The Bechdel Cast - Us with Korama Danquah

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

Jamie, Caitlin, special guest Korama Danquah AND each of their scary dopplegangers gather together to discuss Us. (This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @koramadrama on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode

podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts.

On the Pectocast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hey, Jamie. Yeah? Caitlin? Sorry, I wasn't expecting that, but neither is i could you look could you look

out the window yeah it's it's us out there yeah there's evil doppelganger caitlin and jamie outside oh no but they're cute but i like them better than us what if they're nicer than us what if they're actually not evil what if we're the evil ones it's open to interpretation well guess what here's the twist i am the other i'm the the one outside is the one that you thought was me oh my goodness boo that was an effective opening that was our best one yep, I think. High score. Welcome to the Bechdelcast. My name is Caitlin Durante.

My name is Jamie Loftus. And this is our podcast about the representation of a lot of things in movies. We come to some of your favorite movies using an intersectional lens, using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion. And the Bechdel test, of course, being, if you're not familiar, if this is your first episode ever and you've never heard... I think this will be a fun point of entry. This would be a fun first episode. Yeah. So welcome.

The Bechdel test is a media metric, sometimes known as the Bechdel-Wallace test. It was created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel. And it requires, for our purposes, this is our rendition of it because there are various versions of the test. But ours is that two people of any marginalized gender, they have to have names. They have to speak to each other about something other than a man for at least two lines of dialogue that's our bar my favorite and so this is just a jumping out point for discussion so i can already say this movie passes the bechdel test but one of my favorite passes is when it's lupita nyonga and uh elizabeth moss talking to each other

about how lupita doesn't really want to talk to her. Elizabeth Moss is like, oh, okay, totally. I'm like, that's a pass. She's like, are you okay, Lupita? And she's just like, I'm not good at talking. I don't really want to talk to you. Right. It was one of my favorite passes of this movie or really of the cast at all.

Like, you know, two women agreeing that they don't really want to talk right now. That's a pass. Yeah. And we're so excited to bring back a much beloved guest for a movie that she was really excited to talk about. That is a much requested movie on the cast. The movie, of course, being us, Jordan Peele's Us from 2019. And the guest, of course, being writer, actor, co-host of the podcast Popcorn Book Club, and recent guest on our Cheetah Girls episode.

It's Karama Dankwa. Hello and welcome back. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me back. I am so excited. jamie said i was very excited to talk about this movie i think i sent you an email with seven different us is on it i was like i could talk about any of these movies also us and this movie and also us and i know i don't know us maybe so and it's been a movie that has been requested by listeners since before it came

out. So we are we are so excited that you're back. Welcome back. How are you? I am good. I am, you know, here, which is more than a lot of people can say. And I'm very happy for that have not been killed by an evil doppelganger or a coronavirus yet. So knock on wood, knock on wood, that keeps being true. So tell us, what is your relationship with the film Us? Why of the list that you provided, was it on there seven times? Well, I saw Us. I would just like to shout out my friend, Mike. He took me with him to an advanced screening saw Us. I would just like to shout out my friend Mike.

He took me with him to an advanced screening of Us. So I got to see it before it was officially released to the public. He works at BuzzFeed. So they had like a little screening thing for BuzzFeed people. And he was like, do you want to be my plus one? And I'm like, good. Because if you would ask one of your white friends, I would have felt funny. So I got to see, I think it was like a couple of weeks before it was released to the public and I was just struck by and I love horror and growing up as a black

person not seeing myself in a ton of horror or seeing myself as like definitely never a final girl in horror uh sucked um like I think scream I love scream that's one of my favorite horror franchises i'm so excited they're making a new one because i've seen all four scream movies all three seasons of the television show which no one watched i was like i totally forgot that was a thing yeah for multiple seasons so um i think scream 2 was the movie that was the only Scream movie that had any black characters in it. Yes. And they killed Jada Pinkett Smith in the cold open in the movie theater. It was a beautiful scene.

Love her. Like after acknowledging, they're like, wow, horror movies always kill the black characters right away. And then the black characters get killed right away. Immediate, like four seconds after they're done saying that sentence. So just Jordan Peele bringing Black horror sort of to the forefront of the horror conversation is exciting. And like, I feel like this much more than Get Out leans into horror more than comedy, though he is sort of on the line of both, which I think is great. And I love that tradition, which is one of the reasons I like the Scream franchise so much.

Yeah, so I'm excited about talking about black horror. And I love Lupita Nyong'o just always forever. And so yeah, I just love everything about this movie. And it's there. They have matching jumpsuits. I mean, it's fashion forward. It's got everything. Yeah, the I mean, the tetheredethered i think i mean from a we'll talk about all the complexities but the from a fashion perspective i mean hands down you gotta admire it we deserve to die for not coordinating our outfits just like on that basis alone it's like yeah you guys underground and they got it together yeah how how'd they do that where'd they get them that is my main question like i have a lot of questions i do think that it's hard to talk about this movie without talking about get out because it was like everybody's comparing it to get out and get out

was so critically acclaimed and i think that it is not as good of a movie as get out in terms of it's not as tight but i like it better. Interesting. Yeah, I'm really excited. It's weird because it's like, because especially when it's like a director's second movie, it's impossible to not be tempted to compare it to the first. But in terms, I mean, the conversation surrounding the two movies were also very, very different in ways that I think are really interesting and excited to get into it. Kimmy, what's your? Oh, wow. We're us. It's us. and excited to get into it. Kimmy, what's your?

Wow, we're us. It's us. I saw this movie shortly after it came out. I saw it in theaters twice because I was really confused the first time and then did a little bit of reading, a little bit of research, and then was really excited to go back and see it again. And then when it hit streaming, I think this was the fourth or fifth time i've

watched this movie it is a very rewarding movie on the rewatch i think like yes it really is i watched it in theaters three times i think and then i've watched it again like four or five times since so i've seen it almost 10 and it's like every time it is so I don't know like I really respect especially like a director that can put a lot of references in their work without like feeling like they're being like thrown at you and you're being bashed like it doesn't feel like a Gilmore Girls episode kind of level of we're just like okay I love the chud reference right right like but they're but they're so subtle and like there's a goonies reference but if you haven't seen the goonies you don't

really lose anything like i just i don't know i think his style of writing in this movie in particular is really layered and cool and i like saw stuff on this viewing i didn't realize on the first and yeah i'm a big fan what about you, Caitlin? I also saw it numerous times in theaters. The first time was with Jamie, our mutual friend, Bryant. We had to go to one of my favorite bars that I haven't been to in what feels like years now for obvious reasons. But afterwards, we were like, there's so much to talk about. So we went to this bar and uh talked about the movie for like three hours and we were just like what did we just watch what did it all mean god i missed

doing that i know and then i saw it again in theaters with my friend nolan and you know we had a similar like hours long discussion afterward and both times and I've also seen it about, I think, four times now. Here's the thing, I'll be completely honest about this. I really, really like this movie for the first 90% of it. And then the last 10-15 minutes or so, and this is completely from a screenwriting standpoint, it loses me. I think some choices were made in the writing. I think this is completely from a screenwriting standpoint it it loses me i think some choices were made in the writing i think this is a movie that you didn't need to explain where the tethered come from or what the origins are and like different like like i think it would have served the story a little bit better if we had just not been given any explanation of the

origins and and maybe that actually does something to mess up the intent of the allegory and stuff like that i'm not totally sure because i also don't really know what the allegory is supposed to be entirely and i don't think a lot of people know exactly because there's so many interpretations um but from a strictly screenwriting point of view i was like oh man i don't like that they tried to explain some of the stuff that I felt could have just been left unexplained. But for the first, again, 90% of the movie, I'm like, this is awesome. I love this family. I love their journey.

I've come around on the ending. This was the first viewing where I'm like, I think, because I felt the same way that you did. But then I like weirdly turned a corner at some point where maybe I was reading. I read a lot of new analysis that had come out since I last was seeking out analysis on this movie. I don't know. I'm excited to talk about it because I've turned a corner on the ending of the movie. And now I'm pro. I'm 50-50. I think it depends on the day. On a Tuesday, I'm like, yeah, this is a great day i'm like yeah on a tuesday i'm like yeah this is a

great ending but catch me on a thursday who knows who knows exactly this was also the first viewing of the movie too where i like i had never really sought out any information on the music of this movie but the the story of like how the music was composed is really interesting as well michael ables is an incredible composer. I love him. I think he's great. One of my friends actually wrote a movie that Michael Ables did the music for that came out in April. Yeah, it's called Bad Education.

It's on HBO. Oh, I've seen that movie. Yeah, yeah. That movie is awesome. Yeah, my friend Mike, different Mike than took me to this movie, though I did see Get Out with the Mike who wrote Bad Education. Yeah, my friend Mike wrote it. He's incredible. Love him to death. Oh, that's so everyone should watch Bad Education. I really enjoyed it. That's so cool. Nice.

But yeah, Michael Ables is just like a genius. Yeah, it's amazing. Like we're, I don't know, like I, we don't talk about scoring very often on our feminist movie podcast which i guess fair enough but there is like there's just so much to talk about about how where he was pulling from and like i was i was like oh what are they saying in in the in the theme and it's nonsense it's nothing he made he made it up like i don't know there's so much cool stuff. Well, should we dive in with the recap? Let's do it. All right. So we open with text on the screen saying that there are thousands of miles of underground tunnels in the U.S.

There are abandoned subways, service routes, mine shafts, and then others that have no known purpose at all. I love it. Except to be where the tethered live. Every time I watch the movie, I forget that that's the beginning because my brain has to forget that so that I can walk around on top of these tunnels. That's true, yeah. Now it's like that every time you watch it,

it's like you think about that non-step for a week and then it just kind of leaves you. Until the next time and you're like, oh no, the tunnels. Because is that true? Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah, there are a lot.

I actually did some reading on tunnels and right around the time the movie came out, there was a book that was released. I can't remember the author. I didn't write it down because I was like, I'll remember. Sure. But it's called Underground and then it has a subtitle and it talks about all of

the various tunnels that exist under major cities that are not being used. And I shouldn't say are not being used. A lot of them are actually being occupied by people who are experiencing homelessness. And some some of them are in New York City. Some of them are in Chicago. There's some in Los Angeles. And I was like, no, don't tell me that. Like in downtown Los Angeles, there are tunnels that were possibly used by bootleggers, but were the original subway in Los Angeles before it shut down. And then they made a new subway. So the original red line tunnels are just abandoned. And I didn't know that.

I'm so curious how one would even get to one of these tunnels and figure that out. Right. Right. You go down an escalator that is on the other side of the door at a fun house of mirrors. A well-maintained escalator. I love the escalator shot so much. Oh, goodness. Wow.

Yeah. So anyway, that's the opening. Then we cut to a close-up on like an 80s style tv we see an ad for hands across america and then we meet a little girl adelaide aka addie the cutest child oh i know shout out to all the child actors in this movie because they all do a terrific job incredible yeah so good and and it also made me just appreciate jordan peele's directing again where i know that he pulls a lot from kubrick who is like so notoriously a shitty person towards actors but you can just tell like there were even certain shots because i think i've just like seen this movie enough times to notice the shot changes and stuff

where you're like oh if that was kubrick he would have just let that kid walk into a mirror but Jordan Peele cuts to another shot and is like don't hurt yourself it's okay like I don't that was I don't know why I extra noticed that this time yeah so so we we meet Addie it's 1986 which is the year I was born. Thank you so much, everybody. Yes, actually, Hands Across America happened like a week after I was born. I've just remembered how close you were born to Robert Pattinson as well. And I was just googling Robert Pattinson last night. Wait, is he my age? Yeah, I think he was born like the week, the same week as you. Oh my god. Robert!

Did he do hands across america also winston duke is like is my age he's he's actually a few months younger than me you three should hang out i will say that was the one thing for me where winston duke and lupita nyong'o do not seem old enough to have a teenage daughter yes i agree like on the first like four watches i didn't think about it and then afterwards afterwards, I was like, wait a second. Yeah, wait, Robert Pattinson, May 13th, 86. Whoa. Amazing. He's like four days older than me then.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Robert, let's get married. Because that's how you know if you're compatible with someone, you have similar birthdays. Okay. That's astrology. So Addie is with her parents at like the boardwalk, like carnival-y area in Santa Cruz, California. She wanders off and goes into this creepy house of mirrors where she encounters another little girl who appears to look exactly like her. And we're like, and then smash cut to a close-up of a rabbit. And there's like this creepy chanting. And then we pull out to show hundreds of rabbits.

That was the coolest scene to see in the theater ever. Because you're not expecting it. And you're just like, oh my God, there's more rabbits. And then there's even more rabbits. And it's so long. It's like they're telling you you're going to go down a rabbit hole. Wowee. I had a lot of fun looking for like this really deep layered symbolism of the rabbits, which I did find.

There's been a lot of writing about it. But all I've been able to find from Jordan Peele is he's just like, I am personally afraid of rabbits. You're like, oh, cool. It doesn't always have to mean something. No, cool. It doesn't always have to mean something. No, sometimes. Sometimes Alfonso Cuaron is like, the reason that green is a prominent color in The Little Princess is because I like the color green. The end.

You're like, oh, yeah, it's your movie. I guess you could do whatever you want. Okay, the rabbits. And then we cut to adult Adelaide, who's played by Lupita Nyong'o, and she has a husband, Gabe, that's Winston Duke, a teenage daughter, Zora, and a younger son, Jason. This family, the Wilsons, arrive at their summer home that is not far from Santa Cruz, California. Then we flash back to Addie as a child. Her parents have brought her to a child psychologist because she hasn't spoken since she went into this house of mirrors.

But we don't know why. We assume she's been traumatized by this interaction with this other doppelganger girl. Then we cut back to the present. The family goes to the beach in Santa Cruz. Again, it's the same one where this incident happened. They meet their friends, Kitty and Josh, played by Elizabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker. Who you don't think are going to work as a couple until they do. Until they do. It just does work. But also, I'm like they have teen elizabeth moss can't have a 17

year old daughter i don't huh whatever oh yeah i guess i don't know how old i mean she has she's had work done so i guess maybe we're supposed to think that she's older than she looks that's true not the character kitty has had work done i am not no one sue me for accusing elizabeth moss of having work done yeah because she's 38 I mean I guess if she and which means she would have been like 36 or 7 doesn't matter they have teenage twins is true Becca and Lindsay are their names so they're on the beach Jason sees this scary guy on the beach his like hand is dripping with blood Adelaide freaks out because she thinks Jason has gone missing. And there's all these other weird coincidences that are happening

with spiders and frisbees and 11-11, make a wish. I know 11-11 is bad in this. I was like, wait, it's not a junior high school student making a wish? Can't relate. Because it's a biblical reference yeah that i don't remember the exact jeremiah 11 11 and i believe it was jeremiah again i was like i'll remember that i don't need to write that one down i'm i'm oh for two i've got a little uh analysis section on the on the the bible verses because I'm not very

Bible literate myself but someone on the great wide internet was kind enough to break it down. We'll get there. I think that I'm not super Bible literate. I will say my favorite translation is definitely King James because I think it slaps and like the New International Version. I'm just like

this is boring. Where's the poetry? Where's the smiting Where's the sliding? Keep it moving. King James keeps it moving, and I appreciate that. But I think the gist of the Jeremiah 1111 passage is y'all are going to cry out, and I'm not going to do shit. Love you, God. That is, yeah, the cliff snows.

And then if you go back a verse to Jeremiah 1110, it's all like sins of the ancestors, sins of the father. And it's like for certain reads of this movie, like if you're like, oh, I think Jordan Peele may have read back a verse or two. Who knows? Jordan. Jordan. Okay, so that night they're back at home and Adelaide tells Gabe about the night that she saw a little girl who looked just like her when she was a child.

And how her whole life she felt that she's been coming for her. And that all these little coincidences that have been happening to her it feels like this person is getting closer and closer and then suddenly they lose power and then jason is like by the way there's a family in our driveway and sure enough there's a family in their driveway and this family invades the wilson home and they realize that it's them. It's Adelaide, Gabe, Zora, and Jason, but it's like scary doppelganger versions of them who are wearing red jumpsuits and carrying scissors. Now, scary doppelganger Adelaide, aka Red, explains that Adelaide and Red are tethered together. Everything that Adelaide did in her life, Red also did, but like a horrible version of it.

So instead of eating warm meals and playing with nice toys, she ate rabbits and had sharp toys. Instead of falling in love and getting married and starting a family, Red was forced to do these things. And now she wants to become untethered and the way to do that is by killing adelaide and her family the pairs of the doppelgangers kind of break off there's fighting there's chasing there are injuries there's the boat scene i love the boat oh i'm obsessed with the boat i love that the boat is called the Crawdaddy. All the boats have great names in this. Josh's boat is called the Biacht. Yes.

Like it's Biacht, but with yacht in the middle. And then I love how Winston Duke's character, Gabe, when he's like, oh, this is a home invasion. Okay, just give them what they want. Protect our bodily stuff and then just give them whatever they want. He's like, you can have the boat. And the daughter is like, dad, no one wants the boat. Oh, it's so good. Yeah.

She's like, tears are streaming down her face. She's like, shut up, dad. No one wants your boat. Okay. So there's all these altercations, but the Wilsons eventually manage to get away in the boat and they head over to josh and kitties who surprise also have scary doppelgangers who have killed that whole family so when adelaide and her family show up to josh and kitties

they have to fight scary tim heidecker and scary elizabeth moss which i think are the character names yes they do they have been given names like on imdb and like in the script but i don't think we ever hear those ones yeah it's like tex and dahlia yeah and something else so the wilsons manage to kill them and the twin daughters and stuff. And then they turn on the TV and they learn that there are many, many more of these doppelgangers. Basically, everyone alive on Earth, or at least in the U.S., seems to have a doppelganger. In the U.S. or the us? The us.

Caitlin, think about it it it makes you think and so the doppelgangers have been killing their above ground counterparts and then gathering and holding hands not unlike hands across america so the wilson family takes off they head to back to the boardwalk area because they're going to drive. The plan is to drive to Mexico along the coast. But they get interrupted because Jason, Scary Jason is there, a.k.a. Pluto. But it's a trap that enables Red to kidnap Jason. She takes him underground via the House of Mirrors.

So Adelaide goes in after him and she ends up deep underground. We see the dwelling, you know, these tunnels where the Tethered have been living. She finds Red, who explains that the Tethered are like clones or copies of people, but they don't have souls. They were there's like the illusions of this sort of like science experiment gone wrong but it was failed and the clones or the copies were abandoned but they kind of just had to live on remaining tethered to their above ground counterparts as this is happening we get flashbacks where we see yeah we're getting into the the twist is moment yes yes we're seeing like addy as a kid and red as a kid and the carnival and how they sort

of came together and met up but the tethered were like oh look at look at this little girl. She's going to be the one to save us from this misery. And Red explains how, you know, she had orchestrated this whole movement where they would rise above and kill their above ground counterparts. The untethering, she calls it. The untethering. And then you see this cool montage where they get their suits and you're like, where'd they get the suits? Where'd they get the scissors? Where'd they get their suits and you're like where'd they get the suits where they where'd they get the scissors where they get the shoes there might be manufacturing down there we don't we don't really know what the what the system is like could be and then adelaide and red fight most of the time red has the upper hand the score really shines here and then adelaide finally kills Red and rescues Jason. They're back above ground. The Wilson family reunites. And then we get a flashback where the big twist is revealed.

We see Adelaide and Red when they have met in the House of Mirrors as children. And we see that Red captured Adelaide, switched places with her, so that Addy has actually been a tethered this whole time and Red was actually little Addy the whole time. And then we zoom out and we see that the tethered are holding hands across America. And then that is the end of... They're helicopters. What are they doing? Who's piloting them?

Who? Is it tethered? I don't know. We don't know. All that and more we'll discuss. But first we're going to take a break and then we'll come right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now.

The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I fell too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case,

I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close

to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Where to begin? Where to begin?

Here's a fact that's just pure fun. Sure. You know how at the beginning, when they're on the boardwalk in the 80s, they're like, oh, I think a movie is shooting around here. It's The Lost Boys. Yes, it's The Lost boys yes it's the lost boys that is fun keifer sutherland was there i was like oh that's it that's jordan peele hides so

much cool stuff in here that i was like wait that's the last boys oh his little easter eggs which the little rabbits what if what if those are just a bunch of little easter bunnies hiding all the easter eggs around movies? You'll love to find them. So that's that. Anything else we want to discuss? Nope. The end. I found it interesting this time re-watching

it. I re-watched it twice before we talked because why not? And I realized on the second re-watch for this discussion that it was addy's birthday when they were at the boardwalk which was not something i had picked up on in any other viewing right yes because uh he's he wins her her dad wins her the thriller shirt right or she's like having to pick what prize and then her mom's like it's your birthday you do whatever you want yeah yeah i'm just like what a day what an intense birthday bad birthday it made me wonder do the tethered

have any concept of birthdays like they have to understand what they are because there's it's a mirror so whatever we're doing above ground they're doing underground so it's like they're just doing a the the like worst case scenario version so i guess that they would have worst case scenario birthdays yeah i guess so i mean red mentions christmas she's like on christmas i opened my toys and they were sharp and cold and cut my fingers when i played with them so i think they get the concept of holidays yeah but red also wasn't above ground person before so that also that's That's true. Who knows? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know anything. And I love that I don't know anything. It's so much to explore. It's like tunnels of movie reference and so many tunnels. Also in that sequence on the boardwalk, there's so I'll just go back and hit the Bible verse really quick. Well, because we were just talking about it anyways so you see an unhoused uh man on the pier holding a sign that says

jeremiah 11 11 which says uh i mean i think you honestly uh summarize it pretty well it says therefore thus sayeth the lord i will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they will cry out to me, I will not listen to them. Then if you go back a verse, it says in Jeremiah 1.10, they have returned to the sins of their ancestors who refused to listen to my words. They have followed other gods to serve them. Both Israel and Judah have broken the covenant I made with their ancestors. Don't know what the last sentence is, but the read that I feel closest to on this viewing,

and again, it's like changed over time, but the view, the read of the movie that I feel closest to on this day, I felt like finding out that verse was really helpful in kind of solidifying that. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I think before we maybe dive into the,

the nitty gritty of all the readings and the symbolism and allegories and things, I kind of wanted to touch on the way that horror movies have historically treated black people and black characters. Because you wouldn't believe it. What are you talking about? It's great. But it's been terrible.

There's a really good documentary called Horror Noir, a history of black horror that's a Shudder original documentary. So I would recommend watching that to the listeners. But it does a deep dive of this. But basically, a very brief overview of the representation of Black characters in cinema. Historically, again, has been terrible. There's a long history of Black men in particular being shown as villains who brutalize white women. A lot of that was white actors in blackface.

There is a long history of the magical Negro trope being used in horror films. There's the widely known trope that we referenced earlier that gets called out in Scream 2. And then acted out anyways. And then followed through on. Where in an ensemble horror movie where there's a bunch of people who die throughout this story there's often one black person in the cast and they are often the first to die so there's different things like that that's only kind of the tip of the iceberg so a movie like us a movie like get out a movie like the upcoming candy man i'm very excited for it while

they're not i know i'm so excited for it while they are not the first movies to subvert all of these problems they are pretty unique in that they don't fall into all these tropes and you'll never guess why it's because they are made by black filmmakers. So just wanted to, again, just acknowledge the really reprehensible history in terms of representation of black characters in horror films, because it's been real bad. Yeah. Not that non-white filmmakers have been forced to enact these tropes.

They have just continued to make the choice. And I think it's also marketing. It's like, I don't know. Are people going to go for a black final girl? Who's to say? It's like, I would. Yeah, I like those movies. I mean, yeah, it's like us and Get Out

were enormous box office successes. Yeah, I mean, it's... And Karami, you probably have more thoughts than we do because we every year when we do our month of horror we're like we don't know enough about horror i i don't want to say i'm like a horror expert i am an i'm an enjoyer of horror and i i've loved it since i was a kid uh it is not something that was handed down to me. Neither of my parents enjoy horror films. I was like, Mom, will you watch Us with me?

And she was like, no, I'm good. She saw Get Out and that was scary for her. She was like, I heard this one's scarier. And I'm like, much. And she said, no thanks. So it's interesting that I just sort of adopted that on my own and was like, yeah, this is cool.

I love the creepy crawlies and the killing and the monsters. I think that horror as a genre is great because it allows, and I think that there's a really big love of horror in a lot of Black communities, despite the treatment of Black people on screen in horror, because it is a safe space to be afraid. And, you know, two hours, this is what's going to happen. And it's very,

it's almost like law and order and procedural television where you know what the beats are going to be. Yeah. And it's like very safe and formulaic, but still good and still fresh and interesting in various ways. And like the, the different monsters that are going to come and kill you like oh this one's a haunted lake man and this one is a child molester that's

been burned and this one the one that we see all the time something that has a vagina for a head yep yep it always has a lovely little little vulva head and it's like i'm coming for you women are scary like oh my god take movies away from men today um no vulva heads in this movie and so you do have to you do have to hand it to uh the restraint of jordan peele that's true um but i mean but what is going down into underground into tunnels tunnels, but going into a vagina? Going into the earth's womb? Makes you think. What I liked, because the way that this movie plays out does inspire so much conversation.

And I feel like it is almost one of those movies that, and it seems like in interviews that Jordan Peele kind of wanted it to be like this that how you read the ending kind of like says more about you than it says about the movie which is always kind of fun and terrifying to engage with yeah but in terms of like flipping horror tropes here where horror like you're saying Karama is so built around i don't know what what scares the filmmaker and in theory for horror movies to do well what scare the audience at a certain point in time and taking the idea of the other and i watched a there's a really good analysis of this movie from the take which is just like an analysis YouTube channel, where basically they make the point that the general horror formula is to take the other

and re-oppress them by the end of the movie. So with the example of Michael Myers, he is the othered villain of this movie. And then the victory at the end is to oppress him further than he was at the beginning of the movie because he's bad cute and so what's cool and like also like scrambles your brain about this movie is that you it's unclear who like who deserves what in this where it's like the surface read

of the movie is oh we love this family they're not doing anything wrong that we're seeing that is like they're not outwardly bad people but their existence is like it's just it it fucks with your head but i do like messing around with that there is not a clear-cut hero or villain to these families. Yeah, I find the more I watch it, the less I'm sure in that pas de deux scene, which I love. I love the sort of dance read of it because, as I've told you too, I love dance movies.

I love them so much. And it's like, ooh, I get a little mini dance movie in my little scary movie. It's beautiful too. Yeah. like oh I get a little mini dance movie in the in my little scary movie it's beautiful too yeah it is gorgeous and the orchestration of this sort of classical version of I Got Five on it is just chef's kiss uh but I don't know who should win and at the end I'm like the first time watching it I was like yes amazing we beat the bad person and then i was like oh no because you get that reveal at the end and then watching it every subsequent time i'm like i don't is this good right who's good i never know how to feel i at this point i'm like i'm like team tether i love the family but i'm like if this is so like the read of the movie that i feel closest to right now is the story being like this allegory for basically like the unacknowledged

guilt of living in a colonial society and in america specifically which the more i watch this movie and the more i read the hints of that are everywhere not just in interviews Jordan Peele has done about it where he says literally quote one of the central themes in us is that we can do a good job collectively of ignoring the ramifications of privilege and he's referencing the privilege of being a modern American but even from like really early in the movie when she walks into the hall of mirrors that hall of mirrors when you look at and listen to what's happening in there is the basically cowboy american presentation of false history that we all learn um as it pertains to indigenous people

in america where it's like every lazy harmful stereotype is being laid out just in the background of this scene yeah it's called like shaman's vision quest and it's imagery of like a native and you'll feel if you're paying attention also at the end of the movie that has been changed it's now merlin's Forest or something like that. But it's still the same thing. And you can see that it was just pasted over. Yeah. And when we see Adelaide walk in, we hear this audio.

And I always watch everything with subtitles. Drag me if you want. I love subtitles. No, we're the same. Yeah. And I don't understand why people hate subtitles so much like if you don't want them that's fine but don't hate on me for using them because i get extra layers but you get information about these uh hopi myth like mythological characters and so they're like

oh we're gonna root this in this and yeah if we use these names that we barely researched, it'll be fine. And while I was doing research, because I was like, oh, who are these names? And where do they come from? I read something that said that all Hopi mythology that has been shared with non-Hopi people might just be fake stuff that they tell us, which I love. They're just like, yeah, yeah, this is what we believe. And that there is a sort of layered level of mythology where there's what's shared with outsiders and then there's stuff

that's never shared with outsiders so i find it interesting that these characters are from the like foreigner friendly version of hopi mythology that's incredible yeah i did i didn't know i mean and i honestly on my first i think like at least on my first two viewings of this i didn't really pick up on that but this time it's like another one of those things where like the subtext is there and if you engage with it it's like a more a better way to engage with the movie yeah so yeah if we're if we're reading it so I guess coming at it from the idea of it being from this entrenched, basically like there being more than one America and what we're presented with at the beginning of the movie is a very comfortable middle class life.

And then what is happening? And so I'm trying to think of the way to like articulate this correctly. But essentially, it seems like this movie is playing on, for every person that has it, that comes with a cost. You don't just get that. And the direct allegory happening here is for us to have what we have, someone that we don't know and very possibly are willfully ignoring the existence of entirely are suffering for us to

have the lifestyle that we have which is true and horrifying to consider and i really like that jordan peele writes likable characters so that it's not like oh well like these characters are like awful and suck and it's like no they're good people they love their family they're like living their lives but just like us a lot of the time just are in complete ignorance to well how do you have this lifestyle and who upholds it and whose labor affords you to have what you have. Right. Yes, I too, that is my read of the film. Because there's a few different ones that have been posited, you know, people are like, okay, is it about, you know, the socioeconomic class and privilege divide, which is like what we're talking about? There's the, is it about like the duality of one's

self as an individual? Is it about, you know, how Americans are so polarized politically at this moment during like the Trump presidency? There's a plenty of reads and I see like merit in all of them. But yeah, as far as the one that I am closest to, like you said, Jamie, is the one that I am closest to like you said Jamie is the one that we've just described I am also on board that I I think that it's the same thing I feel like you have to look at what peel is giving us and it's there's so much stuff about that native imagery like even when they're on the beach and kitty's and looking at a magazine there's an ad with a native headdress and she's like, oh, that's so pretty and just moves on from it really quickly. But I just like that stuck out to me the first time I watched it.

I was like, wait, you can't ignore that. It has to be about that, especially knowing that The Shining is a movie that Jordan Peele just absolutely adores, draws a lot of influence from. And the whole thing about that was this sort of haunted Indian burial ground trope. And this feels like a reversal of that, where instead of being cursed because you're living on top of dead indigenous people, the bad luck comes from living on top of alive people who are just like you, but speak another language that you can't understand.

And we are tethered to these indigenous people whose land we've built on top of right jordan peele i'm realizing everything i just said jordan peele has obviously said a much more intelligent version of so i just want to read a quote from him that there's a few different reasons it's kind of funny because it's i wonder if you both feel the same way. I felt like when the movie first came out, it was a little harder to find quotes where Jordan Peele was explicitly saying like, well, this is what I was trying to do because he seemed to want the audience

to have the discussion. And then, but there are like in the year since I have like read about it, he's talked about it pretty extensively. And now it feels like his thesis statement is out there where it kind of wasn't at the beginning. But to continue the quote I was reading from earlier, which is from the like DVD of us. So he says, one of the central themes in us is that we can do a good job collectively of ignoring the ramifications of privilege. I think it's the idea that we that what we feel like we deserve comes, you know, at the expense

of someone else's freedom or joy. You know, the biggest disservice we can do as a faction with a collective privilege like the United States is to presume that we deserve it and that it isn't luck that has us born where we're born. For us to have our privilege, someone suffers. That's where the tethered connection, I think, resonates the most, is that those who suffer and those who prosper are two sides of the same coin. You can never forget that.

We need to fight for the less fortunate. So that is kind of his thesis statement, which also makes the doppelganger even more resonant and cool. And it really hits on that point of like we are no different it's like what made uh Lupita who lives above ground and Lupita who lives below ground different not much to the point where when they swapped no one knew like no one noticed and it was like the circumstance that they were born into that shaped who they became in so many ways right you get the sense that it it just took red after emerging back above ground and sorry i should

yeah i keep saying upstairs lupita downstairs i get what you mean um she basically it seems like it takes her maybe a few weeks or months to assimilate but she starts dancing and she starts like i suppose learning to speak and right and then she is indistinguishable from all the other upstairs people the non-tethered you know so yeah it's just commentary on like if you are in a position of privilege if you have access to things that you need to be comfortable. You have a boat called the, what is it? The Crawdaddy. Oh, the, yeah.

The Biatch. Yeah. I always forget. That's another thing that I just like always forget. And then I see it again. I was like, oh, right. That's the name of Tim Heidecker's boat I love the competition that sort of happens between Winston Duke and Tim Heidecker and these

two families and just even above ground before we really get to the underground people the levels of privilege between them and they're both these middle-class families like there's no no one can argue that the Wilsons are not doing well they have a summer home their kids they drive a mercedes yeah their their kids are doing after school activities and magic tricks and fun things like they're okay yeah they have i love the sticker that they have on the back of the car that's like their little family sticker which i don't understand why anybody has those because then people know they can follow you and then murder your children. That's how I think. That's how the tethered found them.

They're like that. This is the family. They have the sticker and this is how we know that they live here. Yeah. They shouldn't have been giving away their coordinates like that. I think about that every time I post like back in the before times when you would post as like a comic you would just post your location every single night yeah i'm just like this would be a great way to get killed like just thinking out loud or like the the bling ring that's how the bling ring happened in real life because celebrities

would be like going on vacation and then those teenage kids from the valley were like what if we robbed paris hilton so anyway i digress um i think that i love though the difference between this white family and this black family that are ostensibly the same in that they are both living these privileged middle-class american lives but we see the sort of slight disparities and the jealousy and like the nicer boat and the newer car and stuff like that and how winston duke is just like oh i really wanna one-up him and get to him it's like i got a boat but he has flares on his boat and i don't have flares on my boat and i thought it was kind of also a fun touch that it's like the families get along but they don't seem to actually like each other that much like yeah they don't they're

not close that you get the sense that they see each other once a year when they're both vacationing together and that's it and also okay so i was thinking about this where the wilson's seem to own their family home but i think the other family of kitty and josh they're like airbnbing or like they have a timeshare or something because he says like we need to get out of here so even though it's a nicer house it's like it's almost like the illusion of them doing better because they have they're only renting this nicer house for a short amount of time because he's like oh we have to be out of here by 10 a.m tomorrow as if it's a rental versus the Wilson's owning there so it's like I don't know it's like there's a there's this illusion that they're doing better but maybe they aren't even that's

interesting I didn't read that as an Airbnb rental I read that as a kids take too long I have a meeting I need to I need to leave by 10 a.m so less as a checkout time and more as a all right you gremlins could be that um but I didn't think about it that way and I think that could be true I yeah yeah that's I suppose open to interpretation like much of the movie yeah I like the kind of like subtle friction that you see between these families where especially between the the two fathers where I don't know I mean I feel like it's something you see but especially because it's between a white middle-class family and a black middle-class family that friction there's like kind of another dimension to it as well and it's not one i've ever you'd really see in movies that much at all

that's to me gabe is a very interesting character because like was mentioned when the tethered first show up and invade their home gabe he's like trying to reason with them and saying like we don't have much here this is our summer home but you can have my wallet you can have my money we can go to an atm you can have the car you can have the boat you know he's trying to like his values are these like material possessions and that's what he thinks is going to be valuable to the tethered and they're just like i don't give a shit about your money like we're here to kill you yeah no we want to end this connection that's been happening that you've been blissfully unaware of.

Right. The friction between these two families makes me wonder how they know each other. Because I don't think it's from college, which is kind of the generic assumption. Because Winston Duke's character, Gabe, he has a Howard University sweatshirt on. And something about Tim Heidecker's character just doesn't read to me as white person who went to Howard. It just, I'm not getting that vibe. Can you imagine though, if that was the case? I would be fascinated to see that first semester, just that one. I don't want to see anything beyond

that and hope there's a transfer after that not because of white people because of that particular white person um so i was curious because like you said it seemed like they see each other annually because there's that line that uh addy has where she says you look the same as you did last year when the plastic surgery is discussed so it's like who are these people to each other and what is the positive of their relationship because it just seems like they're there to compete that is yeah like it i i really i i never really like thought about their relationships to each other too too much before preparing for this episode and even it's like the kids clearly have no interest in each other the twins only talk to

each other they're like jason's weird yeah they're they're clearly not even like summertime friends and zora like has her headphones in she has no interest in the chaotic Heidecker twins or whatever so it is like it is and also it's kind of she does not hesitate to kill the shit out of them when they're it felt like she liked it

she definitely was like getting some sort of catharsis from killing these twins I i mean based on what we see of those twins i get it yeah yeah yeah and and the relationship between um adelaide and kitty i also think is pretty interesting where i mean again it's like they don't have I think Kitty is like kind of doing a fakey attempt to connect with Adelaide um and I kind of appreciate how Adelaide's like yeah I don't yeah we don't have to be chatting right now yeah but I like I thought it was kind of cool that there was some commentary into how particularly Kitty's story plays out.

I feel like more so than anyone else in the Tyler family. I feel like Kitty is the one character that you kind of see something in her tether that is reflective of like, oh, if we're seeing this as like the haves and the have-nots on which America is built. The scene where Kitty's tetherether whose name is dahlia dahlia pretty name uh so dahlia has this moment where we heard earlier that kitty has had like some work done whatever judgment isn't passed either way but it just is a fact um but then um Dahlia who has been playing out

the actions of Kitty her entire existence we're assuming like finally has that moment of like holding that lip gloss and it looks really scary and like Elizabeth Moss is scary as hell in this role and I just I love her she I really like her in this movie as well but you get that moment of like oh this is what I have been suffering for is for this other woman to look like this and then you see her cut her face open which I'm pretty sure is a reference to Kitty's procedures and like it all it every time I look at that scene, I'm like, okay, girl joker, we get it. But like, you want to know how I got these scars? But it is a little bit girl joker the way it plays out.

Yeah. Oh, it is very girl joker, like very Dark Knight girl joker. But I, yeah, noticing the scars on her face the second time I watched the movie, I was like, oh, she had to do her own plastic surgery underground. That's terrifying. Right. And I always get a little like iffy around male filmmakers making comments on women getting plastic surgery. But it didn't feel I don't know. I don't know.

I didn't end up being really bothered by it in this particular movie. It didn't feel to me like a judgment of plastic surgery. It felt more of a judgment on these layers and how if you choose to do this to yourself, do you think about the consequence to the other person? So it was less about like objective surgery, bad surgery, good and more consequences, bad thinking and conscientiousness good. Good. Right. Let's take another quick break and then we'll come right back.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad free subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel available exclusively on Apple Podcasts i felt too seen um dragged uh i'm n, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown.

I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in.

Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.

The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I wanted to talk a bit about just kind of like the characters as individuals,

starting with Addieie coming at it just from a what do the characters do in the story as it pertains to like their actions in the context of being in this horror movie because and we've talked about this on various episodes in the past where women in horror movies will kind of be stripped of agency a lot of the time or they'll be and again I'm always like worried about sounding victim blaming when I talk about this but they'll they'll be like kind of flailing around and there's a killer right there and they seem completely oblivious of their impending doom and just like different things like that, where female characters are often just written to seem oblivious of their surroundings for whatever reason,

and then they get killed about it. So this is sort of what we're used to seeing as horror going audiences. So that you have Addie taking charge and making active choices and knowing what danger she's in and knowing, anticipating what's going to happen. And we see her fighting and we see her, you know, knowing that there's this scary family outside. Let's call the cops immediately meanwhile Gabe is like no I'm gonna go out there I'm gonna exert my you know masculinity at them and maybe scare them off and then that doesn't work so then he goes out again this time with a weapon breaks his leg and gets his knee broken right so like meanwhile like Addie's like I've

already called the cops and we know that that's not going to do anything of course and then of course that they cops never show up in this movie well i think they all got stabbed by tethers in the cops defense like there was a lot happening i think that all if it had just been one family that had tethers come and i think the cops maybe would have come eventually. Eventually. Yeah. Like two hours later, perhaps.

But I, I do think it is cool. And especially the, the dynamic between Gabe and Adelaide, where I think that he has, and we were kind of talking about it with how he relates to Tim Heidecker's character, but he definitely has like this need to appear to be

the dominant figure in the family when if you know the second you watch the family interact you know that Adelaide is the one that makes the decisions and the way their relationship is is like she doesn't necessarily need the credit for making the decisions but she's making them and that is like how how the story plays out down to like those subtle moments that happen between uh Gabe and Adelaide and then also happens uh right before the tethers arrive at the other house at the Tyler house where uh wife goes to her husband and says something isn't right I know something isn't right something is going to go wrong and then the husband is like baby baby baby relax everything's fine everything's great it's good let's listen to the beach boys and or let's just go to sleep or whatever it is and

which is i mean i guess kind of like a horror classic of like don't believe women and then immediately get killed or injured. Yeah. Which I, there's a converse of that between Adelaide and Gabe, which I found was, I thought was really interesting, and thought was handled better than what we see in most movies. Where, so, you know, a lot of movies will have something that happens out of this world, and that would be difficult to believe probably by most people. It happens to the character, the character tells someone else about it. And then because it is difficult to believe the other characters always like,

I don't believe you. And I, and classic. Yep. Amazing performance by me. Thank you so much. This happens with Adelaide where she's like gabe i as a kid i had this experience i feel like this person is coming after me she's i feel like she's getting closer and he's a little dismissive where he's like well you know you were in a house of mirrors are you sure it wasn't your reflection and she's like no it was real she's explaining all this stuff and then she realized she's like you don't believe me and he's like i it was real she's explaining all this stuff and then she realized she's like you don't believe me and he's like i do i'm just processing and i can't believe you kept this inside for so long and then he makes a really joke in bad taste about it like a domestic violence

joke and then he's like oh that was a bad joke sorry just trying to lighten the mood and i feel like that i just liked that exchange because in most cases you just get like you'd be like i don't believe you you're being hysterical or whatever and then there's no possible way that happened what are you crazy should i call the doctor the yellow wallpaper yeah but then gabe gabe comes at it i feel like because caitlin and i have talked about this a bunch of like how sometimes when a male character is being dismissive towards a woman or being kind of cruel whether they mean to or not that it's presented in a very broad way that a male viewer could not really see themselves in but in this it's like i mean i've been in that type of situation recently of just like someone

being like that's okay no it's like what i don't know what it's called a soft neg i don't know what i would call this situation sure but but something that is certainly recognizable behavior so he's not dismissive but he is he's like he says he's processing he's trying to figure out what this could have been and then two seconds later he would have to realize that she is was telling the truth and this did happen to her because who shows up on their doorstep but a family that looks exactly like them so yeah i, I just I thought that was interesting that way that was handled. It felt like it was handled with a lot more nuance than it normally is. So I appreciated that. And Winston Duke just is great. He's so he's like

the funniest performer, like just he's great. He's amazing. but in terms of adelaide making decisions and not needing credit for them i thought that was spot on and uh we see sort of a reversal from that when they're in josh and kitty's house and he's like we should stay here we've got the backup generator we've got food we're safe and she's like really are we safe you don't get to make the decisions anymore and she's like look i've been making decisions't get to make the decisions anymore and she's like look i've been making decisions and i've been fine with letting you think that it's happening but she's just like this is enough i'm not gonna die for your masculinity we're gonna take my advice we're going to mexico because his pitch was like let's do home alone let's set some traps oh my god

do a home alone thing and she's's like, really? Did you just really reference Home Alone right now? And then of course, the kids are like, what's Home Alone? What are micro machines? Yeah, the kids are like, we are young. That is old. What is reference? It's like, really? You don't know what Home Alone is. Everyone knows what Home Alone is. I was working with a kid once who was in i think ninth grade last year so he's like 16 had never seen the little mermaid had never heard of the little mermaid so oh yeah and i was astonished explode yeah i was like what this is classic but it's also very old at this point it's dated yeah it's generating damn we are old. So I believe they didn't know what Home Alone was.

