Don't Blame Me! - BONUS: Sponsored by Showtime's film, CUSP

Episode Date: December 11, 2021

TW: Sexual Assault This  episode  is  sponsored  by  Showtime's film,  CUSP. Meghan and Melisa discuss Showtime's film, CUSP, about three spirited teenage girls in a small town in Texas who live out a fever-dream summer. Cusp Education Guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rmBMxp9flmWQeVtgvWL7q1UayRXx-G37/view?usp=sharing   Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/join/dontblameme See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and this episode is sponsored by Showtime's film Cusp. So Cusp is a documentary that we both just watched, and before we get into the conversation talking about this, we want to give a trigger warning for the conversations that we're going to have, but then also just the film in general. It deals with substances. It deals with underage drinking. It also deals with sexual assault, coercion, domestic violence, abuse, and also on teen dating and domestic violence and its impact on children, teens, and adults. So this might not be suitable for all audiences so please take care uh if you're listening so we want to talk to you a little bit about what this movie is about so i want to give you a quick synopsis let me just start by saying

it's really good it's like one of those haunting movies that sticks with you i i really didn't know what to expect when i sat down to watch it and it just it was something that it made me sad but also like pulled me in like I just wanted to listen to these stories and hear these girls talk about what was going on in their lives we don't have a ton of um I personally don't feel like accurate representations of what it's like to be a young girl like I think that what we see in movies and tv usually is a very different version than kind of like the lives that we actually lead and what people go through growing up and i mean as hard as it was to watch and to see some of like the things that went down in this i could see myself watching it at 15 16 the age of these girls and

understanding and resonating with a lot of it in a way that like you can kind of watch their growth throughout the movie right and throughout their realizations they're going yeah because when you're that young every every month your brain is developing more and more and you're learning more and you're understanding more about the world around you and and all of that that I it was just as impactful now as somebody who is out of that age as I think it would have been seeing that when I was that age right should we give a quick summary what the film's about yeah do you want to take it away? Yeah. So during a road trip across America, first-time filmmakers Parker Hill and Isabel Betancourt meet three spirited teenage girls, Brittany, Alani, and Autumn at a gas station

in a small town in Texas and are inspired to document their carefree summer. This crew of two with only a camera, microphone, and a $10 flashlight for lighting soon discovers a much different story as they film the teens activities from bonfires to bedroom hangouts discussions around sex trauma agency and consent unfold with candor it's you you can have that sense of it too when you watch it that it's not a huge crew and that these girls are really letting you in and in a way that like again reminds me of like how i talked when i was that age that they're so clearly trying to connect with people their age while still like demonstrating that they're learning and understanding these things about themselves. Right. It was very intimate. And

even though I haven't been this age for a long time, a lot of it resonated with me. And then there were some parts of it that I just found really shocking. I think, especially for me, just how casually they talked about sexual assault and how all three of them had been through it at some point in time one of the girls from a family friend when she was a little girl to another one of the girls she in her words she said and i'm summarizing she lost her virginity to a guy that she had numerous times said no to and he forced himself on her so it was heartbreaking just like the rawness and vulnerability of of it and how you can also see how it impacts their um relationships with men like following through the rest of the film

or boys too yeah with boys but i mean a lot of them are yeah older than them yes over 18 and like it's i think like the thing that really like is the grounding part that i really like that they did is that parents are featured in it for assuming as viewers the parents who were okay with that and wanted to be on camera and it's just you you watch it as an outsider and you see like how strong these how strong these girls are that they have gone through these things at home and there's one specific scene about one of the girls um her dad who has been like in the military for all this time is now back at home and it's her little sister's birthday and she's wearing a crop top and shorts and he tells her to go change in in not a not a gentle way in a really rude

demeaning way on her birthday she's turning 13 yeah and the older sister goes in there and is trying to stick up for her sister and he's just shutting her down yelling at her and you can just like hear that change in her voice from being like so obviously confident in what she's saying but then still being a kid and still being at home and having this parental figure there who isn't supporting her or her sister and you see a lot of like the kids parenting the teenage girls parenting themselves in all of this and wanting to grow up yeah and in that conversation that she had with her dad she said something along the lines of um let her don't shame her body essentially which i thought was very just like strong like you said it was strong coming from her but you

could still hear the shakiness in her voice while she was doing that but like they say speak out even if your voice shakes so yeah i think that like we i mean on our podcast we've talked a lot about like age gap relationships and this kind of stuff and this i this film i think gives a really clear depiction on how those things how a large majority or a large portion of those relationships start to happen and the situations and obviously how none of it is these teen girls fault and their brains aren't fully developed and I remember being that age and yeah like I don't know I could see myself and then when they have these shots of them at these parties with these older guys and they're asking them how old they are and the girls are saying

