Episode 56: A Christmas Story with Dr. Vaughn Joy

It's Christmas time and that means visiting an old classic. This week doctoral student Vaughn Joy joins in to talk about A Christmas Story and her work looking at how the American government exerted control over Christmas films as a way of influencing  the national narrative. We talk about all we love and hate with this movie, the history of Christmas films, and yes, continue to debate whether on not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. 

Dr. Vaughn Joy received her PhD in History in November 2024. Her research is primarily concerned with how popular culture constructs and responds to the world around it, such as in my thesis-turned-manuscript on mid-century media manipulations of the Christmas holiday for socially conservative ends in Hollywood films from 1946 to 1961. She has also written public scholarly pieces on contemporary issues in Hollywood such as the repeal of the Paramount Decrees and the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. I maintain a newsletter entitled Review Roulette in which she promotes media literacy and critical analysis through fun reviews of familiar films with a film studies methodology.