librarypunk - 049 - Party Girl (1995) feat Luisa Díez

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

luisa díez (@luisadieznuts) / Twitter  Why You Mad Pod  Why You Mad (@WhyYouMadPod) / Twitter  Party Girl (1995) - Full Movie Media mentioned:  Librarians and Party Girls: Cultural Studies and the Meaning of the Librarian  25 Years Later, the Makers of 'Party Girl' Reflect on the Cult Film's Fashion Legacy | Vogue  Party Girl  Episode 1 Pilot  Follow Friday

Happy Neil banging out the tunes day to everyone who celebrates. Thanks, Neil. I'm Justin. I'm a Skalkan librarian. I don't like the Dewey Decimal System. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they then.

I'm Jay. I'm an academic librarian in metadata and whatnot. I cried when she sold the Go-Tie jacket, and my pronouns are he, him. And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. My name is Louisa, and I do content governance for a major TV and streaming company. And I came from museums before that. So that's, I guess, more of my connection. And I love this movie. And I'm going to want to talk about it from the party angle, but I want to hear the librarian angle first. Tell me about it. Welcome back.

Thank you. Love you guys. Thank you for having me back. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a movie that's very set in New York City and very set in the 90s. And I thought, I know someone. I've got them on Twitter speed dial. So first question, what was the 90s like?

You bastards. You had to know what I was going to do that. Well, you know, there was a time pre-9-11 that I know that you are. all do not remember. But it is, I mean, maybe you remember as kids, right? But I think you don't get, I think, the big dramatic. I was wearing Gaultier as a child. Were you? Okay. But even if you were that you, I don't think you would have gotten the shift for the coming of age people. And even for me, I think of it more as like, I'm, I'm a borderline in between millennials and Gen X, you know? But that means I came up at a time when Gen X was like who we looked up to. You know what I mean? Like, they were

the cool people. They were the people in bands and making movies, like, being awesome, right? And now we think of them as, like, nihilists who just didn't, like, do anything to make the world better and just fucking, I don't know, went off to cry about how everything's terrible. And though that did produce some great art, what's funny is that the 90s was like this very specific moment of like sort of American greatness, like a peak of American greatness

in terms of like world reputation, supposedly, you know, there were many countries who always understood their relationship with America to not be a positive one, but in general, our PR was very good, right? Our economy was doing well. Everybody

loved this Bill Clinton president. Liberals were just in charge and everything was going great as far as what a liberal thinks is great. And it created this atmosphere of like, if you're not happy with anything, then that's your fault. And you are just the misfit who can't figure out how to fit into the world. And so then like these Gen Xers who were like, let's say early 20s in this time, they were experiencing all of that. And then I guess like 9-11 happened. And it was sort of this like shattering of the possibility of being a nihil, like a selfish individualistic nihilist,

because everybody became like super patriotic and super scared of terrorism and like the collective identity of Americanness was more important than your particular disenfranchisement. You know what I mean? And so they were kind of erased and sort of displaced very quickly. And that this movie, I think you're right, is very 90s because. maybe that is a little bit of what, I mean, I know it's pre-9-11, so she doesn't know what's coming, but. Oh, my God, we've got to warn her.

Yeah, exactly, but she's like- Somebody tell Parker Posey. Yeah, but she's like very much doing this thing of like coming out of the 80s vibe of like life is party, you know? And then because she wasn't the 80s overachiever, you know, like go be a stockbroker or whatever. She was an 80s party girl probably, you know, since like early life. And then by 95, when this movie is made, she is starting to feel like she hasn't done enough in her life.

And she needs to find her place. And it's her own fault that she hasn't. And then that's when this movie's taking place, I think. She's like a club kid who didn't do enough K or something. Yeah, right? Yeah, no, because I want to hear first about your librarian takes. But for me, I definitely had a reverse party girl experience. So please tell me as librarians.

First of all, how did you feel about the representation of librarians? Second of all, how did you feel about this person having, I guess, gaining access so easily? That was like a weird thing to me. Like, do you find that there's people who are getting jobs as clerks in libraries and, like, advancing in the industry without going through proper schooling and shit like that? Or, like, is there nepotism in librarian world? Yeah? Tell me. Yeah.

I mean, I think she still would have had to, like, gone to school eventually, but there is still a lot of, like, it's who you know. Like, you have to, like, have the skills, obviously, to get to the point of where it's who you know, start to paying off. But, yeah, I don't know if it's familial nepotism. Yeah. I guess it does end with, like, her triumph, I guess, being that she's going to go to grad school, right? It's not that she's a librarian by the end. So she didn't, like, shortcut everything. But, yeah, I don't know.

Justin, why did you pick this movie besides the fact that it's obviously about librarians? Well, it's a cult classic. So it was, it's one of those movies that comes up when there's like what movies about libraries are there. And so we've already done like. There's no others.

I'd never heard of this movie. Well, no, Name of the Rose. That's the only other movie about libraries. And also, I've got some stuff in the notes about an article I read that really went to Stuart Hall and library stuff. And it was kind of like too much for me because I'm not familiar with Stuart Hall. So I was like just I can pretend I understand anything about cultural critique, but I don't. I feel like you aren't allowed to graduate library school unless they make you watch part of this movie or part of desk set.

and I was of the desk set varietal which if you haven't seen it's a great movie with Catherine Hepburn about the like not Watson like the computers are going to take away the reference librarian jobs that sounds great yeah yeah no Catherine Hepburn being a librarian it's awesome

I have somehow avoided both desk set and party girl up until now like I don't know how I've well I'm not I'm not a librarian so there's that but like I don't know how I made it 15 years in libraries and never saw either of these. I know what they are. I've definitely heard of them. So, yeah, the librarian movies.

It was a movie that, like, I watched and I was like, I am so confused. Because this movie, like, Jay said it goes zero to 60 and then back to zero and then to 60. And, like, that was one of the critiques. Every single scene. Yeah. But this movie was filmed in 19 days, and it had a budget of $150,000. And so like the ward

It's this like you could do a whole episode On the fashion in the movie I love the fashion so much It was all like borrowed from people they knew So like there are people in the clubs This was something I was trying to figure out Yeah Didn't she steal it?

There's a scene where they're stealing stuff Okay And they're like this is what we were doing To get the costuming Was going into people's closets and going like Oh hello Chanel And then taking it being like,

job lift. It's like, it's not a shop. Yeah. The cameos was something that I loved because they were like, these were just people who we knew in the club scene. And we were so hyped to get them in the movie. So that was Natasha Twist and the It twins,

who I love, the guys in the Jinkos with the green hair. They show up twice. And that's it. And they were like, we were so excited to get them. When I started this movie last night in two seconds in, Lady Bunny showed up. I was like, oh, this is going to be good. Yeah, I love her. I like to leave

Shriver. Where'd he come from? I'm watching him. I was like, so funny because he's also like not Irish. He's like from a Ukrainian immigrant family. And it's just like this is so funny because it's like obviously probably what he was getting booked as early on. It's just like any nondescript European. Yeah. Yeah, he has Euroface. Yeah, all the actors were great, I thought.

I may be Irish, but I'm not stupid. So I found this funny little clip from Siskel and Iber reviewing it, and I just have the beginning, but I want to play it real quick. Okay, next movie, and our next film is Party Girl, and this Generation X comedy really

rubbed me wrong. I didn't care for its lead character, a cute waif who is, is constantly trying to find herself, but is mostly just annoyingly cute. Parker Posey plays Mary, who is out of a job and money, so she hits up her godmother, a librarian for both.

It rubbed him raw. They hated this movie. Oof. Oh, my God. That just made me feel so. The meat librarian rubbed him raw. Old. Doesn't that automatically make it queer, though?

It's a very gay movie. It is. It's a very queer movie. Justin, I love the difference. between your notes and my notes. We were like, wow, this sure is 90s and says the F word a lot. Yeah. And I was like, why don't movies say the F word anymore?

