The Bechdel Cast - We Are the Best with Margaret Killjoy

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

Hate da sport! Jamie and Caitlin recruit true punk Margaret Killjoy to teach them how to play their instruments and talk Swedish youth punk masterpiece We Are The Best! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @Magpiekilljoy on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP.See 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, They're just dreams. 40th season, y'all, and we are coming along for the ride. Woo-hoo! That would be me, Devin Simone. And then there's me, Davon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Join us as we break down each episode, interview challengers, and take you behind the scenes

of this iconic season. Listen to MTV's official Challenge podcast 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 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 is desperate. 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 felt 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. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. 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.

One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. 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. On the Bechdelcast, 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 effing vast. Start changing it with the bechdel cat jamie caitlin i i want to hold the microphone and and host the podcast i i i want to do the recap what do you mean there on day one we said i was gonna do the recap and then you were gonna not do the recap and you said you were fine with that well

i was lying okay well it's too late. You can't... Damn it. You can't date my brother. You can't... But he's so cute. What about my... No, maybe... What about my dad?

He plays the clarinet. I loved clarinet. Clarinet dad. No longer passing the Bechdel test, but... Clarinet dad. Clarinet dad had me... Oh, God. I love clarinet dad. He just... I'm like, love clarinet dead he just i'm like i don't even know if he was a good parent but i loved clarinet hard to say you did laugh at them when uh the other girl's mom was like i'm gonna call the police um yeah he's like you can't call the police about a bad haircut. Anyways, I'm off to go play the clarinet.

Anyway, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus. And this is our little podcast where we have guests bring a movie that they love. And then we look at it from an intersectional feminist lens. And we use the bechdel test as a jumping off point sure and of course that is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test and there are many versions of the test the one that we use is this Two characters of a marginalized gender have to have names.

They have to speak to each other. And their conversation has to be about something other than a man. And for our purposes, we like it to be a substantial conversation. One that is many lines of dialogue and narratively meaningful. Arguments about God at the dinner table if you will uh but isn't god a man and therefore wow okay does that pass i mean i don't think not marginalized gender yeah i was i was like i mean we could really get in the weeds on on that um that that's true yeah look i don't let's not get it but you know but i'm like you know we don't have to talk about i don't assign gender to god who god is to us right and you know there's anyways okay uh today

we and and also the bechdel test is just a jumping off point for discussion. Imperfect metric. It's been a wild summer for the Bechdel test. It really has. Things have just been, the discourse, it's been wild. And, you know, leave us alone is what I would say. We're just here to talk about movies and have some fun. And we have a hell of a movie to discuss today.

And a hell of a movie to discuss today and a hell of a guest our guest is the host of cool people who did cool stuff the podcast from cool zone media and she's an author and musician and she's margaret killjoy hello welcome how are you i'm good thanks for having me on i'm really excited oh my gosh thanks for being here look we know that uh podcasts are an audio medium but i do want listeners to know that margaret has dressed for the occasion of the movie that we're talking about today which is we are the best aka oh god v vr boss are you gonna try to say this in vr boss look uh-huh i did uh i i i did a little bit of do you remember when i was doing i was trying to learn swedish duolingo for two whole months

yeah it didn't get far uh but we're covering a swedish movie today called vr boss aka we are called VR Boss, a.k.a. We Are the Best. I'm very excited to talk about it. And Margaret, what is your relationship with this movie? So I did first see this movie not all that long ago, maybe five years ago or something or so. I basically went through this period where I was like, I'm going to watch all the girl punk movies, and then kind of expanded out to like, I'm going to watch all the punk movies but and this is the one that I remember um you know

I have I have many thoughts about the representation of uh punk in in media but but we are the best like um lives up to its name in terms of representation of punk as far as I'm concerned, especially like punk girlhood. So hell yeah. Oh, I'm very curious. I know very little about that. I'm curious about your opinions and other, what are the other,

not to put you on the spot, but what are other good punk movies? So I actually think that the other best representation of punk in fiction is Green Room, which is a horror movie. Oh, I love Green Room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you all seen it? Yeah, okay. Yeah.

I think the fact that the punks in it don't dress like punks, I'm making air quotes here, and end up at some Nazi venue and then play, I don't remember if you cuss on this show or not. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yes. And then play Nazi punks fuck off if you cuss on this show or not oh yeah yeah yes and then play nazi punks fuck off to a crowd full of nazis right i feel like it's one of the punkest moments in cinema and and very much i get the sense of like okay the people who made this like know what the hell they're talking about um i can't like wildly recommend it right because this horror movie and um but it's a difficult watch and then also the fact that in green room they all secretly also really like non-punk music and like only one of them like

actually has like their favorite band of all time is punk and all the rest of them are not punk at all and i i think that is so accurate in rules um and then the other the darkest if you want to if you want to hear all of my negative thoughts about punk i think the movie suburbia is really accurate um the one that has flea from red hot chili peppers uh and his own non-actors i was fully thinking of dysterbia and that's on me so was i was okay i was like what the shia labeouf movie right no there's this no there's this movie i think it's from the 80s it's called suburbia and it's about these squatter punks in california and they're all racist and misogynist and uh from broken homes and it's very accurate in a very disturbing way um in a lot of ways and it's a lot of like non-actors in it so you get this like weird sense of realism from watching these

non-actors who kind of look like they're just being themselves and slightly awkwardly um so if i were to pick accurate representations of punk uh we are the best would be the one that i would be like look punk rules and then suburbia would be the like also it's really dark and bad sometimes i have a good to know. I didn't prepare this list. There's probably others that people are going to get mad at me for. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie?

I saw it probably also around five years ago. And I don't remember exactly what brought me to it. Maybe aside from, I i think someone just recommending it to me and saying that it was really good and that i'd probably like it and they were right uh i think this movie rules and i think it is because i can't speak to punk at all. I'm extremely un-punk, at least as far as punk music goes. I would say I'm punk in other ways, which is the maybe least punk thing to say.

I don't know. But I think it is one of the most authentic and accurate depictions of just being a 13 year old girl that I've ever seen. And like the things that you talk about with your friends, the things that you care about, the little, just like the little things you do and say,

and just like, yeah, all that stuff. When the moment where clara and whatever the punk boy are on the roof bobo's like ellis yeah and bobo is like i'm gonna jump off the roof just kidding i was like oh that it's like such an uncomfortable moment of feeling like oh no i've been that person that's like haha hey guys i'm gonna jump off the roof is this cool they're like we're leaving stop stop embarrassing uh yeah so i just loved

the depiction of of girlhood in the movie jamie what is your history and relationship with it? Very short. I had not seen this movie before. It had been recommended to me before, as have a lot of Lucas Moodison joints. But this was the first one that I've seen and I had such

a great time with it. It's so cool watching kids like Bobo and Clara such a great time with it. This is like, it's so cool watching, uh, kids like Bobo and Clara, because like I was, my dad is a huge punk fan and like I grew up with punk, but I never had the, um,

self confidence to like do it myself. Like I was like a kind of a closet punk fan where I really liked it, but I was like, aesthetically I, I fan where i really liked it but i was like aesthetically i i just i could never i can't pull it off and i like used to i know i've talked about this on the show before but like in at like this age i was like so taken by like punk kids hot topic goth kids and like juggalos and i just like i loved them all i i would i went and but i like wore a back brace when i was 13 i was like they're they'll never accept me even though they were so nice like tended to be really really nice groups of kids um but yeah i've been uh a sideline lover of um of the punk aesthetic and I loved going to like man the Boston punk scene

in the early 2010s if you were there you were there and it was beautiful um so this was so cool I wish that I had a more punk childhood um so seeing this was very awesome and also like like you're saying like just the like being a 13 year old in general is like represented in such a cringy good way here where i'm i really admire writers that can like still access that part of them i feel like i really buried it. Cause when you see it, you're like, Oh, Oh yes. Oh, this is too familiar. And I hate that. I used to be this awful way.

Yeah. It's like memories. You tend to, I was like, Oh, right. But yeah, no,

I, well, cause this was, this is directed by Lucas Moody. And adapted from a graphic novel by coco his wife his wife his wife um coco moodyson yes so um so shout out to coco who uh was really able to tap into a lot of the very uncomfortable cringyy ways that 13-year-olds behave, but in a way that's like...

I find myself when I write young characters, if I want them to seem good, I want to sand off the rough edges. And I'm like, I shouldn't. I really shouldn't. Yeah. It's like so endearing when, oh man, there's just so many bobo moments where you're just like buddy buddy yeah and how should i oh go ahead oh no you go just how hard um uh not bobo not head vague what's the third punk clara oh clara how hard clara is trying to

be so hard and so punk and she just has this loving, supportive family who just wants what's best for her and her post-punk brother who's a sellout because he's post-punk and she's just like I don't see myself in her I would have wanted to be best friends

with her. Yeah, right. I get the feeling that the writer also kind of probably is most self-insert bobo i was definitely more of a bobo myself yeah i was a bobo and i also had some notes of hedvig where i was like, no swearing. Drinking is bad for you. Stop. Clara. Man, we all want to be Clara. But then also, you know, not everyone can have a clarinet dad. It's a game changer. Also, it turns out that Coco Moodyson, what is the word I'm thinking of?

Like lemony snicket. Oh, a pseudonym? A pseudonym, yes. Wow, okay. Sorry for just throwing lemony snicket. But her first name is Hedvig. Oh. Yeah.

So I don't know. Maybe Hedvig is her insert. I don't know. Well, I know that the director is Christian. Oh, I did not know that. Interesting. Me either. I would not have guessed that necessarily.

It was in a very positive way. I get really excited when I'm not really personally attached to any particular religious affiliation, but I get really excited when people use religion as a reason to be good. Sure. And so I actually didn't know it the first time i watched it but i i did more research before i watched it this time and i was like kind of looking for that and i was like oh i totally see that hmm that makes sense i mean it's like the religion i feel like the way that religion is treated in the movie is very like even keeled and like what you see

present of Hedwig's religion seems to be like generally positive where like she just shows a lot of empathy and like doesn't you know I guess doesn't drink a whole bottle of wine when she's 13 you're like these seem like generally good things

I guess but I also love hearing clara be like uh i don't believe in god i believe in ketchup so you know a lot of points are made uh a lot of good points oh i want to say that you're you're you're worried about not being cool enough for the punk aesthetic um just to out myself as a poser i got my first punk fest in my 30s okay because i didn't think i was punk enough even though i was like a squatter who spent all of her time at punk shows i was like because i wasn't a teenage punk i was a teenage mall goth essentially um ah still very cool yeah and so uh so my mother actually I asked for one for Christmas and my mother got me a vest and then I put a patch on it

so it's never too late that is very motivating because it does feel like and then I'm like maybe this is a construction of my mind it does feel like teenagers really gatekeep the punk aesthetic but it's never too late So like teenagers really can't keep the punk aesthetic.

But it's never too late. Jamie, I think we should pivot to being punks. I would be very into that. I really would. And also the punk outfits in this movie, they're all so good. They're all, especially when the boys are trying a little too hard and the girls have it just right and uh it just it's great it's great who is ellie and they're like gatekeeping they're like yeah isn't that really kind of prog of you

yeah they call them a progger which i don't know what that meant and i forgot to look it up but i assume she's like no but i'm not sure yeah oh i thought i just was like they're in europe they're talking about the city i don't understand but but yeah i i looked it up and they're like um hey goofus they actually mean prog rock you're like oh yeah 82 that makes sense i love they i love when they bring up joy division as a pejorative like there's just so many good so many good moments it's very fun should i recap the story no i wouldn't know wait fine it would be so hot the recap i okay wait one more thing because my favorite movie growing up was school of rock like far like i just loved it so much and this movie i i love that both of these movies exist because this is like an accurate depiction of what a children's band

would be which is very bad they are not very good at their instruments so bad their song absolutely sucks i felt mean i had like an inner like i don't know if this is like my inner aunt or whatever but i'm like hedvig should go solo i don't know what she's doing hanging out with these dorks like and then i'm like wait no no no they need each other but i'm like yeah they're such a town they do they need the energy you know they do yes and and they give hedvig her edge and hedvig brings the the christ like brings the talent mediation and being able to play the guitar so yeah everyone's got there we you all we all bring something to the table it's true oh except bobo to be honest bobo you gotta love bobo but she is bobo brings heart which is like a really nice way of calling

someone a flop they're like no no no she's she's the heart we gotta have her gobo does improve at the drums later on it's true and in her descent she never wanted to play the drums and still doesn't seem to want to at the end no true oh okay so here is the recap again so not punk of me to recap the movie but here we go very joy division of you caitlin all right so we are in stockholm sweden ever heard of it in the year 1982 we meet bobo she is a 13 year old girl who is bored at her mom's birthday party so she goes into her room and she calls her best friend clara they both love punk music they've both got these punk rock haircuts and they are trying to figure out which of them is the most oppressed by their parents right who both come from supportive families but they are very typical teenagers in

the way that they have you know difficult relationships with their parents and their families and we see them not really fitting in with the other girls at school who tell them that punk is dead and they're like no it's not those uh i i they're also just like i don't know the specificity of how they wrote this movie where like clara wants to be political in the way that like punks are political but she like doesn't quite know what she's talking about but like no one around her has enough information to say she's wrong and i was like oh this is a very 13 year old experience where she's like nuclear and you're just like's the same as god yes right um okay so bobo and clara go to a youth center where they hear this band called iron fists which are like older maybe like late teens early 20s perhaps um boys who are playing and bobo and clara want to play music too

so they tell these uh the one of the adults at the youth center that they have a band and they sign up for a spot to play and the way that they bury these adults those two guys i don't know what their characters names are but they are such goofy like dudes in their 40s who like probably wanted to be musicians but it didn't work out for them and they like establish a genuine rivalry with 13 year olds and get shown up multiple times it's so fun to watch um so bobo and clara start messing around on the only instruments that they have at this youth center which is a drum set and a bass guitar. And neither of them know how to play these instruments. So they're, they sound terrible, but they have a ton of fun. And they start talking and they talk about like starting a band for real.

They both want to play bass, but Clara is like, no, Bobo, you are really good at the drums. You should play the drums. And she's like, okay, I guess. So then back at, so then back at school, the girls are in gym class, which they hate. And the gym teacher gives them a hard time. So they start writing lyrics to a song called hate the sport.

And it's still not to continually draw comparisons between we are the best in School of Rock, but it really reminds me of the first song they write in School of Rock where the legend of the rent was way hardcore. Right. I almost forgot about that. Um, so they are writing lyrics to Hot the Sport. And they try to get a spot on their school's upcoming, like, fall concert slash talent show thing. But there are no open spots.

So they can't play. But they go to the show and make fun of most of the acts, which was fun to watch. Except for one girl, Hedvig, who plays a song on the acoustic guitar. And she plays it pretty well. Hedvig is the most punk of them all. When they're like, why does she keep doing this? They're always booing her. And then she shreds on the Christianian guitar and uh i love hedvig

um so seeing her play well bobo gets the idea to have hedvig join their band the only trouble is that she is a christian who doesn't play punk music and bobo and clara tell hedvig that they like her music and they ask her to be in the band um and hedvig is like well i also hate sports so sure so she joins the band she teaches them a couple things and then they start to hang out and become friends there is a scene where they find some yarn that was thrown away in these big garbage bags so they like pick it up and they start playing with it and cutting it up and then bobo cuts her hand um there's a scene it's so sweet okay oh no i was just thinking about like i've only been to sweden once but it is interesting when you spend time in a country that has health insurance the way people navigate the

world is just a little bit different they're like yeah you know if i get hurt i'll just go to the doctor like they're just like i don't know like watching how they were just like yeah let's bring some trash home why not let's use a knife like I just I remember once um staying with a friend of mine in a squat in France and she caught her I can't remember what something was wrong with her hand like something fairly bad and we're like oh no how are we gonna handle this we're like I'm like googling things I I'm like, I'm going to I'm going to reach out to my ex-boyfriend who's kind of a doctor now. She's like, I can just go to the doctor tomorrow. And I'm like, what do you mean?

You're like a squatter punk. Like, how are you going to just go to the anyway? Yep. Yeah. Punks can go to the doctor here. It's so wild the one uh that i went to like when i went to stockholm we went to like this swedish theme park and i'm like there's no rules here you can just fall down and like it was just like it was so fun but you're just like wow i didn't realize how american health care brain

i was where i'm like we need we needed better safety procedures these children are just taking like hard falls right and left but just take them to the doctor they're all fine well the only thing though is that bobo cuts her hand pretty severely but then they don't go to the doctor yeah that's a good point yeah that's true yeah they just wrap her hand in some gauze it's messed up for months for a long time yeah i i mean i'm i'm excited to talk about bobo's relationship with her mom because i was like i i there's a lot of ambiguity going on there with her and her mom i'm interested to talk about it but i was just like oh no bobo got boba should have gone to the doctor but they're very punk. They're too punk for that.

Too punk for the pediatrician. That should have been one of their songs. Pediatrician, fuck you. Oh my gosh. Well, speaking of Bobo's parents, Bobo's dad comes to visit um it's clear that she and him are not close and she wants to hang out with Clara instead when they're supposed to be having like a nice family dinner with her with Bobo's dad and mom but she's like I want to go hang out with my friends screw dessert another great screw dessert another could have been song yeah um so then bobo goes to clara's place where clara's brother linus is having a party um bobo and clara get drunk and they

pressure hedwig hedwig into drinking also but she doesn't want to and she leaves meanwhile Bobo has a crush on Linus and she expresses concern that she'll never find a boyfriend and nobody thinks she's cute um another then there's like all these specific 13 year old moments but like when like an older sibling that you have a crush on like when he like touches her hair and you're like oh my god i love how friendly all of his all of his friends were like yeah concerned about the 13 year olds they weren't like trying to hang out with the 13 year olds but they're all like right oh oh are they okay like what's up they were all they weren't like uh can't believe your sister's here you know they're just like right out of here yeah i like when they're like are what's up? They weren't like, I can't believe your sister's here. You know, they're just like, get out of here.

But they're like, are you drunk? Are you okay? They're just, everyone's so wholesome. Clara's whole family. I'm like, what a sweet family. They really raised some weird punk kids. Even like the youngest sibling. I forget what his name is is like kala

or something i just oh man i younger sibling i mean you could write a whole thesis on younger siblings in cinema because usually they're just like annoying and suck and are like always planning you know elaborate schemes but i like that he's just like a doorway brother and he's always just kind of like and then he just leaves like that's a more realistic younger sibling to pick just someone cackling while you're getting in trouble from the doorway working and cackling then bobo and clara go over to hedvig's house and they have a they have a discussion about whether or not any whether or not they believe in god um they kind of peer pressure hedvig into cutting

her long hair which hedvig's mom is very unhappy about when she finds out and she tells them that she's going to report bobo and clara to the police unless they start going to church with her and believing in god and becoming christians and bobo and clara are like work and at first you're like oh my god is she serious and bobo and clara are like you can't do that you can't force us to go to church and her mom was like well you can't well you forced my daughter to get a haircut and we think that's what's going on and then so the next day at school Hedvig doesn't sit with them at lunch but it's because she thinks Bobo and Clara are mad at her because of what her mom did

and she's like like I was just so embarrassed of my mom. But you're also like, she probably also didn't want to cut her hair. Right. Did you ever have a parent moment where, I feel like I rarely went through with it, but when your parents are like, just blame it on me. I don't care. My mom would be like, i don't care if i look silly to your friends just don't do a bad like i would have totally blamed that all on my mom even if i secretly was like i did feel peer pressured into getting the haircut

yeah um and and not good good for moms for doing that you know you know moms don't need other 13 year old girls to think they're cool and i celebrate that so true the three girls make up and they have a little food fight at lunch they have more brand they and then they have more band practice and they start to write another song they ask strangers for money so that they can buy an electric guitar which they don't make enough money for so they instead spend the money they did make on a bunch of junk food that they pig out on can i tell a story about uh women asking for money in sweden that's a really random story. Yes, please. I was, I was hitchhiking through Sweden in my early twenties and I didn't have any money. And I was like in Helsingborg

and I was trying to get to Stockholm, sitting in a park. And these, this group of young women are like, Hey, Hey, Hey. And I'm like, I don't speak Swedish. And they're like, well you, and I, I'm not out as trans at this point. Um, I actually don't remember if I'm wearing a dress or not. But I'm like presenting as a boy, even if I'm wearing women's clothes. And they're like, will you wrestle us for money? You give us money and we wrestle you. And that's how we're raising enough money for her wedding. And their wedding was that they were wrestling random boys in the park.

Oh, my God. I explained that I did not have any money and they promptly moved on. That, I can't even begin to wrap my head around all of it. I have no idea what happened there. Is this a normal thing? Were they hitting on me? Was it just a weird begging thing? I don't know.

I have no idea what happened. Is that just a very common Swedish thing? We don't know. Yeah, do Swedes just have very inventive ways of making money? That seems possible. How far do you think they got in this venture? It makes it sound like the way you describe it makes it seem like they felt there was some sort of demand for this.

You know, I, yeah, it seems like they're gonna like pay for a wedding with this yeah tens of thousands of dollars that a wedding costs they were gonna somehow raise that by challenging people to wrestle them yeah especially in public i don't know the whole thing made no sense to me. That's fascinating. Brilliant. Okay. I hope that they had the best wedding ever.

I hope so too. So the girls, they eat a bunch of junk food. They are also gushing over this article by this punk band of teen boys. So they call these boys and arrange to meet up. They're like, you're punks, we're punks. We have to meet up. It's fate. And they're like, exactly.

So they meet up. They think it's going to be three boys in this band, but it's only two of them. Right. Because they've already divvied up the boys. Yeah. And that're like you're gonna get with this one yeah and one of the boys was a poser is the biggest problem right because he liked some other band yeah no noise yeah that's right yeah couldn't even spell it right so they kick him out so it's just the two boys and the three girls and they go to their and they go to the boys rehearsal space they hang out and i like the boys song the actually was a better song

yeah fuck off um it was it was it was fun um so but because they're out kind of like outnumbered bobo is left out and she's sort of like the fifth wheel and she's jealous because she clearly liked the boy ellis well and that was also claims the agreement right clara clara's like ellis will be yours and david will be mine but david's the guy who's not there so clara kind of claims ellis for herself and now bobo is the awkward fifth wheel well the boys called called it too the boys have their conversation where they divvy up the girls which they don't remember the names of and they're just like oh yeah the one with the scarf like i'll take her fucking 13 year old boys fuck you i do think that is how boys they're like oh at least they did it by like scarfs and not like hair color because i feel like so many men are just like so reductive about women they're like oh the blonde yeah the brunette um okay so they're in sweden you can't do that

never mind everyone's blonde this is not true at all but i apologize yeah but a lot of you are blonde, to be fair. Shots fired. The youth center that the girls go to says that they've been invited to bring a few bands to play at another youth center's winter concert. And they want Bobo and Clara and Hedvig's band, who I don't, do we ever learn the name of their band? I don't think so. I was wondering the same thing. Okay. I was like, did I miss something? they didn't get that part yeah so they're so punk that they don't even need a name so their band is invited to play and those two guys at the youth center um they bought an

electric guitar finally and we see hedvig showing off her guitar playing skills and everyone is very impressed wait wait it's another great scene the the thing about being an all-girl band this is one of my favorite moments of the whole movie so I want to interject because it's like I mean I guess the only thing worse than being a girl band is to be a female fronted band you know in terms of just like the annoying thing i just as someone who's in a girl band um i'm really excited that they just were like immediately they're 13 and they're like no no we are girls who are in a band anyway it's like my favorite feminist moment of the movie it does kind of remind me a little bit of just because it's still it's like so ridiculous that like

whatever this movie takes place in 82 and this shit still happens all the time it's just so annoying or just it's the same as like women in comedy questions and i was just gonna say yeah you're like yeah not great stop like and this is a part of why it's not great like yeah oh my gosh i can't tell you how many times i've been asked like is it hard to be a female comedian and i'm just like right now it's hard to be a comedian it's hard to be a woman so yeah like what do you want me to say like yeah shut up what the fuck off i mean what the fuck do like cis white straight men have to make jokes about? Because isn't one of the main, I'm not a comedian, but it seems like bad things happening based on people making assumptions about you is one of the main sources of comedy.

Like. Yeah. It's a big one. Well, now. The well is deeper for everyone else. Now with straight guys, you can't say or do anything anymore it that's the new oh right that's the well i forgot that here's the thing pc culture is ruining comedy so yeah they can't really talk i don't even know how to like start a conversation anymore

like how do you even start a conversation i even talk to a woman the answer is no if you're thinking about it if you're woman? The answer is no. If you're thinking about it, if you're not sure, the answer is no. Leave us alone. Probably not, yeah. We are bossed. I can't even just hang out in someone's DMs unanswered, send them a new message every day without people getting upset. You really just can't harass people like you used to, you know?

So they get invited to this winter concert um but bobo is still sour about the um clara and ellis thing and clara's like well ellis never calls me cut to bobo calling ellis and arranging to hang out with them, just the two of them, with him, just the two of them. I was floored. I was floored when this happened. I truly gasped. I didn't know Bobo had that in her. I didn't know she had that rage. I did know because I feel like I did something like that as a teenager.

Really? Oh, God. You're so much braver than I am. I would have just fumed in silence for 20 years and then brought it up on this podcast at some point. So do you want to shout someone out right now from seventh grade? By the way, wait, Caitlin, you did something like this? That's so, what did you do so okay I had so my best friend in high school we both so there was a group of three a trio of boys who were a year or two older than us and they were best friends and me and my best friend were a little duo and we all like basically just all dated each other but like but at first it was like well I like this one so he's off limits to you and then and then eventually

we just like worked both worked our way through all three of them but to start it was like well no I've I have staked claim on this one but like, I kind of moved on to the guy that she briefly liked and dated and then, but he was off limits to me, but I was like, you know what? He likes me. So what am I going to deny myself happiness? And it was, you know, it wasn't great. I don't, I'm not proud of myself. Look, it happens. It, I, I think the only thing I've done that's approached, I didn't I'm not proud of myself but look it happens it I I think the only thing I've done that's approached I didn't do that in like when middle school in high school I started dating someone who was off limits and someone threw a watermelon on my lawn well to send to send a

water bong is that what you said no water full watermelon a watermelon I thought you said water bong. No, I think they just went to Shaw's and bought a watermelon and just chucked it on my lawn to let them know that they knew that I was dating someone off limits. Hmm. But. Well. It sent the message. I don't know.

Pretty punk thing to do. Throw a watermelon. It was pretty cool of them to do. Throw a watermelon? It was pretty cool of them to do. I didn't stop dating the person after that, which that's on me. It's one thing to be like, I'm doing something that's wrong.

But then in the back of your head, you're like, but I haven't experienced a consequence, so maybe it's not wrong. And then the watermelon lands, and then you're like, no, this is wrong. What interesting stories we're all sharing oh yeah we're really all letting it rip i've never done anything wrong so i well obviously yeah yeah um okay you are the head of the group oh wow um okay so uh so bobo and ellis hang out and it's a little flirty he puts his arm around her he tickles her wrist um and and he's like but I have to break up with Clara first which he never does and then they're heading to the new year's party that they're kind of not invited to anymore he ghosts them both and then Bobo tells Clara that Ellis cheated on Clara with Bobo and they get in a huge fight and Clara is

furious but at the encouragement of Hedwig they eventually make up and become friends again and then it's time for the concert so they go to this seems like kind of like a remote far away town and it's like some sort of like a distant ymca kind of vibe right yeah and then so they start playing their song hot the sport and everyone screams at them and calls them ugly and says that they're common communists and they're like you suck and the girls in the band are like we don't suck you suck and we are the best. And that is the name of the movie. And then the movie ends with like the girls talking to those two youth center guys. And they're like, you need to show some respect. And the girls are like, screw you. And then there's a scene at like a fast food place where they're like goofing around.

And that's the end of the movie. You forgot about the very last scene, which is dad playing clarinet on the toilet his hands around his ankles clarinet feminist icon clarinet dad we should all be so lucky truly um okay so let's take a quick break and then we will come back to discuss 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 iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

I felt 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. like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up?

Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago.

We're not hurting people. 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. And we're back.

And we're back. Where do we want to start? I mean, there's a few different kind of thematic cornerstones, I suppose, of the movie that I really enjoy. Okay. What do I have, a master's degree in screen writing or something I would never bring it up but um I mean I love that female friendship as it is at the center of this movie I love that like kind of beauty standards and the rejecting of beauty standards is a large component of this movie.

I like that kind of like the men around them often assume that they can't really do anything or that they're not good at things because they're girls. That's a component of this movie again i love just the what feels like a very authentic uh depiction of the horrors of being 13 and uh just all the nuances you get that you normally don't see in a movie about 13 year old girls one because there are hardly any movies about 13 year old girls and two if they are uh if there is a story about them it's it just feels like a very like cartoony hollywoodized version right which can be fun but it's like there's just not enough of projects like this around right it also appeared to be played by 13 year old actors yeah exactly actual kids yeah because i feel like 13 year olds you just add three or four years in like listen which is like part of why eighth grade i feel like was

such was so cool for a lot of people to see because you're like oh yeah this is what an eighth grader looks like where it looks like yeah and again, not to, I feel like I've been bringing up Degrassi on every single episode recently. I don't know why, but like that was my only yardstick as a kid for like media for kids that were played by kids that were the correct age and weren't like CW teens who are like my age. Yeah. There's,

there's a lot to love about it and not really anything that i have any complaints about one thing i really liked uh because we recently covered margaret have you seen turning red i haven't no it's cute it's a new disney movie it's also like a girlhood coming of age movie and one thing that like i've i liked that these movies I mean the movies have very not a lot in common. Turning around is about turning into a panda. But but I did like the way that like the the girls are like are like going through period. They're like starting to feel like come into their own in terms of their sexuality. But they also like, I like that the movie doesn't ignore that, but it also doesn't do what I think a lot of teen media does, which is like push them into situations that they're not ready for or able to handle, which is such a tough line to toe i feel like you see a lot of that in

bobo where she like has a crush on an older boy but like isn't gonna do anything about it like she's just gonna be weird whenever he's around and when the 13 when you know she hangs out with um i keep wanting to call him elon which is awful yikes ellis ellis when she hangs out with, I keep wanting to call him Elon, which is awful. Yikes. Ellis. Ellis. When she hangs out with Ellis, both of them have no idea what to do, but he still manages to be an asshole, which is a hallmark of 13 year old boys.

But he like. I just liked it. I don't want to defend him super hard, right? Because he goes both of them or whatever. But it's like there were so many ways that if this was a Hollywood movie, he would have been way the hell worse, right? Sure, yeah. He was, he, like, I think most ghosting is people being like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here, so I'm going to not think about it. Right?

Right. And so he's like, I don't know. I don't know how to date. I don't know what I'm doing. So I will be distant in a way that hurts people. But, you know, like I'm worried I'm cheating because I like touched your hand. You know, I know the 13 year old definition of cheating and also of being together is like, oh, we hung out one time. We're we're dating.'re together yeah you know normally we examine a movie that has like a hetero romance and we're often like why is this here or like it'll feel very

wedged in or we're just there's a lot to the mary kit and ashley syndrome right but in this movie it just it feels very true but in this movie it just feels very organic organic and like it belongs because we are seeing these girls and their friendship and like the whole spectrum of what it is to be uh someone of that age which is yes having interest in something and for them it's music um whether it's like to listen to it and then eventually to start playing it um it's uh issues or just whatever complications anything like that with your family and we see that in all of the girls. And it's an interest in whatever, like in other people romantically. And we see that. So it's just like, and it's like, you know, going to school, it's going to your youth center. It's like all the things that kids do.

And we just see that entire scope of their lives versus a lot of stories will be like, oh, well, they're a teen girl. So the only thing they think about is boys. But it's like, no, we get the whole spectrum of their lives here. There's just as much time spent on them trying to figure out how they feel about religion as there is right on like on yeah figuring out how they feel about like different romantic interests which is cool yeah it's like i i like how this movie is very like vignettey and they're like here's a here's a kid thing remember this and it's like slowly leading up to something it's probably how like because it you know is based on this sort of autobiographical graphic novel and you know i assume the yarn incident right like the yarn incident doesn't narratively tie in i mean they managed to pull it off because at the end they're

like fishing with the yarn out the window for fun and like yeah and you know getting cut while cutting up random yarn you pull out of the trash scene is like very emotional and impactful but it's such a a random moment that i i assume that this has happened you know right right it's like too specific to not be real and they still managed to get like that awesome moment out of um out of it too where like that's their like huge that's like i isn't that that's like the first moment where you're like oh hedvig is like permanently in the group part of the group yeah even though she was the one who didn't want to go dumpster diving or whatever you know and was afraid of stealing someone's thrown out yarn yeah she's like this is someone else's and it's wet why are we playing with it like okay hededwig had some points she made some points

some better boundaries than I feel like a lot of movies would go down a route of like oh well a new friend gets introduced so one of the others gets really jealous or like this new friend comes along and she feels like the odd one out because there's already an established friendship with these other two which is a real thing that does happen but I like that it's just these three girls who share a common interest in music and they bond over that and their hatred of gym class and sports so they're like well yeah obviously we're all going to be the best of friends and even though one of them is a little older than the other two even though one of them is christian and the other two are not so much taller maybe that's why i also feel very connected to hedvig taller friend energy where they're like is she older you're like no they're all the same age relax

no she is older i think right because she says she's in grade eighth grade nine i thought she's good i think all these characters are great um and again and they're very they're very distinct they're very again like i knew people like all three of them. And I saw myself in different ways in all three of them. And they're just like very, again, well-written, well-crafted very relatable very authentic characters that again we don't see in media very often i just like i loved it clara because clara is like the headstrong like decisive like like in your face like i'm gonna advocate when someone needs to be advocated for right to the point where it's like occasionally inconsiderate to people around her and i just i i like again i'm just

like oh i can't think of the last time i saw like a movie i don't i mean i guess i don't really know what this who this movie was marketed towards because we famously don't live in sweden but i hope that it was like marketed at like kids because it would have been so i mean it's really cool seeing like kids that aren't like classic you know like hollywood cool girls that there's like a movie about them being awesome and like still bullied but ultimately like really really fucking cool um but but clara i liked that with clara and bobo they like it ends with them all being friends but you can also tell in a way that i felt kind of satisfying like clara still has a long way to go you know clara clara has some shit to wear. Like literally in the,

in the last season, it was just like such a 13 year old, like, yeah, she still hasn't like quite gotten over herself where she's like, I am the best. And then the other two have to be like, that's not the name of the movie.

Yeah. I, I totally agree, but not in a way that like makes that character unlikable or irredeemable it's just that she's a 13 year old girl and this is how a lot of 13 year old girls are or just 13 year olds in general because you're 13 and you have not fully formed as a person yet your emotions are confusing you are your self-esteem is all over the place and yeah it just feels like yeah she's quite self-centered and yes she is sort of like staking claim over

a lot of things and like you know not being as super considerate toward especially her best friend Bobo in a lot of ways where she's like no this boy is mine the playing the bass is my thing in a way that again like this is an immaturity thing that she will probably grow out of not like she's a bad person thing it is yeah it feels like I don't know I mean like every 13 year old has like that that friend structure where it's like there's a friend that just can steamroll everybody and you're like you don't have the confidence or the life skills to be like stop like uh i like and and you know having an alpha friend like clara because it's not i mean she still like loves her friends and family she just doesn't always consider them first

and you know there are moments that i mean it's like you still really like clara she's like the most she's trying to be the most overtly political of the group she like wants to be able to say something even though she's like not quite at a place where she knows how to say it. And, and I liked that she, I don't know, just like reflecting on my own child. You're like, Oh, you need that alpha friend.

Cause who else is going to like get you French fries or like who else is going to, you know, push until you get the rehearsal space or like Clara does a couple things in this movie that it's like, Oh, if everyone in this group were the same kind of shy 13 year old i would i was you don't get the french fries you don't get the you don't get the rehearsal space

and the movie doesn't happen um so right exactly yeah yeah again everyone's bringing something to the table it's true um and then on and then with bobo uh i mean again like yeah with clara she's like very very confident or at least puts on the air of of confidence um on the other hand you have bobo she loves to bully adults too i love how she bullies the shit out of most adults and and it's so punk of her it works um but then bobo has some pretty obvious self-esteem issues um that i think again are just like a product of she's in a society uh where there are certain beauty standards and these girls as punks are like trying to actively uh reject a lot of these like western beauty standards where they have cut their hair short they are anti-makeup yeah that's cool they their style like their

clothing is like pretty gender neutral a lot of the time and they have a lot of people calling them ugly and uh it very clearly affects bobo um because she says things like oh i'm never gonna get a boyfriend no one thinks i'm cute i was never invited to the parties and so even though like they're taking this like punk stance of rejecting beauty standards like just like anyone wants to be desired and desirable and like wants to be attractive to someone and you can just like tell that and and so Bobo is uh kind of in this trying to doing is like kind of doing this balancing act of like yeah well i i want to like i want to seem punk and i i cut my own hair and all this stuff but she also like wants cute boys to like her in a very again relatable way especially for that age and well it's like

yeah and then i just i love that with i love when clara wears the makeup secretly yeah and then to go meet the boys who wear makeup yeah yes and and bobo's all pissed off she's like wait a second you're supposed to be you're it's like i don't know again clara is so fascinating to me because i used to be fascinated with kids like this where it's like they're making all of the rules but also the rules don't apply to them in most circumstances where I'm sure Clara was the one that was like we're anti-makeup and Bobo's like okay we're anti-makeup but then like but Clara can wear makeup sometimes right but this is like one of my favorite I wrote down this chunk of it too about makeup and stuff and how the boys at the beginning, the slightly older boys, like call them all ugly and stuff. And it it's one of my favorite iron tensions within punk feminism, you know, is this idea of like and I I've at least read essays about punk feminism going back further than like I've been aware of punk, like going back in the 80s and 70s and stuff where so much much of it was about especially actually when punk when when

punk women first started wearing makeup a lot of it was like intentionally over the top in a way to try and draw attention and be like you said this is supposed to be pretty but i'm wearing so much that it's obviously ugly and like a way to go so overboard that it becomes ugly and and then you know but then that that falls back and like becomes more moderated later in punk where then it just sort of becomes like punk women wear makeup and it's just like like everyone else or whatever and I was like trying to be conventionally attractive and but just with like ripped stockings or whatever I'm not I'm not trying to talk shit on either of the conclusions

that girls and sure sure right but I find this tension really interesting and I like that this one is situating this like third one that is actually I think more probably tied into the broader feminism of the like we're anti makeup you know as compared to just the like we're gonna go over the top with makeup right I don't know right well that's a thing that has been like something that I've honestly grappled with throughout my life where I'm like, obviously a militant feminist and I'm not I'm like, I'm not going to do anything that like just because society thinks I should or a man thinks I should. But then I'm also like, well, I do want to be sexy mascara looks so good on everyone like right so like there are some indisputable facts yeah so it's complicated so

like I do wear makeup pretty frequently I like shave my legs and shave my underarms and things that I do that because like that's what the beauty standard is. But I but like I think what a lot of people have kind of grappled with when it comes to feminism and beauty standards is like, well, feminism says that you it's your choice. Like you can do whatever you want with your body so if you want to well you know wear a lot of makeup and you know present in a very like hyper feminine way that historically and traditionally is the thing that like appeals to like the heteronormative male gaze if you want to do that absolutely fucking go off if you if you want to reject that and uh you know not do any of that absolutely go off also like it's just it's all about like choice and doing what you want and that's punk and that's why vr the best i always find it interesting to watch um women not of my generation try to navigate these issues

and like how I don't know like my mom's pretty open to stuff but sometimes she genuinely is like wait I'm confused where we were hanging out I was poolside with my mommy incredible um and she like noticed that I had shaved my armpits which usually I don't but I just sort of like I don't know I just like felt like it so I did and I didn't think anything of it because I was like whatever and she was like wait I thought you didn't shave your armpits because you're a feminist. And like, she was like coming from a good place. She's like, I'm confused. I thought that you didn't do that because, because of your rights. And I was like, and then I was like, weirdly having a hard time.

She's like, why did you do it? I was like, I don't know. I just wanted to. And then I was like, wait, no, that's what I was saying. That that's what, that's what I mean. I just should be able to do whatever the fuck I want and not think about it. So, but for a second I was in my head, I was like, have I regressed? And I was like, no, I think I was just like a little uncomfortable one day. It's just that you can do whatever you want with your body. So I just thought it was fascinating to like have that be something that like

Bobo is very clearly grappling with. And like the scene where she goes to meet up with Ellis one-on-one, she has like spiked her hair the way that the other boy she likes taught her to do it. And she takes off her glasses, I think, cause she perceives like her glasses as something that like makes her less attractive. So like she's making these conscious choices to, you know, appear more attractive because she is in this like kind of like between a rock and a hard place kind of thing where she's like, well, I want to be punk and I want to reject beauty standards. But I also have this boy that I want to think thinks i'm like this boy that i want to think i'm cute so margaret like you were just very relatable oh sorry and like you were alluding

to margaret like a lot of punk boys like still uphold those same standards while like technically being like oh yeah like punk but with the asterisks of like unless I personally don't think it's hot like kind of stuff again it's it's funny because like I have this very you know this conception like I'm going through my like teens and 20s like as a boy even though my 20s was as a boy named Margaret who wore dresses um but people would basically be like really shyly like I've seen people both be afraid of being rejected. I've seen women in particular be afraid of being rejected for not shaving and for shaving,

you know? And like, and most of the people that I'm talking to have had the experiences of being rejected for one or the other, because you will meet these like punk boys who are like, I can't believe you shave, you know? And I don't know. It like, I can't believe you shave, you know? And I don't know, it's really, it sucks to be a girl in our society.

I just really like the way that this movie examines that in a way that's like not even a huge part of the story, but it's just like like it's something that's obviously on like any teenager's mind or like it just like especially girls who are conditioned to think that they need to be attractive and like do things to make them seem attractive especially to boys so again i just yeah i liked that that was a part of the movie and then that scene where they like give the electric guitar to hedvig to like that play but they're like well first let's show you we have to show you how to do it and then she's just like okay and then they give it to her and she's like first of all it's out of tune and then secondly she and then she like plays it so well and you just like see the faces of those two guys and they're like oh shit like in in such a satisfying way and they do that awesome thing too

where they like try to like weirdly play it off and act like they knew she could do that the whole time in a way that's completely impossible they're like yeah yeah cool good what's like because even those people are like overly earnest right they're still yeah they're being uh they're making unintelligent decisions um but they're like not bad people they're like you know they're just like being misogynist right but they're like i don't know it's just they're so earnest about that they're like you know they're just like being misogynist right but they're like I don't know it's just they're so earnest about that they're like oh really excited for this thing and you know and they're so excited that they got the electric guitar like you know that they like went through a bunch of work to like right get the girl band the electric guitar or whatever

um yeah and I have them shipped just for full disclosure. Ooh, those two men. Oh, yeah, I like that. I like that. Establishing rivalries with locals and being in love. Yeah, it's like it's misogyny and not necessarily a hateful way, but it's just like they assume that because they're girls, they can't do anything or they assume that like you know oh you're you're a girl you're girls in a band so you're a girl

band and it's like they want to like help like include and like be inclusive and like yeah girls can be in girl bands sure but it's but their their misogyny manifests in a way that um they just like don't trust that a girl could do anything okay although i i hate to say in their defense because i i don't really mean it but they've heard bobo and that is true yes they do are not so good that's true that is fair that's true it's i do love that they're just bad like they're they're not and well that's also like like very realistic yeah they have never really taken a music lesson they don't know how to play the instruments they're playing and their band absolutely sucks Hedvig's carrying the whole band on her back but it's like that's also why punk is so revolutionary like not in terms of actual social change but no offense to it um but because

that's the whole thing is i love that punk and like other genres do this too right but i love that punk is like you can be awful you can be just absolutely awful and you can still play shows like you can have fun and you can play shows one because some of the music is dead simple and two because no one cares if it's really bad um because it's about the aesthetic that you're creating it's an aesthetic that is that you can create easily you know and then at the same time like they still also really like these really good bands i do i will say though that the part where i'm like i expected the boys that they go meet up with i'm wondering if you all had this i expected them to be like at least 16 or 17.

I did not realize that they were all the same age. And then when they were like 13, I was like, whoa. Because they're in a magazine. Right. And then you see them and you're like, I thought they were going to be like, oh my God, what are we going to do with these 13-year-olds who showed up? And I was expecting this either very dark turn or just lots of awkwardness um but then they're also yeah yeah totally who are who are a little better at their bands a little better as who do play better music but yeah although i like the i like the intellectual criticism that bobo offers person sorry like he's dead and clara's kind of like you can tell a dead guy to fuck off

you're like that's true you can ronald reagan fuck so true and then like the big concert at the end of the movie the way that like the third act of most movies have like that big event that you know everything's been leading up to this. And usually it's like this big, epic, like extremely climactic like moment in the movie. But the big concert, quote unquote, at the end of this movie is maybe my favorite version of this that I've ever seen because it goes horribly. They're they don't play the music well everyone's yelling at them and calling them like communist cunts and then they say well fuck you fuck you and your shitty town we are the best and it's just like such a beautiful like climactic moment of like of the movie and

oh i'm obsessed i do and I feel like. In a way. They kind of like. They started like a small riot. Like they did a very punk thing. It's so punk. So. It's great. Like.

And I love that they. Like. It's not even like. It's a contest. Again. I'm just school of rocking it. But it's like. They.

Like. They had an awesome. I did. There. There's. There's. there's so few like examples of like i don't know just like kids doing stuff to because they want to and like it's fun and like that's i don't know i mean i think i know that that's like somewhat of a generational thing too but like uh you know being raised to like excel at stuff and like if you're not good at it there's no point in doing it i feel like that is like a very more modern and it seems to be like dissipating a little bit but definitely like a very strong

millennial like instilled in you of like well you do things be to become a resume like not because you just want to kind of fuck around and have fun. If fucking around and having fun is a waste of time. And to see these kids like be not very good, kind of know that they want to be better, but it's not like they're not like losing sleep over being better. And they're just like fucking around and having a good time. It's just,

I don't know. It shouldn't feel so refreshing to see kids fucking around and having a good time it's just i don't know it shouldn't feel so refreshing to see kids fucking around and having a good time without like having a meltdown of like i'm not good enough at this but it was i mean it was it was cool we normally would see like the mary sue version of like well they start playing instruments and they get so good so fast and i know there are criticisms about like to criticize something because it's a mary sue thing i don't know we'll get we'll get into it in another episode but normally you'd have like oh they're they start playing music and yeah they're kind of bad at first but then we see a training montage and then

they're really good afterwards and that never happens in this movie because it takes really long because it takes a really long time to get good at an instrument and they're working in a genre where they kind of like don't have to if they don't want to anyway like yeah girls and women being mediocre we should see more of it yeah it's something to celebrate. So one time I was a drummer for a band on tour. I'm not a drummer. I do not play drums. I technically, I have some drums I built that are actually within,

but I hit them and I record them and then I program the sounds that they make. But one time, 10 years ago or something, my friend who's in this golf band that's fairly punk we're like hey come um we kicked out our keytar player we need a third person for our band come on tour with us i was like i'd love to play keytar and they're like no no we want a drummer and i'm like i'd love to play keytar for you and they were like we'll fly you out two weeks early and you have two weeks to hang out in our apartment and learn how to play drums and we're

gonna go on tour. But there's another way that you can get away with being mediocre, which is electronic music. And so, because I was playing this electronic drum kit, but there's so many backing tracks going on that on my friend's wedding anniversary, it's this power couple band. We're playing in Providence, Rhode Island, and I just start fucking drifting off. I've like lost everything. I'm just fucking drifting off. I've like lost everything.

I'm just like drifting off. I'm like fucking lost. And the guitarist. Lost the thread. Yeah. And he walks over and he presses this pedal that he never told me about that mutes me and brings up backing tracks of exactly what I'm playing. Oh, my gosh. For the rest of the night night I'm a glorified

stage dancer pretending to play drums oh yeah absolutely the rest of the time I'm just miming playing drums you're lip syncing the drums and I was so grateful

because I was like I told you i'm not a fucking drummer right so you can learn to play drums in two weeks all you have to do is uh fail yeah pretend to play fail on stage always fun yeah oh my god i love that story I get to listen to Margaret stories all day like okay wait I have one more about I wrote this one down because I have to figure out how to shoehorn this in it's about a Swedish punk girl

and one time I'm in Sweden and I'm staying at this cooperatively owned I've only spent like maybe a total like three weeks in Sweden but I'm really impressed by a lot of stuff that's going on. I'm in town for the Anarchist Book Fair, and the anarchists also own this entire apartment building that's cooperatives.

Sorry, it's co-op owned, so instead of having to live in a communal house, you get your own whole apartment, but then the whole building is a cooperative. So there's some shared infrastructure. And these like more hippie-ish anarchists or whatever they have this punk kid who's like nine and she's like she's convinced her best friend who's this boy to be

in a band with her and she's like mom mom mom and she doesn't speak english and she's like mom you have to interpret for me because i'm going to play margaret a song and so i got to see this, uh, this band of two nine-year-old, maybe 10-year-old, um, Swedish kids. And, and it was like, one of them has a keyboard and I don't know if the other one even had an instrument and they're just like, I don't want to go to bed. Uh, I hate bedtime. I want to go to bed. And it ruled, it was the most punk thing i've ever seen it was a it was just me and mom in the audience um and i it's like i wrote this down just like i don't know where to shoehorn this in but i really am excited to tell this story that's the perfect oh my god and what what actually it broke my head a little bit just realize that those two kids are now adults um and so if you ever played this please reach out to me

they are our biggest fans and listeners of the bechtel cast i mean stranger things have happened in regards to this show like people just pop their head out of the woodwork wait that is so that's beautiful and they also were teaching me swedish um as we would like walk through the forest they were basically like what's wrong with this idiot why doesn't she understand swedish which is a perfectly legitimate question when i'm in sweden um and so they're just like pointing out objects and telling me the word for them and um and all i remember is hoppa and skip up this is the like which is jump and run um but oh but that sounds similar to english words yeah and i remember it because it was like nine year olds jumping up and down going hop on

this is not gonna leave my do you understand do you understand yeah you moron. And what do you say, everyone? Let's take another break. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. 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 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 iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. 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 iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i've been thinking about you i want you back in my life it's too late for that 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. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not.

What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people.

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i had i read like a bunch of like little things that you're just like wow great childhood okay let's finger toothbrush culture loved yeah impromptu sleepover finger toothbrush been there done that been there done that still go there every once in a while you never know when finger toothbrush is going to come back into the mix uh i wrote down a bunch of things that i loved here let me see um the so there's that scene where

they're thinking of recruiting helvig, but they're like, but she's a Christian and we're, I'm not sure if this is going to work out. And then Bobo says, we'll, we will influence her away from God. Funniest line of dialogue in the world. And then they're like, actually, it'll be really like political of us to hang out with someone less fortunate, um, because she doesn't have any friends. And so she's less fortunate. And then,

and then they say, if she doesn't stop being a Christian, we'll kick her out. And then Clara plays her, plays Hedwig a song called hang God, and then tries to convince her that it's a Christian song. That whole string of events was so really great funny and i also like that hedvig in spite of and now it makes sense i i'm seeing now

that the filmmaker is um a pretty devout christian but also a feminist and like that that they don't talk hededwig out of being Christian. I think that she remains a Christian punk the whole time and like stays true to herself and her friends accept that about her, which is like just another fun, like little thing that they don't draw a ton of attention to. But God, I love that's like where you're like, man, kids like kids like Clara are the best. They go so hard and they're so reckless. And they're like, I'm going to kill God. Ketchup is God. Ketchup is God. I love when Clara calls her brother a fascist and a cop because he doesn't want her and Bobo to stay in the room during his party.

He doesn't want a 13 year old to get drunk and so he is a fascist cop. She's like, you're a fascist and a cop. And the drinking age is probably 16 in Sweden for beer and wine at this point. I'm not 100% certain. I know that in the Netherlands

at least, the beer age was 16 at some point while I was there and I was really confused. My biggest, not criticism of this film, but the hardest part to connect for me is that these are their biggest problems. Yes. It's like...

Sure. And it's kind of interesting to me because punk is this music of the rejected, the music of rebellion or know, rebellion or whatever. But it's actually kind of cool because I think it has like an inherent almost critique of punk within it in that it's like Clara is the most punk and she's rejecting her perfectly loving family. And that's useful to her, right? It's like useful for her to, you know know separate herself out from her parents or whatever but like you know you can see why this might not connect with the uh the modern person

coming up into a like will there is there a future right um and which which is part of the crucible of punk being formed as you know cold war lack of future or whatever and and i don't know but it's just it's really interesting because it's this very uh it's a very middle class punk setup although you also get the impression that the only reason it's middle class is because of a strong social net like because a single mom is also totally fine at least appears to be totally fine financially obviously she has emotional issues that um her child is perfectly willing to help her deal with which is very sweet um i don't know anyway that was the part for me that i was like it actually made me kind of sad

like nostalgic for when there's a future yeah i yeah i did also kind of want because i also was like i'm maybe just not familiar enough with the economics of Sweden. But it did seem to be like a lower middle class. Yeah. Like they weren't, their immediate needs were always met. They didn't seem to encounter people whose immediate needs were not being met. Right. Which is fine.

But yeah, like that is like a very specific class sliver of punk kids to show um i wanted to i i wanted to talk really quickly uh about the parents too because bobo um i mean clara i kind of like that clara's family structure it's like almost presented in a jokey way of like Clara wants to have more problems than she maybe actually does. Her family is really sweet and her biggest problem is her brother likes Joy Division now. And like her dad is annoying when he plays the clarinet. Like very, very sweet family um Bobo's uh I I liked that Bobo is I think my impression anyways was that like her introvertedness and her like insecurities probably are connected to her home life as well because like I don't know I I found this to be kind of like a relatable dynamic of like, she's like her mom clearly loves her very much.

Like wants to be supportive, wants to be there for her, but needs parenting herself. And so like, just like the Bobo knows way too much about her mom's personal life. And like her mom sometimes treats her more as a friend than a guardian. She doesn't always know where she is like stuff that it's like but i also like that it's like it's she's not positioned as like a bad parent but it's like clear that their relationship is complicated and that she can't be there for

bobo in all the ways that bobo you know needs an adult Hedwig's mom too like embarrassing uh two religious mom culture she was like my friends are gonna disown me because my mom is threatening to arrest them uh and drag them to church calling like calling the mr police right doesn't ever say you can't hang out with those two they're bad influence yeah yeah so like there there's a lot of gray area in people in the way that like exists in the real world and also feels so like small community vibes where it's like they like you were saying earlier margaret with the like the two guys who run the youth center it's like they are not bad people but they just have some ingrained behaviors that these kids are challenging in them that they're like not quite ready to

unlearn and like but this is the youth center so where else are they gonna go they have to like learn how to talk to each other because this is the only place where there's one bass guitar and one drum kit and like yeah yeah i also love that the that scene where hedvig's mom like fixes bobo and clara like cookies and milk and tea like cookies and tea and drinks and snacks and then she sits them down she's like i'm gonna pour i'm gonna report you to the police before that she's like can i get you anything do you want more cookies do you think it was all a faint like do you think because because clearly that you have to go with church with me was just a moral lesson right not an actual attempt to force them to go to church do you think that the i'm gonna call the police was like a an actual threat

or a way to make them take it so seriously that they had to come over to talk i think it was the latter i think it was just like these kids need a wake-up call right and i'm gonna best case scenario she scares them into going to church yeah totally yeah like that's the best case scenario for her yeah but yeah i i also did really appreciate i i fully thought just based on like movie logic that that would result in hedvig not being allowed to hang out with them anymore um totally but you know they put her in check and i like that it kind of remained a little ambiguous whether like Hedwig 100 percent wanted that haircut or not. Like she didn't end up being upset about it. And it looks great.

But there I mean, that's like a very another very middle school thing where like you like you're like, I'm not 100 percent sold on this. It's not going to hurt me, but I don't know. And then, you know, maybe you talk to an adult later and you're like, I'm bummed out. And then they, you know,

and then hopefully they don't threaten to arrest your friends, but sometimes that will happen, I guess. Well, it also is like, you know, because little sister is the snitch. Little sister is the only bad character in the,

um, only villain. The villain is the little bad character in the... Only villain. The villain is the Little Sister who snitches them out. And you get the impression that it was Little Sister says, I saw her trying not to get her hair cut, which is like true, you know, but it's like not the whole story. It seems like she probably was... And you all were talking about this earlier,

and I really resonated with it it's like i really needed my friends who kicked dragged me kicking and screaming into trouble um i a little bit lucky that it worked out as well as it did but i i really appreciate it because i was also the like you know like i don't know guys if we should really crime right now right sometimes you need the friend that's like this is this is a good crime we're gonna do this one yeah totally and you're like oh okay cool yeah yeah and then i love that it's it's Hedwig at the end when um Clara and Bobo are fighting over Ellis which again like on the surface that just might seem like a oh two girls fighting over a boy like but like I don't know the way it's handled in this movie it's just more than a boy I like that it's like clear that's like they're fighting about the bass guitar. Yeah, basically they're fighting about how Clara always steamrolls Bobo and tells her what she wants.

Exactly. Right. Totally. But on the surface, yeah, it just kind of seems like, oh, they're fighting over a boy. And I love that Hedvig facilitates their makeup. And she's like, now you look the other one in the eye and say i like you and then now it's your turn you do it you say i like you to your friend and then they do it and it's so sweet and i just their bond their the friendship between the three of them is just so

precious and i love it because i i wrote down in my like my notes uh one of the lines is a feature-length exploration of being white heterosexual is a shame because they're like they're all like fighting over these boys that they don't actually like and they but then i i actually later after really sitting with it i was like you know i actually this works really well. Like it's not it's not declaring any of these characters heterosexual, but it is definitely saying that like at least at least two of them have heterosexual love interests. We don't. Hedwig has like a moment. Right. Which could mean anything when you're 13, like when you're 13. And so I and I actually realize in some ways, I think if it was made now in the U.S., it might end up like more directly a queer film and that wouldn't be inherently bad.

But there's actually something really pure about the fact that they just sort of don't know what they're doing within this context. I don't know. I had this moment where I was like, wait, am I glad that the anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm just done now. Are you saying you're shipping more of the characters? Well, like perhaps. No, but it's like you see the way that, you know, we think so much in society or at least I do, like especially since I do a lot of like history research and and no one ever writes about the homosexuality of people before like 1920 or so. Right. And you, you have this like gal pals problem where it's like,

you cannot tell who's gay in history because is she just a cat lady who lives in a tower by herself? Or is she a cat lady who lives with her best friend in a tower by the two of themselves? Like that still doesn't actually tell you whether or not they were dating or whether or not this person had no interest in men. Like ace characters are also, people are written out of history. And so, no, I lost my train of thought here. But it's, oh, okay. So they have a lot of like gal pal energy, right? But that's also just an honest way that humans can interact.

Like one of the things that I think is one of the biggest shames about patriarchy, clearly the treatment of women being a bigger deal, but you see old pictures of men and they can interact with other men in ways that are affectionate without it saying anything one way or the other about their sexuality um we talk about this quite a bit on the show where like different how like i think we talked about this most recently on top gun the top gun episode where everyone's like this is the gayest movie ever made and it's like well that might be true and maybe those characters are queer and interested in each other or that queer and not interested

in each other like it could be or they're just friends who have male affection toward each other it could be any number of things but people automatically look at male affection and ascribe, oh, they must be gay to it. So, which is like, you know, it's more complicated than that. And, you know, there's a lot, there's a bigger discussion to be had. But yeah, let people be friends, you know? And speaking to what you were talking about, Margaret, I mean, it's like, yeah, we have no idea where these kids are going to land in terms of their identity. And I like that you kind of get the feeling, even like every single party between like the two middle school punk bands, like it's fully like they're performing for each other of like oh we

are in we're we are dating no we're not and like i'm putting my arm around you what does it mean yeah i'm touching your hand like there's it's like like any kid yeah it's almost like okay well this is how i have seen heterosexuality laid out for me, especially in like 82, I can't imagine. And like, now I am doing it. And then it's like, who knows what happens down the line when, yeah, it's sweet. And the way it's presented is like innocent, even when, you're right, with Ellis.

And also, I mean to ellis's credit you know way easier to ghost someone in 1982 you just fucking fall off the map it doesn't matter especially because he appears to live in a suburb which they make fun of him for they're like where what is this there's a forest over here and he's like no it's a city the last thing i kind of wanted to touch on and i think this might go back to sort of that like beauty standards conversation but um there's that scene where clara and bobo are talking to two girls it's toward the beginning of the movie the girls and i think they're maybe like working together like the spandex like the the leotard

very spandex like yeah do do do do do um yeah the dance at the at the talent show um yes they because those are girls who like they're wearing pastels and their blonde hair is long and they're kind of like giving Bobo and Clara a hard time for just like looking the way they do and behaving the way they do and I feel like uh this this is reminiscent of the like, well, our characters are not like the other girls thing. But again, the way it's presented in this movie, it's it's it just it felt more like, yeah, these two characters are, you know, kind of, they would be considered oddballs, quote unquote, by like mainstream society because they're very intentionally doing that. Like, you know, try, you know, like rejecting society's standards um and while they are kind of casting judgment

on these like quote-unquote normie girls it just i don't know i cannot explain why it feels different but the way we criticize they like it didn't feel like you know like oh they're not like the other girls well it didn't feel like movie bullying. That didn't even feel like even like a movie bullying interaction. Like that felt like kids that were like, like the girls were being mean to Bobo and Clara. And gatekeeping them about punk. Yes. Right. bobo and clara and gatekeeping them about punk yeah yes right i was like oh god these mini olivia newton johns are telling them that punk is dead that's that's gotta hurt that's gotta sting

um but it did feel like i don't know it just felt like a very like kid interaction of like no one really knows what they're talking about in this interaction um it didn't feel like the like overwritten middle school bullies that you're used to saying in movies it was like kids that like yeah these kids are not going to be friends they don't they don't have a lot of respect for each other but it's not like i don't know yeah i i agree and and and i feel like it's you avoid the like not like other girls trope by just like getting to know that character, which is what this this entire movie is. It's like we know so much about their background, like what draws them to punk, what draws them to each other and all this stuff. Like, you know, it all makes sense.

It does. So, yeah, that was the last thing I wanted to touch on. Is there anything else? I think that, I guess like from a intersectional point of view, it's like worth pointing out that I believe the entire cast like is entirely white. And yeah, I kind of like did a little bit of, but not a ton of digging to like, you know, it's just like, there's a certain amount you can just sort of say like sweden 1982 you know right i feel like sweden is kind of famously rather homogenous in terms of but not entirely the demographics not entirely but like it is not quite the like cultural melting pot is like other places um but yeah i i definitely um um i was curious about that too because i'm like is this just what the demographics of sweden were at this time but they're also in a major city and it did feel like this is this is especially white even for sweden my understanding

and i i'm not an expert in this i know a little bit more about finland than i do i avoided all of the problems that you all were talking about about accidentally causing drama within your friend groups by dating people by i just um dated a finnish girl all throughout high school who lived in a different country and so i got to be be like, you wouldn't know her. She doesn't go here. She doesn't even live in this country. Love that. Yeah. And which honestly was probably my like low key way of just being like, I don't actually want to date. This all seems weird and messy. I'll just stay out of it. So I don't know as much about Sweden and probably some of the listeners do but I'm under the impression one that at least more recently the suburbs versus city thing is inverted in Sweden and a lot of places in Europe the suburbs would

actually be more of a marker of being poor and also be more likely to have a more stronger culture to to my understanding and this does not reflect back to the 80s. And then also a lot of the waves of immigration from I believe mostly North Africa and Swana, is that the way that I'm new to this terminology? Southwest Asia and Northern Africa. um southwest asia and north northern africa um folks i mean i believe that was more like the mid to late 90s um but i again not a demographics expert and i but one of the only reasons worth bringing it up is one there's a coziness to this particular punk fantasy or whatever that that's very sweet but is like complicated by the the

current rise and i'm really not trying to hold this movie to these standards but it just like feels worth pointing out that like um there's a lot of problems with racism in particular in sweden uh again i'm not trying to pretend like i don't live in a country full of racism but like so there's a certain amount of like the the all whiteness is feels it's like marked to me because of the current context but I don't have enough information to know whether it feels marked to the context in which it was made or the context of the time it represents as always if there are any listeners who can shed more light on this, listeners from Sweden, or just anyone who has more information, feel free to share.

No, I'm glad you brought it up, though, because that's something that I think sometimes we are guilty of, of being like, well, yeah, this movie sucks on the issue of race, but we don't have enough information, so we're not sure. And then we kind of drop it in a way that we probably should not we should continue to to research and and have a better perspective um on the whole because i mean like so many movies there is no reason that

the cast to this movie should be all white you're making a fucking movie and also there's no way that was true that that could be true so um does that bring us to the backfill test of which which this movie passes very handily almost constantly mostly between bobo clara and hedvwig and um but yeah there's there's other combinations but yeah it's uh girls talking about punk music it's girls talking about uh religion it's girls talking about sometimes you know boys and Ellis and stuff but um yeah it's it's a whole handful of many different things i know and it's it's so effortless it's just like what the story is and i love that we get to see every kind of facet of these kids inner world it's awesome i love it i'm excited to watch it again and to recommend it it's also like if you haven't watched this movie it's streaming on goddamn tubi it's oh is it oh amazing great so if you haven't watched it and you enjoyed this episode get to it so let's get let's get to our uh our nipple scale nipple scale zero to five nipples

based on how the movie fares when we examine it through an intersectional feminist lens. And I would say, I would give this, I think like a 4.5, um, because docking it a little bit for, but again, like, uh, it's that tricky thing where it's like, maybe these just were the demographics of Sweden in 19 early 1980s or maybe it was just that they you know didn't think to be more inclusive so um I'll cautiously give it four and a half nipples um because I think that otherwise it's doing a lot of really amazing things as far as just like centering a female friendship, centering just like girls in punk music. Like there's just not many stories about that. I think the examination of how different things like beauty standards and romance and misogyny and like because they're in uh in like music uh which is often kind of like a male dominated thing and they

are dealing with those youth center guys and the iron fist band and like being misogynist toward them in kind of subtle ways and not like overtly hateful ways but like things that they still have to deal with and just like all of those interesting nuanced things that the movie explores in a very like seamless and effortless and authentic way i thought was really awesome so i'm going to give the movie four and a half nipples i'll give one to each of the gals in the band um i'll give one to the child acting in general which i thought was incredible um i famously am very critical of child acting on the show uh and maybe it's just because it's in a language that I don't speak but I

I think you can you can still tell when acting is good or bad uh even if you're not speaking that language and I think it was really good acting and then i'll give my half nipple to um clarinet dad clarinet dad's clarinet as a former clarinet player myself i gotta show the clarinet some love for sure uh i'll go i'll go 4.5 as well. Do you think it's worth bringing up that there's no country that having a completely white cast, especially in a coming-of-age story where there was room for diversity in the story, there's no reason it needed to be the way it was. I'm glad that we got to discuss that. And I really love this movie. I feel like it's representation of girlhood and

like just the i don't know the like kind of like incredibly specific specific specific specificity let's go with that uh of but of of like uncomfortable coming of age experiences and like trying to figure your shit out and contradicting yourself all the time and your parents suck but they're trying and like it just there are so many like universal cool themes being explored here i really love it i'm gonna give it four nipples i give one one each to hedwig bo, Bobo, and Clara. I'm going to give one to Clarinet Dad, and I'll give the last half nipple

with a vote of faith that she'll do better in the future to Hedwig's little sister, the villain of the story. Yeah, maybe she was just actually really concerned for Hedwig's sake. Yeah, she really thought Hedwig was was gonna go to hell for that i know i mean speaking of calling a sibling a fascist and a cop yeah she was the fascist song about her uh i'm also going to take the cheap way out and copy the same number of nipples that you all give it but i do feel like hell yeah it feels feels right to me um i will give and 4.5 is like the punkest right number to yeah because you're like i really liked it but i can't not be critical yeah exactly

it's not perfect um and oh my god i used to review things on goodreads before i had published books and i used to like i didn't know that the internet meant five stars is good and everything below it means it's absolute garbage and so i used to like accurately rate things and then people get mad at me like after i started publishing books people would go to my goodreads and be like i can't believe margaret killjoy gave four stars to this other book as if as if her books are better and i'm like no i would have given my book four stars like I know what's wrong with it I wrote it you know um but anyway um from anyway so uh One Nipple goes to Clara's Suit uh One Nipple goes to it being top three punk movies um one to the fact that they're not i'm not giving them to people i

apologize uh one is to the fact that they're not a punk band sorry they're not a girl band sorry terrible slip um one is to the fact that there is no doubt in my mind that these girls would have taken in a trans girl there's no part of me that thinks that they would have rejected me from their crew um hell yeah and uh my half nipple goes to them fishing for people with yarn out the window. That's true. We cannot forget the absolute critical nature of that. And then shout out to, have you all seen Together? This guy's other movie about a, it's the best movie about a communal house that I've ever seen.

Like in terms of like how communal living works. It's a very similarly overly earnest, beautiful film. I've also only saw it once like five or six years ago. I didn't know it was the same director. I just thought Swedes were particularly good at making cozy films about things that I like. Anyway, sorry for shoehorning and everything that I wanted to talk about. No, not even a little bit. Margaret, it was such a treat having you.

What would you like to plug? Where can people follow you on social media? All of that good stuff. Well, if you like hearing me talk about things i like i have a podcast called cool people who did cool stuff you can hear me tell jamie loftus about the time that spain um stole itself back from the bosses and the fascists for a little while an absolute treat and that is a good place to find me it's on cool zone media and you can follow me on twitter at magpie killjoy you can follow me on instagram at margaret killjoy and i guess if you

like google my name plus book or music or something you can find the other stuff i do hell yeah yeah thank you so we're we're so, I'm like just genuinely thrilled that you're on the show. I'm so glad we got to talk about a punk movie. I don't think we've ever covered a punk movie on shows. So I think it's good and important that we brought an authority in for the occasion. Thank you so much again for being here. Everyone listen to everything Margaret does it's the best as for us you can find

us on social media and Instagram and Twitter at Bechdelcast you can join our Patreon aka Matreon where we cover two additional movies just Caitlin and I every month and there's also a backlog of over 100 episodes there

so lots of fun to be had over on the matrion we've got our merch which you can find at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast Jamie in

a very punk way designs all of it classic punk I think everyone's gonna be like caitlin do you know what they're like it's pretty wide punk is whatever punk's in your heart um it's true i like it when the one boy is kind of criticizing what Clara is wearing. And he's like, you don't look very punk. And she's like, it's the opinions that matter. It's like, yeah, you got to have those punk opinions. So anyway, Jamie does design all of our merch.

And you can grab that again at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. And, you know, rate, review us, et cetera. And otherwise, we are the best. You're the best. We are the best. Bye. Bye. 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 channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. 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. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right.

The challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all, and we are coming along for the ride. Woohoo! That would be me, Devin Simone. And then there's me, Davon Rogers, and we're here to take you behind the scenes of the Challenge 40, Battle of the Eras. Join us as we break down each episode, interview challengers, and take you behind the scenes of this iconic season. Listen to MTV's official

Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.