There is. And then on the inverse of that, I like how, I mean, I think the child actors in this movie are really, really talented and well directed. But even the way those characters are written, I felt like was unusual in a way I really liked where I feel because you sort of get to know who Adelaide and Gabe are pretty quickly. I liked that it seemed like their daughter kind of took after Gabe a little more and that Jason took a little more after Adelaide. I feel like that is not something you see in movies a lot. It's usually like daughter is like mother. Son is like father because gender binary where you can see i think especially

in zora you can see like both of her parents um and then in in jason to have a younger son character who is like very sensitive and seems like resembles a lot I think it's just kind of very much like how Addie was when she was a kid I thought was really cool you don't usually get to see a mother-son relationship that is like a mirror in in that way usually I feel like it's a little more gender like normative and strict about who resembles who in their actions for sure i think the fact that jason is sensitive and different in many ways is one of the reasons that this big theory has come about where jason is secretly a tethered and um i'm wondering if you were familiar with that theory and what you two thought about that. I read a little bit about it, but as soon,

I, I was reading in it in the same moment that I was also reading that Jordan Peele had completely dismissed that as a possibility. So I like, didn't even, I'm like, yeah, I don't think so.

I remember that was one of the first, I think one of the first popular theories I encountered after seeing the movie the first time and was like, wait, what? What? It's interesting. I think like, first popular theories i encountered after seeing the movie the first time and was like wait what what it's interesting i think like if you like draw that out it is kind of interesting but i think that yeah it holds very little water jordan peele was like what no stop it um but i think it's interesting that this sensitivity and difference instead of just being like a sensitive boy was like, no, he must be a nightmare person from underground who's been replaced.

So, yeah, I don't like the implications of the theory. Yeah, that's how little leeway we're willing to give young boys in our society to be sort of soft. Right. Right. Like it has be it has to be a conspiracy well speaking of some other gender normative stuff here's like one of the few things that bumped me a little bit was so they the family has decided after killing like evil josh and kitty in that family addy's like we have to be on the move again we have to leave we have to run And they realize they don't have the car keys that they need. So Addie goes back inside and she realizes that one of the twins is still alive. Now, Addie is holding a fireplace poker tool that we have seen her used before as a weapon.

She's right by the sink. And so she's realizing that one of the twins is about to like pounce on her. So she grabs a frying pan, even though she's already holding the poker, and then uses the frying pan to hit the twin with. And we've talked countless times on the podcast about how oftentimes women, if they are allowed to fight back or use a weapon at all it is often some sort of domestic item often specifically a frying pan i will argue though it's like i thought that too but then i'm like but then i was like wait a second fire poker i mean it's not it's not like as over the top as a frying pan,

but I'm like, that's kind of a household object as well. It is, but it doesn't have necessarily like the same gender implications. Right. To me, it felt a little bit more neutral. But then I was like, why would she grab a frying pan? She's already holding this weapon, which she continues to hold and fight. Like, that's how she kills. That's what she uses to fight Red with at the end and stuff.

I think that it's interesting because, yes, they are both household items. And one could argue, like, in terms of, like, goddess of the hearth. And, like, fires are also historically in some cultures very feminine and like keeping your house warm but uh the fire poker was an item of necessity that she was able to grab while she was tethered to the coffee table right and so like that she used that to extract herself from danger and then continued to use that so i was like fine with that i was like this is what you were able to grab but then having that already and then grabbing the frying pan definitely read as weird yeah because it's like you have a thing in your hand why are

you getting another weapon and it's like her signature weapon too yeah yeah so i was just like why what a weird choice especially because again i mean we could rattle off several movies right now where a woman uses a frying pan specifically we see it in tangled we see it in roger rabbit we see it in raiders of the lost ark we see it in chocolat you know like it's always in Alfred Molina's. Look, I got my little now in my recording area. I have my little Alfred Molina at the ready. Twenty five. I love Alfred Molina.

I saw him in a play when plays were still a thing. The last the last play I ever saw started Alfred Molina in it. He's great. Wait, the last play. Did you see the one in Pasadena? I did. Yeah. The father.

I saw it, too. He was so good. He was good. Wait, the last play, did you see the one in Pasadena? I did. Yeah, The Father. I saw it too. He was so good. He was good. Everyone else was okay. Everyone else was okay. I don't see a lot of live plays, but I was so glad I got to see that. It was a weird play. I don't know if I liked the play.

It was weird and sad. And ultimately, I was like, okay, I the play it was weird and sad and ultimately I was like okay I could have not seen this and felt better but it was it was well acted but anyway back to the movie um I wanted to just really quickly say something that was a reference to something I said earlier so and I because I just figured it out in real time. I was like, why does this bother me so much? And it's my criticism of female characters this way and i'll use one of the worst horror movies i've ever seen as an example a movie called the terror fire which is about a killer clown who wreaks havoc around the city and is okay specifically trying to kill this young woman and her friend i would watch it i. I will say I would watch it.

It would get a negative one zillion nipples on the Bechdel cast. Hasn't stopped us. In that movie, you see the protagonist, who is a woman, making countless choice after choice after choice of just, you as the audience would be like, why would you do that? Why would you go back into the scary warehouse where you know a killer is why would you do any of what you're doing besides running away and trying to find safety and that is the thing that i take issue with because it's like as women we are constantly on high alert for our safety right we know the dangers lurking out there and we're not just like obliviously making horrible choices all the time to go into scary warehouses where we just almost got murdered.

Right. So, yeah, like I just said, I wouldn't put one of those family stickers on my car because somebody might come and murder my family. right yeah we're all on the defensive now i'm like damn hadn't thought about that about the stickers but now i'm off them for life or i'll put a different sticker to throw them off my track yeah right right it's like we have 18 kids and we all have guns stay away so yeah so the point is like I just I get so annoyed when like, again, specifically men who are making horror movies don't even know to take into consideration the high alert that women have to be on just in everyday life, especially at night, you know, right, and then make the assumption that it's irrational at its core. Right. So that's, I just wanted to clarify, because I'm always like, oh, I sound so like victim blamey. No, I think that's one of the reasons that I like the Scream franchise so much, because Sidney Prescott is always very aware and hyper aware, and she's had multiple killers come after her.

So as each movie gets on, she becomes smarter and more creative. But it's like basically about a woman who continues to be stalked. Right. Right. And like how she fights against that as opposed to like, oh, la-di-da, I'm finding myself in this situation. Like she becomes a target for these people who become obsessed with her, especially after a film about her life is made.

So I think that that's really intriguing. Also, I love the movie Stab, which is the Scream movies inside the Scream movies. And I love that inside the movie in the fourth Scream, they have like a Stab Fest. But anyway, back to us. I love Scream. And going off what you're saying, Caitlin, I am encouraged by seeing movies like us.

And even because it's like, you know, we can't necessarily stop men from writing movies right so if we're going off of that it is nice that they seem to be getting a little bit better about at least recognizing the tropes of the genre that are irrational and harmful and have everything to do with their writing versus what the reality is i feel like another example you could point to is the new halloween movie where you know laurie laurie strode is it strode um in in the original franchise like her actions are made to seem somewhat irrational very like final girly and then in the new one you see that she's been like

living this life of fear and like what are the ramifications of that? And examining at least and it's I will say that horror movies, recent horror movies have done it with mixed results. But examining the PTSD aspect of being pursued by something terrifying and how that affects you psychologically i will say that i don't think i don't there's not a lot of horror movies that do it extremely well the babadook comes to mind of like one horror movie that deals with ptsd and and just like a fear really really well i thought or at least when we did the episode was that one ptsd wasn't i thought it was postpartum postpartum yeah but i mean like a form of psychological stress and trauma here in in us i it's kind of muddled for me where so we see young Addie, who actually is young Red, come up to the surface and then she's put into therapy because she's not speaking.

This is perceived to be a result of PTSD. It also appears to be a stressor on her parents' marriage, which is every child of divorce's worst fear. Although they seem to have some issues before also. Oh, yeah, because there's like, it sounds like he you know, like there's there's some drinking going on and other other stresses on the relationship. But I don't know. I'm curious of like what you both made of that plot point. I thought I felt like it was less about developing PTSD and more about setting up for the reveal. And also, I do like that it was she was gone for 15 minutes. What can happen in 15 minutes? And when we are in real time and the invasion is happening, they call the police and the police say they will be there in 15 minutes.

And we already know what is going to happen or what can happen in 15 minutes. If you're rewatching it, you're like 15 minutes is not good. You need to be there sooner. Bad things can happen. And I thought it was interesting that it was the dad who was like, what could have happened? It was only 15 minutes. And the mom was like, a lot can happen in 15 minutes. Like Addie's mom, like knows. And that's why she's so concerned for her daughter. Yeah, because they have no clue what's happened to her. And it's far worse than they could have even imagined. Like, they don't they never see their daughter again actually and the other the other read that I was and this isn't I don't have this backed up by anywhere so maybe I'm just uh my brain is just

turning into pudding over time um but I was I was thinking um just in terms of how it seems like Addie's parents like want to get her help from a therapist. But the PTSD, while it's made, I feel like it sort of ties into what the message of the movie is, where it's they're ascribing PTSD to an individual when it actually represents something that is far larger, where it's like red is representative of this whole unseen population that is being actively oppressed. And that is where this stress and trauma is coming from. And also she can't communicate with her parents and she cannot describe what the problem is.

