Everything Is Content - Skincare Horror, Mid Movies and Kicking Kids Offline

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

For the second time this week Beth, Ruchira and Oenone are in your ears talking all things pop culture.First we're discussing Skincare- a film that sounds like it has all the active ingredients for glowing success. Elizabeth Banks stars as an aesthetician & skincare mogul whose life starts to wrinkle after being targeted on & offline. 5 stars or total wet flannel?Next up we're examining the charm of middlebrow movies- e.g. the films that don't break the box office or re-invent cinema but are perfectly good nonetheless. Where did they go and can we have them back before the Marvel and Mattel takeover is complete?Finally we're scrolling down under as Australia proposes plans to kick all kids off social media. The news has been met with both praise and criticism- could it actually do some good or is it too little too late from governments who haven't thought things through?Thank you so much for listening! Please make sure you're following us both here on your podcast app and on Instagram & TikTok @everythingiscontentpod and if you fancy leaving us a rating or review... we heard 5 stars is nice this time of year.----------- The Guardian - Bird Mad About The Boy TrailerLouis Theroux x Barry KeoghanOlive Kitteridge by Elizabeth StroutVariety - Skincare reviewEverything Is Content - May/DecemberVox - "Middlebrow" doesn't mean badYouTube - Matt Damon x Hot Ones CNBC - Australia plans to ban under 16s from social media The Guardian - America's tech bros now strut their stuff in the corridors of power Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the first time, our sound waves are like all the same. Oh, really? Yours are a bit smaller. It's not about size, okay? I'm Beth. I'm Richera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything Is Content,

the podcast that delves into the discourse covering the week's biggest and best pop culture stories. Whether it's TV, films, books, tech, famous people, big celeb sons or internet arguments, we're talking about it. With the LED light therapy mask glowing on the skin of pop culture. This week on the podcast we're talking about the killer facialist, why we need more middle brow films and the reality of banning under 16s from social media. Follow us on Instagram at everything is content pod and make sure you also hit follow on your podcast player so you never miss an episode. And if you

haven't already, make sure to listen to our second everything in conversation episode that dropped on Wednesday. But first, I am desperate to hear what have you both been loving this week? So I've got one. I can't actually remember if I've said it before. And my brain has not worked since the weekend when we went out for your 30th birthday, Richira. It was so much fun, but I am ancient and I feel jet lagged. Olive Kittredge. Have I said about the book Olive Kittredge before? or have we talked about it? No. No. Okay, great.

It is a fiction book. It's like a novel but it doesn't feel like a novel. And I'm talking about the book that has since been a mini series which I also just found out about which had like Francis McDormand, Richard Jenkins,

Ann Dowd, Bill Murray in which I will be watching. But Olive Kittredge is a collection of interwoven stories in a novel-length book, all surrounding this one character, Olive, who is a retired schoolteacher, lives in this sleepy little town in Maine. I think it's the 60s and 70s, has a very devoted husband. Olive herself is not the nicest, most likable character. She's quite

complex. She's sort of a busybody. She's very judgmental. She's kind of mean at times. It has this like hard-headed insistence on being a part of everyone's lives. We meet her. We meet the other townspeople. We meet her family. And it is the most beautiful, moving book that I have read in such a long time.

It genuinely feels like a proper once in a lifetime book. I think I was put off because someone explained it to me the way that I'm explaining it now. And I was like, that sounds like too much hard work. That sounds weird. I just want a straightforward novel, but this is just the best book. It's all about interiority. It's all about inner lives. It kind of reveals so much about what goes on behind the curtains of a small town in the town there is this woman whose son has committed a horrible act and she refuses to move there are affairs there are tragedies there's kind of these lives that olive kittredge bumbles about within there's this teenager with um anorexia who just wants to be loved it's so moving so funny so sweet

and i just really have to recommend it. I think it's perfect little autumn read. It's cozy, but it's not dull, if that makes sense. That is such a glowing recommendation. I actually think that that might be the highest praise that you've given a book since we've done the podcast. I'm so convinced that I have to read that now. Me too. And I can't believe that you haven't told us about this before. I really want to read it. I love the sound of that. I love anything that's from like different angles and understanding and self-awareness and different people like looking in from different vistas. Oh, it's so good. I'm so glad that that came across. I do a subseq where I write every book

I read the last month and I put it in my October one. And I think it was one of four. I didn't read that many. I had a hard month, but I I could have just read that and it would have been the most valuable month of reading this year I think if you like those interwoven stories it's like um a visit from the goon squad it's like if nobody speaks of remarkable things which are such divisive books but the people that love them love them forever so I'm very glad that you're both keen and there's also a second one called Olive again and like I said there's the series so I feel like I'm just going to live in Olive Kittredge world oh it's by Elizabeth Strout did I say that I don't think so I've been so bad at reading it so you said you've only read four books in October and I didn't even read that many and in fact perhaps my recommendations are going to

show you how badly read I am what are you going to recommend go on let's do it a leaflet a pamphlet a penguin joke is similar my first one is a trailer no no my first one is the trailer for bridget jones mad about the boy which actually richira and i were supposed to be going to a screening of don't tell them don't we turned up the day after. So we missed the screening. But I did watch the trailer on my own. And it looks great. It's Bridget Jones is back. She's now a widower.

And she falls in love with a much younger man who is played by our lover, your lover, the guy from one day whose name has now escaped me. Mine too. Fuck. Leo Woodall. Yes. Round of applause. God, he he's fit he's so fit

and also i have to say what happens is in the scene you see she meets him because she climbs up a tree after some children trying to get them down and well her children and then this really hot groundsman on hansel teeth comes to save her and i walk on hansel heath every single day and there are not leo woodall's walking around in little matching outfits and if there were i don't know what to tell you you'd be competing with all the women lined up for the ladies pond surely yeah that's so true and then my second recommendation if i may be so bold to even call it that is having dinner at 5 p.m oh where's this one come from it's just been really special to me it's at 6 p.m now I have my dinner at five that's so early no it's amazing because it's so dark I get so hungry and then I'm like actually I do want to be in bed at

nine reading and I sometimes force myself to wait to socially acceptable time like I used to make myself wait till seven but I'm a single woman now and if I want to eat at five I'm goddamn well gonna have my dinner at 5 p.m. exists like a primary school student or a retiree I just feel like otherwise I'm at the Rennie's all night I fully embrace being 30 plus and having my retiree supper five to six which are honestly it's the god now most people obviously on their commute home from work I'm sitting there napkin tucked in ready to go and also it's so much better for your sleep because it doesn't like spike your glucose so by the time you go to bed your tummy's full you're satiated but you're not waking up in the night I really am I'm just after my own old person so I'm just in my black with me I'm so pleased for

you but I'm just I'm confused how you can last until bed seven is my perfect time what have you been loving Richa mine is a bit of a cheeky triple which I've not done yet so this is really taking the piss but so the first one is Barry Keoghan on the Louis Theroux podcast the interview with him was so sweet and very illuminating into his appreciation for film and the kind of people that he looks up to like Marlon Brando and it's really really sweet and I really recommend people listen to that and then the second one a double bill to that is I watched Bird over the weekend which was why he was promoting that film on the podcast and he plays this young dad who is not the best dad but is super loving of his children and it's young dads having young children who maybe fall into having children

themselves. And this kind of like cyclical nature of people trying their best, kind of setting about this wave of trauma, children having lost their childhoods too early. And what that reverberation does for the next generation and the next generation is really sad. It's really moving. And it's not an easy watch, but his performance in it was just honestly breathtaking I think he's such a good actor actually love I feel like Barry almost got a bad rep there where there's a lot of murmurings online about him being a deadbeat dad which maybe he sort of addresses in the interview um and being this sort of quite frivolous guy and I think he is such a talented man I think he has overcome a great deal to be where he is

doing what he is and I just don't want to hear a word about him yeah or a bad word rather words are okay no words no words only silence for Barry I remember watching the banshees of an Asheran and that was when for me it was like his breakout role the way he's been catapulted into the site guys the fact he's going out with Sabrina Carpenter the fact that he's suddenly become this like pop cultural icon is so different from his roots of where he began with Banshees and I am interested to listen to Louis Theroux podcast I haven't listened to any of the series I have heard some quite controversial takes about Louis's interviewing style but you love this episode with Barry you didn't feel it was intrusive or no I've listened to I think most

maybe bar one or two of this series and I definitely can see some of the criticism but this one I would say is my favourite of all the ones I've listened to and I thought it really stood out. I didn't even know that his upbringing and his past was as traumatic as it was. Also the way he talks about it I think is really indicative of a person who doesn't want to be narrativized around his upbringing. So despite the fact it's brought up, it makes you understand that he's like, well, I don't want to be known for that. So in the same boat as you, Beth, I really think he sounds really great. And I'm really in love with his acting style at the moment. And should I do the third yes please okay to take a massive really cutting

left field move I have been watching the Kardashians on Disney plus and like an absolute sicko I started at series five then moved on to series four then I'm now on series three so it's like all of their kind of storylines in reverse. And I wouldn't recommend doing it that way, but I would recommend watching it if you want to get numbed out of your mind and watching mass capitalism on scale. What made you do this reverse engineering viewing? So I think I was just bargaining with myself

and thinking, oh, if I only watch series five, then it's not like I'm committing to this. And then once I finished series five, I felt this kind of like aching, longing in my stomach to continue. So I went back and was like, okay, if I just do four this and then once I finished series five I felt this kind of like aching longing in my stomach to continue so I went back and was like okay if I just do four you know I can quit it I can watch something maybe a bit more stimulating and um critically acclaimed and then I just now I'm on series three and I'm doing the same bargaining basically I love the early series but I never got into the later ones and I remember my friend put it on like a couple of

years ago and I couldn't believe how much it's changed and like how many ads there are that it's so bitty and kind of nothing happens in the more recent series nothing happens absolutely nothing so it's the Kardashians now yeah there's there was keeping up with and then this is the Kardashians that you're watching as in their own breakout split with yes Ryan Seacrest I watched when Kim beat the shit out of her sister which sister I don't know I watched that and then the other sisters, they're like, fucking hell, that's awkward. But I didn't, I've watched a little bit of the early series like here and there.

It's impossible not to. I have not sat and watched the Disney one. I wouldn't recommend it in a way, but I would recommend it in a way. It obviously isn't super stimulating TV, but I have just re-remembered my obsession with this family and how compelling they all are and the fact that they have all these different businesses and you know they're

like various interpersonal relationships the bit I'm on in series three everything with you know Kanye's horrific anti-semitic uh breakdown that I don't know what you want to call it essentially the that moment in time where he was on a tirade and it was horrifically anti-semitic has just happened and you can see kim feeling the reverberations on how she responds to it and her kind of admitting he's not the person that she married and she doesn't really know what to do with that loss and that i just i have not seen from any other kind of content i've consumed about them so there are really interesting bits to it. We could do a Kardashians deep dive. We could.

