Feminist Frequency Radio is coming for your media. Each week, Kat Spada invites you to listen in on entertaining and stimulating conversations about films, games, and TV... from the latest blockbusters to classic hidden gems, and more. With special guests bringing their distinctly different feminist perspectives to the mix as they celebrate and critique it all—including media critics, entertainers, academics, and everyone in between—Feminist Frequency Radio is there to help you dig deeper into…
One question we wanted to ask in our Summer "Camp" season was: does a remake add or remove layers of camp? Especially when it's one of John Waters' best-known films that's moved to the mainstream with a musical adaptation turned Hollywood. Does the overall cartoonishness of Tracy Turnblad's world flatten all of the story's core messages about society? We tied ourselves in knots talking about it...…
Welcome to our new season: Summer "Camp"! What better film to kick off these episodes with than Roger Vadim's 1968 space romp Barbarella . It's a perfect example of a movie that succeeds in its aesthetic endeavors, but isn't enough of a good sum of its parts to be considered well-made. What we can't deny is that none of it works without Jane Fonda's commitment to the optimistic naïveté of the…
Before we dive into our brand new season all about camp cinema classics, we had to reacquaint ourselves with the aesthetic sensibility at the heart of the style. So, we re-read and discussed Susan Sontag's 1964 essay Notes on "Camp." Of course, we digressed into the 2019 Met Gala , Kat's personal history with James Charles (yikes), and the economics of film production. Do we totally nail our…
A.C. and Kat experienced Andrew Ahn's remake of The Wedding Banquet across somewhat of a generational divide. He finds it relies on a millennial aesthetic portrayal of queer identity, with inauthentic politics. She (who watched it with Gen X family members) thought it was sweeter and more satisfying than he did. But, having also seen Ang Lee's 1993 original, Kat thinks the movies might be trying…
It was an absolute joy to spend time in the world of Spike Lee's 1994 bildungsroman Crooklyn . Co-written by Lee and his siblings Joie and Cinqué, the film follows nine-year-old Troy navigating herself, her neighborhood, and her extended family in 1973. We're refreshed to see Lee's rich visual language as the backdrop for a young girl as the hero of the story of growing up. Especially when so many…
Kat and A.C. go through the films that will be fêted at this Sunday's Academy Awards. We feel a big shift in our relationship to Oscar movies, and aren't sure how much of that is the disintegration of the entertainment industry, and how much is just growing up. Plus, we play a new game all about The Relentless Diane Warren's 17 Oscar-Nominated Songs. (Don't laugh: her career trajectory has been a…
Our "Focus on the Family" season is back after an unexpected hiatus! [Once again: sorry for the interruption; a member of our team had an ongoing family medical situation, but we're happy to be with you again.] It was a big nostalgia kick for Kat to revisit Patricia Cardoso's 2002 Sundance darling Real Women Have Curves , but this was a first-time watch for A.C. We talk about how America Ferrera's…
For the first episode of our "Focus on the Family" season, we're taking it back to 2010—a time before Prop 8 when a Sundance movie could really make a big impact on the widespread film landscape. Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right is a great example of a specific early 21st-century portrayal of queer families with a "coastal elite" filter, and how it straddled the line between caricature and…
FFR is going to be back soon with a new season focusing on the family ... just in time for the holidays! Listen to our mini preview ep where we'll explain the theme in more detail, and give a little teaser of the special bonus segment each episode will include. From festival favorites to reality TV, we're looking ahead to discussing onscreen portrayals of all different kinds of families, and what…
"Bingo." As the epic conclusion to our season of Musical Mayhem, we watched Jacques Audiard's 2024 extravaganza Emilia Pérez . Did we hate it? Kinda! Did we love it? Kinda! We also have a teaser of next season on Feminist Frequency Radio, coming soon. This full episode is a special bonus for upper-level Patreon supporters, but also available as a one-off purchase for non-subscribers. >> Listen to…