For one occasion. Yeah, no, I didn't type it out in my notes in case anyone was asking. I was looking for it. Well, okay, so let me throw this at you all. So the character of the librarian, you know, the godmother, was, excuse me, I think obviously exaggerated, right? Like a very caricature sort of version of a librarian, I would say, right? What you would think of as like stiff-lipped and unkind and I don't know, just like very concerned with only her system and how she thinks the world entirely should be ordered, right? So we hate her, I think.

We would all agree maybe. But the girl, yeah, and I'll let you tell me if you disagree. This is what I want to know because she's representing you all. Representation's important, Louisa. I would say also representing me because that is the same kind of job I do, except it's just like in digital shit. Like basically the people in TV industry look at me. Like I'm the annoying librarian who's like you didn't put this in the right place. But the juxtaposition to that is obviously part of the.

girl who's eventually going to become a librarian, right? But the thing is, I hated her too. Okay. And so the thing is, okay, maybe by the end I didn't so much, but at the beginning, I definitely totally did. And it was partially what Eber, was it Eber talking? I think so. What he was saying about just like, she came at a left field just full on, like, demanding. Just like, I can't pay my rent and I obviously don't have a job and I'm like not. doing anything to take care of myself. And yet I'm going to go to this old lady at a library and be like, hey, help me. You have to help. And not even like a nice way. She did it in a terrible public, demanding, petulant, like, shitty way. And that's how she ends up getting the job.

It's because the godmother is like, well, you know, if you want something, then I'm not going to give you a loan again after she had bailed her out of jail, too. Don't forget that part. So then she's like, you can try getting a job. Like, I'll give you a job here as a clerk. And that's how she gets the job and discovers her love for librarianship, right? But she sucks, man. She sucks. She doesn't, she's not even that nice to her friends or her boyfriends.

She, like, she sucks. She has good fashion sense, I guess. And that's it. Like, no? So who is really the hero of this story? Yeah, I have some, um, Complicated feelings about the godmother. Yeah.

That would be a movie. The godmother. We all have complicated feelings about the godfather. Yes, we do. About the godmother. One, the thing about what you said about her system and stuff, I have a whole mind explosion bit about that. The notes we can do it later.

And I also found when she was talking about, like, my body is upgrading. And I was like, Donna Harroway, come here, I need you. but like I know in Justin's notes he mentioned like the vocational awe that this godmother character has or she's very like I'm defending the profession and it should be this way and it's correct and stuff but like I feel like as a profession we started hating Dewey like last year maybe I wasn't noticing it and she's full on being like Dewey hired women because he thought that they were stupid and that librarianship didn't require intelligence and he was like awful and misogynous and we were undervalued and underpaid. I was like, what? That's cool. Yeah. Like, yeah, I, I, maybe I missed the whole trend of librarians shitting on Dewee for the past 30 years. But, yeah, this movie hates Dewey. And I'm like, good movie, you should. So I, I, yeah, so I. Well, like, it's really awesome to hear that, honestly, because, okay, so the closest I can approximate for me with its experience is what I think it might be for you all is recently.

So I'm an anthropologist or like by training. And for me, midsummer was just like, please shoot me in the face. Because everybody was like, it's a movie about like cultural relativism. It's a movie about a bad boyfriend. Whatever. I'm like, it's a movie about bad anthropologist. What the fuck? This is horrible.

It's like a scurial. of anthropology as a study of the people who study it, of the way that they get a degree and write a thesis for it. It's fucking terrible, especially if you're from the West. I'm just like, oh, my God, that hurts so much. But what hurt about it is that it seemed like the people who wrote it had some intimate knowledge of the academia side of it and the industry side of it.

And it feels by you saying that, like maybe somebody who made this movie also did have some intimate knowledge with librarian, training and world. Yeah, especially the like reference interview scenes where it's actually like showing people doing like reference interactions. I was like, yes, textbook. This is exactly what I learned in grad school on how you do a reference interaction and like the steps you take and how you ask patrons to clarify and whatnot. point for point, it's great at the reference scenes. Yeah, I mean, the godmother, when she's railing about, like, librarian script and Dewey, like, this is like a classic feminist critique in library literature. Like, it definitely was around in the 90s. So, like, I definitely read some of this stuff in, in grad school because I did, I was trying to do history. I was trying to do history. I was trying to do history in a degree.

that was not history because I was in my comfort zone. So I kept writing like history papers in library school. I feel like library Twitter hasn't hated Dewey until like a few years ago, I guess. I've definitely heard hate on Dewey before I really got on library Twitter. I'm fucking clueless. Justin, I would just say, you know what? You're a natural critic. It's okay to be a writer of the or like turn the lens on your own people and your own study.

I did that in anthropology. don't love it. But there is a place for like looking at how our knowledge as a profession came to be. So like for example, it's so funny to me that you, Justin framed it as vocational awe. I saw it as like gatekeeping. Is that crazy? Same thing. I think there was a lot of classism in this movie. Yes. I'm not a waitress. I'm just a clerk. Yes. Librarians are profession. Her boyfriend, Mustafa, like with his falafel cart.

Yeah. He's the one who calls her out and he's like, you treat everyone like shit. Like you're running around your party and demanding everyone who favors for you. He's the best person. I love to. She makes her boyfriend be a bartender. I want a hot Lebanese boyfriend. Let me complicate that because then Mustafa really only makes a move once he realizes she's a clerk at the library. And that elevates her from party girl who comes to get a falafel.

3 a.m. Well, he asked her out on a date before that, right? He did, but then he lost interest because she didn't show up because she was at the library all night long cataloging everything correctly. And so then she like tried, she like went the next day, I think with the intention to explain to him that she missed the date because she was working. But he immediately cut her off and was just like, you're a terrible person and I don't want you in my life. And so she didn't go for it and like force the explanation. And so bad at following movies. Yeah, no. So then she just kept. doing this dumb, which I think is also like an outdated paradigm thing where instead of the woman speaking up, she did this dumb thing of like, I'll just keep going there every day and asking for

the falafel until like you like me again and want to ask me out again. And instead he was like, you're fucking annoying and you're getting in the way of my business. And like he wasn't giving her the time of day for like, they showed at least like the montage. It was like at least two weeks. She was like going there every day or regularly. And then he happens to go to the library. to look for information on how to get his license so he can teach in America. And she's the clerk who's working. So he sees her in this capacity as a smart person who has information. And I guess he sees us having a real career and aspirations.

Oh, yeah. And they buck in a library. Yeah. They go from 060 again. Yeah. So it is classism, though, in the same reverse way because he's an educated man from another country who even though in this country he's put in a lower position, he thinks he's better than her. So until he sees that she has this other promise, you know, and then he's encouraging her

later. And yeah, it's because it's the thing she wants, but it's also because it's what he would want in a woman. You know what I mean? So it's like a weird, complicated thing. Yeah. And he also, like, they always say like, oh, you're a teacher. Like, he's not a teacher anymore. And then they also I didn't know you were a librarian. She's like, oh, I'm just a clerk. So people are always like elevating themselves into a professional. There's so much classifying people and things. I was like watching this. I was like on my couch and I was like taking notes and I wish I had wine. And I was like, there's some reading of this film about like proper order of things. And then she opened the book and read the like and the classification.

It's like a system of things that I was like, bitch, I was right. And then I remember that like the first patron she gets is like a clerk asked for the origin of species. So like taxonomy. And I was like, so this whole movie is about like her trained about our categories. Yes. And about her not fitting into that category and pushing against it. Yeah. Until finally she turns into a cop, literally.

Like we're the cop stripper. And that's what she's like, I'm serious about grad school. And there's a stripper cop around her. Like she just like she stops pushing the boulder up the hill She is now Sisyphus happy Oh hang on I got the clip hang on You got it I must imagine Sisyphus happy

Bullshit he's miserable He doesn't have to be But he accepts his fate He you're telling me that if your name was syphilis And you spent your life lugging a fucking rock up in hell You wouldn't be miserable I think I'm an existentialist This movie deserves an Oscar

Retroactively Giermo Diaz is so funny He's so good. You know, especially in this movie, I mean, I know he's generally good. But so one of the things is a 90s elder that I can tell you about is like DJs, man. So I just went to Miami, which is where I grew up. And Miami had like a huge, has still a huge DJ culture. You know, I don't know if you guys have heard of like the DMCs.

It's like the DJ World Championship, basically. So it's like a scratch competition where DJs do tricks scratching. records and they like compete on like seamlessly blending songs from one to the other and DJ craze who's one the most ever is from Miami like it's our thing you know what I mean and uh this representation of the DJ was actually like spot on because of the fact that when party girl reorganized his records according to the Dewey decimal system first of all mind melt you cannot touch somebody's records like oh my God I was so much bad. Yeah, I was on his side. Yeah, absolutely. So it was awesome that there was this nod to the fact that

DJs and probably all kinds of musicians have their own system for how they organize music. And that's part of where their talent lies also is that they create these own systems of categories for themselves and are able to make connections between those categories that are different than the connections you and I would make and the Dewey would make. Right. Right. Because like Dewey and even LLC, I mean, they're starting to do genre, but it's not going to be as like granular as It's not going to be beats per minute. Yeah. Right.

Or even like all of the obscure types of like house genres, right? Exactly. Like you can get kind of like, this is disco and this is not. Right. And so. But even then it doesn't. Okay. So for example, you know, again, because I just went to Miami.

So beats per minute could be a technical categorization. under which they organize things, right? Which would cross genres, right? Because it would be just a matter of whether this musically lines up with the rhythm of the beats. But then there are thematic connections where you could mix something in because it just has one line in the chorus that is related to the previous song. And that's like unless some system is crossing the lyrics with the beat, you know,

like you're not going to be able to do that because only a human brain can do that. So what I thought was really awesome about this DJ representation was that it gave the nod to the DJ as having that level of categorizing knowledge and ability to create their own categories. But then also that he was able to learn from hers and like refine his system by her organization and then spoke up afterwards to be, you know, like be like, Like, that was great that she did that. It was cool because it's sort of a movie that's queerly telling you

that there are multiple ways of categorizing the world and things and yourself. I still haven't figured out who the librarian in the group of these filmmakers was because as far as I know, it was just like a bunch of people who knew each other. That's why all the characters just are hot messes. Like every, like the guy friend who just, just like can't remember his German paramour's name. He keeps calling him like Kurt the whole movie. Yeah, a different number.

Yeah. No, his name is Kurt and he calls him a different name the whole time. He calls him Carl. Carl. Carl, the whole time. Yeah. And I think Carlos at one point. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. All he knew was that he didn't speak good English. He didn't understand him. He didn't understand him. That was my favorite too.

I love to look on his face when she's like, maybe he just didn't understand. you like honestly and he's just like it's so good it's so good yeah uh so let me say as a person who overthanks all art uh he was clearly to me uh the representation of all of us trying to categorize our relationships and our interactions with every single person into some kind of box that we can label and it was like really kind of very cute throughout the movie that this character served specifically to only do that. He had only one dimension, which was we know that at some point he hooked up with someone and then the whole rest of the movie, every interaction

is him thinking about what that interaction with that guy meant, like projecting what it will be in the future, putting all his energy into finding him and why he hasn't answered the phone or called back. His friends pointing out to him that he's making up a whole thing. He doesn't even know this person. It was a one-night stand. It's just such a skewering of all of us. I'm just like, it's fantastic. And it's like this movie, you know, it's very big into both reinforcing and queering categories and whatnot. But it like, like, you know, the example you bring up of it, you know, he represents sort of like, how are we classifying our relationships to people? but also that leads me to be like, okay, but our relationship to information as well, like,

you know, like it's not classifying just us between people, but like how do we relate to everything else around us and putting that kind of relationship into a box as well if we're going to get all librarian bullshit about it? We absolutely are. Just that I was going to say, you should look into whether the people who made this movie any of their parents are librarians. Oh, that could be interesting. Because as an art critic, as an art anthropologist, I have found that very often people are knowledgeable

about their parents' lines of careers and business, and they also have, like, chips on their shoulders about it, whether it was, like, they heard their parents complain and feel, like, unjustly treated at work and stuff like that, or they were neglected because their parent cared more about their career, you know, all of that stuff, it eventually comes out in their art.

Yeah, this movie has some mommy issues. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. People love telling me their mom was a librarian. They just love dealing it. Sadie, did you watch this with Hava?

No, no. They're out of town. Oh, right. I want to get your take on this whole movie. Yeah. Yeah. as a swinging bachelor, what was your take on party girl? I mean, I liked it.

I was also dead tired when I watched it. So I was just kind of in a state of delirium. But I agree with Jay in that like the reference stuff, I was like, okay, no, this feels familiar. Like, even though I'm not a librarian, I did do reference questions when I was doing public service. So it was like, oh, okay. Okay, yeah.

And the scene at the end where she just like recites everything she did to help. Mustafa with like his saying I watched that three times so I could catch everything that she says and one thing that really caught me like and especially with like the godmother character too like I have actually never known a librarian that has been like that stickler and weird about like knowing where things like not necessarily knowing where things are but like you know how she's just like rattling off like this this book or like you know this goes in this section instantly. It's like you don't,

you don't know that because it's like your knowledge. You know that because you've been in the collection so long that you're like, oh yeah, true crime is, you know, 346 or 364 dot whatever, whatever, whatever.

It's not because, you know, you rigidly studied these dewey decimal categories, at least not in my experience. So that was kind of off putting about her character. I was, and I don't know, maybe it was the 90s.

So, but I was kind of like, she was like slightly over the top for the reference librarians that I have known. One thing I really liked about that final scene where she's rattling everything off, where Mary is not the godmother, is that she calls another branch just to double check to see if she's like missed anything. I was like, I've never even done that. That was really nice.

Man, for me, so I don't think it's a 90s thing. This is why I don't like her even by the end. Like, I'm happy for her that she found a passion and, like, want, like, a direction, because that's obviously what she was looking for. But I still fucking hate her because she is over the top. Like, in everything, in everything, she's just a baby throwing a tantrum, demanding shit. Like, if you actually wanted to go do something, then go to school. Why do you have to tell your godmother or anything?

Go to school and become whatever you're becoming. I just cannot relate. to the fact that even everything she got was and I don't I'm not saying that you have to relate to everything that you watch but I guess I should rephrase that and say I still think she sucks as a person and that it's an over the top version of a woman even let's say because it is not likable or acceptable I think to like go through life with everything sort of being either handed to you or you demanded it or you stole it or you tricked people into giving it to you and all by 24. So there were times when I felt for her, especially in like the, um, wanting to

find herself and like herself more and have a direction in life. I think we've all been through that at some point. But it was the only thing that I thought was human about her. Everything else I was like This is fake and a man wrote this, maybe? Because a woman, I don't think a woman would ever demand. Like, literally there are studies that show that women don't ask for promotions or raises, even when we deserve them, even when we do better for years than the people around us. So this, like, I'm going to throw a fit and get a job out of it and get a vocation out of it. And then also demand, I don't get what she was demanding at the end from the godmother,

like approval for her to go to grad school or was it money for her to go to grad school? I think she wanted her job back. Her job back, right? Yeah. Yeah. But again, you fucking left a window open and 30 books including many first editions were destroyed. How the fuck? That, I have opinions on that scene.

Well, the window is probably never supposed to be open, right? Well, yeah. Well, and also like, like, okay, some books got ruined, but also. like first of all if you're a public library why the fuck do you have first edition by the window on your shelves i was like no you do not next to a window that keeps opened like that's just bad idea and like two like shit happens to books so like i understand being like this was incredibly irresponsible but like she was so upset about those books and i'm like she lives in new york City and she left a fucking window open that she broke through earlier in the movie. So her concerns

are security or like anything like that. No, they're gatekeeping. Yeah. And so you didn't, you didn't respect to these books enough so you don't belong here. But also like, oh God, what was what was I going to say? While you think about it, can I say something real quick, City? Yes. Okay. I didn't know if it would throw you off your, off your game. Like one thing I think this movie struggles with is like that fine line between like you know you can obviously have characters who are terrible awful people but like you have to make them enjoyable to watch I guess like I always use like I'm a someone I love it's always sunny and every person in that show is terrible but I love watching it and I don't want good things to happen to them

and I feel like that they were trying to maybe make unlikable characters or maybe they weren't I don't know maybe Parker Posey's supposed to be likable and they fail But yeah, I feel like if they were going for the like spoiled, unlikable character, they didn't like quite stick the landing with it. Sadie, did you remember? Oh, no. It's fine. I think I said it. I think it was mostly about like you left the window open and you're not like worried about the security of that.

The books were the thing. Like no way in hell would any library manager have that take, basically. I think they exist and have existed, but I think Luis's theory that this is someone's parent was a librarian. It's starting to make a little more sense in the light of how the godmother is portrayed. With like the overbearing all of that stuff. Yeah, just the fact that like the stereotype about caring about, the things she gets mad about doesn't really make sense. She's just mad at Parker. Yeah.

Parker's character. So that makes sense if like your parent was mad at you, you think, oh, this is all personal. Like, I get the job because of just my family. I lose the job because she's family. I get yelled at because she's family. So like that makes more sense because all the conflicts have nothing to really do with the job. Right. She's good at the job.

Yeah, exactly. She totally. And actually at some points, it seems like the librarian, a godmother resents her. when she is good at the job without all the formal training. You know what I mean? But what all of you actually made me realize or think about is that a very common 90s, I don't know if it's trope, but it's just like a reality is that in the 90s, it was like the rise of the we want to hear women stories, right, at first, or like maybe one of

them, right? Because it occurred before in the past. I don't want to pretend the 90s were the first things. that were happening. But there was a rise of like we want women characters, we want shows and movies about women that pass the Bechdel test, all this stuff. And what actually started to happen first was male creators and writers started to try their hand at creating female women characters.

Is this how Buffy happened? Yes! I fucking hate Buffy. I'm sorry. I hate it. Listen, I love Buffy. Darya. I love Darya. I love both of them, but they're with this asterisk that I'm bringing up right now, which is that, yes, they gave us a lot of women, characters, and women's stories, but they were still being written by men who were imbueing these stories with their understanding of women and their experiences of women. And to me, I just realized that the reason that I hate both the librarian and the party girl is because, they don't ring true entirely as women. It's not even their, quote, their careers or how they got

to their careers. It's really that they don't ring true as women. And it's probably a product of the 90s that it was a male who wrote these women and projected a lot of shit into them. That's one of the things that I noticed too pretty early on was I was like, oh, cool, she has like a male best friend. And hopefully this isn't going to be one of those like, you know, men and women can't be friends without it being sexual or romantic. And then I started to notice that every other character in the movie besides the godmother was a man. So it was like, even though it was centered on Mary's character with like her godmother, it was like the only other women in there were like the other library clerks who are, you know,

just kind of behind, walking behind. Oh, in Venus, the get a fucking last name Venus. And the elder DJ, yeah. No, what's her name? The owner of the club. Renee, Renee. I loved her. The recovering alcoholic, yes.

Okay, so there were more, but I was like. But she was also a problematic representation of women. Like, I understand that there are women out there who are overbearing bosses and overbearing on your art because she did the whole thing of like, you can't play this particular art, like anybody who make this guy who makes records or whatever, or that there are women addicts, I understand that, but Renee, as a person, was just so caricatured. It just was not, so like I would say to you, the men in all of this movie were probably more real, more believable as genuine characters, and the women were definitely stand-ins for someone's

perception. Yeah, I definitely thought, like, yeah, like caricature, I think is a good word for every single woman in this movie. Whereas, like, the guys were also still exaggerated. This film kind of, um, it would lead into its, like, absurdism every once in a while with, like, the editing and the acting styles, I thought. But yeah, you're definitely right about, like, the men not being as quite as caricatured. Let's call it a Joss Whedon syndrome. Oh, yeah. Justin, you said you have a clip? Yeah, yeah. This is near the end scene. Because she had sex in the library.

Sex addiction. She was just saying everything was an addiction. Are you her sponsor? You've got to stop these lies and manipulations. Yeah, she's a fun character. But yeah, she was, she breaks a bottle. She plays some Teddy Rogers and she's about to fucking. and like cut his throat with the broken bottle.

I love that scene. He starts like crying. It was so good. She was so like Fimdom. It was great. It was very straight. But I'm actually interested in the character Wanda because there's an interesting dynamic in some of this. So she's the other library clerk.

And she is sort of like the head librarian's like yes man. All right. I'm bad at character. Is she the black librarian? Yeah, yeah. I think there's two. I actually think there's two, but one is a clerk and the other one is, well, maybe they're both clerks, but one is the one that she, like, elevates to like going to grad school. Yeah, she's the one that's like better than the other school.

She went to the acquisitions conference. Yeah. She's like a little brown noser. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote my notes stereotype of like mean black woman plus mean librarian to white woman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I just thought the character was in. it like really strange because like she's projecting a lot of the classism. She's like, because she's like a library school student and there are like a couple scenes. So there's another black librarian who has, who went to the fancy library school and hates academic librarians, which is really funny. But the whole dynamics of like everything in it was very,

it hasn't changed much in terms of library school. It's like, Howard. I loved Howard. There's the clerks. on the way to a library school. And then there's the clerks who are like lifers. And then there are.

And there's this whole scene where they're like, oh, just get your degree as cheap as possible, as fast as possible with this little mess as possible. And they're like, yeah, fuck you. You went to a good school. Like you got a great job. And I was like,

wow, nothing has changed. Especially like, oh, are you going to say in public? Are you going academic for like the type of library you're going to be in? I love that the reverse snobbery. Yeah.

Yeah, that was pretty funny. Just making fun of the suburbs. And just like, why would you live in the suburbs? Yeah, that whole scene is like going through the different options for the different schools. I was like, I'm flashing back to like 2014. That was very familiar to me. Yeah. I've heard lots of librarians and managers have very similar conversations.

People considering going into library school. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I try and discourage it. I've got a graduate student right now who's like, I want to do my second master's in librarianship. I'm like, you just started your first one. Like, just calm down. Hold your horses, buddy.

I'm glad you like the job. But four years of graduate school is a lot of time and money. Maybe play around a little bit first. Maybe party girl first. Yes, that's what I would say. even though they were not the most likable representations of party girls for that orientalism party looked boring as fun yeah exactly it was cringing that whole time and like lustafa there i was like bro what are you doing how did you not just turn take your you know falafel card and run away as soon as this like as soon as you laid eyes on this she dressed him like aladdin it was so gross Like it was so bad. The weird scene is where she's like dancing and yelling and fake Arabic.

And the scene goes on a really long time. And like the thing is it's like he's even teaching her. Like they do like Sabah Khair, Sabahnu, Phafalha. Like she knows a little Arabic and she's like doing some weird like the Arabic version of like Ching Chong. Like that's what she's doing. It's awful. Can I tell you? So some 90s insight is that there is this like now defunct.

concept in anthropology, which still sometimes creeps up in discourse, is multiculturalism. I put multi-culti in my notes. Did you? That's what it is. This movie reeks of multiculturalism, which now we read as extremely offensive. But in the 90s, the whole like, we are a soup. What do you call it? A melting pot. That's what I'm sorry. I'm not from here. A melting pot. That idea was like very prevalent in the 90s. And it was kind of the antithesis of I don't see color, right? So I almost like want to say like, let's remember that I don't see color is worse than people attempting to recognize other people's cultures. And it was sort of cute to me that I was like, oh, she's like trying to like recognize his culture and like meet him on a I like you and I'm

going to put in the effort to like know your language and your food and all this stuff and your music because he specifically asked her like, do you like this music? And so then she went home to like listen to Arab music. And it was like, okay, it's almost like doing the accent or something that you should definitely not do what she was doing. But it's absolutely a 90s thing where and I think it persists today with like maybe like the people who are like new age spiritual kind of people who like accident or not accidentally, but I say, I would say like, with a not negative intent, pick up things from other cultures and then like parrot them and own them, take ownership over them. And then people are like, oh, that's weird. It seems like you are trying to like mock a culture or reduce them to a particular thing. But the reality is that sometimes some people are trying to, see it and get to know it and they make missteps. So it was kind of like a reminder of like that sweet time when we were trying. Yeah, it's like that very like the where it's not a hard line,

it's a gradient between a proportion and appreciation. It's like, oh, I'm going to learn this because I like it and it's like cool and I respect it. But then like, uh-oh. Uh-oh. Yeah. Don't, don't do your hair like them. No, yeah. Like don't, don't paint your face. Yeah, exactly. I was surprised there were no white dreadlocks in this movie. Right. We loved it in the 90s, yeah. Yeah, and they love it in Tucson, Arizona. A thing I noticed when I was there for a couple days is lots of white dudes hanging out with dreads.

