Speaker 1: I'm t T and I'm Zakiyah and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 1: We are in the thick of spooky season, and this
Speaker 1: I think is one of our favorite times of year
Speaker 1: in our friendship, don't you think. Yes, yes, I mean
Speaker 1: bring on the fall fashions, yeah, turtle nicks and leather jackets,
Speaker 1: but also bring on the scary movies. Absolutely. I feel
Speaker 1: like we bonded over scary movies very early in our friendship.
Speaker 1: You got me hip too, the insidious movies, and those
Speaker 1: are still some of my all time favorites. Like It
Speaker 1: scared me so much. There's something about dreaming. Y'all need
Speaker 1: to watch it. Y'all gotta watch it. I think so
Speaker 1: it feels good, But that's an old well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I would say it's an old scary movie.
Speaker 1: But there's been a new wave of scary movies like
Speaker 1: Get Out Us and most recently we've seen Centers and Weapons. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I like this genre of scary movie because it
Speaker 1: feels like we've moved from gore and blood and all
Speaker 1: of that to like some symbolism and it's a little
Speaker 1: new ones do you know? And that's not a new thing.
Speaker 1: So you know, we've seen a little bit of symbolism
Speaker 1: here there, and when you go back and look, it's like,
Speaker 1: what do they say, hindsight is twenty twenty? Lit'll make
Speaker 1: you start asking some questions, right, So before we jump
Speaker 1: into anything, let's go into the recitation. So what do
Speaker 1: we know? I feel like we know horror films have
Speaker 1: been around for a long time, and some people hate them,
Speaker 1: some people love them. I know your mom is one
Speaker 1: of the folks that doesn't like horror films. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: she doesn't want to be scared. Life is scary enough.
Speaker 1: We also know that there are some similarities that we've
Speaker 1: seen in these movies, so like witches, Satan and exorcisms,
Speaker 1: ghosts and zombies, right, And I feel like that is
Speaker 1: truth for a lot of different horror films. So what
Speaker 1: do we want to know? Well, I think my love
Speaker 1: for horror films started early. So there are some classics
Speaker 1: that I've seen, but I saw them with like an
Speaker 1: immature mind, if that makes sense, Like before I knew
Speaker 1: what I was looking for. So I want to look
Speaker 1: back and say, like, what are some of the blind spots?
Speaker 1: What are some of the classic cases of like symbolism
Speaker 1: that I don't even recognize? Yes, and I want to
Speaker 1: know how horror films because we might not think of
Speaker 1: it on its face, but it's art, you know. And
Speaker 1: I want to know how this form of art is
Speaker 1: a commentary on the times that these movies were released,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, we think about it
Speaker 1: forget Out and us, but you don't look back at
Speaker 1: Alfred Hitchcock and say, oh, yeah, he was really talking
Speaker 1: about what was going on there. You know, it's so true.
Speaker 1: And I also want to know how recent horror films
Speaker 1: are stacking up against the ogs. You know. I feel
Speaker 1: like when we're talking about horror films, we talk about
Speaker 1: the same ones. We talk about Carrie, we talk about
Speaker 1: Friday the Thirteenth, Nightmare on Elm Street, we talk about
Speaker 1: the Shining, you know, all of the same ones. But
Speaker 1: I want to know, like how the present day horror films,
Speaker 1: how they match up to some of the ones that
Speaker 1: are stuck in our minds. Yeah, I think that's good.
Speaker 1: What's going to be on your mount rushmore of horror films?
Speaker 1: If you can't tell by now. This episode is all
Speaker 1: about horror films, and I love what you said, t T.
Speaker 1: There is an art to this. It is art, and
Speaker 1: sometimes we overlook that. And so we said, who can
Speaker 1: help us unpack it? You know, who can help us
Speaker 1: find the science behind it? And so for this episode
Speaker 1: we pulled out the really big guns and we have
Speaker 1: doctor Eleanor Johnson.
Speaker 2: I'm Eleanor. I'm a professor of medieval literature and horror
Speaker 2: films at Columbia University and my new books, Scream with Me,
Speaker 2: was just published by Atria Books in September of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five.
