Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael
Society & Culture
On this edition of Parallax Views, Adult Swim, the late night programming block, followed up the Season 6 finale of the popular Rick and Morty with the Adult Swim Yule Log (aka The Fireplace). What started out as a seemingly ordinary yule log video quickly morphed into something more unexpected: a feature-length film. More precisely, a horror movie featuring a cavalcade of genre tropes including UFOs, Satanic cults, murderous rednecks in the vein of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and even a rather devious little imp. Melding humor with comedy, the Adult Swim Yule Log is something that has to be seen to be believed as it's unlike anything you've likely seen before.
Joining us on this episode is the Adult Swim Yule Log's writer/director, Casper Kelly. Casper is perhaps best known for his [adult swim] absurdist shorts Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough, the infamous Too Many Cooks, and the TV series Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell starring The Last Podcast on the Left's Henry Zebrowski. Additionally, Casper created the "Cheddar Goblin" sequence for the Nicolas Cage-starring horror movie Mandy and has written for such shows as The Squidbillies and Nickelodeon's CatDog. Oh, and he created the Scooby Doo parody of The Blair Witch Project known as The Scooby Doo Project. Much of Casper's work is available on Youtube and you can check a lot of it out through his website.
In this conversation we discuss:
- How the feature-length Adult Swim Yule Log came to be
- The thematic threads in Casper's work including depression, anxiety, media, and, in the case of the Adult Swim Yule Log, the grappling with the history of American slavery, the idea of "time privilege", and whether we are really progressing as a society or not
- Influences on Casper's work; John Carpenter, Sam Raimi and The Evil Dead, David Lynch and Twin Peaks, and the satirical elements of Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers, Robocop, and Showgirls) are all mentioned
- New media in Casper's projects (yule log videos and podcasting in the Adult Swim Yule Log and video game streamers in Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough)
- Making Too Many Cooks, which plays with the trope of 80s/90s sitcom intros; the research that went into making the short and the way in which the sitcom intro-style is both absurdist and realistic in terms of the kind of shows intros it's satirizing/homaging
- The question of whether Casper's works are comedic satire or eerie horror
- Working within constraints and how those constraints can actually lead to greater forms of creativity
- The difference between working on shows like The Squidbillies and CatDog compared to Casper's projects like Too Many Cooks and the Adult Swim Yule Log
- Whether or not Adult Swim has been short thrifted by the way some people write it off as "stoner comedy" content
- Horror and comedy as genres which are related to each other
- The making of the "Cheddar Goblin" sequence in Mandy
- Dealing with the issue of slavery in the plot of the Adult Swim Yule Log
- And much, much more!
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Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich Calls for ”Wiping Out” Palestinian Village of Huwara w/ Estee Chandler of Jewish Voice for Peace
John Quincy Adams and American Foreign Policy w/ David C. Hendrickson
The Russian Antiwar Movement and the Crackdowns Against It w/ Ilya Budtraitskis
Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19’s Health Lessons for the World w/ Dr. Stephen Bezruchka
Team Jorge: The Israeli Private Contractors Involved in Global Election Meddling Ops w/ Dr. Emma L. Briant
Rampage in Huwara: Israeli Settler Violence in Palestine’s West Bank w/ Richard Silverstein
Secret Power: Wikileaks and Its Enemies w/ Stefania Maurizi
Private Military Contractors and The Rise & Fall of the Mozart Group w/ David Isenberg
Sympathy for the Raging Boll: Re-Evaluating Filmmaker Uwe Boll, from the German QAnon Shooter Docudrama HANAU to the Columbine-Inspired HEART OF AMERICA w/ Uwe Boll
Your Waking Nightmare: Exploring the UFO Through the Lens of Horror and Techno-Realism w/ David Metcalfe
Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America w/ Joshua Frank/U.S. Foreign Policy & Nuclear Weapons Delivery Systems w/ Yint Hmu
Lula Goes to Washington: What Lies Ahead for U.S.-Brazil Relations, Lula’s Foreign Policy, & the Recent Lula/Biden Meeting w/ Andre Pagliarini
The Chinese Spy Balloon Incident & U.S.-China Relations w/ Mel Gurtov
The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis w/ Jared Yates Sexton
The American Surviellance State: How the U.S. Spies on Dissent w/ David H. Price
Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries w/ Rick Emerson
The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy w/ Joseph Fishkin
Violence Erupts in Israel/Palestine (Jenin Massacre & E. Jerusalem Shooting) w/ Richard Silverstein/Did Thomas Friedman Run Cover for an Israeli Nuclear Smuggling Operation? w/ Grant F. Smith
Pro-Social Deep Fakes? w/ Stephanie Lepp
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