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This Podcast K*lls Fascists- A Very Special Episode
29 Plays4 months ago
We're processing the rise of fascism in real time here folks. This episode may not be what you need right now! At all! But we needed to do it in order to move forward with why we are making this show. Join us if you feel up to it.
And we still are talking about movies here- and only kind of talking about costumes. We cover the movies that taught millennials how to fight fascism. Ariel selected V for Vendetta and Melinda selected The Truman Show. Honorable mentions (and mild spoilers for) The Hunger Games, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Dick.
Our regularly scheduled programming will continue next week when we get back on track with The Mummy. For now, take care of yourselves, take care of your people, and take care of your vegetable gardens. Time to batten down the hatches.
Music: Cassette Deck by Basketcase
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Origins
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Melinda. I'm Ariel. This is Hot Set, the movie podcast about costume design.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome back. There's a smile in my voice, but the smile isn't really there because this episode is going to be a very special episode, like an afternoon school special or after school special um where we're going to have a slight derail in our our regular millennial inspired movies um because we're real people. Aren't you real? I think so.
00:00:51
Speaker
i could I could be an AI generated voice. I don't really know. This could all be, who knows. But ah real stuff is happening in the world and real stuff is always happening
Political Views and Podcast Purpose
00:01:02
Speaker
around us. But if you are a part of our American audience, you've been riding this crazy wave. And if you are an international audience member,
00:01:11
Speaker
I'm sure you've heard about it, but we had our election recently and um we are avidly anti-Trump. Let's just say that we are avidly anti-fascist here. We are avidly against any of that I could use so many words, but I'm just going to go with nonsense, which is very, very soft word. But we are very anti all that shit. And so we've been processing, we've been feeling a lot. And ah we, well, this also leads to the origin story of me joining Melinda on this podcast, which is that we regularly roller skate together.
00:01:48
Speaker
Yes, people need to know the origin of the podcast. So this is a slight derail, but we'll end up in the actual pertinent point. um So we were skating like a year ago, earlier this year, even. yeah And you mentioned that you have this podcast idea. And I was like, tell me more, say more words. And we just kept skating in this giant oval listening to 90s hip hop. And it was delightful.
00:02:17
Speaker
And then I was like, oh my God, if you wouldn't mind having me, as a I would love to be a guest, like on an episode. That would be so exciting. And I said, girl, yes, I'm telling you about this so that you can create it with me. Guest, nothing. You said, oh, well, I do have a spreadsheet. that me You sent me the spreadsheet of like your concept and your season like structure and I was like who I'm in and we went and got like Mexican food for lunch and we had this like delicious lunch and we took notes and we talked about it and then we launched into our first season and just kind of like never looked back and we've just been having fun ever since and this is kind of like our well for me I won't speak for both of us.
00:03:02
Speaker
But for me, this is one of my like, I get excited to do this. I get excited to talk about this. Like I'm on ah air quotes sabbatical from working in costume at the moment. I mean, I'm, I'm freelancing, but that's.
00:03:16
Speaker
yeah and does a saw by i is yeah Yeah. This is a part of our sabbatical.
Impact of Current Events on Content
00:03:23
Speaker
It's a fun way to remember why we love the industry that we we've gone into. And um so we were on our regular roller skating ah after the the daytime appointment. Lesson time, have a fun Session. Session, thank you. And I hadn't been in months because they were replacing the floor, all this stuff. And so I was like, my first day back, yay. ah After the election, boom.
00:03:54
Speaker
And we were talking about how we were feeling and just processing some stuff. i I suggested that maybe we do a very special episode that is not our regular because we had a different movie in mind that both of us were going to watch and talk about, which we still are planning to do. That will be the next episode. But yes, it just felt weird to immediately jump back in to. Yeah. ha hahi He. I was so glad that you suggested this and had this idea because like I knew that we were going to record again and it was really hard for me to think about doing something that wasn't about what's going on like it just didn't feel
00:04:37
Speaker
honest or like it didn't give the opportunity to talk about yeah what we're going through and I feel like we needed to. Like I couldn't imagine doing an episode about just any old movie right now. And so this is a little bit of like a, feel free to to move on to a different episode if that's what you need. yeah um Protect yourself. ah If you are pro-fascism, then we're going to kindly point to the door with both middle fingers. Yeah, this isn't a this isn't a situation. This is a please kindly exit situation. We are not for you. Do not announce your departure. Goodbye. um This is not an airport. um
00:05:26
Speaker
But, and if you're wondering, why are we feeling our feelings about this election? And like, what we survived four years, we'll survive another. I'm just going to take a real quick second and you can skip.
00:05:41
Speaker
If you choose within this episode, that's up to you. But I'm going to take a real quick second to be super real and say no. ah Whatever happens in the near future is going to affect possibly the rest of our lives. And it is not going to be okay. It's going to be very, very, very fucked up.
00:06:00
Speaker
And now is the time, yes, to have things that make us happy, like for us, this podcast, and other things that we're talking about to to foster community. um But and in a yes, it is time to also foster community and have healthy communities and check in on your people.
00:06:20
Speaker
ah But this is not a game. no This isn't a power play amongst lower echelons of folks who are not the top 1%. This is not my team won, your team lost. No. Lives are going to be lost.
00:06:40
Speaker
100%. And it says a lot that when one political side wins and another loses, that one is crowing victory over the other while the other one is sharing suicide hotline numbers. h There's a difference. There's real things happening. And to our trans fam, we are here. We love you. To other people of color, hello, we love you. yeah Um,
00:07:07
Speaker
All of our queer, gay friends. Everybody who's going to be affected by this. Everybody who has people in their family that have a, you know, a different immigration status. We are. We love you. We're scared. And we're also in our actual real lives trying to figure out where we can fit in best to help with certain things. Because yes, there are community leaders who have been doing really good work. And that's not for us to be like, I'm going to become a hero in the movement. That's not it. It's more like, where do my skills fit and where can I offer them?
Movies and Millennials' Resistance to Fascism
00:07:43
Speaker
and so we're trying to figure out what that means and one step is yes we are offering like a comfort podcast but we're also gonna talk a little bit about real shit and um we're not gonna pretend like life isn't isn't happening because that happens to help to a point and like i gave myself a weak deadline to wallow and to feel and that deadline that today but but the gate sal landm like my so today's episode is gonna follow a very specific theme and what is that theme today's episode theme is the movies that taught Millennials how to fight fascism yes
00:08:31
Speaker
Because we know certain things. We know certain things. We know certain things. We can learn certain things from people that have fought fascism in the past. Oh, yeah. And people that have fought fascism in movies. Stories are powerful. I think stories are more powerful because they stick in your mind and you can put yourself in them and you can... Story is one of the oldest human art forms, oral history, millennia, right? Like thousands and thousands of years. Absolutely. Before word was written, before anything was painted on walls, we sat her on fires and we told each other stories. We did work in the day and we told each other stories. Song is story. That's how we have maintained so much of human history. That's also how we've taught each other how to empathize. Why do you think so many songs are about love and about loss?
00:09:30
Speaker
it's so that we can share emotions and about anger, like punk rock, man. And so movies are just a, it's a modern, it's a modern show. Just a way of telling stories. We did not tell each other what our selections would be. Yes. I think that- Prize episode.
00:09:48
Speaker
We each have, did we each choose like one major and then like a backup, like an all-in-all session? Yeah, I think so. And then we also have like a list of others to describe. Of honorable mentions, yeah. And I think every single episode I say, this is not going to be like a normal episode because I'm going to have that. Whatever. What is a normal episode? I don't even know. I don't know. There's no structure. I was very honest before we even started recording. I have not watched this movie in maybe over 10 years. And honestly, I could not bring myself to watch it today. So I just futzed around my house instead.
00:10:17
Speaker
And then my backup, I watched the series like a couple of weeks ago. And of my two picks, I did end up watching both of them. One of them I didn't really need to because I've seen it many times. And the other my my other one I did watch again because I hadn't seen it since it came out. And I couldn't really remember what happened in it from being super real. So I was like, maybe I should watch that one.
00:10:43
Speaker
All right, so who's going first today? Is it me? I think it's you. Okay. yeah Should I just do the the movie and save the backup or should I talk about them both? We're really working it out in real time. Peek behind the curtain. um Let's start with, let's start with our, we'll each do our main ones. And I'm sure that we'll go on tangents where the other ones will come up because we don't have this episode. has to be Yes, so let's do let's do main ones first and then when we get into like hour three of recording. we like So my main pick is a movie, a film lo a philermo mu from And this was around the time that my year graduated high school, I think I left in
00:11:32
Speaker
What year did you graduate? twenty I graduated in 2005. Okay. So I left on a GED the year before. So yeah, we were the same year. It's very handy. So we were in high school when this came out and we were also in the Bush administration post 9-11. So I just want to like lay a little bit around work. My mother was a flight attendant, so I remember very much how airports were and how certain you know just things were before 9-11 because I was always at the airport. She was always at the airport. You could walk up and like I know that you hear people say this kind of like a grandpa talking about walking uphill both ways on the way to school in the morning. But like, i I want you to conceive of what it actually was like, and you can watch old 90s movies about this, to walk up, like a whole family could walk you to the gate in the airport and say goodbye to you at the gate as you walk away to go onto the airplane.
00:12:32
Speaker
i I was a kid and I was flying by myself to like back and forth between family and they would just meet me at the gate. yeah And so now you do that by special pass. Like you have to have your ID, you have to have something printed, you have to have it be very official because you're being basically tracked.
00:12:51
Speaker
like security is a whole different thing that did not exist even remotely the way that it was. And it has its faults. It has its many problems, but like you could just walk in and it was just like getting on a bus. Columbine, 9-11, all of these things happened between like eighth grade yeah and freshman. No, it was all freshman year because Columbine was like a couple months before. I thought I was still in I remember being in middle school. Maybe it was. Okay, so it happened at the end of eighth grade then, and then we were in summer vacation, and then 9-11 happened when we were freshmen because that was September, and I think Columbine was earlier in the year. So yeah, right together. For some reason I thought Columbine was the year before, but I'm not going to look it up because it doesn't matter right now for this. It's the same year. It's the same year. That is insane. Same calendar year.
00:13:46
Speaker
ok So since we we were kids and there's been a ton of stuff that happened before that, but a lot of stuff happened in our lifetimes when we were youths that has changed the world completely in the Western space that we live. And so, yes, I've had a lot of privileges and a lot of comforts in my life, but like there's a lot that has changed and a lot was changing when we were teenagers and we were very aware of it.
00:14:14
Speaker
And I remember ah being in freshman year and ah for my birthday going and protesting the Iraq war and like going to protest because my mother was like, this is important that you yeah do this stuff. And like, we got into the newspaper And like just all this stuff about like protesting and being like a cab. And yeah um I got um chastised by a teacher in high school for making an anti Iraq war statement in Spanish class and was told in no uncertain terms that it was not acceptable to express that point of view. Yeah, we ah
00:14:55
Speaker
we would be told, we were threatened a lot by our schools about protesting, about walking out, about any of those things. And then we we had this like realization moment, because we were at a protest, and i like me or my friend bumped into somebody, and that person turned around smoking a Fat J, and it was literally our security guard at school. That's kind of great. And we were like, oh, OK. I see you. oh So if I'm not at school, you'll know why, and I'll probably see you there. Yeah,
Personal Histories and Systemic Awareness
00:15:27
Speaker
we we were seeing a lot. And as we were becoming teenagers, and this is not unique to our generation, every generation, as you get older, you start to witness the world and you start to really put pieces together and see things that you don't see when you have a bubble around you when you're young. And so this movie came out in 2005, Bush era, and we were very angry. Like, I just remember being very angry. And um
00:15:51
Speaker
I'm still angry. We're going to go away. No. But it was very timely. And um I think that when the original comic book came out, it was also very timely because it's, yep. I think this is my backup. Yeah. ah So I watched this movie today. Welcome back. So this is a comic book that was written by, oh my God, I even wrote his name and I just turned away from it. Alan Moore.
00:16:20
Speaker
It was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. And Alan Moore is a very, very well-known comic writer. I only know a few comics, so I'm not going to quote anything. I haven't read the V for Vendetta comic. I haven't read that. I have read the Watchman graphic novel that he also wrote, but I have not read V for Vendetta. Yeah. So i I already today saw people going like, ugh, the movie is totally different from like Kylie Lee Moon.
00:16:47
Speaker
Well, I have so much to say about that. ah Great. And like also, if that's how you feel, bless. Shh. That's all I'm going to say. Shh. Yeah. We're not here to have a conversation with you about your opinions about it. We're here to talk about our opinions and then you can say whatever you want into the ether. That's wonderful. But, um, you've been better. Start your own podcast. Start your own podcast.
00:17:09
Speaker
Me from Montana, starring Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman, and a bunch of other British faces. So many people um that are very recognizable. ah This movie like really spoke to fuck it up.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah. Fuck it up. Because like I remember protesting the Iraq war and I remember watching what was happening in the police response. And that's how we got in the paper was that I was like, this was bullshit. And there were other people who were interviewed who was like, exactly what we wanted to happen happened. But this is when I started to see police brutality. Yeah. And that that like, I mean, that wasn't historical, right? That's like yeah protected. I was in my area. Is it like, yes, I obviously know that police have been brutal. Like I'm not dumb, but like we were taught in the dumbest way. And i I know that this is not true for everybody, but it is true for some, especially in America. There's this like falsehood about so much of our history where they teach us, oh, will that happen a long time ago?
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah, no, it didn't. It happened yesterday. And like people do not heal from these generational wounds that have lasted over centuries in like two minutes, especially not when you break out fire hoses and dogs. Like what are you talking about? And so and like the way that people try to downplay those protests to be like people don't people that have no vested interest in giving you equal civil rights to what they have. Don't do it if you just walk up to them and tap them on the shoulder and say, excuse me, sir. May I have another right, sir? May I please? They don't respond to that. That does not happen. It's does never happened. And people that try to act like it has are fooling themselves. They are buying into some horse puckery bullshit.
00:19:06
Speaker
And so i my mom was no nonsense when it came to to to learning this stuff. And I was raised in a in a bubble for sure. But my mom was like, look, you need to know about as much about where you come from as I can teach you. And people are going to react to you and how you are in this world just because of how you exist.
00:19:30
Speaker
And so we need to talk about it. And there were things that I was taught and talked about with my family, young, that some people didn't have to talk about unless their parents were activists or were super dialed in until later. And so when I was physically present at a protest, which was a very peaceful protest, it was astounding to me how it didn't make any sense at all that you have these people who have to petition for essentially a license yeah to protest. yeah Sorry, what? And then like, that's what you have to do in case you didn't know this in the year of our Lord 2024, you have to get
00:20:13
Speaker
You have to get like government approval. To protest. To have a protest. And that, that, I was like, that's a red flag. That's a sign of, um like, I'm telling you, people in France and know how to do this. People like in France, there's a lot that we can say about Paris. They know how to protest. But goddamn, when they do it, they do it.
00:20:37
Speaker
And like they say, what are you going to do? And like I love it. I love them for this. Me too. And it's also a very different country and their're police i mean there's police violence. Absolutely. But we set a bar here for Honestly, the most unbelievable part of rewatching V for Vendetta from me was at the end, jumping straight to the end, sorry about it, at the end when there's a huge march of people wearing the the masks and they're coming up against these very militarized, very armed police. And the police don't have clear orders of what to do. So they just let them through. yeah That did not ring true to me as an American. what beautiful and inspirational, but it was like, well, this is not how this would go down. That's a fantasy, yeah. Yeah, that's not how this would go down. No, because- And so, and this is not to say American exceptionalism, we're just like so much worse than everybody else. We're worse. We're bad. We're bad. But there's like horrible shit all over the world. Like, I'm not trying to say that everything is worse. That's not it at all. No. I'm just saying that like, we're pretty famous for sucking.