Speaker 1: Your book Scream with Me introduced us to the concept
Speaker 1: of domestic horror, and domestic horror is where you have
Speaker 1: stories where the terror come from within the home instead
Speaker 1: of like external monsters. So tera from within the home
Speaker 1: would be abuse, control, bodily violation, and routines of violence.
Speaker 1: And also in your book, you focus on six movies,
Speaker 1: so Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Step for Wives, the
Speaker 1: Omen Alien, and The Shining And you also focus on
Speaker 1: a specific time period nineteen sixty eight to nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Why was that time period so important to you?
Speaker 3: Several reasons. One, I was interested.
Speaker 2: In writing a book that would look at horror during
Speaker 2: the period in which sort of feminism was really really
Speaker 2: surging into the public consciousness and was worn with women's
Speaker 2: bodily autonomy and so through obviously in Roe v. Wade
Speaker 2: passed in nineteen seventy three, the Equal Rights Amendment, which
Speaker 2: didn't pass, but was on the docket for like almost
Speaker 2: that whole entire decade, and also the early laws and
Speaker 2: social changes that tried to remediate mess violence or what
Speaker 2: was then called wife battery.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the Equal Rights Amendment, and it was
Speaker 1: first introduced in nineteen twenty three, and it proposed to
Speaker 1: make changes to the US Constitution that would make sure
Speaker 1: men and women are treated equally under the law. Now,
Speaker 1: Congress approved it in nineteen seventy two, but not enough
Speaker 1: states have agreed to it yet for it to officially
Speaker 1: become law. That's wild to me.
Speaker 2: So there were three really really big movements around women's
Speaker 2: rights in the nineteen seventies, reproductive autonomy, safety in the home,
Speaker 2: and equal rights before the law, and they were all
Speaker 2: kind of getting cooked simultaneously in the public eye. And
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, the nineteen seventies is a really,
Speaker 2: really important moment because it's analogous to the twenty twenties,
Speaker 2: for better or for worse, Like, there are huge backslides
Speaker 2: happening right now in the avenues. Women have to extricate
Speaker 2: themselves from domestic violence situations.
Speaker 3: As we know Roe v. Wade has been reversed.
Speaker 2: So whatever protections the American public believed that Rowe conferred,
Speaker 2: those are gone. And the Equal Rights Amendment, like fifty
Speaker 2: years later, has not passed, right, Like, I am not
Speaker 2: an equal person in the eyes of the law, neither
Speaker 2: of you, and we just go around and live our lives.
Speaker 2: Women in the seventies had to live in this crazy
Speaker 2: roller coaster where they were held out the carit of
Speaker 2: equality repeatedly, and it kept getting yoinked back, and I
Speaker 2: think that caused a cultural trauma unto itself that our
Speaker 2: popular culture has not metabolized. Well, so instead we've just
Speaker 2: suppressed it. We've forgotten that fifty years ago there was
Speaker 2: an intensive effort to recognize the full equality end of
Speaker 2: the law of women, and it failed.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That's embarrassing, right, And instead we sort of try not
Speaker 2: to think about it.
Speaker 3: And I thought, I want to think about it.
Speaker 2: I want other people to think about it, and I
Speaker 2: want other people to recognize that the twenty twenties are
Speaker 2: looking way too much like the nineteen seventies for my taste, right, except,
Speaker 2: if anything, the trajectory's worse now. At least in the seventies,
Speaker 2: the general pitch was shallowly up. Women did get reproductive autonomy,
Speaker 2: they did get relatively secure protections against violence in the home.
Speaker 2: It got easier to end, for example, an abusive marriage.
Speaker 2: But at the same and now all those things are declining.
Speaker 2: It's getting harder and harder for women to extricate themselves,
Speaker 2: for anyone to extricate themselves from an abusive situation. So
Speaker 2: that was the reason I wanted to look at these
Speaker 2: two periods, is because of the very uncomfortable resonances between
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and the twenty twenties.
Speaker 1: In your book, you talk about how art often reflects
Speaker 1: what's going on socially within our worlds. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about how horror films, how art in general does that,
Speaker 1: and how you see horror films doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, art often receives these impressions from us that we
Speaker 2: can't fully articulate and then the art of repactes them
Speaker 2: so that we can see them. And because of that,
Speaker 2: because of art's capacity to do that, art doesn't in
Speaker 2: fact just reflect cultural reality. It can accelerate cultural change
Speaker 2: and cultural understanding. And I think that is really part
Speaker 2: of what I wanted to convey and scream with me,
Speaker 2: is that these works of art, these films, are receiving
Speaker 2: a lot of input about women's rights and the status
Speaker 2: and level of freedom of women's bodies in America in
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and are reflecting that back and thinking
Speaker 2: about it, and also trying to accelerate a certain kind
Speaker 2: of social change around those dynamics. Part of the power
Speaker 2: that horror has, and that horror cinema has even more
Speaker 2: than like say a horror novel, it's that horror kind
Speaker 2: of hits us in our heart. It hits us where
Speaker 2: we feel, It hits us where we fear, and it
Speaker 2: also hits us where we think about who we are
Speaker 2: and how we occupy our bodies. So we watch a
Speaker 2: horror movie and for let's just say, for example, Rosemary's Baby, right.
Speaker 1: For those who haven't seen Rosemary's Baby, it's a psychological
Speaker 1: horror film that centers around a woman who is experiencing
Speaker 1: her first pregnancy, and she starts to suspect that her
Speaker 1: neighbors and even her husband are part of a satanic
Speaker 1: cult that are plotting to use our baby for dark purposes.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend watching this.
Speaker 3: You're watching Rosemary's Baby.
Speaker 2: You're gonna identify with Rosemary, I don't care who we
Speaker 2: are or where you're from. Causes us to feel her
Speaker 2: agony at becoming pregnant in a way that she was
Speaker 2: not even understanding at the time, and then it came
Speaker 2: excruciating pregnancy to term. So horror films because they activate
Speaker 2: our fear, because they activate our feelings, because they activate
Speaker 2: even our confusion and our panic, are very powerful ways
Speaker 2: of making us empathize with a protagonist. And that empathogenic element,
Speaker 2: the capacity to make us feel empathy, is part of
Speaker 2: what gives horror, if anything, extra purchase on both explaining
Speaker 2: and accelerating social change, because if you can be made
Speaker 2: to feel compassionate empathic identification with someone unlike you, right,
Speaker 2: that's a very powerful engine for social change and social movement.
Speaker 1: Can you think of some scary movies where you felt
Speaker 1: some type of compassion for the protagonists absolutely. I mentioned
Speaker 1: Insidious and not start of our conversation, and in that one,
Speaker 1: I feel like who I felt empathy for like shifted
Speaker 1: with each film. So at first I was feeling really
Speaker 1: scared and a lot of empathy for the little boy.
Speaker 1: Then I was feeling a lot of empathy for the dad.
Speaker 1: Then you get this backstory on like who that demon.
Speaker 1: I don't know who that demon person was. You were
Speaker 1: feeling bad for him split second, you know, because you
Speaker 1: find out like their villain origin story and what led
Speaker 1: to them doing all of these things, and you're like, dang,
Speaker 1: it's so wild how these movies can really like shift
Speaker 1: your compassion for a person where you you might have
Speaker 1: a moment where the villain you're like, oh, how this
Speaker 1: might happen? So just think about society in general and
Speaker 1: the patriarchal society that that we exist in the lens
Speaker 1: through which you're watching these horror films through. It's a
Speaker 1: feminist lens, right, Like, how can we if we're going
Speaker 1: to think along that same train of thought, like how
Speaker 1: does the male gaze play into all of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, such a great question, right, And in the book,
Speaker 2: I have this chapter called bad Men Making Good Art
Speaker 2: because of course, So you're raising a really important question,
Speaker 2: right when we watch Rosemary's suffering in that film, we
Speaker 2: feel along with Rosemary, the question of what exactly we
Speaker 2: feel during the rape scene a little more ambiguous, right,
Speaker 2: And remembering that that scene was shot by none other
Speaker 2: than Roman Polanski, legacy as an abuser of women is
Speaker 2: well established, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, So a little bit about Roman Polanski before we
Speaker 1: keep going. Roman Polanski is a famous film director known
Speaker 1: for films like Rosemary's Baby and The Pianist. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven he was charged with sexually assaulting a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old girl in Los Angeles, and then he
Speaker 1: fled the country before he could be sentenced. And ever
Speaker 1: since then he's been living outside of the US and
Speaker 1: continuing to make films. And so there's this ongoing controversy
Speaker 1: surrounding Roman Polanski, which complicates things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does, and it should complicate things because for
Speaker 2: us to have the capacity, for any individual viewer to
Speaker 2: have the capacity, in effect, to code switch between identifying
Speaker 2: with a predator and identifying with a victim, that's an
Speaker 2: important part of how we think about it violence and
Speaker 2: how propagates itself. To realize that it's a hair's breath
Speaker 2: that separates any of us from transitioning from having power
Speaker 2: to having no power at all.
Speaker 1: One that after reading your book that kept popping into
Speaker 1: my head was No. Sfaratu, the original and the remake,
Speaker 1: and the violence against women in No. S Faratu as
Speaker 1: like one of the first horror films back in I
Speaker 1: think nineteen twenty two, And so it seems like this
Speaker 1: has always been a through line in horror films, and
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure why that is, Like, what do
Speaker 1: you feel like artists are trying to reinforce by having
Speaker 1: this narrative that exists throughout history.
Speaker 2: I think that our culture has been aware of and
Speaker 2: anxious about predatory masculinity for a very very very long time,
Speaker 2: like since way back before second wave feminism really even
Speaker 2: coss the ground in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: And I think that.
Speaker 2: We see that anxiety reflected much more clearly in cinema
Speaker 2: than anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And this is such a great point because as a society,
Speaker 1: predatory masculinity is a shared fear amongst all people. That's
Speaker 1: why when we go into a movie theater, we all
Speaker 1: scream when the man appears in the corner exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not just women's screaming, it's not just what set
Speaker 1: of people screaming. Exactly, everybody's screaming.
Speaker 2: If we go way back, and I'll sort of join you.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen thirties, I was just teaching in a
Speaker 2: class I'm teaching this semester called the History of American
Speaker 2: Horror Cinema. I was teaching a set of films called
Speaker 2: White Zombie, I Walked with a Zombie, and then the
Speaker 2: film Gaslight. And in all three of those films, the
Speaker 2: core dynamic is that there's a controlling, abusive man who
Speaker 2: dehumanizes a woman in one way another, either by actually
Speaker 2: turning her into a zombie, or psychologically abusing her so
Speaker 2: that she's vulnerable to becoming turned into a zombie, or
Speaker 2: by gaslating her so badly this is the case in
Speaker 2: the movie Gaslight, that she becomes effectively mentally ill and
Speaker 2: thus subject to his whims. What's special to me in
Speaker 2: part about what happens in the Hayday of Domestic Horror
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies is that the first of all
Speaker 2: the women either do not get saved, as in the
Speaker 2: case of Rosemary, or they save themselves, as in the
Speaker 2: case of Ellen Ripley from Alien Right.
Speaker 3: And on top of that.
Speaker 2: It's very clear that the cruel, predatory masculinity is giving
Speaker 2: the monster direct access to the women in the film,
Speaker 2: so there's no instrumental purpose to it. And that sort
Speaker 2: of dynamic is true in almost all of the films,
Speaker 2: with the possible exception of The Shining, where Jack Nicholson
Speaker 2: really does seem to derive wrecked immediate pleasure from worsering
Speaker 2: and dehumanizing.
Speaker 3: Shelley Duvall who plays Wendy.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love The Shining. This is another classic horror
Speaker 1: film and it follows Jack Torrance, which is played by
Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson. He's a writer who takes a job as
Speaker 1: a winter caretaker of this isolated hotel in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere. There's all this snow, and his wife Wendy
Speaker 1: and his son Danny, so they're with him, and as
Speaker 1: they're getting settled in this hotel, Jack starts to some
Speaker 1: starts to happen to Jack and he starts to lose
Speaker 1: his mind. Jack started adding strange and very strange. But
Speaker 1: his son Danny has psychic capabilities, which is called the Shining,
Speaker 1: which is where the name of the film comes from
Speaker 1: and it's a tale of Danny and his mother just
Speaker 1: trying to survive their father and husband. It's another film
Speaker 1: that I feel like is etched in the memories of
Speaker 1: all people, Like we all remember Red Rum and the
Speaker 1: Blood in the Hallway and everything like that, and when
Speaker 1: we think about Wendy and what she went through in
Speaker 1: that hotel, we fear for Wendy a lot, and so
Speaker 1: understanding that Jack Nicholson could go from a guy who's
Speaker 1: a husband that we father that we're just going along
Speaker 1: with and then something switches, but there's no switch with
Speaker 1: Wendy and so she has to endure. Essentially, it really
Speaker 1: changes what you're scared of when you think of it
Speaker 1: in that way. When you add this lens of feminism
Speaker 1: to these films, it really makes you think of them differently,
Speaker 1: Like it was scary a little bit before, yeah, but
Speaker 1: then like put yourself in those shoes exactly like I mean,
Speaker 1: it makes you think that you might not have to
Speaker 1: think far, you might be right next to your foot.
Speaker 2: One of the sort of I don't know if this
Speaker 2: was like a designed choice on the part of Stanley
Speaker 2: Kubrick and everyone, or if it was an accident, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to make something.
Speaker 3: Of it regardless.
Speaker 2: I think it's so important that the main character, the
Speaker 2: main malicious evil character in the film is named Jack
Speaker 2: Torrance and the actor who plays that character is named
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholson, because it highlights that what's being described in
Speaker 2: the film is fiction, but it's not fiction. This really happens.
Speaker 2: And I think part of the reason that Shelley Duval's
Speaker 2: performance is so frightening is like in the scene when
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance is battling her up the
Speaker 2: staircase and trying to kill them, and she's sort of
Speaker 2: like Jack. No, Shelley Duvall is like talking to a
Speaker 2: real person named Jack. So you know, when when horror
Speaker 2: depicts violence against women, it often does so allegorically, like
Speaker 2: in the Exorcist, right, it makes the evil man in
Speaker 2: the house into a demon.
Speaker 1: Their Exorcist is an oldie but a good Oh yeah
Speaker 1: tells the story of Reagan, and she begins to show
Speaker 1: some disturbing and violent behavior after becoming possessed by a
Speaker 1: demonic force. Now her mom is like, somebody got help
Speaker 1: me with this child. We've seen them, We've seen a
Speaker 1: helpless mother before. You know, and so she seeks help
Speaker 1: from two priests and they're trying to get the demon
Speaker 1: out of her through an exorcism.
Speaker 2: And to your other point, that like, once you have
Speaker 2: this lens fitted to your eye for thinking about domestic
Speaker 2: horror and the men in a domestic scenario as the
Speaker 2: source of the evil, you kind of see it everywhere.
Speaker 2: I talk about some contemporary reboots of the original films
Speaker 2: from the seventies in the book, like Immaculate, the First Omen,
Speaker 2: Apartment seven A. But if you count a wider kind
Speaker 2: of net, there has been just a ton of domestic
Speaker 2: horror in the last few years. The movie Speak No Evil,
Speaker 2: which came out as before the movie Weapons, Yes, a
Speaker 2: very interesting variant on domestic horror, where like children prison
Speaker 2: in a basement by this old witchy woman and the
Speaker 2: language she uses to keep her the child who's kind
Speaker 2: of like her lackey if you tell anyone, I will
Speaker 2: kill your parents. That happens to be a well established
Speaker 2: ruse that abusers use to keep children afraid to disclose
Speaker 2: what's going on in their homes. So that film is
Speaker 2: absolutely about domestic violence and domestic abuse of absolutely ridden right,
Speaker 2: you see it, It's all over the place, right, It's
Speaker 2: like happening constantly. The movie Heretic that was definitely a
Speaker 2: variation were kind of genre. The only difference is that
Speaker 2: the two girls that he abuses are strangers to him
Speaker 2: until they get into his home. But once he's in,
Speaker 2: they're in his home, they're every bit as subject to
Speaker 2: him as Wendy Torrance is to Jack Torrance and the
Speaker 2: Shining Have.
