Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Devoured by Bugs. It's a podcast
Speaker 2: that isn't called that. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 2: we're not talking about that, except once again giving you
Speaker 2: strange hints at what we're talking about before we hit record.
Speaker 2: Why do you all care? Why do I think you care?
Speaker 2: Why am our guest today is Caitlin? Aren't they hy? Caitlin?
Speaker 3: Hello? Excuse me? I was burping. We got the drink
Speaker 3: of water that I had alluded to at the end
Speaker 3: of the last episode, or maybe did I say that
Speaker 3: on Mic or off Mike, I don't remember, who knows.
Speaker 3: The point is I needed some water. I brilliantly got
Speaker 3: a can of uh sparkling water.
Speaker 2: Oh, Sophie doesn't let me drink those?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, Well it's for good reason, because they will
Speaker 3: make you burp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which you don't realize talk until your job is
Speaker 2: to talk, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, so I might be. I'm going to try
Speaker 3: really hard not to audibly because that is gross and
Speaker 3: anyone to hear me do that. So yeah, I'll do
Speaker 3: my best. But now I feel you.
Speaker 2: Know, binary cred? What's that your non binary cred?
Speaker 3: True? Yeah, I think that the burping on air on
Speaker 3: a podcast is defies gender.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I admit I don't like it, but because I'm
Speaker 2: kind of fem.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean so now I'm just gonna not ever
Speaker 3: not I'm gonna I'm gonna burp a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, not burp cast with our host Sophie.
Speaker 1: I will also not be green lighting that.
Speaker 2: It's cool people who did cool burps, cool people who
Speaker 2: did cool stuff without burping. M Yeah, we're a burp negative,
Speaker 2: We're a body function negative podcast.
Speaker 3: Now I feel shamed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's actually how I knew that I was transits,
Speaker 2: that I poop roses.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful.
Speaker 2: This girl's poop roses. I don't know whether I can
Speaker 2: I can't even. Oh god, all right, we're talking about
Speaker 2: surrealis who probably would have. We're gonna talk about some
Speaker 2: people who are into some fucking kind of nasty art
Speaker 2: today in a good way. Oh hell yeah, a little
Speaker 2: bit more in the sex nasty unless the fucking burp
Speaker 2: joke whatever. Sophie's our producer. Hi, Sophie Hey. Ian is
Speaker 2: our audio editor. Hi Ian, Hey Ian. Okay, and we
Speaker 2: can't continue until you say hi to Ian.
Speaker 3: Sorry I was burping again but you didn't hear it.
Speaker 3: So I'm two for two Highen.
Speaker 2: And Unwomen Deserar theme song. This is part four of
Speaker 2: our four part are on the Surrealists, and today we're
Speaker 2: just gonna talk about even more cool anti fascist artists
Speaker 2: and queers because there's just a lot of them. Nice
Speaker 2: I thought there'd be like clog Con would be the
Speaker 2: only specifically fighting against fascist non binary person in the
Speaker 2: surrealist movement because but no, absolutely not. So back to
Speaker 2: the Surrealists. They're just getting started. You all the datas,
Speaker 2: they're like snoweight Now ur surrealis that sounds more fun.
Speaker 2: Andre Berton was a Freudian physician helping soldiers deal with
Speaker 2: shell shock, and he and others folks are like their
Speaker 2: fucking outh automatic. Writing in nineteen twenty four, Breton writes
Speaker 2: Surrealist Manifesto, this doesn't kick things off, It's already been happening,
Speaker 2: but it's the cultural touchstone for everyone except that other
Speaker 2: group from the big split with Zara that where they
Speaker 2: were like fighting each other and shit. They actually put
Speaker 2: out a different Surrealist Manifesto like two weeks earlier, but
Speaker 2: no one remembers it because it's not the one that's stuck.
Speaker 2: I think they got into a fist fight about it,
Speaker 2: about having these two different manifestos. Okay, And in the end,
Speaker 2: Breton's surrealis just kind of outnumbered the other folks.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like when a Bug's Life and Ants
Speaker 3: came out at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no one remembers Ants.
Speaker 3: No, but people, I do people.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, you probably remember the first Surrealist manifesto too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've established I'm a fucking freakazoid.
Speaker 3: I mean I saw Ants, and I remember Woody Allen
Speaker 3: does a voice in it for some reason. And yeah,
Speaker 3: but bugs Life.
Speaker 1: The lesser Woody buzz Life definitely more fun. Couldn't agree more?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's exactly like that. So the Bugs Life
Speaker 2: there's more of them and people like it more. And
Speaker 2: the Bug's Life Manifesto is an absurdist document. And it's like,
Speaker 2: we know what surrealism is, but we don't know how
Speaker 2: we're going to get there, and we refused to have
Speaker 2: a set plan. And at the start, they're like art
Speaker 2: kids meeting in cafes and playing games like Exquisite Corps
Speaker 2: and doing automatic drawing and some actually mostly writing. At
Speaker 2: the beginning, it actually starts off more of a literature movement.
Speaker 2: It actually like takes a.
Speaker 3: While that magazine called literature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, the well named magazine literature. Some of
Speaker 2: them are rich kids, some of them aren't. Some of
Speaker 2: them are traumatized as fuck by fighting in World War One.
Speaker 2: Kids is the wrong word to use here. You know,
Speaker 2: you can be twenty two years old, but if you
Speaker 2: fought World War One, you're older than me.
Speaker 3: You're yeah, you're a grown ass adult.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Surrealism starts springing up everywhere autonomously, and they're not
Speaker 2: like official chapters. Brussels, which is super nearby, is the first.
Speaker 2: I think. By nineteen twenty nine, they're more political now
Speaker 2: and they write a new manifesto, and this one is like,
Speaker 2: we believe in collective action. We're engaged in all the
Speaker 2: following political things. And by the way, the following specific
Speaker 2: people are specifically not part of our movement anymore because
Speaker 2: we don't like them, because they don't approve of our
Speaker 2: belief in collective action in the following, narrowly defined way.
Speaker 2: Most of these splits which keep happening are fundamentally political. Obviously,
Speaker 2: Dali is run out for being a fascist, but it's
Speaker 2: also like who likes Trotsky and who likes Stalin and
Speaker 2: who likes anarchism and all this shit. But most of
Speaker 2: the people who are expelled don't actually stop being surrealist, right,
Speaker 2: because it's not actually it like claims to weve be
Speaker 2: a member organization. It is not a member organization. Some
Speaker 2: people do leave surrealism, like there's a diehard Stalinist who like,
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of people who are like, actually Stalin
Speaker 2: says that surrealism is bad and only Marxist really or
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck is good and we need to represent
Speaker 2: things in materialism and blah blah blah blah blah, like
Speaker 2: whatever bullshit. Those people stopp being surrealists. Overall, all the
Speaker 2: splits and purges and shit, it's just weird infighting drama
Speaker 2: and not stopping people from looking for the marvelous and
Speaker 2: fighting against miserableism. Then in nineteen thirty six, Friend of
Speaker 2: the Pod, the Spanish Civil War kicks off. Franco is
Speaker 2: a fascist Catholic and he tries and fails to throw
Speaker 2: a coup against the republican government of left leaning Spain,
Speaker 2: and a motley assortment of leftist band together to fight
Speaker 2: him back. Spoiler alert, they lose, but this is a
Speaker 2: huge deal internationally, this whole fight, and it's the first
Speaker 2: war against fascism in history, and the surrealists are all
Speaker 2: about supporting the republic against the fascists. You can hear
Speaker 2: other half of the Bechdel Cast talk about the Spanish
Speaker 2: Civil War on the episode probably called the Spanish Civil
Speaker 2: War with Jamie Loftus. But if you just searched Jamie
Speaker 2: Loftis Spanish Civil War, probably fine.
Speaker 3: I imagine she did at least twenty other podcast about
Speaker 3: that specifically.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, well there was that whole year where
Speaker 2: the Bechdel Cast was just movies about the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Pan's Labyrinth and others.
Speaker 2: I know, a whole bunch, but that's because I'm a nerd. Wait,
Speaker 2: what are some others? Wait, there's this one that's an
Speaker 2: inversion of Pan's Labyrinth. Okay, you know how Pan's Labyrinth
Speaker 2: is like magical realism against fascism and set in the
Speaker 2: Spanish Civil War, like kind of immediately after the Spanish
Speaker 2: Civil War. There's one that's magical realism against four fascism
Speaker 2: set in the Spanish Civil War. It's called ill bosk
Speaker 2: the forest but ill I L I think is maybe
Speaker 2: the Kathalan spelling of it. Okay, yeah, and it is
Speaker 2: pro fascist. It's the other side of the Civil War right,
Speaker 2: and like it comes out kind of a it's like
Speaker 2: ants the bugs life. Yes, it's like a couple of
Speaker 2: years later. Although you know what, I'm not a big
Speaker 2: fan of what are you on? And yeah? No, and
Speaker 2: it's it's fucked up. It's kind of worth watching, just
Speaker 2: as like this like weird, like so what are the
Speaker 2: people who wish that? Who are Glad franco one think
Speaker 2: of all this?
Speaker 3: You know, wait, does the movie take the stance of like, wow,
Speaker 3: fascism is awesome or is it just about those characters
Speaker 3: who feel good?
Speaker 2: The movie is pro fascist? Oh god, it is like
Speaker 2: pro it is anti leftist, is anti the people who
Speaker 2: are fighting against the good, hard working bourgeoisie of rural Catalonia.
Speaker 2: And this was a recent movie, yeah, like ten like
Speaker 2: twenty years or so. Yeah, yeah, maybe ten years ago
Speaker 2: or so. Oh god, okay, so does that one? And
Speaker 2: then there's Libertarios which is awesome, which is about anarchist
Speaker 2: women fighting, and then there's Land Freedom by Ken Loach
Speaker 2: who's like my favorite did he did the Win, the
Speaker 2: Shakes the Barley, So he's like one of my favorite
Speaker 2: directors because he the my favorite movie. But the Irish
Speaker 2: Civil War or Irish Revolution and the Civil War and okay,
Speaker 2: that's it might be all this. I'm sure there's more. Oh,
Speaker 2: the Anarchist Wife, which is the worst name for any movie.
Speaker 2: It's a French movie. Okay, this is not Margaret lists
Speaker 2: all the Spanish Civil War movies. Anyway, I did enjoy
Speaker 2: that very much, though, thanks, We should watch it. I
Speaker 2: would love to see get your take on il Bosky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll watch it, I guess.
Speaker 2: Oh and then wait, there's the zombies one, the recent one.
Speaker 2: It's on Netflix. There's the one where it's a it's
Speaker 2: like anarchists and also some fascists, but like francoists have
Speaker 2: to team up against the Nazis and the zombies. And
Speaker 2: it's called Valley of the Dead on Netflix. All right,
Speaker 2: and that one doesn't take a pro fascist side, takes
Speaker 2: an anti fascist side. Yeah. Anyway, Spanish Civil War, big
Speaker 2: deal in history is the first real war of against
Speaker 2: fascism in history. I already read this part, so at
Speaker 2: least four of the surrealists are like, let's fucking go.
Speaker 2: I think a bunch more did, but like, there's four
Speaker 2: that I've currently tracked down, and there are two couples,
Speaker 2: and it's actually happened a lot like couples would just
Speaker 2: go and join the army together to go fight against
Speaker 2: fight against the shit. Because this is one of the
Speaker 2: also the first times you have organized military forces in
Speaker 2: the Western world that have men and women both fighting
Speaker 2: alongside one another. One couple. They joined the same force
Speaker 2: that George Orwell later joined, called the Poom and these
Speaker 2: are the anti Stalinist Marxists who basically end up allied
Speaker 2: with the anarchists in the Civil War within a civil
Speaker 2: war where Stalin decides to try and kill half of
Speaker 2: his own side to consolidate the other half. The other
Speaker 2: couple they joined the Drudi Column, which is an anarchist unit,
Speaker 2: and I'm one of these people who went to fight.
Speaker 2: I'm going to single out Mary Low because she's sort
Speaker 2: of one of the most interesting. She was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve. She was a British woman and a poet,
Speaker 2: and she became a surrealist. Her partner was a Cuban
Speaker 2: surrealist poet named Juan Bria, who is one of the
Speaker 2: founders of the Cuban Surrealist group, and he kept getting
Speaker 2: arrested everywhere he went for his communist agitation, both in
Speaker 2: Cuba and Spain, and then he kept getting in trouble
Speaker 2: with the communists because he wasn't the right kind of
Speaker 2: communist AKA, he wasn't a Stalinist, because he and Mary
Speaker 2: were both Trotskyists, so they're like less authoritarian communists. Way
Speaker 2: more of the people who end up on this show
Speaker 2: follow the not stalin people will be surprised to know.
Speaker 2: The other couple is a woman named Remedios Varro and
Speaker 2: her partner Benjamin Pere. And Pere, since he's like he's
Speaker 2: like the surrealist founder and the white guy who's fighting
Speaker 2: in the Spanish Civil War, he's often written about as
Speaker 2: the one surrealist who fought in the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2: This is just not true. But he's cool as shit
Speaker 2: and he fucking threw down to try and stop fascism
Speaker 2: at the very beginning, so he's great. All four of
Speaker 2: them fight on the Aragon Front against the fascists, all
Speaker 2: while writing about their experiences for various newspapers. Right because
Speaker 2: they're like, well, we're writers and artists and shit, you know,
Speaker 2: so we will use our communication skills the best way
Speaker 2: we can, which involves both shooting guns at fascists is
Speaker 2: a very direct form of communication, and then also speaking
Speaker 2: about these experiences and putting out like radio broadcasts and
Speaker 2: newspapers and stuff. And Mary Lowe she actually funds, like
Speaker 2: she funds the English language version of the pum's paper.
Speaker 2: And at first I was like, oh, she's like a
Speaker 2: rich kid right now. She right before she went to Spain,
Speaker 2: she won a ton of money at while gam Oh nice,
Speaker 2: she just like went and played Roulette ed La Like
Speaker 2: hell yeah, use that money for the revolution by putting
Speaker 2: out the English language paper for her unit, okay, And
Speaker 2: they're also doing radio broadcasts, and Mary does an English
Speaker 2: one and Benjamin does one in Portuguese. He's French, but
Speaker 2: he speaks Portuguese. And then the Stalinists try to force
Speaker 2: everyone into their command structure in the middle of this war,
Speaker 2: and the POM and the anarchists are like, no, you
Speaker 2: just showed up. You can't tell us that you're in charge.
Speaker 2: And so the Stalinists are like torturing and murdering all
Speaker 2: the other leftists and literally flaming people and shit and
Speaker 2: being bad. Jan Bria, the Cuban surrealist. He gets arrested
Speaker 2: twice by the Stalinists in only a few months while
Speaker 2: he's in the middle of trying to fight their common enemy, right,
Speaker 2: and then they try and kill him. A car tries
Speaker 2: to run him down in an alley, and he's like,
Speaker 2: this is a fucking movie. The way he gets out
Speaker 2: of this assassination attempt is he is to literally break
Speaker 2: down a door in the alley to like escape, you know.
Speaker 2: And so the couple flees Barcelona rather than get murdered.
Speaker 2: The other two leave Spain about four months later, I think,
Speaker 2: for more or less the same reasons. And getting back
Speaker 2: to France after this must have fucking sucked, right, because
Speaker 2: this is like revolutionary Spain is like this is it.
Speaker 2: We were doing it right. All of the things we've
Speaker 2: dreamed of, they're actually happening. We're creating a pluralistic like
Speaker 2: leftist revolution. We're collectivizing all these workplaces. We are like
Speaker 2: abortion is legalized, like divorce is legal made easier. I
Speaker 2: don't remember exactly about the divorce. I remember the abortion
Speaker 2: part clearly. They get back to France and everything's starting
Speaker 2: to fall apart, and Benjamin is arrested for distributing anarchist
Speaker 2: literature by the French government and he has to flee
Speaker 2: to Mexico. Right. Mary and Juan they're broke as hell
Speaker 2: and they're watching the Spanish Republic fall to the comb
Speaker 2: forces of Stalin and Franco. They hang around for a while,
Speaker 2: they're just like living, broke as shit, and they write
Speaker 2: a book called The Red Spanish Notebook together. Then they
Speaker 2: go to England and get married, and then they go
Speaker 2: to Qubo.
Speaker 3: It came out at the same exact time as the
Speaker 3: movie The Notebook.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, Nicholas Sparks famously fought in the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 3: For both sides.
Speaker 2: I actually don't know Nicholas's sparks politics. Surprise.
Speaker 3: I think they're not good. I think he's pretty conservative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and surprised me. I used to have to write
Speaker 2: in Nicholas Sparks style romance books because I used to
Speaker 2: ghost write romance books, and they were like, we want
Speaker 2: you to write. I was not Nicholas Sparks's ghostwriter, but
Speaker 2: I was writing where they were like, look, we're ripping
Speaker 2: off Nicholas sparks. Can you write these books.
Speaker 3: Fascinating?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That was my That was my job when like
Speaker 2: that that saved me from pretty abject poverty at one point. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: wild and I signed a non disclosure agreement, so I
Speaker 2: can't say what they are.
Speaker 3: Damn, that's a secret. I would like to know. Are
Speaker 3: they like famous though?
Speaker 1: I guess you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, What's Funny is like one of them?
Speaker 2: Until recently, was probably the most red thing I'd ever written. Okay,
Speaker 2: but now, thanks dear listeners, my actual fiction is starting
Speaker 2: to be read more than the absolute garbage that I
Speaker 2: churned out for five thousand dollars a novel when I
Speaker 2: had no money in my van. I lived in a van,
Speaker 2: but my van was broken.
Speaker 3: Is that all the more the ghostwriters get paid?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not good. A dire fucking novel for five grand.
Speaker 2: They paid the cover photographer. It was like an Abercrombie
Speaker 2: and Fitch photographer. They paid the photographer the same that
Speaker 2: they paid me to like, I had three weeks to
Speaker 2: write the book, because they this is totally what the
Speaker 2: listeners are here for whatever, I'm gonna finish the story.
Speaker 2: They were like, you have a month to write this,
Speaker 2: and I was like, sure, and the whole thing sounded
Speaker 2: so scammy that I waited for the first check to
Speaker 2: clear before I started writing. And then I had three
Speaker 2: weeks to write the whole thing, and I just hid
Speaker 2: in my partner's apartment while they were teaching and listened
Speaker 2: to Dope Throne by Sleep over and over again and
Speaker 2: wrote terrible, the worst shit I've ever written. I'm saying, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: that is like the book that they wrote, the Red
Speaker 2: Spanish Notebook. While they were living also broke. They went
Speaker 2: to England to get married. Oh, I almost went to
Speaker 2: England to marry actually my partner from then, but I didn't.
Speaker 2: They went to Cuba for a while, then they traveled
Speaker 2: around Europe, and then they had to flee the Nazi
Speaker 2: occupation of Prague and literal Nazi custody right, and they
Speaker 2: used the help of some literary friends to get out
Speaker 2: of Nazi custody and got the fuck back to Cuba
Speaker 2: to just follow just close out their story. One died
Speaker 2: of this or that illness in nineteen forty one. Mary
Speaker 2: married another Trotzkist and helped overthrow the Cuban capital's government,
Speaker 2: all while raising a bunch of kids, then fucking Stalinists.
Speaker 2: She'd settled into the Revolutionary society as a professor, being like, hooray,
Speaker 2: we've made a communism. Her husband was a his civil servant,
Speaker 2: and then Castro was like, hey, sorry, I have to
Speaker 2: persecute all the Communish aren't exactly the right kind of communist.
Speaker 2: So the couple had to flee. This time they went
Speaker 2: to Florida. I think Margaret complains about Stalinists. This is
Speaker 2: probably the free space and cool people did cool stuff bingo.
Speaker 2: But Mary lived a long ass time stay in suru
Speaker 2: to or politics right to the end. She died in
Speaker 2: Miami in two thousand and seven at ninety four years old.
Speaker 2: And if you want to live to ninety four years old,
Speaker 2: what are you promising near bag cut supplements? Right? Isn't
Speaker 2: that a thing we should start selling? Is that a
Speaker 2: cool thing? If we could promise people eternal life? Vamporism, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there we go.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, where's that?
Speaker 1: Say? We try to not do the supplement stuff, and okay, vamporism.
Speaker 1: Most of them give me the grifterick.
Speaker 2: How much would you pay Kaylin Durante to become a vampire?
Speaker 2: Five dollars, ten dollars, one thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: I mean something. I didn't hear the first part of
Speaker 3: your question because I was drinking more of my pur.
Speaker 2: Trying to avoid burpan. How much would you pay to
Speaker 2: become a vampire?
Speaker 3: Oh? Wow? Honestly, here's the thing. I don't want to
Speaker 3: live that long, okay, and I don't want to have
Speaker 3: to eat people, So I would pay zero dollars.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you would choose to not become a vampire? Yeah, yes, Sophie,
Speaker 2: would you become a vampire?
Speaker 1: All I'm saying is there was one time in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles where I ran into the really really really mega
Speaker 1: baybelicious guys who played the vampire in the Vampire Diaries,
Speaker 1: the two brothers. That was really fun for me.
Speaker 2: So you're already a vampires? What you're telling me, That's
Speaker 2: what I'm saying, is do they I've never seen you outside?
Speaker 1: They are they included in the vampires?
Speaker 2: Because that would change my answer.
Speaker 1: So much. Also, I hope that guy's dog.
Speaker 3: Is well, Ah, did you put his dog?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I literally ignored the men and just talked to the
Speaker 1: dog the entire times, as you do.
Speaker 3: I was like I would pay a lot of money
Speaker 3: to become a dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I'd pay a lot of money become my
Speaker 1: dog has a great.
Speaker 2: Life, yeah, spoiled A spoiled dog.
Speaker 1: Ye a podcast, A podcast dog.
Speaker 2: I would become a vampire. I don't to eat people,
Speaker 2: and I'm squeamish, but I feel like I like owe it,
Speaker 2: you know, like like turning down that much power. That
Speaker 2: could be like, let's do.
Speaker 1: It, magpilots start. Let's start it, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So we are selling vamporism. If you give us
Speaker 2: your first born child? Is that a that's not how still?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well we'll figure it out and then insert
Speaker 2: the following ad for vamporism.
Speaker 1: You just have to on the vampire diars. You just
Speaker 1: have to somebody. You have to pay somebody who's already
Speaker 1: a vampire to put give you some of their blood
Speaker 1: and then murder you. And then you have to bribe
Speaker 1: a human to give them your blood so that you
Speaker 1: fully are a vampire. You're welcome. I have friends.
Speaker 2: We all do. You're not the main person. I talk
Speaker 2: to you all the time. And what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Here's ads and we are back and we're talking about
Speaker 2: Prague which is basically the land of vampires. Actually, ironically,
Speaker 2: it'll come up later. One of the reasons that surrealis
Speaker 2: love the Progue surrealists, the prayer of surrealists love the
Speaker 2: prog cerealists, is because they were like your city's so
Speaker 2: like mystical and magical and like anti rationalists and steeped
Speaker 2: in like basically, they're all like vampire fans, you know,
Speaker 2: they're like, this is cool, which I mean. I also
Speaker 2: felt the like week I spent drunk in Prague when
Speaker 2: I was like twenty, so Mary Lowe was. Mary low
Speaker 2: had a much worse time in Prague than I did.
Speaker 2: She was bravely in Prague before it fell to the Nazis.
Speaker 2: While she was there, she was hanging out with the
Speaker 2: Progue surrealists who were cool as fuck. And we're gonna
Speaker 2: use another non binary or trens masculine hero named Toyan
Speaker 2: as our example, and this time I'm gonna use he
Speaker 2: hymn pronouns because I have a bit more evidence that
Speaker 2: this person who's like assigned female at birth would have
Speaker 2: preferred either those or maybe they them. And Toyen also
Speaker 2: is like one of those people who's like I only
Speaker 2: have one name. It's toy In, which is fucking cool.
Speaker 2: Toyen was born in nineteen oh two and when he
Speaker 2: was sixteen, he was kicked out of his house for
Speaker 2: being an anarchist. He started working at a soap factory
Speaker 2: to afford to get to go to art school in Prague,
Speaker 2: which I guess is a thing you can do as
Speaker 2: a runaway in Prague in the late nineteen tens. Is
Speaker 2: go to art school based on working in a factory.
Speaker 2: One of those things that people are like, we've come
Speaker 2: so far, and I'm like, have we He's hanging around
Speaker 2: with all the cool artsy anarchist types and he's going
Speaker 2: to organizing meetings and shit. By nineteen twenty three, he
Speaker 2: changes his name to toy In, which is a play
Speaker 2: on words. He has like a bunch of different It's
Speaker 2: like data where they're like, oh it's this, no, it's that, No,
Speaker 2: it's this other thing, you know, but it probably roughly
Speaker 2: means it is he in check and he refused to
Speaker 2: use feminine endings for words describing himself. And he wore
Speaker 2: men's clothing and he also wore women's clothing. He dated
Speaker 2: mostly women, but had two His like life partners were
Speaker 2: probably platonic art relationships with men m and he also
Speaker 2: once declared that he took his own virginity. I think
Speaker 2: when people were like because everyone was like, well, you're
Speaker 2: a girl, so let's talk about who you fuck. And
Speaker 2: he's like, I fuck myself like that Banks songs and
Speaker 2: it's a pop song and I know it. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: not actually a popular one. Maybe I know it because
Speaker 2: it sounds like a goth song. Anyway, I actually don't
Speaker 2: know this. Wait, it is this this artist Banks, who's
Speaker 2: a pop singer I really like, who has a song
Speaker 2: called like fuck with Myself? Like I fuck with myself
Speaker 2: more than anybody else.
Speaker 3: Nice, Okay, I'll listen to it and I might realize
Speaker 3: I recognize it.
Speaker 2: I learned about it from an article that was like,
Speaker 2: here are pop musicians who make music videos as if
Speaker 2: they are Trent Resoner from nine inch Nails. That's also
Speaker 2: how I learned about shit, what's their name? Fucking most
Speaker 2: popular person in this vein She got famous when she
Speaker 2: was like fifteen and everyone was a creep. Billie Eilish Mmmm. Oh,
Speaker 2: that's also who I learned about from that article that
Speaker 2: I read like ten years ago. Anyway, Toyen mostly drew erotica,
Speaker 2: lots of stuff with like male and female forms all
Speaker 2: mixed up, and he illustrated Marquis de Sad's writing like
Speaker 2: the person the word Sadism comes from. He is like
Speaker 2: very unabashedly into sex and sexual stuff. Right in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty four, he helped form the Czech Surrealist group, but
Speaker 2: he was also always trying to hustle up money in
Speaker 2: that awesome proletarian artist way, the equivalent of ghostwriting novels.
Speaker 2: He writes a travel guide to pair for Chech speakers.
Speaker 2: He designs fabrics, He designs book covers. Klin, Have you
Speaker 2: had to do weird shit like this for money?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. There was a whole I want to say,
Speaker 3: like nine months where I had cobbled together several jobs.
Speaker 3: One of them I was a delivery driver for Hooter's restaurant.
Speaker 3: I was an assistant at the same time, because I
Speaker 3: was like a part time maybe like fifteen hours a
Speaker 3: week kind of thing, because no one ordered Hooter's delivery
Speaker 3: can you imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not really known for those food.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: At the same time, I was an assistant to a
Speaker 3: guy who was like a talent scout, but he specifically
Speaker 3: scouted for men to be in jerk off videos for
Speaker 3: subscription based gay porn websites. Oh yeah, so do.
Speaker 2: You have to like approach guys and be like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'd watch you jerk off.
Speaker 3: No, but that could be considered harassment. Probably wouldn't have
Speaker 3: done it all change in my plans for tomorrow. But
Speaker 3: I did have to field a lot of like email
Speaker 3: responses we got, and I had to write a lot
Speaker 3: of ad copy for ads that we would post on
Speaker 3: Craigslist to be like, hey, we're looking for muscular men
Speaker 3: for a cool opportunity.
Speaker 2: Something you do all the time anyway, Just film.
Speaker 3: It, yeah, exactly, get paid to do it. That was
Speaker 3: literally part of the selling point of our ads. And
Speaker 3: then I had like a bunch of other internships at
Speaker 3: the same time that were weird, but yeah it was
Speaker 3: I've done my fair share of goofy ass jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and I like the like, you know, okay,
Speaker 2: here's the cool, Like eventually he's going to be known
Speaker 2: as like the most famous painter and most famous woman
Speaker 2: painter in twentieth century Progue or Czech Republic. And then
Speaker 2: just like he's like, eh, whatever, you know, writing these
Speaker 2: books that are probably complete garbage. Maybe they're great, actually,
Speaker 2: maybe they're incredible travel guides for Paris for Czech speakers.
Speaker 2: Well never, no, no, Probably someone will know, but it
Speaker 2: won't be me. There was tension in the surrealist movement
Speaker 2: pretty much as soon as the Czech Surrealist group started,
Speaker 2: because all of the political stuff from Paris was starting
Speaker 2: to come to a head around this time, and so
Speaker 2: there's this tension between Stalinism and freedom right in the
Speaker 2: surrealist movement and in Prague. While Breton and some others
Speaker 2: from Paris are visiting visiting the nineteen thirty five because
Speaker 2: they're obsessed with the Czech surrealists, they're like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you all are so authentic. You're like spooky, you know,
Speaker 2: you live in like this booky city, which is like whatever,
Speaker 2: Like that's how again, that's how I felt when I
Speaker 2: was there. Sure, So while they were there, they got
Speaker 2: into a literal fight in the streets with Soviet delegates
Speaker 2: because the Soviet delegates accused, or a Soviet delegate accused
Speaker 2: the Surrealus of pederasty. And in this case they didn't
Speaker 2: mean we think you have sex with children or promote
Speaker 2: sex with children. It was like, y'all are gay, because
Speaker 2: there was a long period of time where that's coming
Speaker 2: back where you can decide that anyone who's you know,
Speaker 2: it's basically be like your groomors, you know, right. And
Speaker 2: so there's one version where they got into a fist
Speaker 2: fight about it. There's one version where it wasn't like
Speaker 2: a two way fist fight and said Breton slapped the
Speaker 2: Soviet delegate in the face several times, which it does
Speaker 2: hit the point of like you slap someone, You're like, well, one,
Speaker 2: that's not part of my daily life, right, but you're
Speaker 2: like you slap someone several times, it's like it's now
Speaker 2: you're really fucking mad. And there's a couple I've read
Speaker 2: a bunch of different ways of how to interpret this.
Speaker 2: One that I seems to be the most likely is
Speaker 2: basically the surrealis are fighting physically to defend their right
Speaker 2: to include queer artists and queer themes and specifically like
Speaker 2: to not drive out the fact that there's a fuck
Speaker 2: ton of openly gay surrealists at this point, and this
Speaker 2: anti gay repression coming from the proper communist left led
Speaker 2: to the suicide of one gay surrealist named Renee Creval,
Speaker 2: and most of his friends defended him after his death.
Speaker 2: This is like where they're like the kind of like
Speaker 2: splits that sort of are like almost like jokes to
Speaker 2: me in the twenties, right where they're like, oh, well
Speaker 2: you fuck you, no, fuck you. At this point, it's
Speaker 2: like Stalinism has driven this kid to kill themself, right yeah,
Speaker 2: And most people are like, fuck the Communist Party, We're
Speaker 2: getting the fuck out of this nightmare. And others are like, no,
Speaker 2: the immortal science of Marxist Leninism just demands that I
Speaker 2: spit on my gay friend's grave. Fuck those people, because
Speaker 2: and I pay more attention to historical drama than present
Speaker 2: day politics.
Speaker 3: I mean, history repeats itself, so whatever was happening back
Speaker 3: then is basically still happening.
Speaker 2: I know. Like the current version of this is the
Speaker 2: turf stuff. The current version is like, you know, these
Speaker 2: people who are ostensibly on the left talking about like
Speaker 2: throwing half of us out and a group that is
Speaker 2: the reason that transpaport pronos socide is repression. It's like
Speaker 2: the solely there's nothing about who we are. It's not
Speaker 2: that we're like mixed up, it's that we're being told
Speaker 2: we're bad, right, you know. Anyway, this split the hell
Speaker 2: out of the PROG group too, where the confrontation had happened.
Speaker 2: When the Nazis took over in nineteen thirty nine, they
Speaker 2: explicitly ban toy In from presenting his work publicly. They
Speaker 2: were like, you're on the list of degenerates, right, You're
Speaker 2: not Jewish, so we're not going to kill you. But
Speaker 2: unless you step out of line or do anything, which
Speaker 2: case will kill you, but you're.
Speaker 3: Not allowed to.
Speaker 2: So he spends all lot of his time underground, like directly,
Speaker 2: like actually hiding, but since most of his time doing
Speaker 2: his work underground and then living above ground and then
Speaker 2: hiding a bunch of Jewish surrealist and anti fascists, including
Speaker 2: his Jewish partner, like platonic partner. I think they actually
Speaker 2: try to escape when the Nazis first take power. But
Speaker 2: there's this fucking piece of shit who's like robbing people,
Speaker 2: trying to be like, oh I got you, I'll set
Speaker 2: you up, I'll get you out here, and it's just
Speaker 2: like a scam, right, So he hides his Jewish partner,
Speaker 2: and until that Jewish partner died of illness in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty two, so during the occupation, and then hit at
Speaker 2: least one other Jewish anti fascist for the entire course
Speaker 2: of the war, I don't know how many, and then
Speaker 2: also kept organizing surrealist stuff completely illegally, publishing degenerate art
Speaker 2: at great risk, including like our other non binary surrealist
Speaker 2: a bunch of calls for Nazis to defend. This is
Speaker 2: like a huge thing of what surrealists are doing. Is
Speaker 2: like you're clearly on the evil side, Like you're the baddies.
Speaker 2: What are you doing? You know? One Jewish surrealist photographer
Speaker 2: that he hit is named Yindrich Hasler, who developed new
Speaker 2: art techniques like new dioramic techniques of like super macro
Speaker 2: photo close ups and shit like for his art while
Speaker 2: living in Toyen's bathroom. Whoa, which is just like a
Speaker 2: fucking cool way to invent I mean, it's an awful,
Speaker 2: horrible way to invent a new form of art, but
Speaker 2: it's also fucking cool, you know. And apparently this guy,
Speaker 2: the way he would escape from like Nazis they'd come
Speaker 2: by in search everywhere, you know, is that when when
Speaker 2: the Nazis were coming, he'd like gaily skip down the
Speaker 2: front steps and like wave hello and then just like
Speaker 2: head off, you know, like at a jaunt as if
Speaker 2: he's like totally nonplussed about there being Nazis coming, so
Speaker 2: he's not worried at all. So everyone just so they're
Speaker 2: just like hey, I belong see it, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he that's wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he survives, and Toyan survives, and the other
Speaker 2: his partner doesn't survive. But that well, I'm sure the
Speaker 2: Nazi occupation probably I don't know, if you die because
Speaker 2: you have to live in your partner's bathroom and hide
Speaker 2: from Nazis and you die of illness, I'll put that
Speaker 2: one on the Nazis.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Fortunately it was liberated. Unfortunately it immediately fell to
Speaker 2: the USSR. Toyen and his partner, his new partner moved
Speaker 2: to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: He has broke as fuck, but the Surrealists support him. Basically,
Speaker 2: they actually are a community and they're actually built on
Speaker 2: mutual aid. They're like, oh, you're toy In, Like yeah,
Speaker 2: Like like Breton's like sure, stay in my apartment as
Speaker 2: long as you want, and like means it literally, and
Speaker 2: like I think he lives Breton for years, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so like the famous ones, the ones who like
Speaker 2: make it in the art world are like fucking pain.
Speaker 2: Everyone else's rent, you know, fucking rules. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 2: Antoya is fucking weird the whole rest of his life.
Speaker 2: He's so cool. When he's hanging out with people and
Speaker 2: feels that they lack poetry, he just doesn't talk. He's
Speaker 2: just like quiet the whole time. He refers to it
Speaker 2: as putting on his spacesuit.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's wow, what a flex. It's like, you're boring,
Speaker 3: So I'm not even gonna dignify your existence by speaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in his seventies he still made his time,
Speaker 2: made time to go see porn in the theaters every
Speaker 2: day or every week or something nice. He died broke
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty and is now considered the Czech Republic's
Speaker 2: most important twentieth century quote unquote woman artist. During his life,
Speaker 2: he illustrated five hundred and seventy books and left behind
Speaker 2: dozens of paintings. I really like his art. I know,
Speaker 2: I'm like mostly not talking about these people's art, but
Speaker 2: his some of my favorite.
Speaker 3: Of you spell it. I'm going to do another Google
Speaker 3: image y e n y n okay, yeah, oh, I
Speaker 3: want to describe what you say imagery yeah, and vaginas
Speaker 3: oh yeah, and some other stuff that I can't quite
Speaker 3: put into words.
Speaker 2: That's surrealism, baby. Anyway, After the war, surrealism it seemed
Speaker 2: as like surrealism like kind of goes away during the
Speaker 2: war in most people's mind because it stops being the
Speaker 2: darling of the art world in the same way. But
Speaker 2: it doesn't go away in after the war, surrealism starts
Speaker 2: a more overt association with the Anarchist Federation. They're like,
Speaker 2: we're fucking done with this communist thing like or this
Speaker 2: you know, staliny thing. They start writing for the French
Speaker 2: Anarchists Federation. At this point, they start refusing to take sides.
Speaker 2: They there's growth here. When when the French Anarchists Federation
Speaker 2: keeps having it's it's like dumb splits, the surrealists are like,
Speaker 2: we're not taking sides in any of that shit. We like,
Speaker 2: we're actually all on the same side here. Get the
Speaker 2: grow the fuck up. Surrealism becomes a bigger deal again
Speaker 2: in the sixties, both under the name surrealism, including having
Speaker 2: spread to the US, where like the Chicago Surrealists Group Champions.