00:21:51
Speaker
I think it's the hypocrisy. It is. The hypocrisy is really loud. It's the hypocrisy for me. It's the way that we, the collective, we of America, it's the way that we try to pretend to be this thing that we have literally never been. Yes. And like, I mean, just to even the police in the United States started as slave catchers. yeah Like you don't you don't cut that evil out. no That's always in it. And you certainly don't by just kind of pretending annoyed with people that bring it up. Rushing it away. Like that's never gonna do it. And so it's like at the root of everything in our country is genocide yeah and horror. Like that's what everything is built on. And when you build on
00:22:47
Speaker
horror like that. Like it's sand.
Authority, Resistance, and Historical Context
00:22:49
Speaker
It's slip slide and away. And so like at 16, like protesting and looking around, these cops are telling you, clear the streets, clear the streets. By the way, we just marched in like a giant circle.
00:23:03
Speaker
Yeah. And people had like, I remember that protest. I actually, ah my my parents listened to this podcast. I was not allowed to go to that protest. I asked and I was not given permission yeah to go to that protest. It was very calm until literally the cops made it not calm because they started throwing themselves on people and hemming them in. And that's the best part is that they kept yelling, get off the street and they wouldn't let you go.
00:23:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's all a pretense. it's all It's all theater. And so it's the theater of of the world. It's just like it was like being really quickly pulled away, pulled away, pulled away when we were teens. And so when this came out,
00:23:50
Speaker
i was real real hot and fiery and like yeah fuck the man and i also we've talked about this but i was ah diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder when i was seven which is pretty early i feel to be handing out diagnoses like that But it wasn't wrong. But it's also like, okay, but if you're, if what you're opposed to is, you know, authoritarianism, like, are you, ah you literally ah do you have Defiance Disorder? Are you just fucking telling the truth?
00:24:22
Speaker
I mean, I was just like, even as a kid, I was like, you're out of your damn mind. Like, there's a difference between respect and fear, and what you're expecting from me is fear, and I'm gonna laugh in your stupid fucking face. So this movie, V for Vendetta, gave me. I knew this is what you were gonna pick, and I had to pick a backup. I just want people to know, we in no way discussed any movies that were possible for this, none. We just went like, what should we do? How about this?
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, like this movie did not come up. Actually, there were a couple titles thrown out. This did not come up at all. And I picked this movie and I was like, you know what? I think Ariel might have picked this movie. So I need something else. So this is actually my backup. But I did watch it. So I thought I'd quickly talk about it. And it's like, I genuinely could not bring myself to watch it because I'm just, I'm not well, not in a fun way. I'm just not well. But from memory, there are some things that stand out. Yeah, tell me what you remember. And so like, costume based, we cannot, this is where a costume point is. That is what we claim to be. We claim big. One of the biggest, obviously, is V.
00:25:38
Speaker
V's costume, yes where he we never see V's face. We see V maybe a little bit in silhouette in a flashback of a fire where we are led to understand that V has horrific scars. correct And psychologically, in the movie, we are told that V kind of has separated himself from who he was before, literally from surviving that fire and surviving the camp that he was put in, um and that who walked out of that fire is just V. It's somebody else, the number five, which was I think the number of his cell number. You remember so much. I didn't remember anything about this movie. This was a very impressionable point in my life. and so I remember walking out of this and just feeling like so
00:26:27
Speaker
angry and so sad because I had this like whole like wouldn't it be great if that people would actually like en masse reject shit but you know we're we're unfortunately gonna have to be pushed to like a catastrophic place. That is also I think a facet of America is like It takes a lot to push people into action in this country for a variety of reasons. Melinda, the fact that the day after the election, one of the highest Google searches was, can I change my vote?
00:27:07
Speaker
i area was and like What are tariffs? like and what What does the Department of Education do? and the i mean The peak Google search for, did Joe Biden drop out, was on election day. like the the way that i like And the words escape me. Because there are so many words and some people have said them better. yeah And so what we have is the the rage of it all. yeah And it's like the system is shit. Everything is all of that, which is why mutual aid and community is where people should really be putting their their energy because like,
00:27:53
Speaker
If you voted for that dipshit, he doesn't care about you. Like, what is wrong with you that you think that he cares about you? Like, ah I just... and like so So many people that voted for him stand to lose the most and will lose the most. White women who voted for Trump. I can't even, I can't even begin to, like, I i can't even talk to those people. Like, it's so...
00:28:19
Speaker
I just... There's a lot. That's part of why we're doing this episode is for processing. Yeah. It's going to take a very long time. Like, please to anyone, you don't have to listen to this episode. This is just for us. No, but no, we're looking at you and that we're human. And we're not like, it's just it's weird to me. Like, I'm glad that I do have podcasts for comfort. I'm i'm glad that I do have media for comfort. But it is weird. And the cognitive dissonance is weird when something happens and people don't mention anything about it. Then I'm like, Okay, well, who's paying you don't say anything about it.
00:28:56
Speaker
And also, do you really care that much about i know like making people who do horrible things uncomfy? Then that makes all me go like, ooh, uh-oh. like This last week, like I listened to a lot of podcasts. And this last week, it was like, if the podcast was about politics, I couldn't listen to it. And if the podcast was not about politics, I also couldn't listen to because it because everything just made me feel so sick physically. It made me feel viscerally ill.
00:29:23
Speaker
yeah And so this this movie just felt like such a, not necessarily, like yes, a call to action, but not exactly a call to action because it's the comics were written in the eighties. So this was about Thatcherism. This was about a different political party on a different continent. And it was really, to me,
00:29:45
Speaker
to wake you up to the fact that this stuff has been happening, it will continue to happen until shit changes and whatever it takes to change that. yeah This is a record that's gonna keep repeating. And like that was the call to waking up that this movie was for me as a teenager. Also because my friends were like, what?
00:30:10
Speaker
Like, oh my God. One thing that was important to me when picking the movies to talk about today and something that I felt when watching B for Vendetta is that I have such an appreciation for movies about these types of topics that put them in a world that we can recognize and understand.
00:30:32
Speaker
yeah because it is the world that we live in and putting it in like a sci-fi context which plenty of movies that we covered in season one have these themes running through them. Yeah and a big one that we haven't we've mentioned but we haven't talked about the series but we mentioned it.
00:30:49
Speaker
yeah um But ah something that, you know, putting it in someplace unfamiliar gives people an out, an intellectual and an emotional out to be like, wow, that is so terrible. that It's so good that I don't live there. And it's like, girl, you do live there. this And that's why I like this movie. It's also the same thing for me when you see historical 40s.
00:31:14
Speaker
stuff, recycling and going over and over and over World War II. You can argue that it is educational, but obviously that education has not taken. No, no. Because it's kind of become a weird nostalgia porn to like talk about World War II in the US. It's weird. like it's It's weird. And like the people who are like, well, well, well, World War II,
00:31:40
Speaker
There's a lot of people who are just like really dumb and didn't learn any you fucking lessons from the fact that A, it was a world war and B, that there was fascism involved but also the amount of people who do not know how pro-fascism America was. Correct. Until a certain point in the 30s. Until we got affected directly. Again, we have to get pushed. All of a sudden. Yeah, like we have to be pushed so far in this country. And when we say we, we're not necessarily talking about the regular guy. No. We're talking about the people who are holding and manipulating the power. Yes. Because they're doing what's good for them.
00:32:23
Speaker
like every time we're in a war it's because it's making somebody's buddies rich like that's basically what you can trail it to is that like some president's friends are making a shit ton of money off of making arms and selling arms and so it's it's it's bad news and like this was yeah kind of like a confrontational like you can you can get on an airplane and you can fly to this place but what you're seeing is stuff that you've only been told happened in world war two which is not true because it happened it did
00:32:57
Speaker
it winning now It's happening now. happened since then. It's happened since then, but there's this weird like fantasy about World War II. And so whenever and anybody talks about fascism, they're just imagining stormtroopers or Germans. That's it in the US. There's like a real limited limin in its base It goes back to that conversation that we had, I think, possibly in our very first episode in the Metropolis episode that like, when people picture fascists, they don't think about themselves.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah. it Everyone thinks of themselves as the hero and like, well, if I had been there, I would do
V for Vendetta: Symbolism and Themes
00:33:39
Speaker
blah, blah, blah. And it's like, baby, no. No. And also people, people like a lot of people have been bringing this up over the past week is like a reminder that fascism did not just like land one year.
