the thing I most want to do in academia.
I am so proud of my colleagues and I just want to organize spaces and events all about them.
Healthily consumed, i.e. with healthy scepticism and fact checking/corroboration with other sources.
Empowering someone to be critical (not negative or dismissive, but interrogative) and framing it as a positive conversation without condescension are also imperative.
The approach definitely depends on the relationship you have with the person, so it's not one size fits all. Determine whether you think it would be helpful and productive to directly question how and where they get their news, and build a gentle dialogue of whether those modes are...
With young people, I personally think building skills with cultural media is a great start. If you can build the critical skills to learn how to ask questions of films/tv/books, you can translate that natural intrigue to news media.
I have a newsletter dedicated to that practice.
Great question! There are lots of approaches. With one person in my life, I ask them to explain what they believe from a piece and ask why it makes sense. Frequently they come to realize themself that it does not, and we go from there with looking at other news sources to compare versions of events.
Jayme Lawson from Sinners hit the nail on the head and said how I felt with the whole BAFTAs situation.