Speaker 2: It develops the phrase make Love not War, and threw
Speaker 2: down alongside the students for Democratic Society, who keep showing
Speaker 2: up in a bunch of my episodes, and also through
Speaker 2: its ideological descendants, probably the most famous of which are
Speaker 2: the situationists and situationists in France. But I want to
Speaker 2: cut back in time to before ads. No, this transition
Speaker 2: isn't yeah more or less. Here's where I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: I trying to sell you stuff. But honestly, other people
Speaker 2: use my work to try and sell you stuff, which
Speaker 2: is fine.
Speaker 3: This is what it is.
Speaker 2: Ill gotta eat. My dog is hungry. I'm hungry. I
Speaker 2: keep kind of losing track of things. What's happening.
Speaker 3: Here's here's miserableism at its peak.
Speaker 2: Yeah as really is actually yeah, and we're back, so okay.
Speaker 2: But I'm actually going to cut back in time now
Speaker 2: talk about some other shit that the surrealist got up to,
Speaker 2: some other people that they were inspired by, and some
Speaker 2: other people that they inspired, because I want to tell
Speaker 2: you a story about three different French murderouses. It's one
Speaker 2: of my favorite words. I don't normally like. I know
Speaker 2: that the word for a female actors actor, you know,
Speaker 2: but like right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like genderize what should just be a gender neutral term.
Speaker 2: And like murderer is that it's core gender neutral term,
Speaker 2: But I like the active feminization of it. I like
Speaker 2: murderous because I will argue that a murderous is, on
Speaker 2: average a different kind of person than a male murderer,
Speaker 2: which we would call, yeah, a ware murderer. Uh probably
Speaker 2: if we're using mister murderer. Yeah, okay, because I'm going
Speaker 2: to go on a tangent. Years ago, I had this friend.
Speaker 2: We all lived in this giant mansion full of depressed
Speaker 2: punks and goths in Nashville, North Carolina. One of my
Speaker 2: roommates lived on the back porch and a coffin that
Speaker 2: she had built. She was another Yeah, she was weird.
Speaker 2: She's another trans woman, though neither of us knew it
Speaker 2: back then. She would have called herself a drag queen
Speaker 2: back then, and I would have called myself repressed. She
Speaker 2: taught me how to shave well enough to pass, oh
Speaker 2: to be twenty two or whatever? Shave right put on
Speaker 2: address anyway. Another roommate lived in an airstream out back
Speaker 2: and had kinky sex so loud we could hear it inside.
Speaker 2: I lived in a loft in the basement where I
Speaker 2: couldn't sit up without hitting my head on pipes covered
Speaker 2: an asbestos. But another roommate, there's an awful lot of
Speaker 2: roommates who lived in this place. Her mom owned a
Speaker 2: costume shop and only hired murderouses because like, after they
Speaker 2: get out of prison, right, not while they're because, as
Speaker 2: she pointed out, they make the best employees. They need work,
Speaker 2: no one will hire them. But a murderous, most murderous
Speaker 2: has just killed some fucking dude who needs a killing.
Speaker 2: Like most are won and done. They're like, my husband
Speaker 2: kept doing horrible things, so now he's dead.
Speaker 3: So now I killed him. Yeah, so they get stuff done. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they see the need for a task, they show initiatives,
Speaker 3: and they get that shit done.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Eventually, unrelated to that, the house mysteriously burned down.
Speaker 2: Oh h, not the costume shop, to the house that
Speaker 2: we all lived in. I didn't live there anymore. I
Speaker 2: couldn't stand I was paying rent where I like three
Speaker 2: months earlier, I'd been living for free in a giant
Speaker 2: mansion of a squat in Amsterdam where there was no asbestos,
Speaker 2: And I was like this is clearly I'm in the
Speaker 2: wrong country and I went back to Amsterdam. But nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties murderesses. On August twenty first, nineteen thirty three, an
Speaker 2: eighteen year old woman named Violet Nozare poisoned her parents,
Speaker 2: slipping them barbituates in their drinks. Her father died, her
Speaker 2: mother survived. She fucked off with some of their money
Speaker 2: and was caught pretty much right away. She confessed, and
Speaker 2: she gave her motive immediately to the officer who arrested her.
Speaker 2: Her father had been sexually assaulting her for six years,
Speaker 2: and the French press rushed to see who could accuse
Speaker 2: her of being a liar. The soonest, odious accusations an
Speaker 2: abominable lie. Are some headlines. The judge opened the case
Speaker 2: by telling the jury quote, remember the defendant is a liar.
Speaker 2: It's not a good way to be a judge.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: The cop who took her confession believed her, so he
Speaker 2: wasn't allowed to testify. Oh my god, after all, she
Speaker 2: is a filthy slut. She took the metro by herself.
Speaker 2: She hung around with bad boys who, according to the paper,
Speaker 2: wore a quote jackets of extremely narrow waist and coat
Speaker 2: hanger shoulders with Mexican style trousers, and the newsapers just
Speaker 2: went on and on. This is like the big thing
Speaker 2: that they're fucking talking about. Also, gasp, she might have
Speaker 2: done sex work. Hating her is all the rage. One
Speaker 2: paper said, quote, she is the inverted muse of youth,
Speaker 2: the scarlet idol of a capsized world, the flower of
Speaker 2: evil of our age.
Speaker 3: Sounds awesome to me.
Speaker 2: I know. Surrealists like this too. Yeah, yeah, like Flooria
Speaker 2: Dumal flower of Evil. That is the name of one
Speaker 2: of their favorite books of poetry by Bold There it's
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three. So the smart part of the left
Speaker 2: is like, are you fucking kidding me? This is all
Speaker 2: we can talk about. Not I don't know the Nazis
Speaker 2: in the next country over that came to power right now,
Speaker 2: maybe we should do something about that. Other parts of
Speaker 2: the left wanted to condemn her. The Communist Party friend
Speaker 2: of the pod was like, she's hanging out with decadent
Speaker 2: bourgeois students, so she's like bad or whatever, you know,
Speaker 2: And the right is like, fuck her. She's destroying the
Speaker 2: natural social hierarchy of patriarchy and family. She had two
Speaker 2: categories of supporters. She had, the women who wrote the
Speaker 2: papers trying one hundred years too early to be believed
Speaker 2: in kind of like a me too sort of way.
Speaker 2: And then there are the Surrealists, who probably a lot
Speaker 2: of them were women who were writing from a met
Speaker 2: to perspective. Right. The Surrealists wrote endlessly in support of her.
Speaker 2: They published a book of poetry and artwork in her
Speaker 2: honor while the trial was happening. Paul l u Ard,
Speaker 2: a Surrealist poet, wrote in there quote, Violet dreamt of
Speaker 2: undoing and undid the hideous vipers, not of blood connections.
Speaker 1: Who.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what that means, but it sounds poetic. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty four, she was convicted and sentenced to death. Ironically,
Speaker 2: she did not get put to death. Ironically, it was
Speaker 2: it was the v She government, the Nazi collaborationist government
Speaker 2: that freedom that set her up to be freed because
Speaker 2: they're super conservative, right, but they're conservative Catholic and she's
Speaker 2: decided to dedicate herself to Catholicism in prison, whether earnestly
Speaker 2: or slyly. And v She France was all conservative Catholics.
Speaker 2: The Nazis hated the Catholics, but the right wing in
Speaker 2: France and Spain fucking loved the Catholic. So here's the
Speaker 2: story of redemption, the fallen woman who found God or
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck, and so her sentences changed to twelve years.