I would venture to say that Tucson, Arizona is stuck in the 90s. Like, they seem like a town that loved the 90s. Oh, yeah. I saw a lot of very specific Asian knives in all the stories. that I don't know why. It's a whole town of like the new age hippie people. But what I was going to say, the whole post-racialism thing was really weird

because there's a lot of random assaults that happen in this movie. And one is where she slams Wanda into the bookshelf and it's like, you're going to help me, bitch. And I'm like, but here's the crazy thing. They tried to make a TV show off of this movie. And I found the pilot. And what they did was they made a funny sitcom

with like a laugh track, and they started lifting the lines from this movie. And they do the whole movie in the pilot episode. And Wanda is like the comic relief black character that is like opposite of Mary. And she's like set up to be like a sparring partner with her constantly. And it is, I was like, oh, yeah, you figured out what they were doing in this movie. But it was like peak really racist fox. sitcoms. Yeah. It was a wild thing. I found it today and started watching it and it was very weird. Send that to me because my, one of my areas of, let's say a category that exists in my brain,

or you librarians and archivists, etc. is remakes and reboots and reimagining, all of that shit. You all hate it. Everybody hates it. But I love it. I think they are great. Every reimagining of a story, like that's what humans actually do is pass on narratives. And every narrative, when it gets reworked at a different point in time,

reflects different values in society, the different concerns of the particular artist who is doing it. And no matter how bad, it adds to the canon of that narrative, even if you hate it. And the only people who get mad, in my opinion, this is going to be the thing that'll get me canceled on Library Punk right now.

But if you ever get mad at a remake or a reboot or a spin-off or anything like that, all that you're doing is getting obsessed with a nostalgic point in which you enjoyed that particular narrative. But I guarantee you that that narrative existed before you enjoyed it and it will continue to exist after you die and becoming obsessed with just. what was important to you. Like, yeah, sure, enjoy that. But there's more to enjoy, which is where it came from and where it's going. You are spot on. Yeah. Yeah. Like even when I'm like, this is just a cynical cash grab. It's because I'm nostalgic about the concept of like cinema

itself. And it's extremely revealing about our own time and the artists in our time and what what they thought needed to be changed about the previous version is like a mirror turned on our artists in our society. It's, they're all good, even if they're bad. Maybe even better when they're bad. All of the like classic Hollywood movies are remakes of ones from like the 30s. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the first time I heard this, I think it was like the Plinker review guy. And he was like, the thing you like will always be there. The only thing what happens with the remake is there's a chance they'll make something more that's good. If it's bad, who cares, you still have the original thing. You didn't lose it.

Not only do you not lose it, but if the new thing is bad, it only reinforces your love for the thing you loved. So why would it make it bad? Why is that bad? There's a speculation and arguments we made about fan fiction and fanned here. I think it's out of the scope of this. We will need the right good people to come on for that. But about ownerships of... I am a populist, so I do believe that fan fiction counts in every...

everybody gets to contribute. Like, we all sit around the campfire, and even if you don't have the professional schooling, and even if you don't have the technical ability, maybe your version adds something. And even if your version doesn't add something, the fact that it impacted you enough to tell your own version adds to the canon of this narrative. Yeah, it's like the Buddhist idea that like, sorry, I'm going to go like Buddhist on me in here. I haven't done it in a while, about how like, you know, each of our perspectives, like we, none of us see the same thing and none of us are experiencing reality in the same way. And so stories are just when like our collective perspectives all like clash together. And I'm like, you know, Donna Haraway will come in and be like, and then storytelling is this because I love Don Haraway. Me too. Yeah. I love it. There was one thing that about like the movie that I was expecting that didn't happen. And I'm wondering if you guys saw the kind of same. kind of thing because there's always that like especially with these narratives about like finding

yourself or finding your vocation or whatever you know there's usually like they try to hint at it along the way and then when it comes to the end like at the end when people are like popping out of the woodwork to say oh you know she helps me this way she helped me this way I was expecting it to come back to somehow how like her love of fashion the jeans are in order jeans are in order and how she like knows exactly what like things are like she just looks at a jacket well the go-tie jackets over here I left it over here this many years ago like exactly like don't mix it up and like the scene where she's like trying like on different outfits and even like the partying thing because like the scene where Mustafa is like you're just demanding people

she's pretty much project managing that party oh absolutely yeah so like she eventman Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Which is like something I think is related to librarianship concepts because, you know, with programs and that kind of thing, we kind of, we don't do the thing. We help people do the thing, if that makes sense. So I was kind of expecting those two. Like those would be her hidden talents that would then pop up and be like part of the reason and why like she would be good at library school.

And it never happened. And I was kind of surprised at that. And I don't know if that's just because that narrative has become so blatant. And this was just like a more subtle version of that or if those two things were not actually supposed to be connected at all. And I just drew that line out of nowhere. But the genes are in order thing. The genes are in order. I absolutely think that you are onto something here because I think what it was is in a lot of ways they hinted the right.

This again to me goes back to a man writing a non. man character because it almost seems like the whole scene, because it was a pretty prolonged scene where she is, her friend is like messing with her wardrobe and she's like, you can't get it out of order because it has a specific order. And it almost seems like it's like trivializing her ability to categorize and organize the world around her into like she only cares about these stupid things like fashion. And I think. you and I Sadie are seeing it as like, why didn't they circle back to the fact that she always had this ability and that it always was good and that it matters in different realms than just

being a librarian? And instead, it was just forgotten about in terms of like, well, now she found a real way to apply her talent. And to me, that was like a very man thing to do of just like, oh, well, it wasn't important until you did it in a professionalized way, you know, like sort Like cooking, if you think about like cooking, like you can be a great cook for your family and for everyone and they can be like, oh, yeah, my mom's a great cook. But maybe like men or like the industry won't respect to you unless you have the degrees and the awards and whatever. The hat. Yeah. Yeah. It's how like, you know, it's sort of seen as like feminized to cook at home, but then it's men who have, who are chefs. A career. Yeah. Yep. And having worked in restaurants, absolutely.

Absolutely. The little thing, yep. But yeah, that's a good point. And maybe I just saw that really quickly because my wife is very much into fashion history. So I already kind of like the social ramifications of fashion throughout history. So like I kind of wish they had done more with that in the movie. So in the pilot, when the scene where she goes into breaks into the library and learns a Dewey Decimal system, in the TV show pilot, her two friends

break in with her and one of her friends is a fashion designer in the movie instead of just the guy who's obsessed with Carl. He's still gay. He is like her little gay friend. I don't think he's explicitly gay. She's not going to call him like a faggot five times.

No, it didn't happen in the Fox TV show lineup. Nineties again. I apologize on behalf of the 90s. Yeah, sorry. But what she, what he does is say he goes into the library with her and they're like oh the doy decimal system's easy you categorize like would you put your jacket next to this jacket and she's like no that would be insane he's like well yeah everything has a category and then he says the line from the beginning

of the duy decimal system to her he reads it off a poster and and he's like oh you can you can just think of the library is a big closet um that you organize everything Alyssa Adler, didn't she write that book already? Was it cruising the stacks? I'd have read that. I was doing closet in the other way. Sorry, it was a bad joke. I was, yeah, I know.

