Material Girls

• Wicked For Good x Femslash with Leena Norms

  In today's episode, we jumped right back on the Emerald City Express with third-time guest, Leena Norms (she/her). Leena joined us for our episode Wonka x Antisemitism and Censorship in January 2024 and then again in December 2024 for our episode Wicked x Paratexts. Now she's back to help us make sense of Wicked: For Good. Marcelle leads the episode beginning with a quick conversation about femslash, a subgenre of fan fiction which, broadly-speaking, focuses on romantic/sexual relationships between female fictional characters. Before jumping deeper into the history of femslash, Hannah, Marcelle and Leena discuss the essential question: how gay is this sequel? From there, Marcelle takes us into a conversation about subtext and representation. As always, the episode ends with a perfectly sound thesis and discussion of the movie, the media storm around the film, how Glinda is positioned as a hero, queerbaiting and revolutionary politics.Follow Leena on Youtube here! Instagram here! And Substack here! You can support Leena's Patreon here!Works Cited“Femslash.” Ultimate Pop Culture Wiki. Fandom, Inc. 2025. https://ultimatepopculture.fandom.com/wiki/Femslash.Hall, Margaret. 2025. “Wicked: For Good Is for the Gelphie Shippers.” Playbill. November 21, 2025. https://playbill.com/article/wicked-for-good-is-for-the-gelphie-shippers.Russo, Julie Levin. 2014. “Textual Orientation: Queer Female Fandom Online.” The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender. Carter, Cynthia, Linda Steiner, and Lisa McLaughlin, eds. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203066911.***To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Material Concerns: Costumes, Boundaries, and Voting Pt. I

  In this Material Concerns episode, we debrief Halloween and an Okay, Hear Me Out segment quickly gets into a conversation abut boundaries and control. If you want more, head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease for Part II! It begins with a quick convo about Harry Potter (if you believe it!) before moving into Consumer Retorts and Make It Make Sense! Tune in to hear Coach get scolded for not voting before taking a nap.And don't forget, if you join for as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!***Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Keanu Reeves x Celebrity Studies

  Happy SWEET NOVEMBER! In this episode, we're talking about LOAD-BEARING MAN Keanu Reeves. What do we mean when we say load-bearing? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out! Tune in for a conversation about Reeves' extensive and varied catalogue of (at least) 76 films! You'll learn all about Marcelle's admiration for this celebrity whose star image is colored by the public's sense of his "goodness." We talk feminism, masculinities, and Tanya Horeck's brilliant essay, “‘Too Good for This World:’ Keanu Reeves, God of the Internet." Happy listening!Works CitedHoreck, Tanya. 2022. “‘Too Good for This World:’ Keanu Reeves, God of the Internet.” Celebrity Studies vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 143–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2063395. “Keanu Reeves.” Wikipedia. 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keanu_Reeves. Middlemost, Renée and Sarah Thomas. 2022. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Keanu Reeves as Palimpsest.” Celebrity Studies vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 137–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2063394.***To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team!Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both.Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Material Concerns: Game of Thrones 2025 Pt. I

  We recorded this Material Concerns on Halloween and BOY DOES IT SHOW! Enjoy a chaotic convo about costumes, dragons and Game of Thrones. Let us know what you think about the new segment in the comments!!Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II! For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!***Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• The Craft x Feminist Rage

  We're throwing it back to the 1996 cult classic film The Craft just in time for Halloween! We begin with a conversation about Hannah and Marcelle's teenage witch phases (of course they both had them), before digging into the filmic landscape of the 90s. Hannah argues that The Craft's interest in girlhood and power was a catalyst that paved the way for pop culture to come, like Buffy and Charmed and Practical Magic. Hannah then draws on Stacy Gillis and Rebecca Munford’s “Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism" and Jessica Rosenberg and Gitana Garofalo’s “Riot Grrrl: Revolutions from Within" to help understand the resonance of film. If you too went through a witch phase, or indeed are still a practicing witch, then this episode is for you!***Works CitedBastién, Angelica Jade. “The Profound, Enduring Legacy of The Craft.” Vulture 27 October 2017. https://www.vulture.com/2017/10/the-craft-its-enduring-legacy.html. Gillis, Stacy, and Rebecca Munford. “Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism.” Women’s History Review 13.2 (2004): 165–82. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1080/09612020400200388 Heywood, Leslie and Jennifer Drake, eds. Introduction. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Jacobs, Matthew and Julia Brucculieri. “Relax, It’s Only Magic: An Oral History Of ‘The Craft.’” Huffpost 20 May 2016. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-craft-oral-history_n_5734f7c9e4b060aa7819d362. Walker, Rebecca. “Becoming the Third Wave.” Ms. Magazine January/February 1992.***To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team! Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both.Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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