We'll have to ask the listeners because I think some people feel like the Kardashians are really toppling or have toppled completely, that we're in a whole new realm of reality TV stars. But yet again, they do capture our interest. And there's lore back 20 years about these Kardashian women. So maybe we will.

We were kindly sent a screener of IFC Films' Skincare, which premiered as part of this year's BFI London Film Festival. Elizabeth Banks stars in this thriller about a famed aesthetician, Hope Goldman, whose skincare business faces sabotage when a rival, Angel Vergara, opens a boutique across the street. This sets off a train of events that follows Hope as she descends from the bright sunshine of Hollywood into the paranoia and danger of Los Angeles underbelly. The film is actually loosely fictionalized of a retelling of former facialist of the Stars, Dawn DeLuise. And in March 2014, DeLuise was arrested and accused of murder for hire plot against her new neighbouring ascetician. She was disappointed not to have been consulted by the writer or directors. And in an interview with Entertainment Weekly,

Elizabeth Banks also said she didn't realise the film was actually inspired by a true story until way later into the process of making it. The film itself borrows a lot from DeLuise's case, but also attempts to look at the emphasis that women put on aesthetic beauty, with hope clinging to her rigorous routine, even at her lowest points. And it also looks at the perils of advancing tech, especially deepfakes, AI, and revenge porn, as well as cancel culture. Direction writer Austin Peters told Entertainment Weekly that these themes of authenticity, beauty and superficiality playing out in this very real and often very gritty environment really excited me. I love their noir genre and the idea of doing this sunshine noir in the place I grew up

in, set in the world of beauty, sparked the creation of this film. The Guardian gave it only three stars but did say that skincare is worthy contribution to the growing micro genre of female-led beauty themed horror and some of us are ready for more. It's a promising premise with a meaty subject matter but what was your girls view on it? I love Elizabeth Banks so I was really excited to watch this. The kind of control of you know putting your makeup on and the perfection of skincare and ensuring that aging doesn't poison your skin all these kind of elements are the perfect mixture for a really good horror so I was really into bits of this film but I think

ultimately the elements that I thought it was going to go really hard on were the light touches and then the thrillery kind of element and the revenge porn were the kind of meatier topics within the film. It was really interesting looking at the way the internet can be weaponized, especially by, say, this horrible stalker in your life. The person who is ultimately the villain in it and who is really harming Elizabethizabeth banks's character creates all of these fake sites uses her face so superimposes it onto some porn and suggests that she is really into a rape fantasy and she wants men to attack her in her workplace and she gets really turned on by it she doesn't realize until she looks online and there's streams of these websites i think that was really interesting because i've not seen that represented in pop culture yet, the ways the internet can be manipulated in really easy ways by people who don't have your best interests at heart. But I just kind of, I wish it went deeper

on the beauty. I wish it went deeper on how horrifying anti-aging is, how horrifying these beauty conglomerates, these businesswomen can be. There's something quite unsettling about Glossier and its medicinal-looking products and the fact that everything is perfect about it. I want more of that, I guess. I agree. Maybe it is that we have just been spoiled with a film like The Substance Witch. It's not subtle, but it's so rich. It gives you everything. It does not leave a stone unturned on this topic. Elizabeth Banks is the ideal casting for this because she's so gorgeous. She does look very unchanged, but she is at that age, late 40s, 50s, that women in the world, however they look,

however they act, people will start to treat you like spoiled milk. It's the age that that anxiety starts. So I was expecting more of the friction between the business she was in, aesthetics and beauty, the fact that she's trying to get this product line off the ground and she's getting usurped by a man, but a younger man, a shinier, newer business. She doesn't look any more haggard by the end of the film, despite the fact, I think she has a bit of stray mascara, but she's being harassed. She's having sleepless nights. People are are in her house she's got her business tanking she she remained quite primped and pretty till the end there is a lot to like about it but I think I went in expecting a horror this isn't horror I can't

imagine in what point this could be categorized as a horror especially not like a beauty horror I could be wrong happy to be corrected I think what could have been really interesting is when the stuff was happening, it was making me feel very stressed. The links that were being posted on all these websites with an accompanying kind of like deep fake picture saying, I've got this rape fantasy, come turn up to my work. In this day and age though, I was almost expecting she was going to capitalize on that, do like a big expose because revenge porn is such a big thing in the cultural capsule.

It is illegal and we're seeing more cases of women coming forward I almost would have liked if it had turned into some kind of gone girl thing where she used that experience in order to like bolster her credibility and be like oh my god look what's happened to me and then kind of had this twisted fame through the ways that she had been violated and again getting through to one of the messages in the film which is kind of about how success is the apex of everything and being beautiful is everything even there's all these awful things going on all she really cares about is getting her skincare line off the ground now knowing that it's based on like a historical case I think it makes more sense because it did

feel slightly dated and even the fact that she visibly hasn't had any aesthetic work done like she hasn't had Botox. She's got like visible signs of aging. Again, I was like, I don't know how believable I find that in a modern scenario where someone's talking about skin. It does feel more arty, I suppose. And it is more of an independent arty film. And definitely, I think that the actual direction and the stylistic and the coloring of the film was definitely something that led towards feeling a bit more considered.

But something about it just felt slightly flat for me as I couldn't quite work out what we were supposed to take away from this. And I agree, it was about the skincare, but actually that kind of beauty element felt quite shallow in the grand scheme of the whole film. Also, I feel like they were doing a nod to the toxic male self-help gurus, maybe somebody akin to an Andrew Tate. I mean, literally one of the figures

in the film, the villain, I guess, has what appears to be like a legion of people who follow him because of his really fake self-help. He's seen doing a line of coke before he jumps on screen to talk about being at one with your identity and being confident and all these things. So this guy is designed to look like a fake. And I feel like they weren't even making points about this guy aside from the fact that he is this villainous, duplicitous person. Everything just had a really light touch and it had so many brilliant ingredients in it I was just like okay but what are you going to do with that and then nothing really came of it one thing I was thinking and I was thinking this when you said at the top Anoni about how

the real life Dawn wasn't particularly happy about this it made me think of when we did the May December episode when we talked about the Mary Kay Letourneau case and her family, real people having their stories kind of mined for content and not being told about it. I think that's quite shocking still. And I went actually onto Instagram and immediately looked up the real man that the character is based on who opens a salon across from her. Anyone who watches this will know what I'm talking about. And he was kind of posting publicly didn't seem too fast he posted the film post and was like not bad lol um mixed emotions and this is the person that she i don't know if i'm like i don't know if this is gonna be a spoiler she is involved in she thinks that he is trying to ruin her life and she takes some quite

drastic action against so in real life these two absolutely hate each other and anyway he posted it's fictional but overall it gives the idea of what happened. The truth is actually Tudor. She's crazy and was behind everything. And it just really brought all that to mind of like real people going to the cinema or streaming something and watching someone play themselves. It's kind of an uncomfortable idea. I do think the strand you mentioned, Beth, about seeing so many films, TV shows, podcasts about people who still are living their lives. And, you know, it's diving into very recent events is so interesting. And, you know, we see it across true crime and the fact that the families of some of the victims are still alive and aren't

approached for many of these things. And something like this, where the people involved don't even have any idea until it comes out, is baffling to the mind isn't it to think you could fund something with millions of dollars and it would be intentional it will be for a lot of these things not approach the people who are involved I wonder if it is just an attempt to sidestep the legal aspects of what if this person declines involvement and then expressly does a cease and desist? Or I don't know what the legalities are, but definitely like tanks the project. I wonder if some of the fear about it is kind of what we spoke about in last week's episode is her story to tell and it is her intellectual property. Perhaps they feel like if they approach these people, they're going to go,

actually, no, I want to make this story and I want to get the rights to it. I don't know how it works. It does seem to happen a lot with criminal proceedings I guess because it's public information that means that's why you can just take these stories and retell them however you like and we're in the true crime era where they've already been retold on TikTok something that I thought was so interesting is that she came out of prison and she rebranded herself as the killer facialist she apparently for a while preferred to be known as that it just made me made me think of, I mean, it's essentially taking the worst thing that happened slash you did. I mean, she was acquitted for this. So you were accused of doing, I should say, and going,

that's kind of my identity now. I sort of have to respect her. I sort of have to be like, oh, this diva. I can't stop myself from being like killer facialist. Like that is actually kind of iconic. It just also shows that if you are able to overcome shame there is no such thing as cancel culture and it's a really specific type of person who is able to take that critical mass of criticism and turn it into something profitable and positive but it is a worrying thing that we go okay well if you can get past all of this hey even if you've done something really bad if you can rebrand that we will stand you it depends if we believe that she was rightfully acquitted and she is an innocent woman she took lemonade and she

made facial serum out of it and i i actually i'm not going to follow her because i feel like i might get too obsessed but good for her i have to say good for her i think everyone is okay in this situation so you can watch skincare it's available to rent or buy from youtube amazon prime apple tv and google play movies and tv so i've got a hot take for this week which is lots of the best films that we're seeing at the moment are middle brow from challenges to salt burn to the substance i think a lot of these films are middle brow and that's not a bad thing I can't actually take credit though I read a piece by Kendall Cunningham for Vox last week which was titled In Praise of the Middle Brow Movie in it she reviews the film

Conclave which is a new film around the Pope and it stars Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci and in it she defends the fact that it's a middlebrow film but it's also a great film. Her review is that Conclave deals with heavy matters but scandals emerge, chaos ensues and it's a straightforward and silly movie. She writes we're used to hearing middlebrow used as a pejorative and knock on overly accessible normie content but as a third path between high brow and low brow it doesn't nearly get enough credit it's a relief to occasionally watch a film that doesn't insult or overly challenge our intelligence accessibility with some standards isn't always a bad thing so I was thinking that sometimes you know what it's really great to soak

into a film that lightly touches on some themes I promise this wasn't deliberately written after we watched skincare but still sometimes it is good to watch a film like that that might have some gorgeous cinematography but isn't exactly you know an a24 film that's super gritty and just makes you leave the cinema basically distressed and sobbing your heart out back in the 90s Harvey Weinstein's Miramax pumped out a lot of the really great middle-brow films that we know today, stuff like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Good Will Hunting. But since then, and Kindle writes this in the piece, it's been really hard for those kind of films to get the traction that they once did. I'll give you an example of Hitman starring Glenn Powell that was amazing. I watched that

