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Jeff Preston and the movie Christmas Evil
62 Plays1 year ago
Deck the halls with boughs of … horror!
Joe and Mark are joined by Jeff Preston, PhD, an associate professor of disability studies at King’s University College. In addition to being a professor, Jeff is a webcomic creator, activist and co-host of the podcast Invalid Culture.
“The real story of disability is being able to bend the world around you to fit your needs, and about the real pain, angst and injustice you feel when the world refuses to bend, when the world refuses to change. That is the real disabling experience,” Jeff says.
Jeff brings forward the 1984 cult classic, Christmas Evil, which is apparently John Waters’s favorite Christmas movie. Mark admits to being strangely compelled by the flick, mostly because of the performance of the lead, Brandon Maggart. “But it is a frickin’ mess,” Mark adds.
Joe asks Jeff to make the case for watching the flawed film.
“I love crap movies,” Jeff admits. He says it’s worth watching bad movies that use disability as part of their narrative, because it’s easier to spot the tropes and how they don’t actually make sense.
A merry (and evil) Christmas indeed!
For more information on Jeff Preston's work and the movie Christmas Evil, please check out the show notes for this episode.
Re-Creative is co-produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. and MonkeyJoy Press. Reach us at joemahoney@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Debate: Is Lying About Santa Claus Okay?
00:00:08
Speaker
Merry Christmas, Mark. You jolly fellow. How are you? Getting jollier with each passing year. Oh, that's nice. That's good. So my question is Christmas related, of course.
00:00:20
Speaker
Wait, sorry. You have a question for me? I do a shocking, shocking development. I have a question for you. So I guess my question is Santa Claus. Are you pro or con? That's the end of the question. Am I pro or con Santa Claus? Are you pro or con? I, did I not put enough question mark in that? So my question is, do you like lying to children? Yeah, I'm okay with lying to children. Yeah. Okay.
00:00:46
Speaker
I don't. Hmm. Okay. See, that's a ha ha. It's a tough question. Well, it's, there's a lot to it. Those who know me know that I don't like to lie. I'm opposed to lying in general in principle. Some will say, you know, they'll catch me in a lie and they'll go, Hey, you say you never lie. And I have to clarify.
00:01:05
Speaker
No, no, actually it's it's aspirational. You know, it's I prefer not to. OK, so then you get to the whole Santa Claus thing, which some people characterize as as a lie. Only bad people do that. How young is our listenership? Do we need to? I don't think we have to worry about spoilers on this one. No, I can't imagine there's any six year olds listening to re-creative. No, they're so precocious. This is not going to hurt them in any way.
00:01:31
Speaker
So, okay, I guess the short answer is I have no trouble whatsoever with the whole, you know, fable of Santa Claus and imbuing Christmas with that imaginative fantasy magic. I think it's a good thing, you know? I mean, I've discussed this with my daughters. I certainly know how I felt.
00:01:47
Speaker
Growing up, so yeah, I have no issue with it at all. Okay, that's good. So yeah, so what about you, Mark? I actually don't have an answer to this question. I realized as I was asking the question, shit, I don't know what I feel about this. I think I'm pro, but I see the cons as well because the inevitable disappointment slash betrayal that a child feels.
00:02:08
Speaker
is probably one of the first traumatic things, well, hopefully the first traumatic thing to experience. So yeah, I'm always worried about that, but I like the mythology of Santa Claus. I have a lot of fun with it at this time of year, mostly making fun of it. So yeah, I'm pro. I mean, obviously I'm pro because otherwise I couldn't satirize it. So Jeff Preston, welcome to the podcast. What do you think about all this?
00:02:33
Speaker
Oh, thank you for having me. Well, I just want to be on record that I am 1000% pro-life to children. I think the more that we keep them in the dark about the realities of the world, the better. As long as possible. I wish somebody had kept me in the dark until like now. Yeah, exactly. I think it's better. It's way better than the reality that they will be born into when they emerge from the family cocoon. Okay, so you're obviously pro-Santa Claus then, Jeff.
00:03:02
Speaker
I'm actually anti-Santa Claus. I'm pro-life. I'm anti-Santa Claus, specifically because if he does not pay his workers, I'm very concerned about the labor conditions in the North Pole. That seems not great. I'm very, very suspicious of his treatment of animals. I mean, making reindeer fly. Reindeer do not belong
Introducing Jeff Preston: Disability Studies and Media
00:03:25
Speaker
in the air. They're not a flying creature. They are land-based. They are not adapted for it at all. Yeah.
00:03:31
Speaker
It's unnatural. I don't know. Also, there's like apparently like a like a U.S. military training regime happening where like they have to bully Rudolph in order to become the leader that he is. That to me felt like sanctioned bullying. Oh, that's just standard. They tear him down and they build him back up again. One of my favorite memes of this time of year is the picture of Rudolph from the classic Rankin Bass.
00:03:58
Speaker
Short and the caption is deviation from the norm will be punished unless that it's exploitable. My big concern is the whole injection of radiation into Rudolph to get that, you know, glowing red nose. That's.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, see, there's some weird science going on up there. And I'm sick, personally, I'm tired of saying I'm okay with it. Okay. So in that vein, Jeff, can you tell us and our listeners who you are and what you do and why you're here?
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so I'm Jeff. I am officially my official title as I'm an Associate Professor of Disability Studies at Cleveland University College, which is an affiliate of Western's. And my research interest is on representations of disability in popular culture.
00:04:53
Speaker
I'm really interested in how we tell stories about disability and more specifically how disability tends to become a useful tool in telling stories and how we tend to objectify disability as opposed to subjectify, I suppose, or embody disability within media. So that's sort of part of me. And then the other side of me is that I also podcast.
00:05:16
Speaker
And so I have a podcast called Invalid Culture, which is looking at the worst representations of disability that we can find on the internet. And you're a creative guy generally. I mean, you had a webcomic for a while and you've been involved with theater. You did a presentation, I think yesterday at the art lab on campus. Can you tell us what that was about? Yeah.
00:05:40
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I like to, I think it's only fair that if I were going to critique media, that I should also probably try to produce it. So as you said, I did a web comic, Cripp's the web comic, which is about disability, about two teenagers with disability. Wait, what was the name of it?
00:05:56
Speaker
Crips, a web comic. Crips with a Z, if you want to see it. It is still online, so find it. So I did that, and then I had a TV show on Rogers called London Undone, which was a satirical news program about London. We survived one season. We did not get sued, although there were a few close calls. So it was good. So that was a lot of fun. It was a real joy to do something that kind of wasn't disability-related,
00:06:25
Speaker
It was just about London, about how this is a silly, silly city that we live in. And then yesterday I was drawn into a, it's actually an aerial piece performed by an aerialist here in London named Aaron Clark as a disabled performer who has put together this thing called visual pleasure.
00:06:42
Speaker
in which she has choreographed an aerial routine, really intense aerial routine, and I am delivering a lecture about Laura Mulvey over top of the aerial. And so rather than having an aerial program where typically you'd have the music, for instance, you instead have this drone in sort of white male voice talking about the male gaze of Laura Mulvey as this female performer is performing an aerial routine. Are there any reindeer in this aerial routine?
00:07:12
Speaker
No, there are not strictly forbidden. No animals were harmed in the making of visual pleasure. That's so cool. And you have also done a TED Talk.
Challenging Norms: TED Talk and Personal Insights
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah, I was invited to do a TED Talk at Western, and being the person that I am, I decided to take the piss. And so I did a TED Talk stating that I had created an institute to hear normalcy. And I was running this lab, and I was working on finding them clearer for normalcy.
00:07:44
Speaker
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just want to say it was very funny. Oh, thank you. I'm glad not everyone got it. Two people tried to apply to be research assistants at my lab. Well, that's incredible because I mean, like you had a video takes of people who have either recovered from or suffering from normalcy.
00:08:05
Speaker
which was clearly over the top. Yes. Yes. I thought I thought I had really drawn it out. And apparently, apparently I had not. So I mean, it led to this awkward moment after where I wondered, well, maybe I should. Maybe like, how long can I take this call on if I have an RA? You know, maybe NSERC would fund me. Maybe I open up the lab and I start experimenting on people. I don't know. Maybe that's what I should be doing.
00:08:34
Speaker
Really, the whole play of the talk was thinking about how we pathologize disability instinctively. We don't even think about it, right? We see a wheelchair or we see a walking stand for a cane or any of the signs of disability and amputation, prosthetic leg, and we immediately sort of wrap it in this world of medicalization.
00:08:56
Speaker
and assume that it is a problem that needs to be fixed. And something that I've thought a lot about as I've grown up, I was born and raised with a disability diagnosed at birth, is the way that my disability in some ways, I think, has freed me from many of the expectations of normalcy.
00:09:14
Speaker
in some really great ways, I would say, because I never got to qualify for normal. From day one, I wasn't deemed eligible to be normal, which I think for some, maybe that would be really upsetting. But for me, it was extremely freeing. It meant that I didn't need to necessarily conform to the expectations of society in the same way that necessarily everyone else feels compelled to for some reason.
00:09:41
Speaker
And so then I thought thinking about it that if we structure a world in which we take non-disabled people, we put them into medical coats, and then we put them into clinics, and then we tell them that they will use their able-bodied minds in order to fix the disabled people that roll through their clinics.
00:09:58
Speaker
What might it look like if we flip that narrative? What would it look like if we had disabled people fixing the people who are suffering from normalcy, who are clinging to this understanding or this misperception that they themselves are normal and that there is a normalcy that they should be striving toward or perhaps that they are compelled to be that maybe we actually are the ones that should be the doctors fixing people?
00:10:24
Speaker
What I loved so much about that, Jeff, is that I find that I really don't like the word normal. And I think you are probably the person who set me on that journey to understanding that is a really pointless word.
00:10:39
Speaker
Cause there is no normal. It's a silly word. It's a very silly word. Yeah. There is no normal. The whole concept. It is. Yeah. There's everyone has their own unique existence and it's unique to every single person. So there's how many billion of us now? And there's no normal amongst any of them. So do you remember a time, Jeff, because you were saying that you, that you were freed from the whole concept of, of normalcy.
00:11:08
Speaker
When did that dawn on you? When did you take that position? Pretty early on, really early on I would say. I mean, I remember vividly going to Junior of Kindergarten and having this weird awakening that I was the only one in the room with a wheelchair. I was like, oh, I'm the only one. I thought I just sort of assumed everyone.
00:11:33
Speaker
or that most people there would be. I mean, I have an older sister, so I knew that not everyone used wheelchairs. But I sort of assumed, I mean, 50% of the children in my household were using wheelchairs. I thought maybe the ratios would be a little better than 130. I remember that, like, being the first thing that clicked in. And even more so the way that the students in the classroom saw me as different.
00:12:00
Speaker
And that, I think, was really limiting to me where I was like, wait, why am I the weird one here? Why am I the different one here? Like, I'm not different. I'm just me. I'm how I've always been. This is just sort of who I am. And so I think there was a bit of a disjuncture there, not necessarily in a compelling sort of way, but in a they noticed I was different, which made me notice that I was different.
00:12:22
Speaker
But I also have always been a bit of an oppositional defiant kind of little dude. And so I think that, you know, people are like, oh, I don't you wish you could walk? And I'm like, nah, I've never really wanted to walk. It looks terrible. I wait for my wheelchair. There doesn't seem to be much. Aside from accessing places with stairs, there doesn't seem to be any benefit to it.
00:12:46
Speaker
I mean, you guys look like you're dying when you're walking across campus. I don't get tired. Well, to be fair, it is just controlled falling. Exactly what walking is.
00:13:02
Speaker
I just glide, you know, it's totally graceful. And so I think that that has always been sort of a part of me as well. And so things like, you know, you get into puberty and you start thinking about like beauty standards and what is an attractive body? What's an unattractive body? I knew right away that I was not an attractive body or at least not in a conventional sense. And that, you know, for some that could be really upsetting and can be really worrisome. But for me, I think it brought my attention to just how completely
00:13:30
Speaker
shallow and vain beauty standards are, and how the self-construction of what constitutes beauty and how beauty is tied to value was just completely false. It was made up. It was Santa Claus. Santa Claus for puberty.
00:13:47
Speaker
I mean, I think one of the interesting things about being born with a disability is that you both had a real sense of the inability to change things from a very young age. It's like, this is my reality. It'll always be my reality. And there are things in this world that do not change. You learned that lesson really quick when you're born with a disability. But you also developed this other sense of the weird flexibility and permeability of the world.
00:14:17
Speaker
and your body, right? That, you know, how my body works today is not how my body will work tomorrow or a month from now or a year from now. And so I also just don't get very hung up on the ways that my body changes or, you know, I don't really fear aging, for instance.
00:14:35
Speaker
in the same way necessarily as others, because, you know, I never, I didn't have a like, puke athletic Jeff moment when I was bench pressing huge weights, you know, jamming steroids in my butt, like, I never had that phase. I never lost it either, you know, and so there's there's a lot like loss of physical ability in the same way. And so, you know, you don't mourn the change so much as understand that,
00:15:03
Speaker
Bodies are in flux minds are in flux always and that's also a reality So you've not only learned to play the cards that you're dealt you've learned that that hand will change with every every deal Okay, which some people never learn
00:15:22
Speaker
I mean, a lot of people never learn. It's a hugely important lesson. And not to get too utilitarian about it, but it breeds not just the desire, but also the ability to adapt. And I think for a lot of people with disabilities, that's sort of the thing you hear a lot, is that the real story of disability is the story of adaptability. It's the story of being able to bend the world around you to fit your needs.
00:15:49
Speaker
and about the real pain and angst and injustice of when the world refuses to bend, when the world refuses to change. And that is perhaps the real disabling experience, not necessarily the change in the genetic code that I experience, but rather the inability for us to change the built-in code in the world around us. Maybe that's the more disabling factor.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, or getting people to add alt text to their images as a, sorry. Or audio description on videos, right? Yeah. I think that leads us to the piece that you wanted to talk about, right?
00:16:33
Speaker
Isn't it? I think you did that kind of masterfully. But one quick observation just before we do that. So obviously humor has been, it appears to me, it's a big part of your life and a big part of your character and how you deal with things.
Film Analysis: The Cult of 'Christmas Evil'
00:16:49
Speaker
And I imagine that has something to do with the choice that you're about to talk about.
00:16:53
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, I'm a deeply silly person. You know, I think about that line for succession, right? When, you know, the Roys are talking and the father says, you know, you are deeply unserious people. And I just want someone to say that to me, because I am a deeply unserious person. And so I thought, you know, when you when you reached out and asked me to be on the pod,
00:17:15
Speaker
I thought that I should probably do a crossover episode and subject you to a film that I have subjected others to on invalid culture, which is, of course, the film Christmas Evil. And I had never seen this movie before in my life, believe it or not. No, I'd never heard of it. Yeah. Yeah. Very few have. It's weird, though, because it does have a cult following this movie.
00:17:40
Speaker
It does, which is a weird thing about this film. One of the many weird things about this film. Can you describe the film for our listeners and Joe? And then we'll get into it. Yeah, sure. So I have a synopsis, which we'll never read. Oh yeah, that'd be great. My synopsis of this film.
00:17:57
Speaker
Sure, okay, so here's a synopsis of Christmas Evil. Christmas Evil focuses on the life of Harry Stadland, a man traumatized as a child by the sight of his mother getting friskly with St. Nick. Making Freud proud, this traumatic event leads to a lifelong obsession with Santa Claus and all things Christmas until, 33 years after the trauma, the lines between Harry and Santa begin to blur.
00:18:24
Speaker
Troubles at his toy factory where he works, and the negative body hygiene of local bad boy, Mas Garcia, eventually pushes Harry over the edge. Those who stand against the Christmas will die. Dressed as Santa, Harry goes on part donated toys to disabled kids slash part murder rampage, punishing those who don't want to hear the, quote, tune he is trying to play.
00:18:50
Speaker
whatever that means. Eventually, he confronts his financially successful repo man brother, Philip, and for denying his traumatic observations, they have a tussle, a fight, he punches Philip, loads his Santa Van up, and flies off into the cold night, escaping a torch-wielding mob that is trying to hunt him.
00:19:14
Speaker
That's actually pretty good synopsis. There's a lot more happening in that movie though, I'll tell you right now.
00:19:23
Speaker
There is so much happening. And I think it's also important to note, famously, this movie has been identified by John Waters as the best Christmas movie ever made. Wow. That's amazing to hear that. But it kind of makes sense. He genuinely seems to believe it. He's said it more than once, and he genuinely loves this movie.
00:19:48
Speaker
So he's not tongue-in-cheek. He genuinely thinks this is an incredible piece of art. Okay, so Mark, you have seen it. Can I give you my experience of this movie? My first thought was, why does Jeff hate me? What? I don't understand. I thought we were friends. And then as I got into the movie, I was strangely compelled by this movie.
00:20:14
Speaker
But I, I think it's mostly because of the guy playing Harry, the lead, Brandon McGart. And then he was in life according to the dark. That was sort of his big kind of fame. It should be this because it's actually.
00:20:26
Speaker
It's a pretty riveting performance. I was watching it going, this guy doesn't know what movie he's in. He has no idea what movie he's in. He's delivering a nuanced and very deep connected performance. And that's essentially what carried me through the movie was watching this guy because he's like, it's it's hard not to watch it just because of how good his performance is.
00:20:51
Speaker
The rest of the movie, though, is a freaking disaster. The script is terrible. There's actually some really well-known actors in this movie, like Hector from Breaking Bad and better call Saul. Hector is in it, that actor is in it.
00:21:10
Speaker
There's a bunch of Canadian actors like there's some actually some pretty well known character actors from the 80s in this. But yeah, it's a mess though. The whole thing is just a big giant mess in terms of the story structure.
00:21:28
Speaker
The motivations are frankly insane. I mean, none of it makes sense. The relationship between the brothers, Philip and Frank, it doesn't make sense at the end. Yeah. No. So my resistance to watching it is because I don't typically like horror movies and I especially don't like slasher movies. So tell me what is the case then for Jeff for watching this movie?
00:21:57
Speaker
So, well, this is the problem. As an unserious person, and perhaps a broken person, I love craft movies. COVID has damaged me because I spent most of it not watching legitimate theater and art, but I was in there trolling the absolute bowels of the streaming platforms to find the weirdest
00:22:24
Speaker
stuff I could find. I watched a lot of Christian films during COVID because they are the most bizarre things I've ever encountered, like deeply strange. And so that's actually where the sort of idea of a valid culture came out is
00:22:42
Speaker
out of is, why don't we watch the weird stuff? Like, you know, everybody talks about Rain Man or, you know, the typical disability, Forrest Gump, you know, whatever. Let's not talk about the Oscar bait. Let's talk about the stuff off the beaten path, where somebody was drawn to disability for a reason that probably had nothing to do with awards. But for some reason, they had a story to tell, and disability was going to be a part of it.
00:23:08
Speaker
And I thought that was a really interesting way to kind of look at it. And I think that Christmas Evil gives us a really interesting glimpse into this sort of 1980s, the idea of the madman, the idea of the sort of going postal, you know, the aggrieved worker who snaps and goes on a rampage, all of those sort of like,
00:23:33
Speaker
early sort of that concept I think is there. So like Michael Douglas and falling down. Precisely. That's a perfect comparison, except with toys and weird sexual confusion. Well, that's one of the things that's so hard about the movie though is because his rampage really isn't a rampage.
00:23:56
Speaker
in the sense that he obviously had, he, I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone. So I'm not going to do that because I'm assuming most people haven't seen this movie, even though it's like, whatever it is, 43 years old. But there are some scenes where it's like, yeah, he's not really on a rampage at this point. He's still just.
00:24:16
Speaker
In some case, I would say he's not doing second-degree murder. He's doing first-degree murder. Like the guy that sends him over the edge, he's gonna die. And that might be the point of the whole movie is that the guy who really did him the most wrong is gonna die.
00:24:32
Speaker
And that's not a rampage and the people at work, he doesn't kill because he doesn't have the opportunity to kill him. Well, not all of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like there's very clearly like you could see how this director writer, um, Lewis Jackson, you can see how he clearly wanted to make like a commentary on like the commercialization of Christmas, uh, which is of course a very generic thing to do.
00:24:58
Speaker
And so that's really the target, right? So it's like the corporate owners, the Wall Street guys coming out of church, the people that don't allow him to be Santa. These are the people who are going to have to pay, right? The people that are sort of bracing this innocence.
00:25:16
Speaker
But then he's also presented as this kind of out-of-control madman, like, is he gonna kill his brother? Is he gonna kill his brother's family? Is he gonna kill Moss Garcia, this degenerate street child who lives next to him? So that's where some of the tension comes in in the movie, because you don't know what he's going to do.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, there's also you got to realize too, because it's a bad movie, there's almost like two movies here. Like there's sort of like the pre movie, which is like his childhood and then working out a bit of schlub at the toy factory. And then he goes into this like fugue state and then it's like start the second movie. And so then a lot of things that happened at the beginning just are never addressed again. They don't come back up. It's just completely dropped.
00:26:02
Speaker
Because now we're onto the massacre. And so. So it needed a good story editor. And I would say, I mean, I'm not a fan of slasher movie movies either, but there wasn't enough blood like to really qualify as a slasher movie. It really isn't a slasher movie. Like a few people get murdered and it's kind of fake looking and unbelievable. Like one guy gets killed with a Christmas ornament, which doesn't seem likely. Yeah, that's a pretty, pretty good shot right there in the eye. And then and then the tension with the tension really is.
00:26:32
Speaker
Like, he keeps vacillating wildly between this guy who's killing people and Santa Claus. He's actually Santa Claus. He steals toys from all of the bad boys and girls under their trees. He breaks into the houses, steals the toys, and then gives them to an orphanage in the same night. It's all in the same night. It's all happening. The movie is... And then a mob tries to get him. Yeah, well, that's, yeah. He gets caught in the street and, yeah, a mob tries to get him.
00:27:00
Speaker
Class of New York. Was the director of the writer, you said it was Lewis? Yeah, Lewis Jackson. I think the 19th century wrote it and directed it. But it also seemed- Yeah. Sorry, I was going to ask you, do you know, it seemed to me they had, there was some money behind this movie because- There was, a little bit. It wasn't a huge budget, but they stretched it. They did a good job because- In a big way. Pretty good production values, to be honest.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yeah. And the other weird part about this story is that, so this to me felt like the type of movie that somebody makes when they're trying to basically put together a sizzle reel that they'll then parlay into something bigger. Because I think there's some technical ability here and there is some conceptual ability here and it just didn't all come together necessarily. So it wasn't Sam Raimi.
00:27:54
Speaker
No, and so he ended up like he didn't really do anything else after this though is the weird thing He went on to do a bunch of like art house like porn essentially That's like almost impossible to find like you can't get it if that doesn't exist like some people have it obviously but
00:28:12
Speaker
I do not kind of go on Amazon and find the Lewis Jackson collection. And so kind of faded into obscurity a little bit after this, which is also strange. Or maybe not, because you're not really convincing me that this is a great movie. So other people may have looked at it and taken a hard pass. Jeff, can you account for why this has got a cult following?
00:28:38
Speaker
Like that's the part for me that was a real surprise. Cause I was like, I understand why there's some value to the movie, but, but, um, if nothing else for his performance, for Brandon McGart's performance, it's, it's actually, it shows you how an actor can like rise above a script in a sense. But like, why is it a cult? Why does it have a cult following? It's weird.
00:29:01
Speaker
So I think it was one of the movies that got swept up in the UK and their, like their, oh, okay. A film in the early eighties. I'm pretty sure. Oh, so it had that stamp on it. So people got a, you know, if it's been censored, it's DJ and art. Okay. Got it.
00:29:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was it. But now that I'm looking that up, I don't see that on the Wikipedia page, which I mean, I kind of took to it like ice pirates or a movie like that was like, it's just so bad that you go. Okay. You got to watch that. It's so bad. You got to watch it. I think that's part of it. I think the badness of it is part of the sort of cult interest. I think the like.
00:29:46
Speaker
It's the taboo of it in some ways as well, right? It's this one weird mix of like sex, violence, Christmas and mental illness that you just don't get anymore. You know, when was the last time you had that mixed together in a film? I regret to say you have completely failed to sell me on this movie. I will probably not be watching this movie. Let me ask you then, I mean, I assume this is not your favorite Christmas movie.
Favorite Christmas Movies
00:30:15
Speaker
Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? I mean, it's probably Die Hard. I would say probably Die Hard would be my favorite Christmas movie. 100%. Number one, Alan Rickman is incredible in that film.
00:30:36
Speaker
Unbelievable. He plays two nationalities in the film, one kind of better than the other. I think there is like there is some incredible filmmaking stuff happening in that film, really subtle ways that they tell you about the characters without telling you anything. I mean, like when Alan Rickman, that scene, if you watch the scene of Alan Rickman entering Yakutomi Tower. I think so.
