2025 – PopCult Reviews

Governing Through Kink: The Fetish Politics of American Power

“The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”
— Karl Marx

The United States is governed not merely by laws or markets, but by the libidinal economy of its elite. The fantasies, kinks, and psychosexual obsessions of a narrow ruling class seep into everything from legislation to advertising, from architecture to warfare. This is not metaphor. It is the literal operating code of a late-capitalist order whose leaders rule not only through economics or violence, but through desire.

The Filtered World: Observations

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” — Steve Biko

To be raised in the United States is, in many ways, to grow up inside a carefully curated reality. The nation that prides itself on “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press” maintains one of the most tightly managed flows of information among modern democracies. This is not through overt censorship, but through structural control, ideological gatekeeping, and algorithmic isolation. Americans do not live under a dictatorship of thought, but they do live inside a media ecosystem that selectively filters the world. Global events are not hidden. Instead, they are reshaped to align with American interests via decontextualizing & minimizing.

This is not merely a media issue. It is a cultural condition, a learned blindness, fostered by corporate consolidation, state influence, entertainment soft power, and educational neglect.

Movie Review – Dog Man

Note: I will be pausing the blog for a few months. I’ll certainly be back, but there are a lot of things Ariana and I are getting in order as we go through a big life change.

Dog Man (2025)
Written and directed by Peter Hastings

While making the Star Wars prequels, George Lucas was asked why so many elements seem directly lifted from the original trilogy of films. His response to this was, “It’s poetry. It rhymes.” I’ve come to find that life as a whole is like that. The older I get, the more connections and parallels I can draw between one event and another. In reality, these are just moments that happen to me, but the meaning I personally derive from them turns these interactions into a kind of poetry. I recently had a moment that reminded me of another from nearly four years ago.

PopCult Podcast – The Electric State/I’m Still Here

We look at two very different films about people living under oppressive connections. One is a bloated, charmless Netflix original. The other is a passion project about a family struggling to stay together in Brazil during the military dictatorship. Check out our reviews of The Electric State and I’m Still Here.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – A Torch in the Dark

A Torch in the Dark
Written and designed by NotWriting

You can purchase this game here

Last year, I attempted to play Blades in the Dark using Parts Per Million’s solo guide. While there was some helpful advice in that book, it still felt like I was emulating a whole table of players rather than a singular protagonist. I had fun, but I wanted something that provided an actual solo tabletop experience. I decided to try A Torch in the Dark, a game that takes the systems of Blades and tweaks them for a solo play. There is a lot here I like a lot, but there were also elements of Blades that were missing, and I felt the game was lacking as a result. It provides a roguelike experience and uses 52 standard playing cards.

Weekly Links – 14 March 2025

There’s continuous talk about “the United States sliding into fascism.” We are there. We’ve been there for a long time. Instead, you must realize you are becoming aware that America is a fascist construct to its roots. This has been made nakedly apparent with the rendition of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who engaged in protest against the Palestinian genocide. If you think putting your head down and “getting through this” is an option, I hope you have the life you deserve.

PopCult Podcast – The Seed of the Sacred Fig/The Room Next Door

This week we look at an Iranian film that depicts life for one family during the recent hijab protests in The Seed of the Sacred Fig. That’s followed by our review of Pedro Almodovar’s English language debut The Room Next Door.

Weekly Links – 7 March 2025

A new month and some more links to share with you all.

Techdirt is not known as an overtly political tech news site. That has changed since Elon Musk came into the US government with Trump’s new administration. This post talks about how part of their job now is to chronicle the collapse of the United States as techbros are a major part of dismantling things.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Everspark Part Eight

Read the previous chapter here.

(For our journey to meet up with Korrin’s army, I will create a Spark that represents the journey. It uses a Spark like a countdown clock; with each ray, it will be a stretch of the journey. I will roll for each leg on the Yes/No oracle, asking, “Is there a significant encounter on this stretch?” If the answer is “Yes,” I will roll on a random encounters chart and create a NACHOS for that.

I will also roll on this simple terrain table to determine what the land is like generally around me: