The Bechdel Cast - Videodrome with Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

On this episode, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Melissa Lozada-Oliva talk about Videodrome! Long live the new flesh! And please order Melissa's book, Candelaria -- https://bookshop.org/p/books/candelaria-melissa-lozada-oliva/19732642?ean=9781662601804 (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @ellomelissa on Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

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if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Hey, Jamie. Yes. I'm going to try something. Okay, Caitlin. Long live the new flesh doll cast.

On the flesh doll cast on the flesh doll cast the questions asked why is there a vagina in my stomach someone remix it we don't have much time there is and that passed

that was a we should do that every time we do a body horror movie is did it pass the the flesh the flesh will test yeah is it fleshy enough i think this movie is going to be a hard yes although i honestly i mean maybe this is me being unwell okay possible i was kind of like wow i thought there would be more flesh you know the it takes a while for the flesh to get going and then it doesn't ramp up quite the way I was remembering I guess I'll talk about my history this is the kind of movie I I'd never well yeah I never I didn't see but but like whenever I watch a Cronenberg movie or a David Lynch movie or any movie that's just like it's a weird it's a weird

auteur guy I love it most of the time the Davids the Davids are out there making weird shit yeah Lynch's hit or miss for me I David Cronenberg almost never misses for me it's it's a whole lot of yes but I always picture my like I was doing it yesterday because Sarah was staying with me and I always picture my uncle trying to describe a body horror movie. And it really enhances the experience for me. So there's this guy and his television has boobs and he's motorboating it. And I'm supposed to know what the fuck is going on. And I don't it's i highly recommend just having an i do the same thing with black mirror episodes where he's

like so this guy is having sex with his computer in the port i mean that's kind of my black mirror episode internal monologue as i'm watching all of these things in that exact accent also uncle caitlin okay this and and this is a show that exists welcome to the bechdel cast yes this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the bechdel test and sometimes the flesh doll test yeah when when needed when needed simply as a jumping off point to initiate larger conversations about representation inclusivity all of that kind of stuff um what is the bechdel test though jamie well the bechdel test uh is a media metric queer crew i just created created by queer cartoonists I understand where the words were getting mixed up I just wanted to say queer so badly for some reason yeah of course okay created by queer

cartoonist Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace test a lot of versions of this test it originally appeared as a joke in an 80s comic anthology called dykes to watch out for but it's since been adopted as a way to sort of uh see how gender is treated in movies which is usually bad the version of the test we use requires that there be two people of a marginalized gender with names who talk to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue that's it low bar yeah this movie does pass in a way that i thought was funny oh i'm glad you paid attention because i didn't as per usual okay well yes it um it does but we'll we'll get there because we have to get our guest in here a returning a three-timer four-timer three yeah that means you get a hat i wish we

had this means you get a fleshy vhs tape that we'll mail to you at five we start promising that we'll get you a jacket but the jacket never materializes never comes yeah that's true anyway our guest is a writer her newest book candelaria, which is about a Guatemalan grandmother at the end of the world and how her granddaughters started it, started the apocalypse. It was just released, so you can read it and buy it and do all the things with it now. And you know her from our episodes on, is it 13 going on 30 and Spanglish? Right. Okay okay what a legacy did we also do made in manhattan no no you made that up we did cover that movie but that was with a different person all right anyway it's melissa lozada oliva hi welcome back welcome back we love her first of all tell us about your book yes it's yeah it's so good

so tell us about it um yeah so my book is it is about a guatemalan grandmother at the end of the world over the course of a day and then it goes back a year later and you see her guatemalan american loser granddaughters uh and the ways that they start the end of the world. And there is a fair amount of body horror stuff with television screens, cannibalism, unwanted pregnancies. Yeah, that's my book.

So we asked you, when you're coming on to promote the book, we asked you to send us a list of movies that felt uh candelaria adjacent and you sent martha marcy may marlene prometheus videodrome and splice so we are covering videodrome by mr david cronenberg himself what is your connection

to videodrome? When did you first see it? What's your relationship with David? Actually, I've never seen this movie before, except to come on this podcast. But my friend, Oz Rodriguez, who did Vampires vs. the Bronx. Cool. And he was like, oh, you must love Videodrome. And I was like, I don't know.

I've never seen that. And he was like, I think you would really like it because there's a lot of, there's like scenes that are similar in my book to Videodrome with TVs and flesh. So I was like, let's talk about it. That could be fun. And I, and I've, from what I've seen from the clips I've saw of Videodrome the the body horror effects are super goofy and that stuff is fun I can't wait to read it it's so good uh it's the read of the year I love it wow nice it's so and also it just I don't know it's so I love reading books where I'm like I know where they they are. I'm easy. I'm easy in that way. I was like, I know they're going to Coolidge Quarter Theater.

What? They're just like me. It's so, it's so, so good. That's so funny that you haven't, that you hadn't seen it before. Yeah. I feel like that comes up pretty frequently where everyone assumes that everyone's seen every movie on the planet and you're like no i guess that me and david cronenberg just both like the same kind of perverted stuff yeah yeah i was like i wonder why i thought of this also um yeah also i think i feel like i've seen i mean well we can talk about it i feel like movies like an ancestor for a few other horror movies like the ring and i was getting strong ring vibes from this movie because both of them are about you watch a mysterious videotape and then bad things start to happen yeah i love i love both of those i guess that this is just a

subgenre that I love. Caitlin, what's your history with Videodrome slash the David Cronenberg expanded universe? So I'm not much of a Cronenberg head. I don't mind body horror if I feel like it's there for a reason. But I feel like, at least in Videodrome, I'm like, what does a vagina in your abdomen that you put VHS tapes into have anything to do with the, like, corruption caused by the media kind of thing? I don't know that he knows. And I find that enjoyable. I had no idea what he was doing. I don't know. It's kind of fun.