00:33:52
Speaker
It built and there's i I believe that I saw somewhere that there's a study. Yeah, welcome to this episode where it's a real serpentine subject. We're talking about a movie. But like and history but like there was a study done I think and I want to look it up but I keep forgetting about it about how pandemics lead to a rise in fascism.
00:34:13
Speaker
And there was a study done about the 1918 pandemic getting into the 20th century's fascism. And then we have our pandemic, which is a direct supporter.
00:34:27
Speaker
like led to direct, you know, fascistic shit in the US. So that would be interesting to read. Not today. I'm not going to read that word for word. So anyway, I think I was talking about V's costume. Oh, yes. I forgot about his little wig.
00:34:48
Speaker
Yeah. I forgot about his little sassy little wig. And Hugo Weaving is so great at being sassy with the wig and all these things. But we never see Hugo Weaving's face. V's face. We just see the guy Fox Mask. I was not 100% sure that Hugo Weaving was actually in that costume. I would understand if it was just the voice and they got like, Yeah, but apparently it was him although it there are actually shots with the previous actor that left partway through filming. So there are there are some shots I don't know which in which it is actually not Hugo weaving in there. amazing. And what I think is also interesting about this movie, another side, is that the screenplay was written by the Wachowskis of matrix fame. Yes, I didn't really realize that at the time. And they were very, very into their era of talking about this system. And it has a lot of meanings. It has a lot of meanings. And like in this world of V,
00:35:49
Speaker
ah People are being put into concentration camps for being queer, for being artists, for being outspoken, for being um considered part of the intelligentsia or academics, like people who collect history. There are all these people who are being erased. And like that was something, again, to put into like a ah current context of something that you can recognize and be like, yeah, no. And one of the reasons why I did choose this movie is not only the amazing performance of Hugo Weaving and the iconic, you know, shape of the Guy Fawkes V, yeah but it's also that it's not just about a man.
00:36:31
Speaker
Right. When you look at, like, I looked up some lists of movies about fighting the system or anti-establishment or any of those. They're always from the perspective of men. It's always the hero's journey, like a clockwork orange, one flew over the cuckoo's nest. It's always about men. yeah Women are these like cartoonish villains or are pretty negligible to the story. Yeah.
00:36:55
Speaker
And like also like war movies, like all this, sure like it's pretty recent that we've started telling stories mostly from women's perspectives. Like there's so much where women are just accessories and that's just not how it is at all. And um so I was not interested even remotely, especially because of the direction that our lives are headed in right now for elevating the voice of just a male perspective, like hard pass. And so like V is in the name of the title of the movie V for Vendetta.
00:37:35
Speaker
But because V walked out of that fire that we talked about seven hours ago, um and he like wiped away his first name, his first life, like obviously you they're they're there somewhere, but he has become someone else. He's become what he thinks of as the face of a revolution. He's basically a sacrifice, like a walking, talking sacrifice where he is going to do this thing that Guy Fawkes failed in, which is blowing up parliament and blowing up the source of power.
00:38:05
Speaker
and So that people that it can be done that it can be done and that other people can fill that vacuum and he takes Natalie Portman's character Evie and He tells her He creates this like false reality for her, which really was his reality. yeah or Somebody else's reality, sorry. it wasn't It was not just his, but like somebody else's, where he reconstructs someone who was killed under this system, reconstructs her imprisonment for Evie.
00:38:36
Speaker
And right, that's what happens. I think he makes Natalie Portman believe that she's been abducted by the secret police. Shaves her hair. She's in a cell, interrogates her, tortures her, which does mimic what happened to him. Okay, so it is putting her in his past and the person that she's communicating with. But she finds the writings. Yes, on the toilet paper.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, so the but she knows that this woman is gone, yeah like has died previously. And she's reading the the record that this woman left behind who is um a woman who was abducted for being gay openly.
00:39:21
Speaker
and was tortured and ultimately died in the same facility that Hugo Weaving died in and she left behind this written record of what happened to her and he like plants it in Natalie Portman's cell and she reads it and think you know and she she was kind of like a match for V wasn't she this woman who like left that record like that record was about staying human. Yes. And like, that was the thing that like gave him purpose, I think yeah was like her voice her last
00:39:55
Speaker
Yes. Sentiment was the thing that was like launched like into being. Yeah. Like I don't know you. I'll never meet you. I'll never get to tell you in person, but I love you. I know, but I had a lot of feelings watching this movie about him doing that to Natalie Portman. Oh, it's so messed up and it's so fucked up. Like there's, there's so much cruelty in that. yeah And like, but it is that cruelty of
00:40:29
Speaker
making you wake up at an accelerated pace. Yes. and And it's like his motivation is, you know, you said that, like you told me that you were afraid of what would happen to you, blah, blah, blah. This is what happened to your family before you have nothing to be afraid of. You're not afraid of it because you day you faced it and now you can leave that behind. It's kind of like, here's a, here's an honorable mention, which is not my backup, but this is an honorable mention for the hunger games.
00:40:59
Speaker
Katniss Everdeen is shaped into who she is, the Mockingjay, by outside forces. You can argue that every decision she makes, except for maybe one, is engineered for her by the people who are around her, so that she will do and be this this creature and like the one thing or like the two things because her sister is chosen she volunteers that's one right and the second one once everything is is on its way she makes the choice to kill president coin and that was not what she was engineered to do like it was a possibility that plutarch wanted
00:41:38
Speaker
But like that was you could argue that that's where she stepped off the track. I think and i think her plan to kill herself in the arena was also a big curveball, not what she was supposed to do.
00:41:52
Speaker
I think that it's not what you're supposed to do, but it is potentially something that people gambled on in the back. Cause I think Plutarch has been like, I don't know. But anyway, like those berries existed in the arena. Exactly. They existed. And also making her care about this person because they witnessed how much she cared about people, even if she didn't want to talk about it. Um, she cared for wounded things. But anyway, this whole thing about engineering and stripping away all of the things that you're afraid of so that you come through the other side.
00:42:20
Speaker
And then you start doing the things that you talked about doing. Start doing the things that you imagined that you would do. yeah And it's like the whole thing with V for Vendetta is that V doesn't really look at himself like he's an empathetic human being anymore. He's not a person. He's a statement. And so it's like he recognizes that he is going to be done. He's going to end. His timeline is like he has a clock and it's ticking. And he recognizes that there has to be somebody to carry on after. And it can't just be left to an amorphous.
00:42:50
Speaker
thing, right? It has to to be a face. It has to be a person who has a name, who has an experience, even if that experience, which is hers, because she is actually tortured, even though it is mirrored on somebody else's, she will have all of that and can carry that and can unify and talk about it. yeah And so it's that it's that thing of at least in a narrative way of being like being soft now doesn't matter because the world is not soft and there is no place to be soft. I pulled a quote from from the from the movie when he because he systematically
00:43:27
Speaker
uh, kills everyone who was in a position of power at the facility that he was being held in. And notably, the only person who hasn't materially benefited from it and shows remorse is the only woman on the list. yeah Interesting. But he comes to her house to kill her anyway. And she says, sorry, he still killed her.
00:43:51
Speaker
And he says this ah beforehand, he says, and in relation to him coming there to kill her, I've not come for what you hoped to do. I've come for what you did do. yep And I think that is kind of key to this movie. It's very key. And it's very key to the whole character. Yeah. Where he's like, I'm not a person, I am your fear. And it's like he has completely removed who he was while carrying everybody else who was lost. And so it's like he is a movement.