recently on Netflix, which had a really limited cinema release, but then was just dropped onto streamers. So I think a lot of people missed it. And also even May, December potentially being a middle brow film. I'm not really sure. Maybe it's more gritty and is the high brow film actually but still it went straight onto streamers after having a really limited release so I want to ask you girls have you heard of middle brow films before is it something that you're aware of as a term what is your relationship to it I guess I was going to ask is there a specific specification for what makes something low brow middle brow brow and high brow? Because every film that you have just listed as a middle brow film to me is A++. So this is the definition that's come up. It says, a middle brow film is

a movie that is interesting and of good quality, but doesn't require much thought to understand. It's popular and is understood by most audiences. that's so interesting because when you say low brow it's so subjective isn't it of what you think is good but I guess that's kind of a little bit elitist as well that idea that it's about how much you can understand it it depends I guess how you view art because I think so much of art is how it makes you feel but that makes sense in the context of what you said thank you that's all right I I do think it's like quite a challenging term to not project worth and value onto because obviously if you're saying low, middle, high, there feels like there's a value system there.

But I'm going to go for Barbie is a lowbrow film, but it's a great lowbrow film. A Marvel film is a lowbrow film and some of them are good. Some of them are fine. Some of them are bad. A middlebrow film is something like Challengers because it's not trying to do any class dissections, it's not touching on anything sociological but it's shot really beautifully and is quite melodramatic and soapy

and then a highbrow film would be something like Bird with Barry Kieran. I was thinking like poor things, would that be a highbr brow or would that be a middle brow because it's a bit esoteric and it was really divisive wasn't low brow because it was a thinker but it was i mean okay i'm gonna think about this a bit more but i think your definition has cleared because i was a bit confused i was thinking that marvel was not middle brow but it wasn't low brow i think i've got it oh no I'm gonna hit my head against the wall for five minutes is Christopher Nolan high brow or is that like high brow for low brow guys I think that's a high brow middle brow film do you get what I mean it's like a high middle one

eyebrows up one eyebrows down it's the critical emoji do you know what I think it's more that I have such a sentimentality for annoyingly those 90s Miramax films like The Tantrumist Ripley and Good Will Hunting to me are just like great films I almost see them as like that final frontier of when movies were like the movies and now there's such a broad spectrum of what film feels like but that might just be an age nostalgia thing because those are the films that we were coming of age and watching rather than actually their quality. I'm going to defend your gut feeling. I think loads of the 90s films were amazing. So many podcasts I listened to, so many people that I speak to have a general consensus that in their

mind, the 90s was like the golden period of films. And that's not to say the period we're in now is bad. I mean, we're like drowning in good films. yeah I don't know so many of those films are so iconic still to us in a way that if you if you're interested in cinema it's almost like there's a checklist of films from that exact period that you have to watch I in a way wish they didn't make those films like anyone but you and all of that because I do end up watching them because it's an easy access entry point so you're what and I feel like I've probably wasted, if you add up how many hours I've got to be alive on this planet, I kind of wish they would just only present me

with the middle to highbrow movies because I really need to watch more, but I am just such a sucker for putting something on that requires absolutely no brain power. And I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. But I guess the argument is that

there aren't enough of these films that you are craving, that we are craving because the studios are going, no, we need another smash hit. We need to spend 200 million so we can make that elusive billion, break a billion at the box office. We need to chase that kind of Marvel recipe, Barbie recipe, whatever else is done, the Avatar films, we need to do that. And the argument is we're sort of starved of these films because the studios aren't making them. And the Vox piece that this is all based around mentions the Hot Ones interview with Matt Damon. And I watched this whenever it came out, however long ago. This was my first introduction to the whole idea of studios not making these sort of 10 to 20 million films anymore. I just thought the landscape of cinema is changing. I'm getting old and curmudgeonly. I'm just not appreciating them. Actually, they're not making them.

And I think that was the really interesting thing for me where he sort of explains while eating chicken wings that because of the landscape of streaming, because it's very like Faminoff East, boom or bust, the studios aren't just putting money into these releases because they're going to go straight to streaming because they don't have a built-in audience because they won't then make any money back on dvd or vhs sales you can't make the same films that you did in the 80s the 90s early 2000s because we don't now have digital media that people are buying you have to be a

smash basically or it's a pass i mean go and watch so we can link the interview it's really interesting um i think that was a real wake-up call for me and made me feel really sad because those are the films that i love that i re-watched they're human stories they aren't too taxing but they are very moving like i've watched maybe four of the marvel films and those were just because i was at the cinema when i was a teenager or like an early teen. I have nothing to talk about with anyone on that topic. I want like something that everyone sort of connects us all, if that makes sense. Yeah, like I think of Dead Poets Society and that's like a really nice version of it. It like gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. It makes you feel good. It also has some really nice kind of reflections on life, but it's not super challenging and it has big names in it one thing I did want to say is working backwards thinking about the idea of middle-brow movies I think I