It's so circuitous it reminded me of like listening to my pediatrician talk about why watching tv was bad for you when i was little and he's like and i was like why is it bad he's like it's just it just is definitely not good right so i don't really know why the body horror is present I know why it is in something like the fly which I've seen and I haven't seen that one in a while I also hadn't seen Videodrome in a really long time I watched a handful of actually probably only two Cronenberg movies in college and then I was like I don't think this is for me so I didn't watch any others but I have a limited experience with Cronenberg but I had seen Videodrome and I really only remembered the abdomen vagina VCR and the bulging TV that like throbs and is horny and that's pretty much it i love the horny tv jimmy what's your

history with cronenberg in general and video drome so i haven't seen i had not seen video drome uh so i'm not i don't know i'd like letterbox users do not come for me you can like a director and not see every single fucking thing they've made it scares me i'm so afraid of movie fans um anyways scary yeah but uh i i'm a david kronenberg fan i'd see i mean i'd seen the fly i'd seen shivers i'd seen both crimes of the futures i'd seen a movie of his that i don't think people talk about very much and i just i don't remember if it's good but i definitely remember being affected by it Dead Ringers have either of you seen that one no oh it is uh it's Jeremy Irons and Genevieve Bujold I don't know who that is uh but they play twin twin gynecologists oh my god and it's just like the most cronenberg thing of all time because it

they you just start at gyneco like you don't need to like go through leap through any hoops to get to where he wants you to be sure um i love body horror i don't need a reason for it really i do think cronenberg is so um so mommy like in the way that like where you're like well I think that that's where his problems lie that's my guess it seems like maybe he has some things to work through um and and maybe he hasn't but it's been fun to watch yeah I liked Videodrome I love that it's gross I love that it's short. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

I do like that. Love the horny TV. And I think my general opinion is I felt like the back half of the movie moved way slower because I don't care about the James Woods character. I care about all of the women that he's meeting that call him ugly. I liked that part the best. But then you get the horny TV at the end. So,

you know, it's like, it's worth, it's worth, it's worth the ride. I was like, why does this guy look so familiar? And I realized he played Hercules and I think,

or not, he played Hades in Hercules. Yes. And I think they modeled his face. And to kind of look... Yeah. He's the... I mean, he is the absolute worst as a person.

Oh, really? Yes. Yeah. He has horrible politics, just a troll, a ghoul of a man. And I also just hate him as a performer. Him and Kevin Costner... I liked him as Hades. ...are just...

If they're in a movie, I won't see it because of them i just hate seeing them on screen i don't know which one is kevin costner i can't i mix up all my kevins i know i like cline i mean obviously no no to spacey but uh i think i like cline i like kevin cline it's my kevin yeah well and then of course kevin lemon oh my god kevin the minion yeah he belongs in he's an actor named kevin i'm being ridiculous no you're not kevin klein yeah right um kevin lemon young now we're talking yeah okay okay let's talk about video drome the movie by david crenberg that came out in 1983. Thank you.

You're so welcome. And before we do that, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk about it. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right?

Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost.

Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music.

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Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. And we're back and here is the recap for video drone we meet max ren that's james woods he's the president of a toronto-based tv station 83, which shows kind of anything ranging from softcore porn to violent smut type stuff. And we see him going around wanting to buy various videos to put on his channel. Some of it he feels is too soft and not tacky enough. I'm just like, can you do like, could you do this in Canada? Is it a Canada thing? I feel like on American TV, this would not fly. I'm not.

Can you show snuff movies on TV in Canada? I doubt it. I think this is just like, it takes place in a world where porn is easily accessible on television oh i love i love a strange and ominous distant near future oh yeah it's nice yeah okay so this is a canada where you can show snuff films on tv and james wood's job is to find the scariest ones yes yes yes and so max wren finds a show called videodrome where a woman is being tortured and eventually murdered and he thinks this is awesome he thinks this is a great fit for his channel 83 and i like with it once they start saying videodrome in this movie then they never stop people are saying Videodrome at least once a minute.

And it's used as a noun. It's used as an adjective. It's used as a verb as the movie goes on. They don't hear it at first. And they're like, what? And then he's like, Videodrome. And then he spells it. Wait, I took a screenshot of one part where I'm like, this is getting ridiculous in a good way.

But it was James Woods like, tell me about my Videodrome problem. And you're like, what are you talking about? I really loved it. They talk about it like it's a place. At one point, it's a brain tumor. Sometimes it's just kind of a general vibe. You just don't really know. And by the end, I'm like, I'm no clearer on what was going on with video it's

like what is videodrome but also what isn't videodrome yeah you know and that's what makes us think yeah so goofy i love it i did too so this guy harlan is helping max pirate Videodrome. And what's going on with him? He keeps calling him Patron. Yeah, right. That's kind of his thing. Yes. And he wears interesting shirts. And that's kind of all you need to know.

Oh, actually, no, there's a good twist with him later. There is. They think Videodrome is coming from Malaysia, but then they realize it's coming from Pittsburgh shout out to western Pennsylvania oh my gosh I I'm like does Pittsburgh claim this movie right they like yeah that's where all the fucked up stuff happens if it's too fucked up for Canada it's it you gotta go to Pittsburgh I love Pittsburgh shout out the ketchup museum yes yes of course um okay so then Max is a guest on a talk show along with a guy named

Professor Brian Oblivion great character name yes and a woman named Nikki Brand played by Debbie Harry Debbie Harry. Debbie Harry. She was some cool in this. She was. I think maybe it's just her general hairstyle. When I looked at her first, I was like, is that Michelle Pfeiffer? But I think it was just her hair shape. I love when pop stars are in movies.

I do. And this was like a good pop star role because she didn't need to be amazing. Right. It's kind of like when Jennifer Lopezifer lopez was in the cell oh yes i love this whoa it's a bizarre one yeah that's like a subcategory pop pop girlies who cannot really act but if but if cast correctly it's a fun time yeah uh okay so all of these guests on this talk show are talking about erotic media and its effect and influence on society and it's making me think and we're thinking about it but max is horny and he's like hey nikki you want to go out to dinner with me he asks her on air television yeah that scene is i i i think i really liked it it's so bizarre i

had to re-watch that scene several times to be like what really weird because it's i mean it's it's interesting that like we do know say what you will about how women are portrayed in this movie and we will say things about it but we do know what everyone's job is. And everyone's job is very weird. It's so bizarre because in that scene, Nikki says the right thing and has the right values and then immediately does the opposite. And I was like, oh, I feel kind of seen by that. Right. I also know what my values are and constantly disobey them.

Right. The second I get one percent horny so not to mention because she's just like we live in an overstimulated society and i think that's bad and then he's like well what about that red dress you're wearing you hypocrite and i'm like excuse me and then she's like yeah i the red dress is a bit much like oh my god I thought I really appreciated the uh the host of the show I thought she she was really trying to keep things on track while James would yeah the guest like was being actively sexually harassed but was like no this is cool and poor poor Rina she's just trying to keep things she's she's talking to a

dead guy on a videotape doesn't even know it reena is just in it she's trying to say that sex and violence on television in canada is not good yeah damn anyway so they go on the date max and nikki and she's like let's watch porn it puts me in the mood and then she puts on videodrome and despite its violent nature she really likes it yeah cut to them naked and while they're having sex or like you know i don't know hornily canoodling yeah she hornily canoodling caitlin dorante or noodler yeah swear to god i'm like i don't know if he's inside her but they are canoodling and it's horny so i was i re-watched the fly recently and i wonder is jeff goldblum's character in the fly has the you know his his mattress is basically on the

floor which makes sense with the character James Whitson I'm like all these men have beds that are very low to the ground and you would think if he owns a tv station he could he has a Ford I have to believe he has the budget for it but I'm just like what is it with all these bed frameless um protagonists yeah he must kernenberg must sleep on the floor himself oh yeah i bet he does it gets it's something something creative juices yeah i used to sleep on a mattress on the floor i feel like that is unfairly gendered where they're like oh yeah deadbeat guys like a series of like plastic tubs from ikea and i was like that's craft that's elevation it feels like a very late 2010s kind of meme of like

this guy doesn't even have a bed frame i was like look i can't talk i slept on the floor for a full year there was a mouse that crawled in my bed and then i had to sleep in the bed with my roommate who i shared a room with that's beautiful the struggle is universal if you don't have a bed frame you are seen yes anyway back to horny canoodling oh god now max cannot get videodrome out of his head and now he wants all of the shows he buys for his TV station to be more scandalous and violent like Videodrome, because he thinks that's what's next in adult entertainment. And he wants this woman who he works with, Masha, to find out who makes Videodrome so that he can acquire it legally, I guess. Okay okay Masha yeah awesome character I know why didn't we get more Masha seriously she I one of the many I'd like again one of the things that

I like about this movie is James Woods character is a scumbag who sucks and I feel like Cronenberg loses track of that because he expects us to care about him the whole time which i didn't right but whenever he encounters a woman she lets him know that he's a scumbag who isn't as hot as he thinks he is and i really liked that masha does it she's like yeah you're a little old for me yeah and debbie debbie harry she's like well this has been a fun you know two-time hookup but i'm moving to pittsburgh fuck you like you're just like good good people should bail on this guy he's the worst i also when you're talking about cronenberg's mommy problems i was like maybe masha yeah he's like oh even my mom doesn't want to hook up with me even my mom thinks i'm old yeah is there a part where he's like, ooh, we could take a shower together.

And she's like, how about this hot young waiter who's next to me? I'm going to hit on him instead. I loved Masha. I wish. Yes. More. Not enough Masha. Not enough any of the women.

Because I also. Masha, Masha, Masha. I also loved Bianca. But we'll get to her yes and i liked bridie too yes um anyway so nick and max are still hooking up and she tells him that she's going to pittsburgh to audition for videodrome but he doesn't think it's safe he He doesn't want her to do it. And then she deliberately burns herself with a cigarette to show him that she means business or something. I don't know. I don't know. He's just sort of Cronenberg-ing out in that one.

That was a fun scene to watch, too, because it just keeps cutting between them. And James Woods is like, I don't know. He's just like, stop. Stop. No, i won't stop cool awesome good job you guys good job so the next day max meets with masha again and she's like look video drum is bad news what you see on the show the torture the mutilation the murder it's not acting it's real what and then she tells him that a guy named brian oblivion is connected to videodrome in some way and he's like oh i know him i was on a talk show with him sort of with him right he's like oh actually i I was sexually harassing someone while he was talking.

So we're basically friends. We all got on a TV screen. Yeah. So then Max goes to pay a visit to Brian Oblivion. But his whole thing is that he refuses to be in the same room as people. He's only willing to be seen on a tv screen or he has his daughter bianca be his liaison and then max is like okay well mention videodrome to him and then i think he will want to talk to me then max's assistant bridie comes to his house to bring him a videotape and he's now like

hallucinating this like bizarre violent stuff he has this vision where he assaults bridie but then it's actually nikki but then he actually didn't assault anybody. We'll come back to that scene. That was, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then she leaves and then he watches the tape and on it is Professor Brian Oblivion telling him about Videodrome. And at this point they're saying Videodrome about every one second.

A lot. What's Videodrome? Oh, and the tape is breathing when he puts it in. It starts to breathe yeah it's like pulsing it's yeah great it's so fun the effects in this movie i mean it like kind of goes without saying but the effects in this movie are absolutely they are cool wonderful what did they use do you think i don't have you i haven't looked into um who does his practical effects although i when i was re-watching the fly

recently um i wonder if it's the same person because the fly won an oscar for special effects because it was whoa so i mean deserved yeah he really did turn into a fly if you recall let's see yes indeed yes i think uh i think it's the same guy, Rick Baker. Everything's so slimy. It's so good. It's slimy. It's throbbing. Throbbing, balloony. Oh, wait.

No, sorry. He did another movie that I watched recently called Rat Boy. Whoa. But that's for another day. I'm having a hard time right now. So I'm watching a lot of Rat Boy. Watching things like Rat Boy. Rat Boy.

Robert Townsend is in it he's really good it's a bit essentially yes and it came out the same year so i feel like you know the fly he was like using the same materials yeah unfortunately um did rick baker do he didn't do videodrome okay he but he did he did he did videodrome okay got it other things he's done include the exorcist he did rat boy awesome he he worked on star wars he did the thriller music video special effects um he did that freaky um beauty and the beast ron perlman tv show that i love that was hamilton yes perlman yeah i love that oh my god so goodman. I love that. Oh my God. So good. He did Gremlins 2, the new batch.

He's so prolific. Yeah. Oh my God. He did Jim Carrey Grinch. Okay, Rick Baker. Yes. He did The Haunted Mansion 2003, which we just covered. He did The Ring.

Whoa. He did. Yeah. He did Maleficent. Well, he did The ring and Videodrome and Videodrome it makes you think it all comes back together we all go through

the abdomen slit together and out Pittsburgh we wear the slits we bore in life anyways not the same guy as the fly but accomplished guy and yeah i hope that answers your question thank you um okay so we're seeing professor oblivion talk about videodrome and how

he started having hallucinations that caused a tumor in his brain not the other way around where like a tumor that he had was causing the hallucinations and then he's like and then when the doctors removed the tumor it was videodrome and then you're like what so what is no no i just thought i figured out what videodrome was now i'm back at square one it's a it's like hakuna matata it's just a feeling that's like i mean that's what's fun about david cronenberg's movies is like very often people are just saying shit they're just saying whatever they're just like all right and then we cut to the to the stomach vagina you're like yeah it makes sense um okay so then nikki shows up in this video and strangles brian oblivion and then she's like we want you max and then his tv starts throbbing

and bulging and then he makes out with it so then the lady from blondie is in the television the television has boobs it's horny you can stick your head in it i had no fucking clue what was going on five stars yep okay so then max discovers that brian oblivion died nearly a year ago that he helped to create Videodrome. But then when he realized what it did to people, he tried to shut it down. But Brian Oblivion's business partners didn't want that. So they murdered him. And then Max starts having even more visions. He hallucinates that this huge gap opens up in his abdomen aka his vagina vcr and he shoves his whole hand inside and puts a gun in there what and then it that's a i mean that's a perfect reveal yeah there's that he's just dated a gun yeah awesome i wonder if it's like the metaphor is like the video tape is just as dangerous whoa makes you think we're thinking

again i was like did i was it's so funny because you're like the intent who knows yeah yeah you just probably gotta look cool yeah yeah it wouldn't be cool if there was a gun in the stomach slit and it's like yeah it would be cool and it was I liked it but I was like yeah men gestate violence and destruction and then it's like we're just smarter than the movie probably yeah yeah i think it's just like rick could we fit a gun in yeah you think yeah or like put a videotape in the well what is it called now i just want to say slit what was it called in the video in the vcr in the in the you put the videodrome in the videodrome to watch Videodrome. Watch Videodrome. And as a result, Videodrome. And you start Videodroming all over the place.

But the action's a little bit like fucking. Yeah. And it feels all very Videodrome. Yeah. Yes. The more we talk about this movie, the more I like it, unfortunately. And the more I dislike it. So that's a classic.

Yay, a classic. Flesht out cast conversation. I had a great time. Nice. Well, glad somebody did. Okay. So then a man named Barry Convex approaches Max. And Barry Convex works for a corporation that makes video drone question mark and they also when did the were the glasses always like i was like wait when did we go to a glasses store so he's like yeah my

company manufactures and supplies eyeglasses for i think he said like developing nations or third world countries or something like that and we work with NASA to make like missiles or something I don't know the video drone yeah they work with NATO right and also they make video drone yeah and Max learns that the videos he has previously seen were just tests and that they will be launching Videodrome to the public soon. And Barry Convex wants to record one of Max's hallucinations and analyze it because he's concerned for Max and what might happen to him so then they like induce this hallucination and max has a vision where he's whipping nikki but then we pull out to reveal that he's actually whipping a tv set that has masha on it and she's like feeling the pain of being whipped. Yeah. And then suddenly he's out of the hallucination or is he?

But he's in bed. Videodrome. And that's videodrome. Classic videodrome moment. But he's in bed next to Masha who appears to be dead. So Max calls Harlan to come over and take pictures. But then Masha's body is nowhere to be found, almost as if Max also hallucinated that. So then Max goes to the video lab, where they pirate and record Videodrome because Max wants to see last night's broadcast.

I think he thinks that maybe his hallucination would be Videodrome or something. Again, don't understand. But he learns that there was no Videodrome transmitted last night. In fact, there was never a transmission of Videodrome. What? Because what was happening was harlan was playing max pre-recorded tapes to get him involved in videodrome so it's also a recruitment tool

and then barry convex shows up again and he's yeah, Videodrome is a scum show and only degenerate losers would like it. And that's why we're going to use your TV station to start broadcasting Videodrome to a wide audience. So it was like they're like, you like this? We're going to kill you. Are they trying to So it was like, they, they're like, you like this, we're gonna kill you or like, are we gonna are they trying to kill the viewers? Okay, so I didn't quite understand until I consulted scholarly journal Wikipedia. Okay. And I believe Barry Convex's goal is he wants to like put an end to this like media induced cultural decay by giving pediatricians message right and they're going to do this by giving brain tumors like terminal brain tumors to anyone who is so obsessed with sex and violence that they would watch videodrome so they're deliberately killing people who they think are like degenerates by showing them Videodrome knowing that it will kill them like I watched this movie I did not get that because it's not very clear which at least is a part of this movie's legacy is that it's I

was reading about the production history and like how the first time the original cut of the movie was like under 80 minutes long and you really could not tell what was going on and David Cronenberg I mean I really like his interviews he was like yeah I guess I cut the part where you learned that Max works at the TV station so people got really confused I do feel I don't know I don't that also wasn't clear to me on the first viewing it It took me until the second viewing to like have it come across clearly, which is so bizarre because they're talking about Videodrome all the time. But because you can't really understand what it is based on how they talk about it. You're like, well, I don't, how could I possibly, maybe my brain is too small. No, no, I think it's not super clear. It's not clear. And because those guys also like Barry Convex makes it seem like video drum is awesome until he's like, no, it's not. I want to use it to kill people.

And it's like, but wait, what? Okay, I love it. the vagina slit VCR thing in Max's abdomen opens up again and Barry Convex shoves a videotape of something. I don't know if it's Max's recorded hallucination into it or it's something else or if it's just Videodrome. What is Videodrome? Anyway, whatever's on the videotape seems to be telling Max to kill his business partners and give Channel 83 to Barry because Barry wants to use Channel 83 to broadcast Videodrome so that people will watch it and die. Yeah. So then Max reaches into his vagina VCR in his abdomen and pulls out the gun that he stored in there. It just wasn't ready before.

It was still a bun in the oven more like gun in the oven. Oh no. I knew that was going to get Caitlin. Wow. I love a pun in the oven. Also, he's kind of Gregnant a gun, if you think about it.

Yeah, the gun's name is Greg. Yeah. Okay, so he pulls the Greg the gun out. And the gun kind of permanently fuses to his hand, but only sometimes. Sometimes it's attached to his hand but only sometimes sometimes it's attached to his hand sometimes his right he just has a regular hand as soon as it's a normal gun yeah it's really confusing but i love i love the reveal when he goes to like the dance show uh shortly after he's just sitting at a table he's like then he pulls out his gun hand and you're like yeah yeah real really cool and it's fucking like slimy and like huge it looks like it really hurts i've been enjoying recently when i

before i watch a movie and something is like so dramatic but doesn't quite hit for me to just sell say like wow really cool to the screen just to take him down a peg got his ass got his ass wow really cool james wood gun hand really cool nice try yeah um i fully was watching this like that was awesome i mean it's a cool effect it is yeah um really cool okay so then max goes to his own tv station and shoots his business partners with his gun hand and then he goes to kill bianca oblivion and she's like no don't because videodrome is brainwashing you to do this. And Videodrome killed Nikki Brand. Or someone killed Nikki Brand.

But anyway, she's been dead the whole time. Yeah, I think. Which is also like, well, then how the hell do we talk about her on the fucking show? She's been dead the whole time. Videodrome, you know. Videodrome. Yeah. Okay. and i i video drum you know video drum yeah um okay and then a tv set reaches out with a fleshy hand and shoots max but it doesn't kill him it just switches the channel away from the videodrome that's you know kind of controlling his thoughts and movements and now he's compelled by the idea of death to videodrome long live the new flesh yeah yeah which is

what is he saying but also sounds cool and he says it it sounds cool yeah also it's like the first time that they've said it and there cool yeah also it's like the first time that they've said it and there's like 10 minutes left in the movie and they just keep saying it for the next 10 minutes and then you're like oh yeah that phrase we know and love and didn't just hear it 10 minutes ago yes um okay so then max goes back to harlan who puts this like fleshy, throbbing VHS tape into the vagina VCR. It's cheering, cheering. We love it. We're like, woohoo.

But his slit eats off Harlan's hand. And then Harlan explodes. Very teeth 2009 vibes. Veryy true yes then max goes to barry convex's trade show where people are dancing that's what you were talking about jamie and max shoots barry convex while he's yelling death to videodrome long live the new flesh he gets on the microphone and says it yeah and then he doesn't like drop like okay what do you say when at that trade show is this like well this weird thing happened at one point but other than that it was a lovely event

i love my new glasses yeah so he kills barry convex then Barry Convex's guts and brains are like wriggling their way out of his body. And then Max runs off and goes to the harbor and goes into this like condemned ship. And inside is another TV set and Nikki Brand is on it. And she's like, OK, you damaged Videodrome, but you didn't kill it. It still exists. And to fully destroy it, you have to move on to the next phase. Like Jesus. Which means that he has to become the new flesh and get rid of the old flesh.

A.K.A. he has to kill his human body so that he can live inside of a tv or something it was very he has risen you know yeah at the end yeah at the end i was like jesus i despise this character so much you are not gonna sell me on a christ allegory at the very end of this damn movie nice try david i don't think so five stars he died twice for our sins yeah i got uh i got our sins oh my god jesus also famously had a gun in his stomach so it makes sense um okay so max realizes what he has to do which he does he puts his gun that's fused to his hand up to his head he says long live the new flesh and then the movie cuts to black as we hear a gunshot and that's the end of the movie so let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss the videodrome and then videodrome

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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. Videodrome. We're back. It's Videodrome. Welcome to Videodrome. You're watching Videodrome, and that's messed up. Or is it? But it is. What if the Bechdel cast has the same effect on people as Videodrome and it's like brainwashing?

Or it makes them want to kill people? Let's hope not. Anyway, where do we start oh boy um well i i kind of i mean let's let's start by talking about women as we have been known to do from time to time over the years yeah yeah i think that like it's cronenberg i i was sort of reviewing the many waves of discourse that has gone around about david cronenberg's movies because they're so body horror focused because they're very often body horror focused in a way that feels like explicitly like things are happening to women or it's about women um yeah and there's been a few different ways like some i think um I read some mid 2010s discourse that argues his entire body of work is inherently misogynist which I disagree with but then there's moments where I

don't like I think I just find him confusing enough that I may be overly excusing things but there's I don't know as far as Viderome goes, I'm not like offended by anything that is being explored. I just am like, wow, this guy really has some things to figure out about how he feels about, I don't know. I don't know. What did you all think about? I guess with like the body horror specifically, and then we can sort of go character by character a stomach vagina I'd say sure I mean yeah I mean we've talked about vagina monsters in a lot of yeah movies and specifically which horror movies which he is a huge proponent of and I think that like I guess the closest you can get is with the with the various vagina monsters we've covered. It's like usually a male auteur that maybe sees a vagina as something very threatening and confusing that wants to destroy. And there's elements of that here because it's like, that is like the thing that you are inserting the tape into very Very heteronormative body horror.

In order to like destroy. But then he like uses it. It starts being this like. Freaky thing. And then it becomes him. And then the character like accepts it. And it's almost good. I don't know.

Right. Well yeah. It's like by the end of the movie. This movie is so confusing. Yeah. Because it's like there are certain. We've got a variety of slits here we've got uh the video drone slit and that that is like a source of evil and chaos but then by the end the James Wood stomach slit is a source is like what saves him but also he kills people with it so you're like I don't know I don't know i think it is safe to say that david

cronenberg's a big fan of the vagina monster there's i mean i really want to re-watch the twin gynecologist movie because um there maybe that's a patreon thing but um it's just bizarre and like i i think part of because i just re-ed The Fly as well. It's interesting that these are usually it's like the male protagonist that's undergoing the body horror physical transformation. And women suffer as a result of it. Women bear witness to it. But it's mostly like the body horror is their problem. It's not something that they are experiencing yeah yeah like at the end Nikki's like you're still changing and it's like she's talking to like a little sister getting

her period or something like there's still you're still becoming like the woman you need to be or I don't know or like Gina Davis in The Fly like she's just taking care of Jeff Goldblum as he turns into a fly, showing him compassion and sympathy and like, you know, stuff that good qualities. But it's just like, yeah, this is just her problem. And I think that that is like an interesting thing to explore. I don't think it's done particularly well in Videodrome, though. though um i guess i appreciate that because so much body horror in horror movies is at the expense of women and it's like look at this woman who is like over 50 right and or not attractive by traditional western beauty standards and therefore she's a hag who is like slimy and rotting and all the body horror is like at the expense of her like size and age. And it's just like a very heightened grossness that is attributed to or like connected with or conflated with like an older woman that's what so much of body

horror is so I appreciate that the movie isn't doing that but I think it's just I think that women are just like sort of incidental to this story in a way that makes it and so I think like yeah having and again this is like very we're like, I don't want to be overly prescriptive in describing, uh, women as inherently connected to vaginas, but it, the way that like, it's, it's bizarre to see so much vagina specific body horror while most of the women are incidental to the story. Um, You're like, it feels like having it both ways in a way that feels undercooked. I don't know.

I feel like there are some directors in their body of work where you can feel kind of an open hostility towards women. And I don't feel that in David Cronenberg's work. I think he just kind of like doesn't understand them well enough to write them. I wonder, he seems really like fascinated.

Cause I mean, I feel like I would argue that he's like i don't know having the slit is making him like a woman again not saying that having a vagina makes you a woman but it seems like he's like really fascinated by like female suffering and he's like it must be so hard to have all these holes and like things go into them and things come out of them like let's explore that and i don't understand yeah i think he's like i get the impression that he's like scared of women yeah right which is like good he should be he should be afraid of us but like i don't know it it feels like a curiosity fascination that never i mean really and even though i i'm a fan of his work he never quite he never gets it it's

so funny because it's like when you watch like a julia ducarneau movie she gets it frame one and that's but like i feel like cronenberg has like spent a lot of his career being like women what's going on there what's going on with their bodies and how am i yeah and he doesn't quite get there but i don't think it's like an offensive or for the most part at least in the space of this movie i just i'm like he's just a little all over the place with it yeah and i i guess i wish well actually caitlin speaking to your point yeah that like you see i always think of um the shining when we talk about like making a woman over 50 just inherently grotesque the scariest thing the shining the vivage

suspiria 2018 which we just discussed there's countless examples right so so many in a way that feels just like oh this is a reflection of the values of who's making it they're like oh yeah well older woman equals scary grotesque nasty but yeah i mean you have in with masha you do have an older woman in this movie who is i mean she does experience that's the tricky part because it's like Masha is just kind of generally a fabulous character and like she is not subject to the kind of like leering cruelty that you would often see older women be subject to she's almost sexualized also like yeah like she's like a cool hot horny older lady yeah but then as the movie it's the same thing with the Debbie Harry character where it feels like they're being presented pretty non-judgmentally.

But then they experience suffering later on. Well, right. So this is what I don't. I mean, well, this is what I don't get. And I also don't get everything else. But so every woman you see is brutalized at some point in the movie, either by Max Ren actually physically or it's a part of his hallucination or maybe it's always him hallucinating. But like but some of it's self-inflicted or is it just Max Ren hallucinating that because you see various like when nikki burns herself with a cigarette and or she wants max to like inflict cutting on her so i don't know what to make of any of that because the movie is also asking us the movie is like hey let's root for this guy or at least the movie is following a man who

like is obsessed with snuff film where women are being brutalized he thinks it's awesome he hears that it's real and that women are actually dying it doesn't deter him he is like yeah more of this um and then yeah you see various scenes where he assaults a woman or hallucinates that he has assaulted a woman right and but it's like it that's what it's so confusing to me that by the end we're supposed to be like yeah james woods because it felt are we like i don't i don't know that's the confusing confusing. Well, I feel like in like another David, the other David Lynch who's like Twin Peaks, that Bob character is supposed to represent

like the evils of man, you know? And I feel like maybe David Cronenberg is like, James Woods is like the evils of man. I don't know. I think he's trying to do like a pro-woman thing in this movie, but like in a really goofy way that not necessarily effective but him being like you see how bad men can be yeah well and that came that came through for me at a bunch of points but yeah it's i mean it whatever this is just like kind of classic auteur man director thing where it's like yeah this is a

pro women movie where all of the women are brutalized and uh they disappear halfway through the movie but it is very pro-women and I have proof and you're like exactly whatever but like yeah I mean I don't think that we're supposed to be like cheering for James Woods I think it's just because the movie becomes so narrowly focused on him specifically as the movie goes on because we get this spread of a lot of interesting characters but then they're you know whatever killed off brutalized we're dead the whole time all this confusing stuff yeah there are so many which is wild because there's so many interesting women in the space of this story that kind of like get lost I think Nikki I don't love her arc but she has one but it's like Masha she kind

of disappears Bianca like that sort of gets dropped a little bit I'm like bring back poor Rina the host like Bridie is just sort of a witness to violence and keep showing up for James Woods anyways there's a lot of women in this movie but they but right like they don't have and and I liked uh with the Bianca character I liked where you sort of start with her where she's you know I mean it turns out she's saying this because her dad has been dead for a year uh but she's like my father and I don't have conversations he has we have he he does monologues and like right examining that and like that father-daughter relationship and you're like that's interesting but then it kind

of gets dropped as well i don't know there was so much interesting stuff presented in this movie and i think i just was sort of bummed that it ends up zoning in on what it does because it felt like there was a lot to explore if it's if the movie is like commentary on you know the the corruption and the moral decay of society that is caused by mass media and like excessive violence and like exploited which sexuality on tv which i was like okay what is that what cronenberg is trying to say like what has he said about this movie and yeah like what his intentions are with it and i found a quote in an interview where cronen, quote, it's very hard for me to say what Videodrome is about. In a sense, I think it's totally misleading to say it's a criticism of television, or that it's an extension of network. I think he's referring to another movie he made called Network of Blood, but I also

don't know what he means by that. Anyway, back to the quote. I think it's totally misleading to say that it's a criticism of television or that it's an extension of network or something like that. It really is exploring what I've been doing all along, which is to see what happens when people go to extremes in trying to alter their total environment to the point where it comes back and starts to alter their physical selves. Unquote. I think he's referring to the movie network, which is also about TV. I thought that too, maybe. Right, exactly. So that is possibly what he meant as well. In any case, that quote is just as confusing to me as the plot of the movie. So I still don't know quite what he's saying or what his intentions were with video drum. He's just like, I just have ideas that I want to explore.

I just thought horny TV and kind of just like went from there. But it's like everyone ever left for the day and you're home all alone and you get horny because you want to watch porn. But like, what if that was like a cool smart movie um yeah i i don't that i've that's surprising to hear because i felt like that was like what the movie was circling around which i don't even think like i don't even disagree with that message it feels dated in a way where it's like i don't know sex and violence on tv is corrupting our children yeah it's very like reagan era kind of messaging and it's interesting seeing it in kind of like an artsy movie this like sort of it feels like a very like I don't know authoritative like this I remember having to

write an essay about why violence on tv was bad for me in the fifth grade in like whatever the 2000s and it's like this is just like messaging that's been coming at us forever yeah and it's I mean it's obviously a more complicated issue than that I like yeah I don't think you know young people should watch a shitload of sex and violence on tv but I think when it's like prescribed to everyone where it's like no one can watch sex and also the the fact that and i think that cronenberg i don't know maybe maybe he isn't trying to say this but like conflating sex and violence as like equally damaging images to take in because those are always the two things that are brought up as like well this is what's fucking people up and you're like i'm i'm willing to say

violence is yeah but but sex not so much right but i don't i mean apparently he didn't mean any of that in that way and so so who i don't know knows but i still think like i you know he's focused on the extreme of what people might do in response to like being influenced by sex and violence i keep thinking of the theme song for family guy where she's like violence and movies and sex on tv oh yeah we should cover family guy on this show oh my god um but i guess he's like criticizing the extreme yeah of what that might do to people but i also right i don't know i'm just like it feels like a weird oh you're you're blaming people for being corrupted by media without stopping to think like okay who is making most of mass media why are those people making this media what are their values what do they think is marketable well i think that's what

the max character is doing though right like he kind of represents the like curator right aspects of like and and the shame like i guess melissa going back to like him not being a character we're rooting for is that like he is the one that is curating all of this like with with no care about like who's going to see it it's just about profits and keeping the station on air so i feel like there is like but again it's it's it gets so muddled that it's confusing especially by the end where it's like right if he's like an i guess not even an anti-hero because we're not like i'm not on board with anything he's doing but if the movie is trying to comment on something, then why do we keep following his journey? And then it's like, okay, he has to destroy Videodrome, but it's not because of

any conclusion he draws himself. It's because like, his brainwashing just got switched over to now Bianca Oblivion is brainwashing him or kind of controlling him or something. And it's all just too. I don't know. It's just one of those movies where it's like, it's, it's too experimental almost to actually have like a clear narrative. So it's hard to analyze in any meaningful way. Yeah, it's hard to meet the movie where it's at because i have no idea where it's at i know i yeah i think it's like a part of a league of or just like a string of movies where men are concerned about technology becoming autonomous and i don't know maybe in a way technology is woman video drone right right well that's like the other thing too

is like yeah woman woman is machine yeah yeah okay um we talked a little bit about nikki i wanted to go back to her for a second because she's a very confusing character and then you're sort of told like well don't worry about how confusing it was because she was dead and so she was a hallucination so like don't worry about it the inception effect yes yes yeah i kind of thought that they like knew each other already in like a better call sol way where i was like oh they're and they're just i'm confused about like how she could have been dead the whole time if we see her in person so much it's yeah like she was on tv i'm assuming other people could see her she couldn't have been in a hallucination wait she was dead the whole time or when she went to pittsburgh not clear anyways so it is it is the inception effect where you're like well can we even talk about this character as a woman if

she strictly theoretically exists as the projection of a man right we don't really know but for the sake of doing it anyways one thing i i did like i don't know and i i probably accidental from cronenberg but how she like said like yeah there is too much sex and violence on tv and i worry about how it affects people and then she like immediately bails on anything she was saying the second that she gets horny I was like okay I've done that yeah fair enough but and then like she's you know into like sadomasochistic stuff yeah I feel like I mean I've seen that presented worse in movies where it's like at very least like in the scenes where it happens there is I was I was like okay 1983 like there is like consent involved yeah and she

says like this turns me on I want you to do this to me and so it it I don't know I think in a way that if that those conversations hadn't happened it it would have been ghoulish and stuff that we see pretty frequently. It's something that she wants. Yeah, it's something that she asks for and, you know, whatever. He's happy to do it. And that's their business. But I don't know. I just wanted to give that little crumb of like, all right, movie consent um yeah took place but i don't know exactly what the movie is saying but it also seems to be conflating like like a sadomasochistic kink with corruption yeah right yeah for sure and that she's doing this because of like she has this kink because she's been corrupted and hypnotized

and bamboozled right like it's part of the moral decay of society you can only be kinky if you've watched video drone you're like well no some people are kinky and then they go to work yeah yeah i don't know again a mixed bag. But I was surprised at consent being presented at all in a movie from the early 80s. True. And then we have I mean, we've talked about Masha. I feel like she's just like a generally underserviced character. And then she comes back to be like we she disappears and then she comes back to be abused and then she's really gone yeah bianca i think is a really interesting character who is also kind of dropped throughout the movie i don't know yeah we just had a lot of interesting beginnings right and no follow-through i mean i guess bianca comes back around because she's the one who's like i release you from your like control videodrome has over you but now you have to carry out my agenda right

death to videodrome long live the new flesh which like you know i don't know what that means but it's a woman in charge but it's active it's active yeah um yeah i mean she's like running her dad's weird business question mark after he dies i mean she's she definitely moves the plot forward quite a bit but just like like with most of the characters you're like what is going on with her like yeah despite knowing that her philosophy is long live the new flesh because i don't exactly understand what that means or what her actual values are i could not like ever get a handle on what she actually wants or what she's trying to do because she's so cryptic in the way she yeah talks right right which she takes after her father in that way yes uh but yeah i mean, I think it would have been interesting.

And again, it would have just given her more to do. And like if maybe she had had a different vision for Videodrome than her father. It wasn't just carrying out his wishes and was like had her own vision. I mean, there are so many ways that this movie could have been just as like gross and confusing and the many women we meet could have been like more meaningfully involved and it had um like moved the plot along in a more interesting way especially because like all of the i mean videodrome whatever it may be but when we see it when it's when it's the version of him watching a videotape or some like broadcast or what he thinks is a broadcast where it's a naked woman being brutalized

and it's unclear if it is acting it's unclear if it's actually real. It's unclear if this woman is like consenting to what's happening or if she's not, whatever it is, because it's so unclear, you just sort of have to maybe guess that she's being tortured against her will and then apparently murdered. And I guess my point is like because so much of the violence we see is directed at women why then do we not see like women try to rise up and fight against this or i don't know it's just like right everyone's seeing i mean speaking of oblivion brian oblivion everyone just kind of seems oblivious as to what's happening or like when for example when Masha finds out like it's not acting it's real why does she not do something to try to stop it or yeah it's it is confused yeah again it's obviously very different because

the time is different and the director is so unique and i like him a lot but like it reminds me of yeah like the wave of movies that came out post me too from famous male directors that were like all right i gotta say something but what am i gonna say and you're just for these ladies girls we've been pretty mean to them right and like just it all kind of is like even if the intent is good which it isn't always necessarily i think in cronenberg's case i don't feel animosity towards women i just like what do you really have to say yeah about you know but that's fine i don't know um is there anything else people wanted to talk about nothing that i can articulate into words because i can't understand what i saw

but fun fact so i think a couple years before this cronenberg directed a movie called scanners which was a box office success which led him to be offered return of the jedi wow people like you should direct return of the jedi because scanners was a hit and he's like no i don't want to direct any material produced by other filmmakers so he turned it down but can you imagine what a cronenberg return of the jedi would have been i cannot another fun fact um three different endings were shot i saw this movie um yes i was once again consulting scholarly journal wikipedia yeah i was too one of them was the ending we see in the film which was apparently apparently James Woods' idea. He's like, what if I shoot myself on the ship?

It's so Jeremy Strong of him. Another ending was Max, Bianca, and Nikki appear on the set of Videodrome. And Bianca and Nikki also have the slits in their abdomen out of which come like mutated sex organs like they pop out of their slits I like that more and that would have been cool um and then another ending featured an orgy where Max Bianianca and nikki have sex and there's different like i think body horror sex organs that are they're using in the orgy i feel like this is just like a really fun uh illustration of how like yeah cronenberg is just like horny he's like well here's three different horny endings and we'll just kind of see which one is the horniest i would love that if it ended with the

ladies if the ladies came back that would be yeah i mean that would be closer to what it seems like he wanted to do now that i'm like if the girls had slits do you you think Cronenberg is thinking of it as a vagina or just a slit? I don't know. I wonder if it never even occurred to him. That would be embarrassing for him. But I don't, I genuinely don't know. I like it because all of his interview, all the interviews around this, as Caitlin illustrated, are baffling and do not support what i thought he was trying to say so hilarious i don't know have you seen brand new cherry flavor no it's a

show i think i'm one of three people have seen it but there's a scene where she keeps throwing up these cats and because like a witch put a curse on her and she's i want to stop throwing up these cats like stop it and she's like fine you won't throw up any cats and then she gets a slit in her rib cage and it's like this rib cage vagina and she keeps like birthing these little cats and then eventually she gets fucked in her rib cage vagina with a hand oh it's very similar I see I love body horror so much I do too I'm like why would you do that stop I went to this medieval museum and I was like oh my god people are putting boobs on necks you know

a slit can go anywhere I mean yeah the only other thing I wanted to comment on was and I think these characters are supposed to like represent the like industry and how the values of like the entertainment industry are usually weird because it's run by cishet white men mostly um but it's those guys who are like watching that

porn in the beginning that they think is like too soft and innocent. Right. And just like the way that they're talking about like porn from East Asia and how they can like capitalize on like fetishes and stuff like that. It just like felt icky. But I think it's supposed to be icky. But no one really challenges it in the scene. So I'm not totally sure. It doesn't come back either right

well and then you have that like that exchange at the end that also felt very reagan era-y where he's like north americans are too soft yeah and i and it just felt like they were talking about stuff that super nationalistic people still talk about today of like you know everyone out east is coming for us and i'm like i don't even know if he was thinking about yeah yeah yeah it did feel the mention of nato exactly and then you're like and that's why we need to have snuff films in canada yeah and you're just like uh-huh a little convoluted a little bizarre but yeah it just felt like that scene in particular was like so 80s. And I'm not trying to suggest that I think Cronenberg feels that way.

Obviously, like the bad guys are the ones saying it. But it was just like, well, what's all this then? What is he trying to say? And then in the interviews, it seems like he's not sure. He doesn't know. However, he says that. This movie passes the Bechdel test in a fun way tell me it passes during the tv broadcast between reena and nikki oh right reena says what about it

nikki is it socially positive and she says well i think we live in overstimulated times we crave stimulation for its own sake we gorge ourselves on it we always want more whether it's tactile emotional or sexual and i think that's bad uh and that's the exchange that passes i mean james woods is there but no one is talking to or about him true but then right after that he's like that's why you hypocrite you're wearing a red dress which is like the whole like oh but what was she wearing did she was she asking for it is like the vibes that conversation gives off. That's why I thought it was a funny pass. Cause she immediately is hit on and never speaks to a woman for the rest of

the movie again, right after that exchange. It is. It's so true to life. You can pass the Bechdel test in real life and then face yourself. It's great. Relatable. Yeah. Well, what about our nipple scale though the perfect metric on which we rate a movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through

an intersectional feminist lens like but uh i'll give the movie one vagina slit and interpret that how you will. But what I mean by that is I'll give the movie one nipple because I think there is commentary to be made on the way media influences individuals and society. In fact, that is what our show is. We are commenting on that media influence. This is basically Videodrome. We are Videodrome. If you were wondering what Videodrome was the whole time, the answer is it's the Bechdel cast. But I think we usually make sense and present a clear analysis. Whereas I don't really know what Cronenberg is saying half the time. And he's often showing a bunch of brutalization of women

in a way that I don't really know what his intentions are. And yeah, just not really characterizing the women in a way that makes any sense and not letting them have fully fleshed out stories or really contribute anything to this story aside from and twist. They were dead for a long time or twist. They were a hallucination or, you know, whatever. None of it makes sense to me. And I'll give it one nipple who gets it and i'll give it to debbie harry i'm gonna i i'm gonna go two and a half on this one i um i agree with you caitlin i think that this movie is uh like kind of like i mean it's visually incredible but story-wise really messy and confusing and it sounds like Cronenberg struggled to get this movie to a place where it even sort of made sense and

it still kind of doesn't yeah but I'm gonna give it two and a half because I like the women that we meet uh I think that at least the first half of this movie I really enjoyed because you get a wide spread of women they have a wide spread of opinions we know what their jobs are they're cool it seems like the movie respects them and then in the back half that kind of goes away in a way that I found really frustrating and then tried to end on this like sort of pro-woman sort of anti-media message that fell flat because I just feel like the James Woods character is just like so repugnant that I struggled with it yeah but I think it was like an attempt to say a lot of things I think I agreed with what he was saying for the most part and I just like David Cronenberg

so I'm probably ranking it too high two and a half nipples from me I'm gonna give one to Debbie Harry I'm gonna give one to Masha and I am gonna give one to the waiter that or the half to the waiter that Masha had sex with yeah Melissa how about you um I think'm going to give it three stars and I think sorry I'm sorry three nipples I'm so sorry the stars are over the nipples

covering them up because we can't be seeing sex it's too scandalous and it'll corrupt us all and we're not in Canada and we can't see lewd stuff on local access television or whatever um i think well i think i just like i don't know if he's like the first guy to like do this but i it is interesting seeing like similar imagery like

in movies now like in cam or like even in big mouth where kid gets so like addicted to his phone that the phone starts like horny talking to him and like i found it fun for him to i like seeing him like explore these ideas of like like addiction to screen and sex and corruption and in like a almost not primitive way but just like in the it's like the beginnings of someone thinking about this and it's never like yeah only form thought but i'm like oh yeah like people are still thinking about this and you know worried about like brain damage with screens and um porn and and that kind of thing. And I also, I really liked the Debbie Harry character, the Masha character.

It was cool to see an older woman be funny and sassy. And I think, I mean, as like fogged up as it is, the scene where he's like whipping the screen and she's on it is like really auteur interesting but yeah i mean i think like i'm like what if a woman did this i think maybe it would be better yeah for sure and well it's like and i feel like cronenberg's work at least paved the way for women's body horror that i like much better I feel like without Cronenberg you probably wouldn't have a Julia Ducournau down the line absolutely true um so I appreciate it from that because yeah

I just feel like uh because she's my favorite right yeah and I think she's a lot more successful and and like talking about grand unified theory of female pain or whatever or whatever yeah or whatever um so yeah and i watched it and i was like oh yeah this is kind of a similar to my book but as a woman a woman a video drum experience i'm like oh i think i i explored it in a different way yeah but you'll have to read my book to understand what i mean and okay so the three nipples go to debbie harry and oh the the girl who wakes him up in the morning and it's like this is your oh bridey his assistant yeah yeah poor bridey she was cool and i'm gonna give one to the to the chest pussy the abdomen slit hell she so hard VCR video cassette recorder more like vagina cassette recorder hell yeah Melissa thank you so much for

coming back on the show thank you for having me again so fun oh my gosh and remind us where we can get your book and where we can find you on the internet. You can get my book wherever they're sold, preferably not Amazon, local bookstore, bookshop.org, eBay. And you can follow me at E-L-L-O Melissa on all social media platforms. Woohoo. Hell yes. You can follow us on social media platforms at Bechtel cast. You can go to our Patreon slash Matreon at patreon.com slash Bechtel cast, where you'll get two bonus episodes every single month, plus access to the back catalog of well over 100 bonus episodes and you can also get our merch at tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast with that let's pull a

gun out of our slits and videodrome. Let's videodrome all the way home. Boom, boom, boom. Bye. Bye. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.

You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit.

Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks everywhere

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