00:44:26
Speaker
in and of himself and that requires making decisions and choices that you would not make if you were just an individual yeah necessarily. And so there's a lot of brutality in this movie and it's a lot of heartbreaking stuff but it's really about radicalizing Natalie Portman's character Evie um because the world is moving on and things are getting worse and worse and worse and they don't really have the luxury of time for her to naturally put aside her own fears and put aside herself like he has to take it from her. And so he has to put it himself in the position of of his cap captors and he has to do horrible things.
00:45:09
Speaker
And it's like has to, maybe not. But like, that's the way the character is written. And I'm sure that there are people who've written really deep a analysis that I'm not going to. Yeah, I know a lot of the critique that I saw was that um people felt like the message was really um like watered down in terms of like, removing ambiguity from characters that are more layered in the comic and making certain people be like, this person's good. This person's bad. But, you know, I don't know. That's adaptation, friend. That is. And, you know, it's it's filmmaking. um And it's also like I feel like it's kind of similar to a lot of the arguments that people had of why they thought that the like feminism of something like Barbie was a little hollow is like you have to understand that if you're making a movie that you want to reach millions and millions of people,
00:46:04
Speaker
you're trying to reach people that aren't familiar with these concepts. And sometimes they need to kind of simplify it for yeah we're hitting people over the head with a hammer. Yeah, not like that's what TV shows are for. And like, that's what the book is for is for the long um journey. And then the other things are weighing entertainment and education. And so it's like really punching you in the face with it. And you can't ignore context of when it was made. Like this was made during the Bush administration. It was not written. It was not made. The movie was not made when Margaret Thatcher is in charge of English. Exactly. It's made for an American audience. It's made for an American audience. It's made for
00:46:48
Speaker
like I'm sure there were conversations about what what your viewership is going to be, the age group, the demographic, all that stuff. So like there were choices taken into consideration to change and alter the story. But this was a real, like this is not something that taught me how to say fuck the man or fight fascism, but but it was definitely like a a really powerful thing to watch. And it was also very interesting as a teenager to watch my friends watch it because like, here's another honorable mention. VHSs were a big deal when we were kids and I had, I don't even know why I had this, but when I was little, I had this movie. It's a French movie and it's a movie about World War II.
00:47:34
Speaker
called Au revoir les enfants, Goodbye the Children. o And it's about a private boys school in France where they are hiding some Jewish children, some Jewish boys. And I don't quite remember how it ends, but I think that the little boy that you follow who becomes friends with like our protagonist I think he gets found out and taken. And so as a kid, I was watching this and the sound of music and I was like, ooh, ooh, like the power bo does not make something right. And also another honorable mention, we have a lot in
The Truman Show: Control and Identity
00:48:12
Speaker
this episode, Camelot, the musical, sorry, Richard Harris, because
00:48:19
Speaker
there is this whole scene, this whole, which maybe we'll talk about old musicals at some point and talk about their costumes, because this one has some costumes. But Richard Harris as King Arthur is singing about the idea that might is not right. That right makes might. And so as a kid, I was like, yeah, that's,
00:48:49
Speaker
that's a thing, just because you're powerful does not make you right. And having learned about empire, like Roman Empire, all these things coming in and like we could, I wrote a paper in college about these things, but like,
00:49:03
Speaker
Just because you're powerful does not make what you do right. It is just to keep you more powerful. Yeah, we could. There's so many examples. It wouldn't even be like we can't even. It's not even right. We can't. We don't even need to go into them because everybody knows in their heart that that is true. Even if they don't want to admit it. Exactly. So to to put a little shine on V for Vendetta and and also give you an opportunity to share your choices.
00:49:30
Speaker
Because I also have my like actual backup that we can talk about but anyway, it's your turn But the last thing I'd be for vendetta is like I don't really feel the need to talk about the other costumes Like if we were to talk about this movie there's not difference i mean there's not a lot to say because they They're good. They're good. They're good But it's it's very much set to make you feel a type of way and it effectively does that which is like humdrum and And shout out to a costume designer, Sammy Sheldon, for bringing us that film. Thank you very much. Now, moving on. Okay. Yes. What was your film? Okay. ah My film...
00:50:11
Speaker
is one that I have seen many times, and I think that it's a little bit more ambiguous in certain ways than yours, um but I think that it is something that is important, and that is the 1998 film, The Truman Show. Oh, yes. And I picked this movie for some of the similar reasons that I was drawn to V for Vendetta, which is that I think it's important to pick movies
00:50:49
Speaker
that we can recognize the world in them, that we can recognize how things got there, and movies where not everything seems bad all the time because I think that it's important to recognize that People still find ways to like find happiness and joy under these oppressive systems and that you can't lose sight of what you've lost and disappear into
00:51:24
Speaker
the like comfort and happiness that you have left when your freedom's been taken away. I think it's important to not let go. And so I feel like that is present a lot in the Truman Show because ah this movie, in case anyone hasn't seen it, stars Jim Carrey as a man when we meet him who was born into a reality television show that he is not aware of. And he has been being filmed live and living in an artificial family, an artificial town, an artificial world his entire life without his knowledge. And his life is entertainment for people that watch ah like 24 hour
00:52:16
Speaker
live stream produced ah television show of every single thing that happens to him. And the movie is about his realization of what's happening to him and his fight to get out of that environment and to get to the real world. So. Like what year did that come out? That came out in 1998. So we were in middle school. Yeah. Like I definitely remember seeing it in theaters and I remember a lot of friends seeing it in theaters and all of us kind of like walking out like I didn't see it with friends I don't think but like everybody at school going like this is this real? Yeah. Is everything I know real?
00:53:02
Speaker
Right. And I think that you can kind of like take it that way and it's kind of fun and whatever. but But like it went even further beyond like, is there a camera in my like medicine cabinet mirror? But it was like, do we all live in a simulation? You know, that's kind of like everything that is around us is pretty much made up. Like people just tell us whatever they tell us right about that is real.
00:53:26
Speaker
And so it was like,
00:53:29
Speaker
like what are we supposed to believe? What are, it what indeed, what indeed are we supposed to believe? Yeah, I, I think, um, yeah, God, I don't even know what I want to say about the Truman Show. Um, I think, I think that it's, I mean, I just think it's an excellent movie. I think it's an excellent piece of art. I think that it's only gotten more and more relevant through the rise of social media and this sort of performative front that certain people put on their life that engage with social media a lot and the way that it is, you know, not the whole story of who you are, but it can become confusing for people about what is real and what is performance and what is authentic and what, you know. What's that word about, um oh, parasocial relationships?
00:54:20
Speaker
absolutely Absolutely. Yeah, so like the ah we cut to like different people watching the Truman Show throughout. There's like a bar where everyone, it's called like the Truman Bar, and everyone there is watching the show. um There's also, it's laid out and discussed in the movie that everything that you see on screen in the show is for sale. The wardrobe, the props.
00:54:47
Speaker
the food you could buy in. It's all product placement and advertisement. And I feel like that was you know starting to happen in 1998, but only has gotten more nightmarish and true now. and Yeah, I just think it's so fascinating because it's like, you know, we see Jim Carrey's character. He has a wife who purports to love him. He has a friend who purports to love him. He has a mother that purports to love him. He lives in a comfortable home. He has a comfortable job. Everyone is pleasant to him. Everyone is nice to him. And there's something at the core of him that knows
00:55:30
Speaker
that it's not right and that it shouldn't be that way and he has to like reject all of that comfort to discover the truth. And it's also kind of like a weird fifties fantasy. Yes, it is. all the hairs like slip back and like the suits, the the matching clothes. Everybody has a trimmed lawn. It's very much like 50s. Like the the color palette of the clothes is very 50s. It's um the silhouettes, the sort of like colorful, slightly garish like menswear. Like the cut, everything is all very like 50s inspired. It's like neato.
00:56:15
Speaker
yeah Yeah, everything's great. And it's like it's so interesting because like especially in in American media, I feel like using the 1950s as like a jumping off point is just like such a shortcut to fascism and authoritarianism and like toxic.