Speaker 2: She gets out in nineteen forty five. She marries a
Speaker 2: middle class dude like a prison clerk, has five kids
Speaker 2: with them, and then diaza cancer in her fifties. But
Speaker 2: she joined the ranks of the surrealist heroines for killing
Speaker 2: her abuser and breaking free of the patriarchal family. And
Speaker 2: this is alongside another scandalous case at the time in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three also when two sisters who are servants
Speaker 2: for some rich focks finally they just like can't take
Speaker 2: it anymore and they killed a shit out of they
Speaker 2: They gouge the eyes out and beat to death both
Speaker 2: their mistress and her daughter. Yeah, their case is very
Speaker 2: true crime podcast. There's probably a true crime prodcast about this,
Speaker 2: if not Sophie.
Speaker 3: Now there's another spinoff podcast.
Speaker 2: Cool Times. Actually, I mean this podcast is true crime,
Speaker 2: but in a good way. It's pretty much like some
Speaker 2: of it. Very little of what I talk about is legally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's ethically.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, people who did cool things that boring people
Speaker 3: would consider crime, but it's actually awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally green lighted title.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's very true crime podcast. After they killed
Speaker 2: their boss and her daughter, they locked themselves in their room,
Speaker 2: like the room that they stay in it is live
Speaker 2: in servants, you know, and huddle like naked on the
Speaker 2: bed until the police kick in the door. And there's
Speaker 2: lots of like the newspapers are like, oh, it was
Speaker 2: like incest and they'd performed sexual rituals with the bodies,
Speaker 2: and you know what, that's possible. It seems far more
Speaker 2: likely that their version of the story is true, which
Speaker 2: is that it was self defense against a horrible, cruel mistress.
Speaker 2: The second affair was immortalized in a play called The
Speaker 2: Maids by a by a guy named Jean Jannat and
Speaker 2: I want to talk about him in our last little profile.
Speaker 2: In this Exquisite Corpse, get it because there's corpses.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, they killed those people and it's exquisite. I know.
Speaker 2: Okay, there probably is a podcast called the Exquisite Corpse
Speaker 2: that's like a there's so many bad puns I want
Speaker 2: to do with. Okay, anyway, Jean Jonnay is tangential to
Speaker 2: the Surrealists, sort of descended from them as best as
Speaker 2: I can understand. I just think he's really cool, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about him. He was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen ten, and he got going in the arts after
Speaker 2: World War Two, so he wasn't as much a part
Speaker 2: of the Surrealist heyday. Because while this we'll talk about
Speaker 2: what he was doing during the Surrealist heyday, but he
Speaker 2: ends up a part of the theater of the absurd
Speaker 2: that came after the Surrealists. And this guy is the
Speaker 2: opposite of a trust fund kid. This is a very
Speaker 2: crime part that's coming up. Jean Jannat is a thief,
Speaker 2: a sex worker, a vagabond, a queer, and a prisoner.
Speaker 2: Those are his main occupations before he becomes a world
Speaker 2: famous novelist and playwright and pro Palestinian activist. We stand,
Speaker 2: Jean Janet. I promised you I would you stand? In
Speaker 2: the script?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was born in nineteen ten to a sex
Speaker 2: worker who gave him up for adoption before he turned one.
Speaker 2: He was placed with a foster family and he kept
Speaker 2: getting arrested and running away and like spent time in
Speaker 2: like detention centers. When he was like ten, he would
Speaker 2: sneak out at night wearing makeup. He started stealing and
Speaker 2: getting arrested for vagrancy. By the time he was fifteen,
Speaker 2: he was sent to a penal colony, which I thought
Speaker 2: meant like sent to South America, but it actually is
Speaker 2: just sort of a in this case, like a crime
Speaker 2: boarding school whatever. You call those places, A bad prison for.
Speaker 3: Kids, you know, juvenile that's a tension yeah center.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Actual, they don't want to call prison for kids
Speaker 2: for some weird reason. It's nice a ring, it's catchy,
Speaker 2: you know, prison for kids. Why his prison bad? I
Speaker 2: thought it was help to make people better. I don't
Speaker 2: know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Right, It's almost as if they know that it's bad.
Speaker 2: Weird anyway.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: He gets out when he's eighteen, I guess because he's
Speaker 2: an adult. Now. He joins the French Foreign Legion, but
Speaker 2: he's pretty much immediately dishonorably discharged for doing some cool
Speaker 2: gay shit like having sex. So he fucks off around
Speaker 2: Europe as a vagabond, sex worker and a thief. In particular,
Speaker 2: he liked to steal rare books and sell them in
Speaker 2: the Shadow of Notre Dame, which is just classy cool.
Speaker 2: He was raised Catholic and he loved all the ceremonies
Speaker 2: and rites, and he despised organized religion. Near the end
Speaker 2: of his life, he's actually he's hanging out in a
Speaker 2: Palestinian refugee camp where he like lives for six months
Speaker 2: and is doing all this work. And they're like, what religion,
Speaker 2: and he's like, none, but if you insist Catholic and
Speaker 2: I really identify with that. So yeah, he spent almost
Speaker 2: all of World War Two in French prison, so he
Speaker 2: wasn't like a political activist, right, He's just a fucking prisoner.
Speaker 2: And he starts writing. He starts writing in prison, and
Speaker 2: he writes stories about all the cool crime stuff he's
Speaker 2: been up to, and he like sexualizes the role of
Speaker 2: the prisoner in society. The only thing I've read by
Speaker 2: him is I've read chunks of the Thieves Journal, and
Speaker 2: it's just like, basically, it's like I adore all of
Speaker 2: these like hyper masculine men in prison who all like
Speaker 2: hide things in their butt and want to have sex
Speaker 2: with me. It's pretty fun. And it's funny because the
Speaker 2: stuff that gets you condemned literally to spend your life
Speaker 2: behind bars. The literary crowd eats up. Not that I
Speaker 2: capitalize off that myself. No, sir, he wasn't a famous
Speaker 2: writer yet. He started his first novel, Our Lady of
Speaker 2: the Flowers, on his like prison job that he was
Speaker 2: supposed to be making paper bags out of like brown paper,
Speaker 2: you know, And so he's like writing his novel on it.
Speaker 2: So they burn his first draft and send him to solitary,
Speaker 2: and he had to rewrite the entire book from memory,
Speaker 2: which he claims he like did it word for word.
Speaker 2: I don't believe him, but I don't care. He got out,
Speaker 2: and he kept getting arrested again, and he was about
Speaker 2: to get a life sentence in nineteen forty nine under
Speaker 2: the notorious ten strikes your outlaw, which is like, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: I gu it's fair.
Speaker 3: I mean, say what you will about the prison industrial complex,
Speaker 3: but apparently they give you a lot of chance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at this particular time and place, I wonder the
Speaker 2: fact that like the government has changed so many times,
Speaker 2: you know. So he's about to get sent to prison
Speaker 2: for the rest of his life. And I mean, I
Speaker 2: actually do think if you're up to like petty crime,
Speaker 2: you should never be whatever. I don't believe we should
Speaker 2: have prisons, but like, if you're doing petty shit, it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be like all the petty equals throw you away
Speaker 2: for life, Like that just doesn't. But the literary world,
Speaker 2: in the art world is like, no, he's our guy,
Speaker 2: and like Sart and Picasso are like, no, police, don't
Speaker 2: imprison him. We're famous and we like him, and they're
Speaker 2: like okay. So he goes free and he actually never
Speaker 2: goes back to prison again. And all this time he's
Speaker 2: sort of obsessively non political, or at least he's read
Speaker 2: that way. I would argue that he's a nihilist. He
Speaker 2: is functionally a nihilist anarchist at this point. He's against politics,
Speaker 2: but he's writing about anti colonialism and anti racism and
Speaker 2: against all institutions of power. He loves all rebels, including
Speaker 2: people doing lots of bad shit too, right, He's just like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're fucking a rebel. I'm like criminal. Queer is its
Speaker 2: own political position, and eventually when he finds like more
Speaker 2: traditional ideological politics, it's somewhere in the anarchist communist spectrum,
Speaker 2: which is in the late sixties. He in the late sixties,
Speaker 2: he gets involved more politically. He spent six months in
Speaker 2: refugee camps. He makes friends with the Black Panthers. He
Speaker 2: starts writing in the Black Panther Papers. He sneaks into
Speaker 2: the US, like multiple times, illegally because the US is like, no,
Speaker 2: you can't come in here. You're just a crime guy.