figured out why so many people were mad at Saltburn because they were treating it like it was a high-brow film when it's a middle-brow film it touches on ideas of class and homoeroticism all of these different things but it's a thriller it's this like mental unhinged thriller. And people were really angry at the class politics of it. But I don't think that was the point of it. That's really interesting. And I guess it was kind of tied to the talented Mr. Ripley and Brideshead Revisited, which if we're going by this, the segregation thing that you've done, that is middle brow. I think what you were saying, Beth, is so right about that feeling. So much of film, what happens now is when I'm watching it, I'm really enthralled. I'm thinking of something like The Triangle of Sadness, which was such a ride to be on and so enjoyable. But actually,

even though there was really interesting themes in it, it wasn't enough to compel me to have lots of interesting conversations off the back of it. I don't think I probably spoke about it with my friend I watched it with and then that was it. And think it's that fast food highly sugary highly satiating suck you in in the moment and then you're kind of left hanging with no aftercare that's where film feels like it's at right now because it's got to be as grabby whereas I'd love movies to have that sense of lingering it stays with you even something like the notebook which I know actually is kind of problematic in hindsight that was I guess that's look is that lowbrow is it problematic well it's kind of like if you actually look in hindsight it's sort of like he's quite emotionally abusive I think it's the current oh god yeah well I did take shot get

to it oh no yeah I don't know I just have I've heard some discoursing about it I know exactly what you mean it's something I don't know it's just having something for all appetites. It's having enough of each brow, not just here is, I think I, it's like if you wanted to watch all the Marvel films, you'd be in the cinema for like four days. If you think about all the collective time, we would have spent light years watching Marvel. We would have spent collectively the world's money on Marvel. If you just think about dispersing that attention and that money, just a little bit towards projects that were not as boomy, not as big. I think that makes more sense for a balanced, good society. I mean, obviously we aren't a balanced, good society, so maybe we don't deserve this, but I want to go to the cinema and I want to have a nice time, but I don't want the options to be Ant-Man, Ant-Man 2, or a Mattel IP. I would quite like human stories that make me feel.

Well, as we said in our news bulletin in the extra episode, The Substance only cost $17.5 million to make and grossed $50 million, which is amazing. I still haven't watched Substance. I need to watch it. But there obviously is the capability to make these films but I'm even thinking about the way we talked about how much CGI has got so much works even if you look at the Pirates of the Caribbean films the quality of those films is so much better than the stuff that's being made now so when they're even putting so much money still into these kind of sci-fi movies the quality seems to have got

so much worse at the same time and that's quite depressing because I think we'd imagine we'd be living in an era of incredible sci-fi but actually there hasn't been that much amazing stuff coming out in terms of like our attitudes to films the marketing around films is so intense now that people almost assume it as their whole personalities that you maybe can't have that many big releases because the fandoms won't cope like I'm thinking of Wicked which is that's out next week maybe the marketing around that has been absolutely insane it's been like so pressurized that this film which is a remake of a musical that a lot of people love has to be

like world bending world changing people are getting tattoos people are you know falling apart the seams to go and see about you know this film which is surely it'll just be on in the cinema and then we'll move on. I think it used to be like, you'd have like a red carpet, cardboard cutout, little toy McDonald's. That felt like the whole thing and that was fine. And I think you can't have middle-brow movies

when you don't have midly interested cinema goers, when you have like hardcore ride or dies. Well, even thinking about the fact that Wicked is a remake of a musical and that Gladio is a remake, and we've spoken about remakes so many times it's that assuredness the industry needs that people that there is an appetite to that but even thinking about catch me if you can which you mentioned like all of leonardo dicaprio's roster of films that he'd been in are so varied and broad and really wide ranging and often quite interesting stories and span so many different

areas and that's not something that we see from actors very often anymore. I mean, I have to say, I'm finding the wicked press tour quite ingratiating. If Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo cry one more time, I don't know what's happened to them. Have you been seeing all of this? I have, yeah. And it feels like something I shouldn't be watching. What's happened?

Oh, the rumours. I mean, they are so, they're joined at the hands and they kind of are so like we're best friends has changed our lives but one and they're crying interviews going you know there's nothing more amazing than what's happened and everyone's going one they're like problematically bonded two i bet there's some drama behind the scenes a lot of speculation about like are they healthy are they you know have they worked themselves to illness things like that but they are fully weeping and it's a lot it is a lot it's it's like they've trauma bonded lots of people in musical theater world are saying that this is basically what happens when you do a musical because it's so exhausting and so tiring that you end up with

these really strange relationships with people and then you kind of come away and you're like what the hell was that I think we definitely need to watch Wicked and we should do it as a segment. Yeah, I would love to. I know nothing. I said this on Twitter. No one on earth knows less about Wicked than I do. So I'm going in fully blind. I know their song,

defying gravity. That was Ariana. But I don't know anything else. So I'm very excited for that. But again, like I've been caught up in this. I would like to be caught up in like little, nice little films um there's a tweet i always think about which is must a movie be good is it not enough to sit somewhere dark and see a beautiful face huge which by mike gin i think that's what i want from cinema i want to go to the cinema i want to see a beautiful face huge

i want to leave the cinema i want my life to continue I don't want to be subsumed every single time by discourse we'll link the vox piece in the show notes as ever if there's a piece that we mention during our chats it will always be in the show notes should under 16s be banned from social media that is what Australia has been asking after their government has proposed a social media ban for children in a step that has been called momentous by some and reckless by others. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says social media is doing social harm to our young Australians. The safety and mental health of our young people has to be a priority. The legislation will be introduced