But I was going to say, kind of related to what Sadie was talking about, about, like, bringing up her, like, skills, and, like, she does, like, project management, and she, like, you know, my jeans are in order. Fuck you. is I notice that they kind of like bring up that like you know when Mustafa yells at her about it like they kind of are pointing out the sort of like cop in her head element of it like in one of like the little opening like cool absurdist montages when she slams the card catalog it does like the jail like prison door sound closing and then with like the cop at the end and she even gets arrested at the at the beginning. And so I just thought it was interesting that they were sort of like equating this sort of like organizational power that she is learning and that she has with like enforcing rules and like specifically

with like police. I don't know if anyone else picked up on that. I've got another clip of the charges list, which I thought had one very interesting. Hang on. For illegal operations of social club, unlawful sales of liquor without a liquor license. possessions of control substance, possessions of pirated video cassettes, aiding and abetting minors.

The video cassettes part. You put download a car. I was like aiding and abetting minors to do what? Just vibes. Fives. Exactly. Just having fun. We don't like it.

Yeah. Oh, I was just saying, were you the one who wrote, what is tell net? Yeah. The whole thing, there were lots of library technology stuff that I was fascinated with because she's like, oh, I went through telnet and I used gopher. I got so excited about the gopher thing. You see, I didn't know the gop, but she was like, I telneted and got the FTPed me.

And I'm like, oh, okay. And like that's when I rebound it and was like, is this actually something like they could have done? Because those aren't librarian concepts. Those are just early internet things. Gofer is still a thing, by the way. People are still using gopher. It's still alive and well. It's just nerds.

People still use Telnet and FTP, even though they shouldn't. Yeah. They're not secure anymore. I read about that. You're supposed to use SSH now because it's more secure, but people still use Telnet as a login. I like that you noted that they had sex in the romance language section. I agree that was corny. I noticed.

Where do you all professionals recommend that we all should have sex in your library? Hmm. I did. Not on a desk because I don't want to wipe it down. No. Don't get you on the books. Of course not. Maybe not in the stacks just because that might not get over as a safety hazard.

I know I put in my notes one of John Waters, like a little like recorded lectures that he does. He talks about fucking in libraries. It's like book reports and hand jobs. They go hand in hand or something like that. And librarians on Twitter love to be mad at people fucking in libraries, the very concept of it. They're so scandalized. I was like, no, fuck in the library. Please, I want you to.

Go do it. You just throw out your, throw your fucking condoms out. Don't put them in books. Don't put them in books. Yeah, I had a coworker who was, well, first of all, we had somebody who would put unused condoms in, like, the sex education books. That's nice. Which is, which was sweet. Like, with, like, planned parenthood stuff and, like, you know.

That's cute. But, like, it was after a while, it was starting to, like, warp the spines of those. Oh, yeah. Like you do with the jeans pockets. Mm-hmm. And I think somebody actually left a note that was like, listen, like, we understand where you're coming from, but please stop doing this because you're actually like hurting. Like the books can't take it anymore.

But yeah, then at least at one point in time, I had a coworker who pulled a book off the shelf to see why it was weirdly bent and there was a several days old used condom in it. Oh, God. And, yeah. So. If you're going to pick it up to put it in a book. why wouldn't you just put in a napkin and take it with you and throw it out? Or, you know, one of the trash cans.

Just do us all that favor. Put it in your pocket. Wash your jeans. It's fine. Deal with it later. I'm trying to think of where. Go ahead, Justin,

make your joke. Yeah, I was just saying the same thing with cigarette butts, like where you're not supposed to throw them out. Just throw in your pocket if I can get them, dump them out later. It's fine. I'm trying to think of where would be the best place to fuck in a library

because you don't want to knock the stacks over. Justin doesn't want to clean the table. Well, okay, the stacks thing, if the library is earthquake prepared, those stacks will be bolted. So they could actually be a very... So if you're in like California or Utah or something, you can fucking get those stacks. Yeah. Yeah. Do they not have like moving stacks?

Oh, yeah. You can get these because those are like... You get squished though. You can get... You put the stool in. That's what those stools are in there for. so it doesn't close all the way. I just saw a movie.

What is it? I think it's called, oh, unfollowed or something like that. It's a horror. I watch, whatever. Is it like one of Shane Dawson horror movies? Maybe. It's a horror movie that is about, like, somebody is posting like a, oh, that's what it is, Follow Friday.

It's posting like Follow Fridays on Twitter. And then whoever that account posts as a Follow Friday gets murdered that week. And the very first person who gets murdered in the movie gets murdered in, gets murdered in the library stacks getting squished in the movable shelves. Or Vanguard, are you listening? Come back on. Yeah. Let's write that one down for a future movie night. Absolutely.

You got to check it out. It begins with murder in the library and all of the future victims are in the library together. Hell yeah. Very clue. Yeah. But yeah, no, those like rolly shelves, you have to put the little step stool in so you don't get squished. Yeah. Exactly

Hot tip They should have A little sensors too Yeah or like they have the The little bumper Like the Yeah Yeah

The little door stops Yeah Yeah I don't think there's really any good place To have sex in the library Unfortunately Except there are a lot of like wooden chairs that are like really sturdy

Because you don't want to be like unstable You don't want to get an injury Dude in the chair Yeah Yeah Like lap style Graphic novel section that's cool

I mean don't come on anything though no and like I was going to say on the floor but the carpets might like chaf yeah short carpets yeah we don't need that yeah and you know people walk you know what I'm going to go

with the rare anti-sex take and say don't have sex in the library I would agree is that weird or if you're going to do it in the bathroom where all the dirty human biological things should be happening Yeah, I mean, like I said, it just, it doesn't seem fun.

I don't feel like there's any good place to do it. I agree. I don't see it. I don't see it. It's like sex on the beach. Like, why would you want to do that? Not good. It's better in theory than in practice.

No. I'm going to be the pervert that supports it and wants people to figure out the best way to do it. Do you guys have an email? Right in. Yes. Where to fucking. I think we do, actually. Just no one used to it.

Yeah, I just, yeah, I haven't used to DM us or something. Add us on Twitter. I want to know. If you guys have professional suggestions, I will enact them and come back. Yes, let us know. Feedback. This is Louisa coming in from the field. I am, I'm your sex correspondent.

Library sex correspondent. Speaking of Florida things, sex on golf courses, very popular. in Florida. True. Always walking up on people fucking in golf courses. There's a porn of that. You know why? It's because everybody lives with their mom.

That's my theory. Yeah. There's nowhere else to go. Like places like Sarasota and stuff like that. There's nowhere else to be except hide on a golf course. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Get the alligators involved. Mine the gators. Yeah. Be careful with the gators. Flat fuck Friday. I'm going to respect the gators. What was y'all's favorite scene? I mean, Lebanese delight was pretty good.

Yeah, I got falafel for lunch today because the movie made me want falafel with hot sauce sauce real bad. I'm jealous. Yeah. There's no falafel around here. I like the gene category scene, actually, because I am a make my own taxonomies for all my things. Hell yeah.

So I enjoyed the representation of what I guess now might be called the OCD, but in this 90s version is a very talented archivist taxonomy. I mean, isn't it only really OCD if you think something bad is going to happen to you if you don't do it? Like in a clinical sense. Yeah, and like repetitive things is a big OCD thing, I think. Yeah. But most people don't use it that way on the internet. It irritates me just because OCD runs in my family and I've had to deal with it. So it's one of those like, oh, I have OCD.

And I'm like, you sure do not, you asshole. Yeah. Anyway. Exactly. Exactly. That's what I mean. So I think maybe very often in the present things are framed as this person is OCD because they're like obsessive about categorizing and organizing things.

And I do think that maybe. I don't know, anthropologically, I think that categorizing and creating taxonomies is how our brain works naturally. And I am actually very resistant to ever saying that anything is human nature. I don't think that most of the things that people think of as human nature are actually human nature. They're just common in our current psychies. But categorizing and creating taxonomies in order to help us understand the world around us and ourselves, I do think, is human nature. I mean, didn't our brains evolved? Yeah, exactly. Didn't our brains evolved in those patterns. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And what's, I think, interesting and at the core of our conflict in

existing is that we both need categories and taxonomies to like understand the world around us and ourselves. But then also if those categories and taxonomies become frozen in time and become authoritative and fascist, then they stop our growth and they become the antithesis to human evolution. And so our whole existence is about finding the line that we can walk between those two things. Yeah, where taxonomies become borders instead. Yeah, no. And where they become a form of empowerment. and not a form of holding each other down. And that was Lucia Green with me.