Speaker 2: And he's like, but I want to come and they're like, no,
Speaker 2: you're a crime man. And he's like, all right, I'll
Speaker 2: go to Canada and then walk over or whatever. I
Speaker 2: don't know how he sneaks in, but he sneaks in
Speaker 2: multiple times. And in France he's getting involved in the
Speaker 2: fight against police brutality of like Algerians, like basically, you know,
Speaker 2: black people in Paris are getting murdered and ship by cops,
Speaker 2: and he's fighting against that. During the uprising in France
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight, he writes one of my favorite
Speaker 2: quotes about revolutionary symbolism that I've ever read, which is, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: I don't think we can win without the red and
Speaker 2: black flags, but they must be destroyed afterwards, which is like,
Speaker 2: I think a really useful way to think about labels, right,
Speaker 2: being like, are these politically useful to us, then we
Speaker 2: should consider them, but they are not our goal, you
Speaker 2: know or not? A goal is not to have a
Speaker 2: specific ideological position, right. Another quote I like by him
Speaker 2: one time he was giving a speech to a Yale
Speaker 2: audience and he his quote was basically like, your universities
Speaker 2: are quote comfortable aquariums where people raise goldfish capable of
Speaker 2: nothing more than blowing bubbles.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he's not a surrealist, but he was inspired
Speaker 2: by them, by like the same shit as them, because
Speaker 2: he writes a play about those maids. He murdered their employers,
Speaker 2: and I only sort of a descendant of them, and
Speaker 2: I just think he's cool, So I want to shoehorn him,
Speaker 2: shoehorn him in.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He died at seventy five as one of the most
Speaker 2: acclaimed French writers of the twentieth century, which ain't bad
Speaker 2: for a criminal queer. And that is where derive ends
Speaker 2: for now or are exquisite corpse? It ends with some
Speaker 2: gouged out ladies on the floor, killed by some other ladies.
Speaker 2: There are so many more corpses. I guess they all
Speaker 2: do die. So we're all corps isn't waiting?
Speaker 3: We're all I'm just currently a live corpse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Britton and Pere are both cool as hell, and
Speaker 2: it didn't get included Max Ernston, Leona Carrington or cool
Speaker 2: as hell. They all ran all over the world, chased
Speaker 2: by this or that oppressive force, with the politics aiming
Speaker 2: further and further towards real liberation, and they inspired people everywhere.
Speaker 2: And I think they're cool. I think the Surrealists were
Speaker 2: even cooler than I already thought they were when I
Speaker 2: started this.
Speaker 3: I agree, and thank you for teaching me all about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just for you. Actually, this is a secret one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing how I'm the only person who will
Speaker 3: ever hear this.
Speaker 2: You know, Sophie's just had headphones like earplugs in the
Speaker 2: whole time too, So's.
Speaker 3: Sophie were on now you can listen.
Speaker 2: What but speaking of ear plugs, what about Caitlin. No,
Speaker 2: that's the worst. No, that's bout that was Actually.
Speaker 3: That was a great transition, great pun. And here are
Speaker 3: my plugs which will go into everyone's ears. Whoa ear plugs.
Speaker 3: You can follow me online if you wish, at Caitlyn Durante.
Speaker 3: You can listen to my podcast, The Bechdel Cast in
Speaker 3: which Jamie Loftus and I and often guests discuss movies
Speaker 3: through an intersectional feminist lens. And we have a live
Speaker 3: show that we are doing in Portland, Oregon, which I
Speaker 3: know is not how you say that, but it's too late,
Speaker 3: and that's how I said it. The show is October sixth,
Speaker 3: which I think is right around the corner of when
Speaker 3: this episode comes out. You can go to link tree
Speaker 3: slash Bechtel Cast to grab tickets if they're not already
Speaker 3: sold out, but I mean brag, they probably will be
Speaker 3: people people you can oh the live stream exactly, so
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, Sophie, you're a genius. If the show
Speaker 3: is sold out the live show, you can live stream
Speaker 3: it from anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And if you can't make it to the actual like
Speaker 3: live stream as it's happening, you can still buy a
Speaker 3: live stream ticket and check out the stream for like
Speaker 3: up to a week afterward. So there's ways to see
Speaker 3: Jamie and I talk about the movie say anything. And
Speaker 3: then I'm also doing a bunch of stand up in
Speaker 3: Portland as well as Vancouver, but I think my Vancouver
Speaker 3: shows will already be done. But check out my website
Speaker 3: Caitlinduronta dot com for details about all of those shows.
Speaker 2: Yah yay, I have things. I have a sub stack.
Speaker 2: I post on it every week. Half of them are free.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear the more personal stuff for
Speaker 2: me talking about punk cows as I've lived in that
Speaker 2: have burned down. That's the which I do. Okay, well
Speaker 2: that's the not free half. Although, Caitlin, if you give
Speaker 2: me your email a dress to add you to the
Speaker 2: thank you but not you listener, but half the shit's free.
Speaker 2: I don't feel guilty about this, and it's just like
Speaker 2: literally my more personal shit that isn't And also I
Speaker 2: have a thing that is probably kickstarting as you are
Speaker 2: listening to this called Defenders of the Wild, which has
Speaker 2: is a board game and role playing game, and I've
Speaker 2: been doing some world design on both, but I'm especially
Speaker 2: involved in the tabletop role playing game part of it.
Speaker 2: So if you want to play a game where you
Speaker 2: are a badger, ooh, my favorite character right now is
Speaker 2: is a bear with a frying pan who is really
Speaker 2: at organizing people and fighting machines. And if that sounds
Speaker 2: fun to you, then Defenders of the Wild is on Kickstarter.
Speaker 2: Might the full title of the kickstarters probably defenders the
Speaker 2: wild by outlandish Games. That's it, except for Sophie. What
Speaker 2: do you got Sophie? Well, what do we got? Margaret?
Speaker 1: Happening starting October eighth?
Speaker 2: Do you mean the book club, the Cool Zone book Club?
Speaker 1: I do Magpie.
Speaker 2: Well, every Sunday until the heat Death of the Universe,
Speaker 2: or at least for a little while, we are starting
Speaker 2: a book club. We are starting a book club called
Speaker 2: the Cool Zone book Club. It'll be on the It
Speaker 2: could Happen Here feed that is normally Monday through Friday,
Speaker 2: but now it is Sunday through Friday because on the
Speaker 2: Lord's Day, I will we.
Speaker 1: Should probably drop it in here too. Okay, that sounds great,
Speaker 1: So if you're I'll probably do that, but I'll drop
Speaker 1: it in cool People for people that because obviously people
Speaker 1: who listen to cool people think you're cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it will be me reading new stories sometimes
Speaker 2: some other people reading me stories. We have a couple
Speaker 2: of different ideas of what we're going to do with it,
Speaker 2: and the very first thing we're going to do with
Speaker 2: it is four Sundays in a row, we're going to
Speaker 2: have me reading Robert Evans, my novella The Lamb Will
Speaker 2: Slaughter the Lion, which is more or less about a
Speaker 2: punk house full of weird people that burns down, only
Speaker 2: in this case, it's a squatted punk town that is
Speaker 2: occupied by a three antler demon deer that eats people
Speaker 2: who act irresponsibly. Hell yeah, yeah, so check that out.
Speaker 2: And I'm really excited about it. Yeah, we've been working
Speaker 2: on it for a while. That's what we got. We'll
Speaker 2: see you next week.
Speaker 1: Bye bye. People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.