like oh well I forget the exact term that they used but it was um how to when they're in groups of people they'll be like oh my gosh like you're way too young for me but then like when they're alone it was like well now it doesn't matter and how at that age people who are when you're 15 16 people guys who are like 18 19 20 like they feel so they are so much older than you but they feel so much older than you and so to have them kind of make you feel chosen and picked and special but they also recognize like the bad the problematic dynamics in these relationships of they're asking each other for advice on how to respond to a text message because they're like well i don't want my boyfriend to be tell me i can't go i don't want him to be mad at me and

they talk about that kind of well he's not telling me i can't go do this but he knows i will be upset if i don't do this and like i've had conversations that like my friends in college like that's something that i think like is is a constant sort of thing of like women feeling like they have responsibilities and um that things are expected of them that they haven't said that they want to do or said that they're going to do where do you think this normalization of abuse comes from oh i mean you know to get all therapizing it's the cycle of abuse and we see these um the parents and those parents most likely were also abused we heard about how one of the age the one of the girl who her mom is upset that she wants to move in with her boyfriend their age gap

was the same as her and her boyfriends and i think that like there isn't a great from what we saw there wasn't a good great dialogue between the two of them to understanding what that is or one of the other girls her mom for the 13 year old she was like keep your head in a book like you don't want to have to you want to make a lot of money you don't have to depend on a man like i depend on your father and like that emotional dumping on your kids makes your kids feel responsible for all of that and when we've subconsciously kind of forced these kids to grow up faster than their brains are actually developing like the situations that they think that they're mature enough to hang out with these older people and have relationships with older

people because they've been told that they're mature and been told they're responsible when in reality there's only so you can only be so mature and so responsible for how where your brain is developed and like how mature you actually are yeah even going back to that mom that you're talking about you know making enough money so you can take care of she said making enough money so you can take care of us when your dad and i when um we get old it was interesting because earlier were in the film she had talked about how um she hadn't worked the whole time she'd been married to her husband but then at one point she got a job and now her husband calls her quote-unquote the sugar mama and then later we hear her say you don't want to depend on a man and so it's just

And you can see through her relationship that she was probably subjected to the same type of abuse in her life early in her life, too. And I think one of the hardest things is that I think that she's still living in it. Like, as this film's going on, she's still married to him and all of that. So, like, when the younger daughter said that, like, oh, yeah, I would want to take care of you, not dad. and she was like no come on that's your father and then that becomes normalizing the abuse of like this man loves you and at that age like you it is so hard when someone who you love and trust tells you that someone else who treats you horribly loves you and trust like loves you and that's why they're doing what they're doing and then when you go out into the world and you

start dating and making decisions and surrounding yourself with people you i don't want to say it's like your pickers off because i think that's a very uh minimizing way of describing it but like someone that you've trust has told you this one thing represents love and you start seeking out the thing that looks like that right and it's like oh that wasn't it that's mom trying to justify and reason with her own issues of staying with him and like being a victim of his abuse as well and like that's how we get to like that cycle all over again and again with the other one of the other girls where her mom was like screaming at her that she would call the cops on her if she moved in with her boyfriend but there was like this one moment where she was like i just don't

get it because my mom kicks me out of the house all the time but the second that i want to go move in with my boyfriend she says that she's going to call the police and get me arrested right and it's like what do you the the kids who are desperately need parents to parent them and when you don't do that and you kind of like come in with an iron fist at the end it's like there's no consistency there it's just not fair to them what do you think it would take to break this cycle of unhealthy relationships i think i mean one thing i did notice that was like really great is just again like how they talk amongst each other about abuse and consent and all of that is something that I think in the age of smartphones and like social media and like being

connected to things that are outside of your very small town and understanding all of this I think that they're all very they're all very aware of what they're going through and like what is happening and they all seem pretty aware of like where it's coming from and in their family wise and all of that and i think that like ultimately what breaks the cycle of abuse is people making the choice to get out of those making the choice to like really heal themselves from that and understand it before they embark on relationships of their own and like you know I wish it was a requirement for parents to go to therapy. I know that one of the girls was talking about how she was in therapy.