into Parliament this year and once it's been approved by lawmakers it should come into effect 12 months later. The ban will likely use age verification systems to block kids from going on social media sites like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X. There are a lot of supporters to this plan. According to a YouGov survey from October, 61% of Australians polled supported the restrictions of social media access to those younger than 17. Danny Alachi, the co-founder of Heads Up Alliance, an Aussie organisation that helps connect parents who want to keep their kids off smartphones as long as possible, has said that the news is very rewarding and it is parents at the coalface who know the damage that social media is causing we refuse to give up on our children and here we are on the verge of reclaiming childhood after it had been stolen for 15 years not everyone is a fan though 140 academics signed an open letter to Anthony Albanese last month that said an age limit on social media was too blunt

an instrument to address risks effectively. So a fairly contentious issue, both in Australia and worldwide where it's being discussed. Something that I have to admit is that I don't know where I stand and I've really wavered on this. So I would love to know from you both, is this a great idea, bad idea, almost almost good idea what are we thinking so I completely understand why you were confused in how to react to this because my first thought was well actually maybe this is a great thing maybe this is action that will lead to helping some of the issues that we know about which is rising anxiety and depression in teenagers and increasing levels of self-harm and you know issues regarding body image many of the things that we know about, which is rising anxiety and depression in teenagers and increasing levels

of self-harm and issues regarding body image. Many of the things that we feel day-to-day on the internet, which is rejection, fear, anxiety, social shaming. But with that, I went to somebody that I knew was much smarter than I am, Sonia Livingston, who is the Professor of Children's Digital Experiences and Rights at LSE. She did an interview with ABC News. And I think her response to it is where I've fallen into now, obviously, with her being so intelligent and so informed on the topic. And she just said, much like you mentioned, Beth, that it's quite a blunt instrument and quite a blunt response. And it's not really effective in the way that we want it to be. It's understandable why people have gone down this route but I think having social media's platforms and these tech

bosses who have unleashed a beast in society negotiate with us as the way to go forward it's not just kind of you know stopping the stream of use because our world has changed irreparably at this point. I'm not sure if cutting use is realistic, is going to change these platforms for even adults who are struggling with it. So I think that's the problem. My initial take straight off the bat is like, oh my God, great idea. We should 100% do this. But as you both said, it's so much more complicated than that. And I think also, even if you get young adults and children off adult social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram they're still probably going to have the same things happening on those like things they use like Roblox or other kind of like children focused sites they're going to find ways

to shoehorn the same issues on there and without something as extreme as sort of like a completely different smartphone for children that you can only be issued up until 17, which literally only has access to certain parts of the internet, which is rolled out in a way that if you're born after a certain age, a bit like the cigarettes, I think it's a really admirable angle to start. I just don't even know how you would begin to roll this out. And it also brings into question the way that they would be checking the age of the people online is through identification and monitoring that online use. But that means that that might then get rolled out kind of more globally with all age ranges. And this starts

to bring in issues with people who are undocumented, who need to use social media for communication or other things. There's been arguments back and forth for a long time about whether or not social media platforms should require documentation. And most of the backlash says that actually this can make a lot of people's lives more unsafe who don't have access to documentation. So whilst it's really admirable, and when we're talking about children, I think we also have to remember that this will ultimately also impact across the board, across all ages and social medias and social media, whilst it has all of these negative and harmful aspects, which we have talked about at length. It is also an amazing way for organizing grassroots communication for people who are disenfranchised or need means of getting in touch with other people. There's lots of reasons why people use social media that isn't for negative and nefarious reasons. And it can actually be a lifeline for lots of people.

And so I think that that's something else to think about. As I said, by the beginning, my natural instinct is great. Children shouldn't be on social media. It's just, we've let the beast out of the cage. It's going to be very hard to put it back in. I was very on the fence about my feelings about it, but I'm absolutely hardline that you can't and shouldn't remove young people who are a already autism-franchised group. They're a very vulnerable group. They do have a human right to connection and information, which is what we get on the internet, whatever we use it for. It's a rights issue, basically. What are they entitled to and what are the costs of removing

that for them? So like you say, removing young people from community that they might not have elsewhere is really damaging. It's really isolating. Asking for ID also is a huge breach of privacy for adults and for children. I think a lot of social media now, Instagram, and I read Roblox, which is a children's website that uses estimating technology. So it doesn't need ID, but it uses your search terms, it uses what you say, it uses who your friends are to estimate the ages of its users, which I found quite interesting. I don't know if it's a reliable alternative, but I found that very fascinating. One thing this does come down to is why a government so hell-bent on throwing the baby

in the bathwater out at the same time, rather than trying to reason with tech companies, why would it be ban all children from social media versus, well, maybe let's have a dialogue with these social media companies to try and scrub all of the malign influences off them? And I think perhaps we'll talk about this at some point, but with tech giants more and more involved in politics, it's just very suspicious that a government would jump, I think, several paces ahead to this point, rather than engaging in a little bit of back and forth

and trying to make these sites safer, trying to make them more compliant, trying to, you know, hold them to better practices. And we've seen it in the US with fucking jumping jacks, Elon Musk and daddy Donald Trump. Are they all just in bed together? And that's why something like this would make more sense? Or am I being a bit of a conspiracy ad? I don't think you're being conspiracy minded at all. I mean, that is exactly what I think. And it is just wild to me that we have had access to these platforms for so long. And there has been little change in the ways they operate. If anything, I feel like many of them have got worse,