00:56:33
Speaker
patriotism. like it's It really is. It's like we understand it immediately it' when we see that. We do. We understand. Oh, oh my God. We understand it so fast. And like another example of it is Edward Scissorhands and like the suburban neighborhoods. like It's like kind of countless references to suburbia that we could find kind of anywhere where it's just like everything has to be the same. And if it's not the same, then you're the problem and you have to be taken out. Pleasantville comes to mind. Pleasantville.
00:57:02
Speaker
it's it's all there's like in that kind of homogeneity is insta-built a dystopian like wasteland of just like yeah oh stepford wives stepford wives like there's just like It's the e-valley that you so that you feel. like where It's like disgusting, rotten core that's like covered in this like beautiful chintzy fabric. like You know immediately that nothing it's not right. Because anybody anybody, anywhere you've been in your life, you've met people and you've met people who are different. If you've met two people, they're not the same.
00:57:43
Speaker
And like if they are, that's weird. It's weird. It makes them feel alien because like you know, being a human being, that you have your own thoughts and your own feelings and that some days you're cranky. They're not always perfect. They're not always perfect. Some days you're cranky and you might be rude. Yeah, you might be rude accidentally to somebody. And on days, you might be rude on purpose. like You know that you have feelings and emotions and that there's a complicated thing happening in the gray matter between your ears. And so when people pretend that that's not true, there's ah there's a dissonance that's alarm bells. And it's like it's very much nature versus nurture is the conversation of the Truman Show. like If this is your right nate if this is you know what's nurturing you, will your nature click in ever?
00:58:32
Speaker
And um your nature is basically like your hackles going up and going like, what? There's too much evolutionary history that tells me that that sky is not real. Yeah, that's not right. And like I remember that there's a conversation where he's trying to be serious with his wife and I can't remember what they're talking about specifically, but it's towards the end of the movie where he's like, do you love me even? Yeah. And she's like, her smile is like really brittle and she's still trying to advertise something into the camera that she knows is there. And he's like losing it. He's like, what what's like that what are you doing? And like, what are you talking about? And it's just like this nightmare. Yes. And go like, like Laura Linney
00:59:18
Speaker
absolutely demolished that role. Like oh she's incredible as his wife. Like I love her. so well She's amazing. It's, it's incredibly cast and like, I don't remember the actress's name, but the actress that he meets in college.
00:59:35
Speaker
who yes is like, nothing you know is real. And he's like, what? And then she gets shuffled off but quite quickly into the real world. And he's like, but you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Oh, no. no I know and it's like one of the first scenes in the movie is when he's trying to create the collage of her face with the magazine pictures because he remembers what she looks like and he's trying like he doesn't have anything to remember her by and he tries to like well I guess he is he's he's a her sweater um but he's trying to create a picture of her out of
01:00:11
Speaker
magazine pictures like collaging different facial features together. And it was so resonant to me actually after watching V for Vendetta because it was like a lot of the message of V for Vendetta is that an idea cannot be killed. Yeah. the way a person can be killed and that's sort of what's going on with him in like Truman Show is like they can take her out of the show but they can't take her out of his mind yeah as much as they try and that push towards someone that he felt like was
01:00:46
Speaker
talking to him, like with honesty, even if he didn't understand what she was saying, he like understood like honesty, I think in what she was in her presence and like the connection that they had felt real and everything else. All the other personal connections he's had are artificial because they're people that are being paid to be his loved ones in that environment. And it was like, you can get rid of her, but you can't make him forget her because it was the only meaningful human interaction that he's really had. I really love how both of these movies are tied by that, that like an idea cannot be killed and that um that goes both ways. It goes a bad way and it goes a good way where
01:01:36
Speaker
In the good way, it's not about like to tie it to what's happening right now. u You or I, we matter, but we don't, but we do, but we don't because like it's the idea of what's right. And it's about what we do to further the idea of what's right, of how people should be treated and cared for.
01:01:59
Speaker
And that's, again, mutual aid and community care. um It's never going to come from the top down because at the top are going to be in V for Vendetta, these politicians who are only benefiting from having their boots on somebody's neck or Truman Show, the producers who are making money off of the advertisements and who have basically job security forever because they have job security for the rest of Truman's life if he never figures it out.
01:02:27
Speaker
And they never want to change the status quo. They never want to change anything. They never want to think about anybody else except for in terms of how it rewards them. Yeah. And solidifies and maintains their power. But the idea of what's right, like law in parliament and ushering in all those people who put on the Guy Fox mask because they've seen what's been happening around them and now the match has been lit.
01:02:57
Speaker
And the match was a person who they don't know who he was, but he was somebody. And now they're going to burn it all down and build something hopefully better. And for Truman, it's walking the fuck out of his biodome, finding the door and leaving.
01:03:15
Speaker
And it's so it's I it was like, this might not be the most obvious choice, but for the for a pic for this episode, but it's because it's like the producer Christophe is like a fascist dictator, but his entire like constituency is one person, which is true, man, because everybody else understands what's happening and they're being paid to be there. And They're obviously complicit in the situation, but he's Christoph is such a fascinating character to me because, and he does what I think everyone does, which is he rationalizes why he's doing the right thing by trapping and controlling and manipulating this person. And he is sort of like asked to answer for that a little bit in the movie.
01:04:06
Speaker
And he says Truman prefers his cell. And if he really wanted to get out, he would. And he says, there is no more truth out there than the world that I created for you. That's what he says to Truman at the end as he's trying to convince him. Over the PA system. Over the PA system. Over the god mic. If this is in a theater, it's literally called the god mic. Called the god mic.
01:04:35
Speaker
<unk> the mic that goes through all the spaces in the theater yeah like the director or the stage manager is gonna be calling on and that's exactly what he's doing is using the god god mic and it's like the paternalized Yep. Violence. I know what's better for you, and you don't, so you should listen to me. And the response that Truman gives to that, and I wrote it down, is, you never had a camera inside my head. Yep. And that's the answer, is like, you can control the physical environment that people are in, and you can try to control what they think, but
01:05:17
Speaker
you'll never, you can never have 100% control. No, because like, again, to bring it back down. Oh, oh all of these. I have a lot of words for all the people who chose the way that they did. Yeah, I have a lot of words and a lot of them are very, very angry words that are very derogatory and rude. Um,
01:05:42
Speaker
Which I'll keep in my head, I guess. But like, our literacy level in this country is horrendous. And um I watched a little clip recently of LaVar Burton talking about Reading Rainbow. And why did he think that Reading Rainbow was cancelled? And he knew exactly why. And it was because of don't like, no child left behind, which was just engineered to leave children behind.
01:06:04
Speaker
And that kicked into effect while we were in school. We are a generation that was brought up on Reading Rainbow and like programs like that where like I'm sure you remember going into school libraries and seeing the Got Milk posters while everybody's reading.
01:06:22
Speaker
yeah Part of it is literacy. And literacy does not just mean reading. Literacy means comprehension. It means reading and being able to comprehend and disseminate what you are reading. And critical thinking, like pretty analyzing and 100%.
01:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, and that was very much a government supported failure. And so there are people who were tinfoil hat was Yeah, was it a government supported success? it reduced it it succeeded it succeeded It was a failure to the people but a success to the people who implemented it.
01:06:56
Speaker
Yeah. And so these are things that do not come out of nowhere. And I get very frustrated when people talk about like, how could you? This is stuff that has been sitting for a very long time. Yeah. And like this is stuff that is product of hundreds of years. Like this does not come from nowhere. And so It is upsetting. It's very fucked up. But it is the product of this country yeah and these people. And it's the product of an environment where people are so
01:07:32
Speaker
ah desperately just trying to survive. Yes. That they don't even have like the capacity, they don't have the time, space, and ability to question things more deeply than like how can I get through this situation that I'm in in this immediate moment. Like I think that there is enough desperation of like people that are like just working and working and working to survive and they're not like they're not understanding how that situation that they're in is a product of these systems.
