Hello there. My name is Merriell Moyer and I am The Pop Culture Scribe. Now, first off, an argument could be made that anyone who writes about pop culture is a pop culture scribe. While that is true, I consider myself a pop culture scribe for a different reason. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says a scribe is
1. a member of a learned class in ancient Israel through New Testament times studying the Scriptures and serving as copyists, editors, teachers, and jurists
2. a : an official or public secretary or clerk
b : a copier of manuscripts
3. a writer; specifically : journalist
It also lists the following related words under entry number 2: archivist, bookkeeper, recorder, reporter, transcriptionist; annalist, chronicler, documenter, historian. With all this in mind, I, and therefore this blog, fall under entries 2 and 3. I am both a writer and a chronicler, historian, and documenter of literature (think The Iliad, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s plays, Frankenstein – that sort of literature) and today’s pop culture (including comic books and graphic novels, video games, movies, television shows, and the like). There is a distinct link between the literature of ages past and today’s pop culture memes and themes, and that is what I intend to focus on in this blog.
Some of these may seem quite obvious. For example, it’s no stretch of the imagination or the intellect to figure out the connections between, say, the Twilight series of books and movies and Bram Stoker’s Dracula or the Harry Potter series and Arthurian legends. However, some things may not be quite as obvious – though they probably should be – like the fact that literary heroes like Achilles, Odysseus, Beowulf, King Arthur, and Don Quixote served as inspiration, directly or indirectly, for super heroes ranging anywhere from Batman to Captain America and from Superman to Deadpool. Or the connection between Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Michael Bay movies. Believe me, there are connections between all of these things, and they run deep.
Literary scholars have been making these connections for years. What makes this blog different is that I intend to consolidate this information in one place for easy access, and add my own take on things while engaging readers in my own unique style and in a slightly more entertaining way than what you would find in a text book.
Thanks for checking out the blog, and please enjoy my posts. I hope you find lots of useful information, and I hope I can entertain you along the way,
Merriell
The Pop Culture Scribe 