specifically X and Twitter, because of Elon Musk just taking it and ruining anything that was good about it. There was a really good piece. It was in The Guardian and I'll link it, about how tech bros are officially walking in the White House as of now with Trump having his second premiership. And yeah, I don't know, it just, it feels wild that regulating children and regulating the country will come before ensuring that these tech giants and these platforms operate in a way that works for the people using them and whose data is being farmed every minute we go on them. I think one point you made, I completely agree with and Sonia Livingston said this too, is interesting that a ban is being suggested. But I haven't in the coverage of this seen any kind of talk about what will replace social media for children so whether

that's you know an increase in funding to youth groups after school initiatives to make sure that they have somewhere to socialize and be children and just you know find other pathways to developing their identity I've not seen any of that with the coverage of this if you're talking about taking away there needs to be talk about what will come next and she made a really good point as well about how we need to look at the full picture a lot of parents are quite anxious these days about the safety of their children so smartphones and the internet has become a core way in which they socialize so if you are taking away phones we need to have a wider discussion around okay well what will parents do to encourage their children to be out and about and to develop their lives offline everything you said which is kind of where I come from I do think that children shouldn't be on

social media I think it is inherently damaging and like just as one anecdotal example I have a friend who has teenage stepchildren and she said that all they want to do is they do not understand why they were going to hang out with their friends on the weekend or why they would hang out with not school they literally just want to talk to them through platforms like Roblox or like gaming platforms or on FaceTime. I actually think fundamentally for generations growing up with social media, it is warping the way that we engage with each other. I wonder if some characters like Elon Musk don't see a dystopia in that future, which is digital led. I do really think that children shouldn't be on social media. I

really believe that. And whether that is that we create brand new platforms that are just for children that are completely monitored. So it is a social media, but it's not our social media. I definitely agree with the blanket idea of this, but everything you said as well about youth centers and support for parents, like we spoke about more recently in the episode where we touched on motherhood. It's like, this is a great idea idea but also we have adapted and evolved to rely on these platforms children again of a certain age it's really hard to put the what's it called put the thing back in the thing like put put the sausage back in the case it's not the phrase yeah to put the not the baby in the bath water put the don't know toothpaste toothpaste back in the tube yeah yeah so i think i think that it could be again a bit like that smoking thing of

like perhaps this is something which is trialed on a younger generation coming up where we pull it back i don't know how easy it will be to take it away from those that are already using it i mean how hard would we find it as adults if someone said suddenly you know you can you can't use all of these platforms? I think we'd find that pretty difficult to adjust. It's just the conversation is so much more layered and so much more complicated. And what no one ever seems to want to acknowledge is exactly what you said, Ruchira, which is, okay, how do we actually make life more inviting than being online? And how do we make it safer, easier, more supported? that's obviously going to come through governmental change and legislation but probably not going to happen under governments

like we're seeing in the US where they're literally putting a ban on certain education so it's a conversation which I don't think is going to go away but I very much think they've slapped a good headline and a nice story but I don't know how far they're going to get with it. It feels like shirking of doing the real work of saying, look, parents of Australia, and if we adopt here, parents of the world, we're doing something we care about your children, but actually it doesn't show a lot of care. And a lot of young people that I've seen are not particularly worried about it because they are tech savvy enough to know about VPNs to predict that there'll be a myriad ways to get around it. And I think if you're a parent who is worried about this, if your children

have social media, you probably already know about it because it's an established website, and at least there is some safeguarding. What this might cause is your children are on dodgier social medias, and also you don't know about them because, of course, they're not allowed them. So that is a worry. And it makes me think also of the UK Digital Harms Bill, which there was a lot of chatter about. And then I think it was quietly, it was passed, but I don't know what's happened with it, which is a very similar effort by the UK government

to make the UK the safest place to be online, which is three people who are online in the UK. It seems ridiculous, but it's essentially saying we know how addictive social media is. We know how none of these sites really do the proper work of regimenting, keeping people safe. And the idea would be to really come down on that. And there was talk of anyone who doesn't take abuse seriously, anyone who doesn't protect

children on these websites could be hit with the biggest fines, billions of pounds, could be taken off the airwaves billions of pounds, could be taken off the airwaves, could even in extreme cases have their bosses put in prison. And I know it's all written down. It all sounds like a nice idea, but that in an ideal world is exactly what I would like to happen. To make it utterly indefensible and illegal for websites to do nothing about their addictive features, to do nothing about abuse, to do nothing about their addictive features to do nothing about abuse to do nothing about predation which is what happens at the moment because they're such money makers so i will keep an eye on the the uk harm spill because i do think something like that makes

much more rational sense in a world where yeah the toothpaste is everywhere let's not worry about putting the toothpaste back in let's's hose it off or something. Do you know what I mean? Just something that actually takes action that doesn't just put a nice face on it. Is this a genius stroke that will save a generation of young people or is it a massive misstep

that will leave kids more isolated than ever? Let us know at everything is content pod on Instagram. Thank you so much for listening this week and thank you to everyone who listened to our newest episode of everything conversation which came out on wednesday in case you missed it we've expanded the everything is content universe and are now taking on an extra topic once a week where we ask you listeners for your thoughts and feelings this is all happening on instagram at everything is content pod so if you want to be involved you have to go over there and please give us a follow on there and tiktok please and if you've enjoyed the podcast it helps us so much when you give us a rating or review on your

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