And she also mentioned earlier, pretty much at the top of the film, that she was in therapy. And also that she thought that she was more mature than most girls her age and how that affected her life. She even said, as she was smoking a cigarette, said, when I go to parties, I don't drink because when you drink, then bad decisions get made, essentially, is what she said. So like you said, I think therapy would help a lot. And then one of the other girls talked about how when the one that wanted to move in with her boyfriend, she talked about when she was 18, she was getting out of the town and never coming back and never talking to her family again and you know removing yourself from situations

does help but also again therapy is what's gonna make the hugest impact yeah and i mean i think it's hard because when you're in these small towns and you might not have access to a rigorous high school that can get you into a college with a scholarship and all of that like it not only not only is it like parents who continue the cycle of abuse onto their children who continue that cycle of abuse but if you are unable to physically get out of the situation that you are in it's really hard to mentally get out of said situation so i think i mean i'm i'm a big proponent of beyond just people going to therapy themselves just like having the resources for kids to get out of these small towns and go to school and get an education and not feel so not feel like

their future is so finalized and set in stone especially when you come from a rough upbringing that's a really daunting thing and you hear about the girls talking about how after a breakup she was like i haven't been i've drank and smoked every day since i haven't been sober since we broke up but i don't know how else i'm supposed to deal with that right and that's you of course you don't know how like that's not something that you have been taught and that's not an innate thing you replicate the behavior that you see and that you do and even just like the smoking cigarettes at home in front of their parents and like smoking weed with their parents all of that the lines are so wildly wildly blurred that you can even see that struggle in them when they're

having these conversations that they recognize that they're really young but they are like you said they're othering themselves from other people their age that they are more mature and there's again there's only so you can only be so mature and these circumstances are really hard right do you think that we saw any representation of healthy relationships in the film i would i think the friendship between the girls yeah agree and i think that's like i mean first of all the film's beautifully shot like it's it it's a very it's cinematic it's gorgeous yeah i was shocked when they said they just had a flashlight for the lighting and it was just the two of them but they capture that teenage essence of like you're just laying all bodies tangled on each

other just laying on your friend's bed and you're scrolling through your phone and you're like laughing and cracking jokes and all of that that um you also i also think too part of the thing that i feel like was so impactful for the scene like we mentioned one of the girls goes in to basically tell her dad off for yelling at her sister she's in the room with her boyfriend her little sister like she has she has people she's surrounded with and i think that attributes that confidence and we see that a lot like when the girls are together and they're talking about another friend of theirs who broke up with her boyfriend because he raped her like when no when the girls are all together like their voice is so much stronger when they're talking to these boys

being like no like this was not consensual and all of that that i think that i mean i know at that age like you gained so much confidence from the people that you're around and i think they they really show that and they're really good at like listening to each other and it's it's very it's really sweet yeah yeah you keep saying the confidence that they have with each other and but one of the girls autumn she said confidence will take you far what do you think that she meant by that i mean i think confidence at that age is also kind of a coping mechanism with shit that you've been through and she talks about it i mean they all talk about it a lot but one of the girls talked about how when she was molested and sexually assaulted by her dad's

friend that she never cried and she said that she only cried the day that they lost that she lost the case and she was like but i don't i don't think about it anymore like i've completely moved on from that and i think that there is a beauty and power and confidence but there is also this confidence that we fake and we put on and even when one of the other girls she lost she she had sex for the first time quote-unquote lost her virginity and she didn't want to do it she was like immediately I blamed myself though and I owned it and I was like I did this and I think that at that age we're still learning who we are so like we have at least for me like I know I would be so overly confident in decisions that I was making because I wasn't confident and I like

needed to fake it because it was like oh it's okay that you don't know what you're doing it's okay if you fucked up it's okay and also like if you were put in a situation that you didn't ask to be a part of and it the outcome was really shitty that wasn't on that wasn't you you don't have to own that like you chose to be there and I think that there is uh when you grow up in that cycle of abuse like the the negative the negative connotation with like don't be a victim like don't have that victim mentality like you are strong you can be better than all of this doesn't really allow for teenagers and like young girls to recognize that like sometimes you are a victim and like that is not your fault and you don't have to be strong and it has nothing to do with you

but i think that the confidence that they have i don't know as an as someone who's much older like as an adult you can see the stark difference in the confidence when they're all the girls are all together talking with each other versus when they're talking to these boys and right you can see that age difference you can you can just see it what they're putting on and what character they're playing versus like who they where they really feel confident and who they feel confident with yeah just going back to that conversation that they had in the car when they were talking about their friend um who had been raped they they said they were very confident in what they were saying as far as like she was raped um she said no and then they'd get around their guy

friends and the guys were like well they were both intoxicated so it's not rape and they didn't really you know speak up on that but also in the car the girls also said i would break up with him for like five or six months yeah so it wasn't even they didn't even see like the long-term effects that that had on yeah themselves but also at that age five or six months seems like a really long time and it's not when they see the relationships of their parents that's a really hard it's really hard to hold your partners to a really really high standard when the relationship that your parents have at home is not that and also when your parents are treating you so badly and calling it love it's it's really it's hard and they talk about how like well he really like