And for self-preservation issues, even when she has the tools to communicate, she doesn't because she wants to thrive in Addie's place. And I don't know, it's dense. Here's a question. Do we think that Addie, when she is newly Addie, when she's come from underground, do we think that she has repressed the fact

that she was originally a tethered? Because I felt like that was supposed to be something we were believing yeah i thought that was how that's how i thought we were supposed to see it i don't know i was focused far more on and again maybe this is just me trying to make sense of something too hard but i was focused more on well why doesn't real Addie who has now been trapped underground and made to live among the tethered even though she is not a tethered why does she never try to escape and just go it seems like all she would have had to do is like run up an escalator that is going in the downward motion but it seemed I was like why doesn't she she knows where she comes from why doesn't she ever try to leave this terrifying place i that was curious for me too

because so the tethered are mirrors of what's going on above ground they're doing all the things that their above ground people are doing and then they switch places so when they switch places is now underground addy and tethered to above ground Addie? Because there is also the speculation that they're sharing one soul. So it's not even that they are soulless. It's that they're like, everybody's got half a soul sort of split between them. So like, is the soul stationary and it lives above ground? Like, what is, what's the deal there?

Well, that's what Red seems to explain in the when they first invade the home and she's like i was tethered to you and that's why i'm trying to become untethered so i i think but yeah i guess that that's why i don't really like the ending there's so many story logic issues that come up for me and i'm just like oh what well and the dance is the big lynchpin when she's like 14 years old and she has this dance recital where she ends up getting injured and my understanding of that was that red underground version red was able to take control during that dance and that's how she was ultimately injured because she has that line where she's like oh i peaked at 14 with her leg as a dancer and uh that's when they realized she was ultimately injured. Because she has that line where she's like, oh, I peaked at 14 with her leg as a dancer.

And that's when they realized she was special because she could control her above ground or she could break from the tethering. And I don't understand what that was because they would all have to have eventually broken from the tethering to be able to even plan this and put on these fashionable jumpsuits. Right.

So is that the moment where everything switches the ending worked for me on this viewing going with the read of the movie that i'm currently going with um in that way i feel like it really works where if you're going off of jordan peele's kind of uh thesis that this is a movie about like you you know American exceptionalism like I deserve this lifestyle this is I'm entitled to this and just kind of I don't know like exploring that fallacy of like oh there's enough there's enough prosperity to go around where the reality of what I mean I we've gotten this far without saying capitalism so sorry but like the reality of like American capitalism is that

it's designed so that there's not enough room for everybody and so for one person to prosper by this movie's logic and by a lot of reality another person has to be oppressed and suffer so in that way i felt like the swap ending works if that is supposed to be the message at the core but like logistically there's for sure i'm like hmm huh what and also there every time i do have to say it's an incredible line read from lupita nyong'o but every time Red's like we are Americans I'm like okay all right hitting it real hard there Jordan well that transitions into a talking point that I wanted to hit on which is um the use of disability equals evil in a horror movie this is an enormous widespread trope because what happened here is that Lupita revealed at some point that as inspiration for the way she made

Red's voice sound she used the symptoms of spasmodic dysphonia, which is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms of the larynx. And her revealing this received, understandably, backlash. And I'm pulling from an article in The Guardian entitled Lupita Nyong'o's Under Fire from Disability Groups for, quote, evil voice in us. So RespectAbility is a nonprofit organization that works to fight stigmas against people with disabilities. The president of RespectAbility, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, said, quote, Connecting disabilities to characters who are evil even further marginalizes people with disabilities who also have significant abilities and want to contribute to their communities just like anyone else. Dot dot dot. What is difficult for us and for the thousands of people living with

spasmodic dysphonia is this association to their voice with what might be considered haunting end quote so again this is just another movie that ascribes a disability or a characteristic of a disability to a character who is evil who is violent who murders people and this isn't just a horror movie thing this happens in action movies this happens in sci-fi movies this happens fantasy a lot basically across film in general where disability will be demonized yeah fiction across the world in every aspect disability will be demonized i will say i love how to train your dragon too because i feel like it sort of goes against that where in How to Train Your Dragon 2, has a disability, but refuses to accept that their disability is a part of who they are,

and that's why they're bad, not because of disability. I literally wept when I saw How to Train Your Dragon 2. I was like, this is beautiful. I haven't seen those movies. They're pretty good. I mean, even speaking to how disability is portrayed and the fact that the demonization of disabled people

is so normalized that Lupita Nyong'o didn't think twice about saying that. I mean, I'm glad she was called out for that, but it speaks to something that is much larger, where it's like this is a horror movie that subverts so many common pitfalls but there still wasn't really a thought of or discussion about how disability is presented by by the filmmakers or by the actors or kind of on any level which i feel like speaks to just how

cooked in it is to what is quote unquote okay to do for sure movie and Lupita apologized and I have this quote here as well she said quote it's a very marginal group of people who suffer from this which sidebar it's like well that doesn't make it okay it's almost like are you saying that that makes it okay that it's only a few number of people that are offended. Like who are this affected? But it's like, I was only going to hurt 17 people. Yeah. To continue the quote,

the thought that I would in a way offend them was not my intention. In my mind, I wasn't interested in vilifying or demonizing the condition. I crafted red with love and care as much as it was a genre specific world i really wanted to ground her in something that felt real for all that i say sorry to anyone i may have offended end quote so i don't love this apology i feel like she's the best it's kind of like well in my defense but also i'm sorry yeah but it's like love and care for who like that's such a weird thing to add that i crafted red with love and care like ah that lupita i mean i mean it's like if we're giving i don't know that was like not a great apology I heard worse but I do hope that like she's she

is going to carry this forward and I hope that you know other actors saw this and was were you know will think twice it's it's an easy it's just again it's like it's so easy to just not do this and be respectful of other people um and yeah it's not like it's usually people's intention to demonize things like this but because like you said jamie it's become so normalized that people just do it without even giving it a second thought about who would be negatively affected by these kinds of misrepresentations which is kind of fascinating because that's like what the movie is about that she's in is like how the whatever upstairs Lupita has nothing but good intentions and is trying to do well but is ignoring what is going on elsewhere

and is willfully ignorant of what's going on elsewhere and this is like I guess not a one-to-one example but a microcosm but he is not even willfully ignorant I mean maybe but it's it comes down to the question of, has she repressed all of those memories of when she did live among the tethereds underground, or does she remember them? I guess I meant more just like those characters in general, not the swaps. Well, and the frustrating thing for me is that there's also

a plot-based reason for Red to have a voice like that. She gets choked. She gets choked out and dragged down there and she also has not spoken english in presumably many many years so she's been using this other language that is very throat based and she has throat injuries and like i don't understand why it had to be oh there's this disease that looks interesting for me to copy it just doesn't make sense because there's so many things that are based in the character and in the text that would make crafting that more sense right like i i don't could have just done an Andy Serkis Gollum voice or something. I love Andy Serkis.

I love Andy Serkis. Yeah, okay. Serkis Hive over here. He seems like he'd be so much fun to go to a party with and just hang out with him the whole time and talk to no one else at the party. I got to interview him a couple of years ago, and it was, I think, my favorite interview I've ever done with anyone. Just such a pleasant, smart, thoughtful. I could go on. I'd spent one hour with him and I just have carried it for like, I don't even know how long it was.

It could have been like four years ago, but I was just like, oh, he was so nice. I was so much taller than him. Exciting. The other things I had to mention were kind of, I mean, I wanted to touch on the music, not really for intersectional feminism, but just because I think it's really fascinating. The use of music and drama, like you were saying, this composer, Michael Ables.

I have no idea how it's pronounced. I just made a choice and went with it. So sorry, Michael. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Abels or Abels. I mean, his composition is incredible. He pulls from just like learning even about the music. He pulls from Tchaikovsky for that ending.

He's like blending. I got five on it with Tchaikovsky for that ending he's like blending I Got Five on it with Tchaikovsky and it's like a section of Tchaikovsky from The Nutcracker where Clara is being pulled into a mirror world so there's like that whole thing it's so smart and so cool and I also really liked um that there is a black ballerina motif in this movie. That's such a rare thing you never get to see in movies, and especially in professional ballet. That's a huge discussion that is ongoing in the ballet community. And I just love ballet in general, the dancing in this movie. It's great.

Upstairs, downstairs, it's all beautiful i loved it okay i think that that was that was just a small rant i saved for the end please thank you uh karma do you have anything else you wanted to discuss i wanted to just discuss how i think jordan peele does a really great job of integrating visual clues and like just a lot of visual symbols and 11s coming up a lot like it's the first scene the first scene on the boardwalk yes we have the 11 11 we have the people playing rock paper scissors who keep doing scissors which is also like a two there are a lot of twos and 11s throughout the movie yeah and uh it's her birthday she gets number 11 which is the thriller one which is sort of about the like real the like good michael

jackson turning into the bad michael jackson uh there's just like a lot that's happening there when she's watching the news it's like channel 11. You see the little 11s. Although they say channel seven, I think, or they say channel four, channel seven instead, but it says 11 on the screen, which was like, I was like, huh, somebody missed that or I'm missing something. No. And just like the ambulance, the ambulance that gets the Jeremiah 1111 guy at the beginning of like the current day stuff.