Heck yeah. No, that was something that really, I think, a lot of feminist scholarship opened up for me was, because I took a class on gender and war, which really was fascinating. And so, like, if you were to separate people by gender anyway, assuming there were two, You would just have bell curves that overlap to a very high degree in terms of like upper body strength, ability to run, ability to do this and that. And then you have to create boxes that then exclude and include based around those bell curves, which then cuts out a certain amount of people and would include it a certain amount of people. But your brain categorizes that. So also something really interesting about that article, the academic article about party.

girl I was reading because the whole point it was making is like there's no out there that is separate from human thought. Everything is a representation. And so the stereotypes that exist in the movie are there because we feel the need to categorize people, especially when there's an imbalance of power. And so that plays the whole feminist angle of the whole critique about Dewey and everything that happened in that scene. And well, stereotypes are also not always negative. and sometimes are true is another fascinating thing about stereotypes. Like the godmother was very much a caricature and also completely accurate to a lot of. And also not everything about her was negative either, but this was still a librarian stereotype.

Yeah, no, I think with stereotypes, it's the same thing. The only thing, you know, in museum world, there is this term called the museumization effect, which is basically whenever something gets put up in a museum, it gets frozen in time as like fact forever. And it always existed like this before this. That's what catch on the rise about. Yeah. So there is the, what, I don't know, but we'll revisit that. But our problem as creatures as society, I guess, I don't know, is that our desire to freeze things in time and stop moving.

forward and to just be like certain about things right now and forever is the thing that keeps us from moving forward. So it absolutely just has to be this way where we accept that we need categories and structure and hierarchy and a map sort of for understanding ourselves and everything around us. But we need to know simultaneously that that map, is a, you know, like in corporate world, they call it a living document nowadays. You've all heard the term, right? So it is a thing where, okay, let me tell you a story, actually, as a museum person that maybe you all will relate with.

I used to work at the Museum of the Moving Image, okay? And the Museum of the Moving Image, their purview was cataloging and displaying, everything that has to do with the moving image all the way from, like, the GIF to film, to video games, all of it, right? So one of the things that we did was we had a huge collection of arcade games, right? Like 1970s arcade games. And one day we have this meeting with the head of collections, the head of exhibitions, like everybody that's working, whatever, in the museum.

And the problem that we're discussing is that in this museum, we believe in the idea that people should get to experience the playing of these arcade games. So we put out our arcade games and you can buy tokens. and you can play them. But what's happening is that they are degrading the motherboards with all of the use. So now our problem becomes, is our responsibility to preserve the motherboard of this game or to provide access to all people to enjoy this game, even though it will degrade it over time?

So I come in and I propose with a curator that what we should do is put simulators. into the arcade games, right? Because what simulators would do is it's basically you put in a new CPU that would run the game exactly the same way without putting any of the strain on the original motherboard. And therefore, the person coming in and having the experience would have the same experience as they would based on the motherboard. But the motherboard would be preserved, say, in 50 years,

somebody wants to come in and see how it worked. It will still work, right? So me and this other curator, we're like, we're proposing to you an ideal solution where the people today will get to experience the actual, because the box that holds the arcade will live on. You know what I mean? It's only the computer that's having the problem. So we come to the table with this perfect solution, we think, where people today will get to enjoy it. We won't box this product away from people and keep them from touching it, which seems pointless. in terms of preservation, but we also won't be allowing the thing we want to preserve to be

constantly degraded until it just dies. The head of collections said to us, well, the collections policy says that we are not allowed to interfere with an object to change how it operates. So I say, okay, but didn't we write the collections policy? To which the collections manager says, yes, but now that is the policy. And then I'm looking at him and I'm like, okay, but doesn't that mean that we can amend the policy to say this is the better thing for how we should preserve a thing but also allow access to the people in the present to use it? And we just, it was a deadlock where the people who institutionally write the policies

of how we should treat content and preserve content and materials in our world, we're not willing to then continue to see it as a growing document that as you get more information, you would adjust it so that it continues to serve society presently and in the future. They were obsessed with, in the past, we wrote this and they has to stay this way. Yeah. And I think ultimately long, that was my long way anecdote. to give you an example of, I don't think the problem is that we categorize or that we create taxonomies or that we love order.

The problem is when we insist that those taxonomies cannot change after we've come to make them. We make them. We can continue to change them always. Yeah, video game memorization is so cool. I wish I could work with it and do it. But yeah, that's the kind of person who become, that's like the equivalent of the godmother character. in the movie because like that kind of rules policing. It's like, well, this is the policy.

And like if you're not a position to change the policy, I understand it. But like I, we change our collection development policy every year because like we've got we have a circulating collection. I think when you're a museum, you can be a little bit more like, well, things aren't circulating. So there's less of like a public service ethic, I think. There's a little more of the items, people, the book touchers. that we talked about last time. Yeah.

The objects, people versus the people people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Museum world is definitely more object people, whereas I, from the outside, perceive library people to be more people, people. Depends.

It's a mix. Yeah. It's a mix. Are you front end or are you back end? And if you're back end, what kind of back end are you? Yeah. I think if you don't like people,

well, you'll probably more likely leave libraries eventually. But there are lots, I mean, I think you can be an objects person and find a career in libraries. And you shouldn't be pressured out of the field. But I think. And like you do it in like a good way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We need people to preserve the things, you know.

Yeah. It's just you have to. That rules policing just gets so many people caught. And they're like, well, it's the rule. And it's like, that's like the worst kind of interaction I see with people too. So I'll watch like, like I'll just be standing at the Cirque desk or something and one of the library assistants will like walk someone through a whole process of something. And at the very end finally finds out that like the process won't work for the person. And they go, oh, you can't do that.

Like you need three people to reserve a study room after like explaining for what felt like 20 minutes, how to reserve a study room. And I just want to, like, grab that assistant and be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? You screwed up this interaction. You just got to let them in. Like, you should have asked at the beginning how many people there were or, you know, whatever the thing is. But it takes practice. I can't, I can't get mad. I screwed it up a million times.

Oh, we didn't finish saying what our favorite scenes were. I just, I liked Leo. Which was in? He was the DJ. Okay, I'm so bad at names. Yeah. Yeah. I only remember Mary because every time they said it, I thought they were saying it in the gay way.

Like, Mary, like, I thought, like, I didn't realize her name was Mary until, like, halfway through. Yeah, Guillermo Diaz, who also was in Half-Baked, a movie I have not seen since middle school. But I was just looking up all the, I was looking up all the actors. Because the guy who plays Mustafa, I don't think was ever in anything else ever again. I thought, like, for halfway, I was like, is that the dude for Miss Congeniality? But he wasn't. He has similar vibes. They just found a humk.

Benjamin Brad? I don't know. I've never seen him anything else. I love miscongeniality. That's great. What was my favorite scene? I did like the little reference interaction scenes. Those were actually really like sweet and nice.

I loved all. The twins enthusiast. Yeah. I liked it when it would get really fun and creative with like the editing, like what I've been call it the like absurdist montages for like it the scene no this is my favorite scene the like a fucking high fidelity in this movie i assume came out before high fidelity did but where it's like she does like the one interaction and then she does it in a different way where it's like she does it like the different way she would have done it um that was my favorite part i think um yeah it was like some fun

little like editing that was happening there is it any wonder then that i've chosen not to learn the intricacies of an antiquated and idiotic system. Yeah, that scene. Best scene. Loved it. I was like, you tell her. Yeah, just a lot of weird monologues. With bad acting.

It's very strange. It's very stilted. But again, a movie made in 19 days, you've only got so many reshoots. And is that like a directorial choice? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, like, my favorite movie was shot in two days and you can tell when they start running out of daylight because like the camera gets

Graney. The Man from Earth. I've never heard of it. Yeah. It's just people in a room talking. It's all academics. And they have a hypothetical. And then the whole movie is them trying to work out if they can break the story.