00:31:04
Speaker
Plaza, something like that. As he's walking into the plaza, that scene of him walking in, you understand everything about the dynamics of this mob of people. You understand all of the dynamics of this gang as they're entering, and barely any words are said.
00:31:22
Speaker
Um, it's all like body acting and camera angles and just facial expressions and like the way that they dominate the scene, the way that Alan Rickman dominates that scene tells you everything you need to know about that character. And I think that a lot of people go into Die Hard thinking this is just like a crappy action movie, which it is, but there also are some like very clever things
00:31:44
Speaker
that are happening. Well, I would say that it's a, it's certainly an action movie, but it's not a crappy action movie. I mean, it's, you know, it's one of my favorite directors, John McTernan, who just knows what he's doing. He's a craftsman. Yeah. And he, and you know, with the actors, I completely agree. Not my favorite Christmas movie, but definitely a movie I love.
00:32:03
Speaker
It's a little cliche, but I would have to say it's a wonderful life. It has grown on me so much over the years, you know, watching it from a kid. And it's one of those movies I can can and have watched over and over again. And and it just gets me emotionally. And I also think it's a masterful piece of writing and directing and acting.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, I can't complain with that. I think I give honorable mention to a Christmas story as well. Yeah, that's a close story in the top well-made movie. The guy who wrote the short story is narrating it and his narration is perfect. Like it's so good. It's so great. Yeah. Oh my God, I shot my eye out. I guess I also have to mention Elf.
00:32:50
Speaker
Just because I, again, I enjoy that performance so much, like almost anything else. Actually, I really like James Cahn too, but I mean, Will Ferrell's performance in that is just so perfect. It's obvious that Jon Favreau knew what he was doing when he wrote the script, but I'm...
00:33:08
Speaker
really glad that Will Ferrell ended up doing that role. It feels like the most authentic Will Ferrell in some way. So that feels like the most authentic to him, I feel, than maybe many of his other roles. Often his other roles, he has a bit of an earnestness to him, and I don't get the sense that that's Will Ferrell in real life. I kind of feel like it might be this. Yeah, actually, I would have to meet the man to have any understanding, but
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it's so light and perfect. I mean, if you think back to Saturday Night Live when he was, you know, starting out and his role as the cheerleader with Shari Oteri, again, that seems like him, right? Just super happy, enthusiastic, supportive, and that's who the guy is, yeah.
00:33:56
Speaker
Okay, so a little segue then as we come into the closing moments of our Christmas special podcast. It wasn't meant to be, it was just how it turned out. Well, and I think it's terrific. I'm actually so glad, Jeff, that you suggested- It was a brilliant choice. Maybe not the greatest movie, but so the whole notion of Christmas itself, what do you guys think of Christmas?
00:34:21
Speaker
Whew, that's a tough one. I sometimes call it Christmas carnage because for me, it's always been kind of this.
00:34:30
Speaker
weird time, which I know I'm supposed to feel all these things, but I don't necessarily feel them. Yeah, I feel like I'm being manipulated pretty hard around this time of year by everybody. And I've kind of learned to resent it a little bit and I've mostly let that go now and I kind of enjoy it for what it is. Yeah. So that's why it's a hard question. Well, for my part, I apologize for manipulating you. Jeff, what about you?
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah, I love Christmas. But I'm not gonna say that I'm a Christmas evil guy by any means. But my Christmas, like the ideal Christmas in my life is the quiet Christmas with the family hanging out, playing games, watching movies, being away from it all, right? It's not really about the presents for me. It's really about the dinners and
00:35:22
Speaker
to chat in and to hang out. And my family was always, we were sort of on the quiet side for Christmas. It was really interesting being my folks, my sister and family friends as far as we'll come over. And it was just sort of a nice fun time. And my partner,
00:35:38
Speaker
her side, they're a bunch of Catalans. And Catalans, they know how to celebrate Christmas. So it's not quite the glitz and glam that you might see in a movie. It's definitely more of that kind of family hanging out and whacking along with a stick to make it poop out presents, which is the greatest tradition I think that I've ever met.