It's ambulance number two, which is the same ambulance that they end up getting in and driving away in in the end. There's there's so much just with 11s and twos that happens there. And like I said, the 15 minutes thing that I mentioned earlier, how that became a mirror of what can happen in 15 minutes with the disappearance at the beginning and then with the police coming in 15 minutes. Just I think that it's really cool to see him sneak all that stuff in there. And I just think it's a pretty it's pretty tight, except for like you said, Caitlin, that last like 10, 15 minutes where it's like you explain too much. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. you said caitlin that last like 10 15 minutes where it's like you explained too much yeah right right yeah i'm just like jordan do another rewrite of the end um i thought they're just going off of because i think we like vaguely referenced it at the very beginning of the episode but um something that has been coming up a lot in this year's month of horror movies is the fact that there is an

unhoused person that is dead at the or really injured at the beginning of the movie as like a warning um i think is something that we have been seeing pop up in a lot of horror movies or at least two uh out of the four we're covering this month um feature a story beat where an unhoused person is brutalized or killed as a vague plot point to keep the protagonist's story moving. We also saw this in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. And just write better. You don't have to do that.

Yeah. Agree. I think the last thing I wanted to say was that i don't know if anyone noticed addie's dad at the very beginning of the movie playing whack-a-mole and how bad he was at it he really sucked he did he wasn't moving the mallet around he was just hitting the same empty hole over the mole hole over and over again and nothing was popping out of it i'm just like sir he also stopped playing in the middle where i don't know why i got so but i was just like you just gave them two tickets to play and you're stopping in the middle you're wasting you're wasting time

and oh it was two tickets like my inner chucky cheese stan it was two tickets also to play the game two tickets it was two tickets a lot of twos a lot of twos a lot of elevens jordan peele is a terrific writer i love get out i wish the ending of us was as solid as the ending of get out but most again most of the of this like that it invites so much discussion yes for sure i just yeah i i can't wait to see more of his work. I also, I feel like Us has more rewatch value than Get Out. I feel like because there's so much that you notice different times in a way, I feel like Get Out is almost because it's so tight, you're like, oh, I see everything. It's there. Yep. Yep. Good. Okay. Got it. And with Us,

it's sort of like, oh, there's so much that I don't understand. And maybe if I watch it again, I'll understand it a little bit more. Like, I feel like there's a secret message and I don't quite have it yet. But if I watch it 18 times, maybe I'll get it. Right? Yeah, it's fun. It's cool. It's weird. Because it's like, it's the same genre as his first movie, but it's like, completely different. Like it's like completely different like it's yeah you love to see range yes you love to see range uh does this movie pass the bechdel test we already said yes it does between um addy and her daughter zora between addy and red well my question about that with red they never say red's name on camera so does she count as a

named character if they don't say the character's name that's my question well my take on that is always like even if the character isn't given a name are they narratively significant enough that they matter to the story because the name the naming caveat's always like oh are they like a barista who you see for five seconds in the movie and they don't have a name because they are not an important character? Yeah, they're an under five. Yeah. So I count any interactions between Addie and Red as passing. Fair, fair.

And as far as our nipple scale goes, zero to five nipples based on an examination of intersectional feminism. For this one, I think I would go like a three and a half. I do appreciate its exploration of class and privilege and kind of the, what is the word that I'm trying to think of? The fallacy, I think, of the American dream and things like that, as sort of like an allegorical presence in the story. I do really appreciate the way that Adelaide's character is the protagonist and the most active character, we see her do things that are, well, my brain is also pudding.

I also love how active Red is. I mean, both of Lupita's characters are like the people in charge of their respective situations, which makes sense because they're tethered together. You know, they share the same soul. But they are the ones who are making the most active choices. They are the ones who are calling the shots in whatever it is they're trying to do. Zora also we see doing a lot of fighting.

She attacks three different characters. There's at one point they're talking about like their kill counts and they're almost like kind of being like well i get to drive because i've killed the most people and she kills two uh and then she thought she killed three but then yeah she thought she had three but she actually had two that seems really funny yeah i like that you see female characters in a horror movie like knowing the danger they're in immediately, responding appropriately to that, making active choices,

doing fighting that feels appropriate to what they would be capable of doing. Nothing felt like, how does she suddenly like a martial arts master with this fire poker? Like we don't see anything like that. Noary sue stuff it's all it's all pretty grounded so yeah i uh i i just wish the ending was a little bit different um but other than that i do really enjoy this movie uh i'd give it three and a half nipples i will give two of them to lapita on the condition that she learns from her mistake of

demonizing a characteristic of a disability uh and i'll give one to the actor who played zora whose name is shahadi right joseph i think she's great exactly and i'll give my remaining half nipple to the actor who played young red slash addy and her name i also wrote it down is madison curry so uh those are my distributions i think i'm gonna go four on this movie um I yeah I mean there's there's definitely some small things and a lot of it were had a little more to do with the production than the movie itself but I mean Lupita marginalizing disabled people in that way that's uh you gotta dock it um and there I mean we discussed a few things but i think by and large i mean this movie does so many things that your average horror movie isn't doing

in terms of like you could not have a more complicated dual shared soul character than red and adelaide there's so much being examined just within these two characters and how they interact with each other like it's uh it's slightly confusing at the end but it's still it's i mean show me show me more layers i don't think it's possible uh i i i don't know I like how I guess kind of like the reflection of a lot of family dynamics of like Adelaide is very much in charge of her family but has I mean even the reflections on masculinity

that this movie has I thought were pretty effective of you know you understand why Gabe is kind of in this standoff with Tim Heidecker whose name I never remember uh Josh but it is an impediment to the family ultimately and I like the showing of masculinity in um Jason whereby being more uh sensitive and more receptive to things he sees things that uh

other characters just don't. Zora is super active. She's like one of the funniest characters, very able to call her dad out on his bullshit. I don't know. And I enjoyed most of the commentary being made with Kitty Tyler as well. I didn't really, I was touch and go on the face.

The girl Joker moment wasn't my favorite thing in the world, but I, I think, I mean, for, especially for a movie that is written and directed by a man that it's largely, I mean,

the portrayal of femininity and masculinity, I thought was really effective and cool and used to examine a larger thing pretty effectively. So I'm going to go four. I'll give one to Adelaide, one to Red, one to Zora, and then half of one to Kitty, and then the last half to little Adelaide. Sorry for cutting a nipple in half. Sometimes it must be done. I am going to, like two tethers standing together, give four nipples. Two and two?

Yep, twos. Twos everywhere. Nipple, nipple, nipple, nipple. Also, 1111 is 1111, which adds up to four. Yep. yep damn the number of nipples i'm giving it's all there uh i like the commentary and how there's an acknowledgement of the fact that we are all living on stolen land and how that is going to bite us in the butt if we do not acknowledge it and uh should be acknowledged because of the way that people are treating each other. And I would like to see less of the issues with the unhoused people and the issue with the demonization of this disability. So that's automatically a nipple off in terms of not hitting the the five nipples

but I will give a nipple to uh a shared nipple between the Lupitas uh two nipples for Shahadi Ray Joseph because I honestly every time I watch it I have to remind myself that she is one person playing two characters and not two different actors I feel like she and her tether were the most different for me it's incredible so she gets two nipples and then i'm gonna give the last nipple to uh to jason for the line kiss my anus which is a beautiful line and then zora's like where did you even learn that word he doesn't want to get in trouble for swearing, so he goes to the anatomically correct terms. And it's way grosser.

It is hilarious. I love all those characters. So those are my four nipples. Great exploration of privilege disparities and not great exploration of privilege disparities between people with disabilities and able-bodied people but you know overall good stuff good story good characters fun time hell yeah thank you for being here Karama it was so fun to have you back thank you for having me yes I'm so glad tell us where people can check out your stuff online.

You can check me out at Karama Drama, K-O-R-A-M-A, D-R-A-M-A. It rhymes for your pleasure. And I'm on Twitter and Instagram, though I do not frequently post on Instagram because it makes me sad. But Twitter's great. Follow me on Twitter. I make jokes about Batman's dick dick it's fun oh yes good hell yeah yeah uh you can follow us as well on twitter and instagram at bechtel cast you can subscribe to our patreon aka matreon it's five dollars a month it is uh two two wow two bonus episodes every month uh including access to

the entire back catalog you can do you can get our merch at tpublic.com slash the back del cast uh and we also have a face mask there so if you're looking for a fun and fashionable way to live in the scariest timeline, that's a way to do it. Yes, indeed. And now we go, we scuttle back underground and

stay tethered. I don't know. My brain is tired. Bye! Ciao! Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks.

She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus Plus channel available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you.

Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Captain's Log, Stardate 2024. We're floating somewhere in the cosmos, but we've lost our map. Yeah, because you refuse to ask for directions. It's Space Jam. There are no roads.

Good point. So where are we headed? Into the unknown, of course. Join us on In Our Own World as we uncover hidden truths, navigate the depths of culture, identity, and the human spirit. With a hint of mischief. One episode at a time. Buckle up and listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. Trust us, it's out of this world.