01:08:11
Speaker
And on top of that, there's an erasure of empathy. Yeah. And part of that comes from why I was diagnosed with oppositional violence disorder, yeah which is where people confuse respect with fear. that is that big That is a big thing for me as people that don't understand the difference between. It's massive. Yeah. And it's it's fascinating to me how many people in this world think that they should get to like scream at you as much as they want to do and that you should stand there and listen to them quote, out out of respect and not understanding that they are not respecting you by standing there and screaming at you. And that that indoctrination of misunderstanding, respect and fear starts day one. Yeah, it does. Especially if you are from a religious background. It starts from day one. Yeah.
01:09:06
Speaker
and the patriarchy of our country. Oh, here he comes. It comes from day one. Yes, it does. And so that God-mic voice, that Christoph, is a few people who have been in power for a while.
01:09:25
Speaker
working towards exactly where we are today because like Project 2025 did not come from nowhere. That came from the Reagan administration. That came from back then. It came from Christian nationalists, white Christian nationalists. It's been a thing for a long time, not just percolating because percolating would just be like bubbling away as a thought. It's been in practice for a really long time.
01:09:53
Speaker
to disenfranchise different groups continuously and to make it worse and to do this and to do that and whatever. And I'll give a shit if you go tinfoil. It's not, it's just political chess, that's all it is. And like, it's people- These people play the long game. They play the long game and we're here now. And we are in a place where we were also, while this was happening in the background, before we had access to the internet, before They were showing us, you know, atrocities on TV, and they could commit them without us knowing about it because we weren't talking to people on other parts of the world on message boards. They just like, they. The capital T they. This is all stuff that has existed. And did I lose my thought? Yes, I did. But like,
01:10:42
Speaker
It's not brand new. and we are oh while they were While they were doing all that stuff that we didn't initially know about because we didn't have access to it as the people, but now we do, they were teaching us in school that all the bad stuff has already happened. We're in the good. we're in the good We're on the yellow brick road. We're fine. yeah Everything's fine now. You're fine. and The Truman Show is fine. You should love being here. It's it's something that um fills me with despair and rage simultaneously is the number of people who don't recognize that the only reason that we have the rights that we have is because so many people fought and died for them.
01:11:27
Speaker
and that they don't just spring out of the ground. like They don't ah happen organically in this society. and having to You have to take them and you have to defend them continuously. And the same people who do tell that you have to take things and defend them don't have the... They're not connecting the fact.
01:11:53
Speaker
that the the things that were taken for people that don't look like you, that are being defended by people who don't look like you, like the, upon miss you, those are also valid. Those are also valid, like women being able to vote ah valid,
01:12:10
Speaker
having choices over their own self agency valid. yeah And the fact that they, we have those choices does not take away anything from you unless you are a predator. That's it. That is what is so like every every single time I'm like, and that's the problem. i like yeah There's like 50,000 problems, but um there there are way too many people that um think of
01:12:41
Speaker
ah civil rights as a zero sum game, oh that if I have something, then it takes something from you. And it's like, not unless the thing that you want is the ability to like brutalize people. If that's what you want, then yeah, people having civil rights does take that from you. But if that's not what you want, then then it has people being able to has nothing to do with you. It doesn't affect you if someone gets to do what they want to do, unless what they want to do is, you know, like unless what people want to do is commit violent acts against each other, yeah them having freedom doesn't affect you. No.
01:13:19
Speaker
And that honestly leads to my honorable mention, yeah which is my mother and I used to read together. And every once in a while we would read a series together. And this one she handed to me and said, we should read this.
01:13:35
Speaker
and it was the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series by Steven Anderson. And that, I'm not talking about the US adaptations, I'm talking about the actual Swedish movies with Mikael Nyquist and Numi Rapace. I'm so sorry if I say your names incorrectly. I haven't seen any of them, neither version. So and pretty brutal. um The premise, spoiler alert, um is that there is this magazine called Millennium, and we are following Michael
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Patriarchy and Injustice
01:14:12
Speaker
Blancquist, I think, who's a journalist who is being sentenced to jail for libel for publishing a story about someone being crooked, but like,
01:14:26
Speaker
you're crazy, it wasn't actually true. you And of course, he's being sentenced to jail in Sweden, which means it's like three months in a room that has a bed and a desk and he can have visitors and he just walks out and he says, oh, hi, like it's jail is very different.
01:14:43
Speaker
and During the course of this, he get he meets this elderly gentleman who like hires him to find someone who has been sending him these really creepy pressed flowers every year on, like I think it's his niece's birthday. And his niece had disappeared 40 years before. Disappeared.
01:15:09
Speaker
yeah And he's like, I assume she's dead and that this is the person who killed her. And every year he's like taunting me. Can you help me find this person? And through the course of this, Blomquist, the um journalist,
01:15:24
Speaker
um gets hooked up with this woman named Lizbeth Salander, and she is the woman of the title, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And Lizbeth is like metal punk, like, yeah you know, full war band, like, just, we're gonna have like the leather, and we're going full mohawk, like piercings of the wazoo, and she's like, fuck the man, and she's a hacker.
01:15:52
Speaker
And she hacks and she's very smart, but she, and I'm sorry, I'm telling you some details, but there's a lot that happens so I'm not spoiling anything. okay She has a legal limitation put on her. This is where it comes to fuck the man and like all this stuff. she has a Legal limitations put on her when she was like 11 because she set her father on fire.
01:16:16
Speaker
she set her father on fire because he was a gangster who was beating the shit out of her mother and her and so she threw gasoline on him and lit the match like when she was a child and so the system some very crooked um psychologists who I believe were being paid by her father who survived, ah declared that she was mentally unfit. m In such that she, if she ever gets a job, most of her money has to go to like something else and like she can't be responsible for her own money.
01:16:51
Speaker
Oh, wow. And she can't make legal decisions for herself, but she's smart as hell. Like, um, it sounds like similar to like a conservatorship. Exactly. There's a conservatorship place on her. And so she's a hacker who like puts her money all over the place. And she has like different, um, apartments that like these people don't know about. So like she goes and checks in with her conservatorship and that goes down a very dark path and the investigation into the missing niece.
01:17:21
Speaker
who was presumed dead, goes down a very dark path about the things that men do to women. yeah And I do want to say that I've been really like, fuck men. And I want to say, fuck the patriarchy. I have men and men that I love very, very much yes who were not necessarily assigned that at birth and who are cis, male of many different colors and representations and all these different things. um it's the patriarchy that i am staunchly against and this is like a series that really talks about that because it's like kind of through the eye like we follow the journalist but our protagonist is lisabeth salander and what she can do and how she gets herself out of this horrific
01:18:07
Speaker
situation and like how she does learn to like trust some people including the journalist and how he helps her and she makes friends and like security and other things and like other hackers who help her but it's about the patriarchy and what it does and what it supports against women. yeah And I just was really in my feelings about that and yeah really wanted to give this series the books and the Swedish trilogy, the Millennium trilogy, a real big shout out.
01:18:39
Speaker
because it doesn't give anybody a pass. It's a mystery, but it's also, it really is about the things that men do. And like it's about rich men who are just doing stuff to stay rich. It's about like what men do to women specifically. And it it's very much like a set of fire in your spine kind of deal.
01:19:05
Speaker
but it is also, there's really horrible stuff that happens that you see and it's awful. Yeah, not for everybody. Yeah, it's also a thing where things happen to a woman and nobody believes her until she literally shows them. Yeah. And so it's like, it's really tough and it's really powerful um in the same way that I think the other things that we've been talking about are where it's Recognizing a system is in place that does not benefit the most. It only benefits the few. yeah And burning that shit down is is basically the heart of it all.
01:19:46
Speaker
own My honorable mention, um I think, takes a slightly different tone than that, which is the Kirsten Dunson-Michelle Williams film, Dick, yeah from the late 90s, about the downfall of Richard Nixon and how ah in this sort of Historical ah fiction,
01:20:11
Speaker
ah Deep Throat is actually two 15-year-old high school girls who accidentally put themselves in a position to like uncover the Watergate scandal and deliver the evidence to Woodward and Bernstein. And I think it's like a great testament to ah the power that teenage girls have in this world. And I think there's a reason that our society tries to laugh at them because they can do amazing things and look so cute while doing them. Absolutely.