he apologized he felt really bad and they they just don't have any they don't have any guidance and they don't have any help and like the only mom who's kind of around a bit wants to be their friend and doesn't i don't think is confident in her own decisions with her own relationship that she doesn't feel comfortable really parenting yeah her kids yeah i don't see her really parenting them at all no and yeah it and it's and it's so it's just so it's just so shitty and because they've all they all they're comparing horrible guys to other horrible guys and it's just a who wins who is like the least bad in this current moment and it's just i those age differences at that time like you think on it and it doesn't feel so huge when you're the younger

person but as soon as you reach that older age you're like i would never i would never and spending time with them like it is just it obviously heartbreaks are so horrible and bad but when she got dumped at the beach like she was shaking she was devastated and that's a level that i'm like you can't date like first of all it's illegal and also like you cannot do this to there is no under not understanding but like it you have two people in completely different parts of their lives and you are going to wreck her life and break her heart and that's something that they know these older guys know and they the girls don't and that's not their fault and they shouldn't be the ones having to be like oh i'm gonna put my foot down and not go out with this

older guy because they really these guys are pursuing them and say that they're too young for them but then they they they want to date them and yeah i mean with that girl there um she had she we saw her shaking in the bathroom and then i'm not sure how much time passed but it was only the film only took place over a few weeks so but we quickly saw her move on with another man he was a man because she talked about how before she told him how old she was and he was like oh you're too young and then she's like i guess he now forgot about how old i am and this is the same girl that later wants to move in with him yeah yeah and it's it it's just it's so hard because like i don't want to this is a this is a male this is a guy problem this is like a problem with these men

and it's such yeah and it's such a hard thing because it's how do you educate young women about this without making them feel like it's their responsibility and it's their fault when it's not and the onus is not on them and i think the only conclusion i've drawn is like you have to lead by example and you have to have a supportive home environment where you're like nurturing your relationships with your kids and showing them showing them like what true love is showing them what like a healthy relationship is and i think if you don't do that it's really hard to i don't know how you tell your kids to not like do you what i mean like if that if you're not showing that at home and there is none of that at home like it's a really hard thing to

educate your kids on without coming across as like a hypocrite and also you know not making sure that you recognize that they are teen girls and this isn't their responsibility for older men to not to not date older men the responsibility is for older men to not pursue them but yeah i it's just it's it's brutal and there's one girl who she lives with her dad because her mom used to invite a boyfriend over who used to abuse her and the mom knew the whole time and it seems like she has a very sweet relationship with her dad i loved the scene of like her painting and then like him just being like no it's beautiful yeah she's like the colors it's too dark he's like no no it looks great it was really sweet but i think that it's um even then like you

we don't see those conversations that he has with her in all of that and i think the the cycle of abuse really continues when nobody has the resources to get out of it so when a parent doesn't have the resources and education um and knowledge and therapy to understand their own situation it's it's really hard to help your kids through that and then it just becomes this like big thing that you only see the girls talk about with each other you don't see them talk about these really big issues with the adults in their lives and that i think makes them feel like they have to be the adults yeah yeah you know if you're like a a teenage girl or anyone in any type of abusive relationship. We'll have information and places where you can contact that if you need

help, just know that you're not alone. One example is the National Sexual Assault Hotline. And again, we'll have all these links in the show notes. But if you are in immediate danger, please call 911. so cusp and showtime actually have an entire document breakdown that both melissa and i read that's incredibly helpful and there's these sections talking about is my relationship healthy and these quizzes to kind of understand all of this when when we are with friends either my or my partner is friendly welcoming we get along is sometimes quiet and it talks about what those answers mean and represent there is also how to start a difficult conversation about relationship abuse like talking points as a concerned friend they have a whole section

on understanding consent and the sexual violence spectrum and it's just really really great and we get questions a lot of people unsure if they are in a toxic relationship or if their friend is and how to help out and so we want to have this document that we will have listed in the show notes to check out and even if this is something that you don't think you've had any experience with um educating yourself on this and just reading up about this is really helpful if you potentially start to see those signs and relationships in your life or a friend comes to you with that and so you can be um helpful in in in that as a resource all in all i really enjoyed this film it was very eye-opening even if you know like i think it's relatable even

though i am you know like 20 years older than these girls um i grew up in a different culture but it still like really hit home for me so again the trigger warning stands that we said at the beginning you're there are lots of these heavy discussions in the film but i really would recommend it i think it's a very hauntingly beautiful and like heartbreaking truthful reality of what it's like for a lot of girls growing up and um i think it would also be really great for parents too to watch this um but it is on showtime so if you want to go watch it go check it out cusp and thanks to showtime for sponsoring this episode Thank you very much.