Unseen Academicals: A Discworld and Terry Pratchett Podcast Podcast Por Joshua Bulleid arte de portada

Unseen Academicals: A Discworld and Terry Pratchett Podcast

Unseen Academicals: A Discworld and Terry Pratchett Podcast

De: Joshua Bulleid
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 An intermittent examination of Terry Pratchett's Discworld book series from an academic perspective, hosted by Joshua Bulleid. Contact: unseenacademicalspod@gmail.com Support: patreon.com/unseenacademicalsJoshua Bulleid Arte Historia y Crítica Literaria
Episodios
  • 15B - Small Gods, Part 2 - Books and New Sons

    15B - Small Gods, Part 2 - Books and New Sons
    Sep 17 2024

    The second episode examining Terry Pratchett's 1992's Discworld novel, Small Gods, examining the role of books and memory in fantasy fiction, comparisons to Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun sequence, contemplations of genre and what it means to be a "comedy", and seriously considering whether I even want to do the show anymore.
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    1 h y 51 m
  • 15A - Small Gods, Part 1: Consider the Tortoise

    15A - Small Gods, Part 1: Consider the Tortoise
    May 26 2024

    The first episode on Terry Pratchett's thirteenth (and best) Discworld novel Small Gods (1992), looking at religious and folkloric depictions of tortoises, the idea that gods need belief to survive as a trope of fantasy literature through influential works like those of Fritz Leiber and the Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as the early Dungeons and Dragons handbooks, the use of explicitly religious language in fantasy, comparisons to Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials series and, finally, an examination of religious animal ethics.
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    2 h y 17 m
  • 14C – Pyramids, Part 2b: Egyptian Representations

    14C – Pyramids, Part 2b: Egyptian Representations
    Apr 4 2024

    The third and final episode tangentially related to Terry Pratchett's 1989 Discworld novel Pyramids, providing a crash course in Egyptian fantasy and science fiction—as in written by Egyptians, rather than simply about them. We go all the way back to the beginning, talking about traditional fantasy precursors and the origins of the modern Egyptian science fiction tradition, talking about its development throughout the later part of the twentieth century and providing some (overly) close analysis of Mustafā Mahmūd's The Spider (1965) and Nihād Sharīf's The Conqueror of Time (1972), before jumping forward to the allegedly more "authentic" post-2011 Egyptian Revolution era and the currently available English translations by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, Mohammad Rabie and Ahmed Naji, among others.


    Contact: unseenacademicalspod@gmail.com
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    1 h y 45 m
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The episodes I listened to started well, but quickly degenerated into interminable, rambling digressions into everything else these over-attenuated English majors think about.
Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to start with their least favorite book, then talk about it for two hours? They found the first podcast so taxing to record that they took a several-months break in the middle of recording it. Please let that fact sink in before you start listening because if it was that bad for them it will be so much worse for you.
I just wish I could find the magic spell that would completely remove the episodes from my phone. I have unfollowed and I never did download them, but Audible persists in queuing up the next episodes, then cycles back to the first and starts again.
Probably this podcast is cursed.

interminable and cursed (probably)

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This is a great podcast if you want long rants on Lord of the Rings and woke culture. Unfortunately, I wanted to listen to people discuss Pratchett.
I could go on but I won't. I'll just say it's bad. It's trying to justify every joke by today's standards of what is deemed appropriate bad. It's Pratchett meant this (and even went so far as to say in multiple interviews he meant this and nothing else) but let's pretend he meant this instead so the book fits in-line with woke culture bad.
I think people who hate the humor of Discworld and wish someone could come along and make the books unfunny will love this podcast. As the title of my review says though, it's just "Not for Me.:

Not for Me

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You could have spent more time on an original name for the podcast and less time bashing half your fan base.

If you actually wanted to discuss intersectionality, how about examining why they made the bad guy (Casa) black on the TV show? Why they made Vetinari a woman, and the female dwarf into a trans giant? Discworld featured a little person in the Watch, and the TV show straight up removed her.

Or how in basically every book, the male protagonist is a bumbling/bigoted idiot (Rincewind, The Unseen Wizards, Two Flower, Detritus, Nobby and Colon, Vimes) and the females are always a snarky, cigarette-smoking trained assassin, a werewolf, or princess?

Literally every female character is ultimately a dutchess or magic in some way. I get that the "unimpressed, eye-rolling femme fatale" is appealing to young female readers, but for everyone else its just gaslighting. The females in this book do not lack power, either in their story arc or personal devopment.

It really seems like you just wanted a space to dogpile, not discuss the books.

Girl gud, boi bad

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There are so many canonical errors here for both Pratchett and Tolkien, overlaying activist postmodernism in a highly inappropriate way. Canonical errors aren't severe, but they do detract from the presentation. For instance: when they note that the wizards had been in their present form since Sourcery, it was from Moving Pictures onward. The speakers insist on maintaining an analysis where they consider gender as exclusively performative, it can be but it isn't exclusively so. It's very obvious to the listener that the presenters entirely disregard biology.

As for overlaying racist tropes on Tolkien and attempting to problematise it, I find this deeply disingenuous, particularly when it's obvious that they aren't as familiar with Tolkien to make such a determination. The orcs in Tolkien were corrupted elves, made so by Morgoth. The Uruk-Hai were a product of crossbreeding orcs and men - they were never meant to be representative of black-skinned people. Yes, Sauron had dark-skinned Easterlings, but it was also made very obvious that those peoples had been coerced into supporting Morder. Also, remember that in a world where travel is difficult and dangerous, societies tend to be more homogeneous than not. This is a fact of geography, not political will, it's not surprising that most of Tolkien's characters are white-skinned. It's not 21st century Earth.

The closing comments clearly demonstrate why applied postmodernism is destructive, not creative: you aren't permitted to have antagonists, you can't portray evil - why? Dark tetrad traits abound in society, there are bad actors, and literature should represent them.

In closing, the podcast spent its entire runtime talking about tangential elements in the story without considering the wealth of cultural references on the history and origin of football. The book devotes significant attention to it, but it's nit mentioned once, Also, why is it problematic to insist on a degree of cultural integration, like a vampire not tearing an innocents throat open. Not all assimilation is inherently bad, but postmodernist thought vlearly notes that anything identifiable as Western is and should therefore be derogated. This makes no sense, all cultures and civilizations have cultural norms that are there for a reason, even if you don't agree with it. If you have chosen to live there, you must adapt or move somewhere more suited to your own considerations of propriety. This tendency for problematising everything in sight is not helpful and makes for a culture that is doomed to decadence.

Disingenuous Representatation

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For whatever reason Audible does not carry Lords & Ladies in English. We can listen to it in German or Spanish but no English for us.

no Lords and Ladies for Audible readers

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