01:20:51
Speaker
But if anyone hasn't seen that movie, I highly, highly recommend it. It was definitely made in an era where you could have like a wacky romp through the authoritarian leanings of the US presidency and have it be ha ha fun. So it might be if you're in a different mood then. dragon tattoo is the avenue to go down. If you want a little bit lighter, yeah, a little bit of a lighter victory. Yeah. Yeah. I do. Okay. So on that note of how the powers that be really like to mock and belittle
01:21:34
Speaker
like teenage girls or women or women's things. That's something that I've been thinking about a lot, which is like the things that women do that people automatically dismiss. And we were actually talking about that earlier with like seamstress gigs.
Community Support and Personal Growth
01:21:52
Speaker
On the note of mutual aid and ah gathering your communities and looking into the health of your communities,
01:22:00
Speaker
doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be on the forefront of rah rah fight the man yeah yeah you could be the people who are connecting people with each other. You could be the people who are holding third spaces for other people to be safe. You can be the people who carry the first aid if you are at an event where it's raw, raw, fight the man. Like you can be somebody who gives somebody a ride across state lines. You can, you can be someone who disseminates information if you're really good. If you have those types of skills, you can make sure that people know
01:22:33
Speaker
What they need to know. Yeah, if you are a person who's a good speaker that you can make everybody make everybody sandwiches at the meeting like no matter like what your You know skills are or like, you know, it's like everybody wants to be like V but but this is not about being the main character not not what it is and so That's something that I've been thinking about a lot because also like this is a time in which people have two very stark different opinions on art, right? I went to school for art. I work in the arts. I teach the arts. So that's what I do. I have other skills, but that's what I do. And over the past like four or some odd years,
01:23:19
Speaker
I mean even further back even when I was like a kid but still when I teach it's usually like kind of like a ah nervous system regulation kind of thing because I'm coming from a ah a background with a lot of trauma and so it's like I want to be able to create those spaces in which you can breathe and also learn a new skill and also connect and so Like for me, I'm trying to figure out how does that mean that I can contribute to my community? And like I, the the job I've been working for the past many years is sewing like I sew. I'm really trying to think about what does that look like? And Melinda and I are working on a project that I'm sure we'll drop a line about soon. Cause we're not going to like divide the podcast lives entirely.
01:24:09
Speaker
But I am working out some logistics, but, um, just, you know, take care of yourselves. That's one thing, but also like, if you're a good gardener, grow extra vegetables this winter because prices are ah going up and they're going to continue to go up, help feed your neighbor. If you know your neighbor, want to help feed them. Um, there's some, you know, how to sew, like, you know, help people figure out how to like repair something so they don't have to buy something new if they, if what they have can be fixed.
01:24:38
Speaker
I actually watched ah ah an Instagram reel of a quilter this morning where she was talking about how she lost like hundreds of followers after she posted a video talking about hemming. She was just kind of like continuing the conversation where she was telling people like right now as we are talking having these conversations about mutual aid and support.
01:24:58
Speaker
that it's not about solely, what makes me happy? What do I do for fun? It's good to have those things for your own mental health and support, but that's not the focus if you are going to be turning your head towards what can you do with your community. It's about what you can share with your community. So if you have the skill to hem, you can teach somebody else how to do that or you can help them do it. You can do it for people and maybe they can grow some vegetables and trade you.
01:25:28
Speaker
and give you some vegetable. It's all about that system of how can you help each other and kind of stepping down from that main character thing. Like, this is me, this is my page, and this is what I do. It's like, okay, but how can you contribute to somebody else who might have a need? And if you have that skill set,
01:25:47
Speaker
how can you help them meet that need? By teaching, by offering up your skill, if they can't do or don't yeah want to do, can you fill that gap? And um Yeah, I feel like I could just like, rant for forever. Isn't that why we started this podcast? I mean, 100%, but it's like, goddamn, like, I feel like the ranting might like stop making sense. But basically, like you and I are artists. And not to speak for you, but we are like trying to figure out how we can
01:26:27
Speaker
you know be there for our communities and and what we can do that is meaningful. Because art does have a place. like I realized the other day that I texted my birth mother like, all I do is art. so And then I was like, art has a purpose. Art is is even just marketing you know like for for a movement. like What do you think the Catholic Church did for 2,000 years with stained glass windows? That's marketing.
01:26:51
Speaker
and like You know, it's also a connection point. People like to put art and they like to put artists in boxes and be like, you're not this. I am this. And it's all it's all bullshit. And it's so hard to convince people that what they do is important, even if it's only important to them. like There are so many things that I make where I'm just like, I'm doing this because I think it's funny yeah and entertaining to me and it makes me feel good to think of an idea and then make it real. Even if nobody else likes it, I feel good about doing it.
01:27:43
Speaker
And that's important too. Yeah. Your audience can literally be yourself. Yeah. That's fine. There's a reason why everyone started crafting during the pandemic. Yeah, that's partially because we had time and nervous system regulation comes in. That's where you keep yourself healthy. And it's like being a part of an anything. You can't just burn out You can't just be like, wow, I'm going to get in there and I'm going to do it. There are people who've been doing it longer than you, who've been doing it better, who understand. You can find a different place to be in there. like The idea is not to lead the charge because there are other leaders. It's about how can you support them? How can you support the person next to you? like What skills do you have? You don't have to become a leader overnight. like
01:28:29
Speaker
what i thing What a burden to put on yourself to be like, it has to be this or nothing. yeah Don't do that to yourself. No, you have to figure out how to support your community. Like where do you fit in? It's like when people talk about creating even a small business, they're like, you always have to look for the niche that you can serve. There's always a need. What is the need?
01:28:49
Speaker
So it's like if you have a skill set, where is the need for that skill? And if you don't have a certain skill set that you want to volunteer or that you can volunteer, think about where you can best learn a skill.
01:29:05
Speaker
yeah like truly Listen to people that have experience doing this and like you know obviously like don't fall victim to like grifters and con artists, but you know when people have knowledge and systems in place to like do these things, like you can trust them that they they figured it out. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. You don't have to reinvent the wheel about revolution.
01:29:29
Speaker
and oh Revolution, the wheel turning. remember There's something there. There's something in there. but um So long story, very long. We are headed into a very ah We're headed into a time and we are still here. We're still going to be making this podcast because this is part of my emotional regulation. This is a part of my joy. This is our little period of time where we can offer usually a little, you know, aside from real moment of
01:30:04
Speaker
levity, yeah levity and rant. um But, you know, this is real shit. And over time, we're going to figure out, you know, like what we can do for our community, how we can grow our community, even if that's just in being a touchpoint for connection with other folks.
Closing and Future Discussions
01:30:24
Speaker
But yeah, that's on the horizon. Yeah. In the meantime, we're here. yeah um I do think that some of the ah some of the movies that we've discussed doing
01:30:38
Speaker
throughout the rest of the season fit into the category to continue this conversation. ah Shocker, the movies that we are drawn to, maybe these themes come up. That's crazy. Who would have guessed? Yeah, we're definitely going to be talking about this again.
01:30:54
Speaker
and um Yeah, we will return with you know other movies that made millennials and made millennials in different ways and we can choose to define how they made millennials anytime we want. That's right. Yeah. We're in charge. We are. we are this is our This is our ship and we're going to sail it. We are be a the unquestioned leaders of this ship in this space. Meanwhile, I'm being ratatoued by a cat. I think 100%.
01:31:25
Speaker
Okay, so we're going to we'll be back next week. We'll be talking about a movie. Yes, we will. It'll be a little bit less this than this was. It's going to be silly. Yeah, but that's a guarantee. That's a good gosh darn guarantee. but that Well, too much effort, yeah.
01:31:49
Speaker
And in case we don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good love night.
01:31:57
Speaker
Good night!