00:36:03
Speaker
Yeah i'm very pro-christmas but probably not in the way that our corporate overlords would prefer me to be. Well done. Yeah i have to say i like christmas i've got lots of great memories of christmas and i sometimes i like to go nowhere do nothing and see no one and have that kind of christmas. This christmas will be going to prince edward island and hanging out with my family the first
00:36:27
Speaker
time, I think in like 30 years that I, that all of us will be together, like extended family for Christmas. So that's very cool. That's going to be all sit down and we'll watch evil Christmas evil together. Don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Both, both the therapist, the therapist arrives immediately afterwards.
00:36:46
Speaker
Then you can unpack it as a family. Just have a place for everyone to go when they leave the movie. That's right, yeah. I don't think we'll be watching that movie. But Jeff, any final thoughts on your choice for today's episode?
Disability in Film: A Critical Perspective
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the reasons why I like people to watch this film is that I think it is doing really badly what a lot of our media does when we tell stories about disability.
00:37:11
Speaker
which is that we don't see disabled people as people at all, but rather we take these diagnoses and reuse them as a justification to get the story where we want it to go. This is what Mitchell and Snyder call narrative prosthesis.
00:37:27
Speaker
or the way that disability is used as like a crutch to prop up story development or to prop up the plot of the film. And so I think we can actually learn a lot about how we tell stories about disability by watching the truly bad representations because the bad ones are doing the same thing as the big budget Hollywood Oscar-bait movies. They're just not doing it as well.
00:37:54
Speaker
And so I think when you're watching things like Christmas Evil, you can start to see the absurdity of the stories that we tell, the truly one sense that exists in the way that we tell stories about disability. And so then when you're watching a really good movie, quote unquote, something that will probably win an Oscar someday, you're watching it and you say, well, this is kind of like that plot in Christmas Evil. The alarm bells start to go off.
00:38:20
Speaker
You're like, okay, I see what's going on here. So it sounds like our listeners should be listening to your podcast too, to inoculate themselves. Maybe, or if you want to recommend a terrible movie to someone, come and check out any of the movies that we've done. Because they are, Chris, I will just say, just to put it into context, Christmas Evil is one of the best movies we've done so far.
00:38:45
Speaker
by like a lot. Well, not a lot. Not going to be. It was pretty good. But like top two. No questions. OK, let's take a second here and just so explain to us the premise of your podcast. Yeah, you guys do. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So the premise of invalid culture is we wanted to turn the camera lens back on culture itself and to say, what if we have
00:39:14
Speaker
disabled people, disabled scholars, analyzing the truly awful representations of disability that we can find. And so one of our big rules is we're not going to analyze big movies. We're not going to analyze movies that you've probably heard of. We're going to do the weird stuff, the stuff that you're going to find at the bottom of 2B.
00:39:38
Speaker
the stuff you're going to find at the dollar stair DVD bin, we're going to find the weird stuff. And we're going to dig into it because what we're finding is the more of these truly awful films we watch, the more we realize that these movies are simply replicating the tropes and the story, the archetype that they're seeing in popular films, in the movies that quote unquote work.
00:40:03
Speaker
And so then we have to wonder, well, what is the artifice that we're building of disability? What is the simulacra of disability that is being constructed in our cultural content? And I think that the bad movies can actually help us get access to that.
00:40:19
Speaker
to help us to see under the polish of a very good actor or a very talented scriptwriter that might be feeding us a story of disability that has a lot more to do with those who don't see themselves as disabled as opposed to actually telling an authentic story about life with a disability.
00:40:40
Speaker
Market sounds like people should be listening to that podcast instead of they should listen to both. Obviously. Oh, yeah. This is the talent cleanse. You listen to ours. Yeah, you cry for a bit. And then you listen to this to get whole. Yeah, exactly. Because it will be all okay. So so where can people find your podcast, Jeff? Did you find us at invalid culture calm, or wherever you find your podcasts?
00:41:07
Speaker
All right. So Mark, any final thoughts from you? No, I just want to thank Jeff for coming on and forcing me to watch that horrible movie because I did learn things. I learned a lot. Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. And Merry Christmas to you both. Merry Christmas. Cheers.
00:41:47
Speaker
Recreative is produced by Mark Rainer and Joe Mahoney. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney, web design by Mark Rainer. Show notes in all episodes are available at recreative.ca. That's recreative.ca. Drop us a line at joemahoney at donovanstreetpress.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.