And it was filmed in two days. So you can see it start getting like darker. And they also have a whiskey bottle, but they clearly only bought one. So you can watch the whiskey go up and down because they've had it because they were actually drinking it in the scene because they have to pour it. out, but they only could buy one because they didn't have any money. So, yeah, I love that movie. It's such a pretentious movie for me to like, and I still do. Can't help it. I really, honestly, I'm glad you guys, you all, sorry, I always say guys and dudes because I'm a dude

and her guy. I don't know. Well, two of us are. Yeah, thank you so much. So, you know, I like dude and guy. I'm a dude and guy. I'm a dude and a guy. I'm a dude and a guy. So it's really hard. I just put everywhere. I'm like, if you're cool, you're a dude or a guy. I don't know. Anyway, all of y'all. One of the things that I thought was awesome are the reason that I'm happy that I got to see this movie is because ultimately I do think that this movie, even though it's not perfect in every way in like representational terms and things like that, it was a movie that was ultimately about how categorization or like being confident in your ability to taxonomize, I don't know if that's a word by like to put your world into an order that makes sense to you is the path to self-realization.

Huh? What do you think about that? And not to like a broader like systematic like put on new categories, but like ones you define yourself. Because she pushed back all along and it was even though I don't think they like perfectly showed that in the movie, that's the message that I got was that through gaining confidence in your ability to see order in the world, you will find your path to self-realization,

whatever that may be. You have to order the genes. Yeah, that is the key. Or the records. That is our mantra. You have to order the genes. Justin, I saw in your notes that you said that, like, librarians have completely misunderstood this movie.

Explain that to us. Yeah. Because I probably agree with you. Well, I think a lot of people have talked about this film in terms of like, it's challenging stereotypes in this very 90s way. And I think people are still like kind of in that mindset. They're like, it's challenging stereotypes. That's cool. That's good.

And I'm like, well, this movie is like about like relationships. And it's about like, I think even though it has this really accurate depiction of like working in the library and library world, that's still just a backdrop to what the whole movie is kind of about. It is not about librarianship at all. It's about self-realization. Am I wrong? What's it about? What do you think it's about, Justin? I think it's about, I think it's people trying to make a representation of, like, their actual lives and, like, being in your 20s and being weird.

I think that every character in this movie was probably someone they knew and just wrote into the script. And that's why everyone's, like, weird and annoying and sort of seen from the outside. side and that's why everyone's like really messy and but they're also like messy and their own hot way like they're going around being hot and going to clubs and having fun and they're also just extremely messy and sloppy about it and they're all trying to figure out their shit yeah when did manic like when did the sort of like when did party girls start going to library school I guess like when did like that library and stereotype start happening in my timeline around 1999 2000 I don't know

that's why so up top I told you all that like I saw this is very much the reverse of my experience which was I was a party girl uh you know like I mean I was an AP classes and everything but I took my SATs on acid like I did not have aspirations to be anything and I now have five degrees and I have wasted all my life in academia and I literally had to make other choices to not become a professor and so I felt almost like I had the opposite experience of party girl in the sense that I was always, while I was partying, I was going to school. And I was doing. So like, one of the things that kind of annoyed me or rubbed me the wrong way about the movie is the implication that these things are mutually exclusive because they weren't mutually exclusive for me. I existed in a party world there was like the movie kids while also being an AP student that went to college that had multiple jobs that got multiple degrees and that means I met people on both sides of the spectrum that party girl presents but my experience party monster party girl yeah exactly was very much the other way

and it was almost like okay well I got to pick a job so I'll just do this but I understand the I guess the storyline of like finding yourself and the self-realization part of it because I knew plenty of party girls and party boys and party people who were struggling with like who am I, what am I going to be? What should I do with my life? How will I support myself? And they didn't know themselves beyond I am fun to party with. And this is what I like to do. So I feel like I knew party girls. You know what I mean? And very often the people who were in like Raverworld and stuff like that, they were people who had strong taxonomy abilities because they were people who recognized music, underground trends, were able to like get into

subversive circles in society. So you do have a specific talent and ability to look at the world around you and categorize it and put order. to it in a way that works for you. Look at ball culture. Yeah. Absolutely. A fashion is that like every, every world, every subculture has its own logic for how it organizes value.

And it is valuable if you have that ability, even if it's only within one world. But what matters and what I think this movie was trying to say, and maybe I'm being more hopeful than my Gen X influence would lead you all to believe. but I think that what it's saying to us all is encouraging us to find value in the way that we see the world and that we organize it and we categorize it because it matters. If you can put it into a logical order for yourself and make a better you and a better existence for you and those around you, then that's an excellent system, an excellent. taxonomy that you came up with. It's not about bowing to taxonomies that exist before you,

but to understanding that one of our greatest abilities as animals, as sentient beings, is to put logical order to things where most can't. I would say all, like, except maybe dolphins and pigs, maybe they can't. Dolphins just want to fuck. I know, they're pretty. Dolphins are the Dubros of the sea. Can I tell you all something? So I told you I went Miami this week. After living there, did a dolphin get at you? Oh my God, I got to witness a dolphin attacking its trainer at Sequarium in Miami. I went to see the flipper show, which by the way, FYI, Flipper's 50 years old and they haven't let him retire. He's still doing daily shows. Free flipper. Holy shit. Free flipper, I know. But flippers, I don't know, grandson, I guess,

like flipped out at its trainer. And then I learned that earlier in the practice, the trainer poked the dolphin in the eye. And so later when they were doing the real performance, the dolphin had some like vengeance in its eyes. It was ready to go. So they start to do their performance. And then the dolphin like straight hits her in the chest twice and then tries to drown her. I swear to God, he was just like pulling her down.

Like I will murder you. Funniest thing I've ever seen. Amazing shit. So wait, I don't even know why I brought this. Why did I bring this up? Sintia beings except for dolphins. Oh, yeah. They're bastards.

So, point is, we and dolphins and pigs are the only ones capable of categorizing and revenge. That was my point. Taxonomy and revenge. That sounds like a librarian tagline. Maybe the real friends was the jeans we ordered along the old. I'm just so caught on those jeans. I loved it. He was boxed in like a turtle's pecker.

Justin, where do you get these drops? I don't know where I got that one from. I told you to get the Gilbert Godfrey one today. That was good. Yeah. I hate when good comedians die, but it does mean that my timeline's funny for a few days. You know, that's, you know, silver lining.

Oh, did he die? Yeah. That was why that clip is going around. Well, no, people don't share stand-up, like, comedian clips unless they die. Or unless we're canceling them. Yeah. But yeah, no, he died like yesterday. Yeah.

And that clip was very funny. RIP Gilbert. He was your real one. I think we can wrap up. It was so nice to have you back on. Yeah. It was great. I love the What You Mad episode about like the Marxist feminism and stuff, by the way.

Thank you. Like as a trans person as well. I really liked it. Thank you. I appreciate it. I am trying. I'm, you know, never perfect. But we're working it out.

you know, I'm not an end of the road person. We're on the way there. So let's have the conversations. And maybe they're not all perfect, but they will lead us down the progression timeline. I don't know. I'm working on it. I appreciate it, though.

And I love the cat there. Arthur is the best. Oh, Arthur, I hope you feel better, buddy. Arthur, Louisa, says she hopes you feel better. Did you want to tell people about why you mad? before you leave? Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Were we still recording? I just thought I was like connected with Jay on cat levels. Sorry, yes. Okay, I do a podcast called Why You Mad with a comedian named Jake Flores. Jake has a lot of things that make him mad. And then I come along and I, yes,

and him on a lot of stuff. But no, we talk about art, uh, media, just shit the categories in our life that make our life difficult and make us mad. Uh, and I, and I, really enjoy doing it and I think people should check it out. If you like the show, you will probably like Y. You Mad. And we are at YMadPod on Twitter and at Gmail if you wanted to write to us. Yeah, I'll link all of it in the show notes. It's a good show. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Good night.