Critic Cal

Just when mum and dad thought they could safely stop worrying about my little sister leading me astray, said rebellious sibling gets me into Buffy -- a program most decidedly  not featured in the authorised version of the Radio Times when we were growing up. I guess I've long-since graduated from the target demographic. Still, I can easily see why it got so successful. It has everything a high-school horror comedy romance drama series should: the jocks, the geeks, the cheerleaders, the teachers who are out to get you (slash eat you) ... undead overlords, seductive arthropods ... friendship, unrequited love, parental run-ins, the older (but only by a couple-a hundred years, though) guy ... peer pressure, bullying, internet demons ( not the 'background process' type) ... the general, over-arching challenges of trying to balance a social life around schoolwork around slaying ... Sure is a tough gig being the Chosen One: [Buffy defeats vampire/demon/human-animal hybr...

Disney's  Frozen  is a powerful allegory about mental illness and the propensity of sufferers to shut down to the outside world ... No, wait, it's a parable about puberty and coming of age, and the temporary distance and awkwardness that it generates between family members ... Oh, or is it about the challenges of bringing up exceptionally gifted children, and the loneliness of mental superiority? ... Of course, it's really  a corrective on the damaging fairytale notions of romantic love ... It's a polemic against reductive and oppressive notions of womanhood, transforming the 2-dimensional Disney Princess into an aspirational fully-rounded smart, feisty and flawed character ... It's a celebration of sexual liberation ... A metaphor for coming out as gay ... An admonitory yarn about climate change ... A sympathetic observation on the discomforts of Raynaud's disease ... In short, it is a very human, very simple, very beautiful (IMO) story which most people c...