Speaker 1: You seen weapons? I've seen weapons, and I actually really
Speaker 1: liked it. I thought it was such a smart movie,
Speaker 1: in a very well done movie. It really makes you
Speaker 1: think about a lot of things. And one thing that
Speaker 1: I through our conversations with you, Eleanor that made me
Speaker 1: think about something is that there are always witchy women
Speaker 1: and not any witchy men. What is that about?
Speaker 2: Because in history, like I'm a medievalist by training, I
Speaker 2: study medieval history, in medieval literature, I do a lot
Speaker 2: of early modern literature and history. In the actual witch
Speaker 2: hunts that took place in Europe and the United States,
Speaker 2: men were witches too, not as frequently, but it was
Speaker 2: well established that a witch could be male. We've lost
Speaker 2: that cultural vocabulary over time. When we say which, I
Speaker 2: think the default assumption is that we mean female, right
Speaker 2: in terms of dark magic or whatever.
Speaker 3: And I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think that when a female character in a film
Speaker 2: is cast as really bad, she often gets monsterized in
Speaker 2: a supernatural way, whereas men often just are monstrous, like
Speaker 2: in a sort of daily quotitian like, oh, I.
Speaker 3: All murder my wife kind of a way. So I
Speaker 3: think there's.
Speaker 2: Laytan misogyny baked into that, right, like that a woman
Speaker 2: is bad, She's not just a bad woman. She's a monster, right,
Speaker 2: airwolf like in Jennifer's body or in apps, or she's
Speaker 2: like a vampire, or she's like a witch.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So I think that that's very much in play. I
Speaker 2: also think the other thing that's interesting about the gendering
Speaker 2: in that film, and it's related to the way that
Speaker 2: film is mobilizing an awareness of how domestic abuse, and
Speaker 2: in particular, the sexual abuse of children works.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Children statistically are far more.
Speaker 2: Likely to be sexually abused by someone they know and
Speaker 2: are relating than by a stranger. Right. Growing up's parents,
Speaker 2: they go around the world sort of afraid of the
Speaker 2: kind of like iconic man in the van who grabs
Speaker 2: their kid off the streets. When that happens. That's a calamity.
Speaker 2: It's extraordinarily rare. It's much more different for a known
Speaker 2: relative to say, molest a child than anybody else. And
Speaker 2: so the fact that she's related to him, like his
Speaker 2: mother's aunt, I guess that is what creates the condition
Speaker 2: of vulnerability. So the film is I think doing really
Speaker 2: important consciousness raising work around abuse of children, particularly the
Speaker 2: sexual abuse of children, which isn't really in the film.
Speaker 2: The other film, if I may, that I think is
Speaker 2: a brilliant exploration of that dynamic is the absolutely outstanding
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen film by a twenty four hereditary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, part of what's so interesting in that film
Speaker 2: is that is very clearly a domestic horror film. But
Speaker 2: the Tony Collette character, who's bad, and she's bad in
Speaker 2: spite of herself. She doesn't want to be bad. She's
Speaker 2: bad because her mother was bad. So that film is
Speaker 2: exploring how there can be not only patriarchal and patrilinear
Speaker 2: forms of violence in the home, but matriarchal and matrilinear
Speaker 2: forms of violence in the home. And it's so important
Speaker 2: that in that film, the progenitor of evil is the
Speaker 2: dead grandmother transmitting the evil through her daughter and in
Speaker 2: some ways also through the granddaughter and definitely the grandson.
Speaker 2: So that film, I think, is exploring the same or
Speaker 2: at least an analogous thing to what Weapons is exploring,
Speaker 2: which is what do we do when the violence is
Speaker 2: coming from a woman or from any really unexpected corner?
Speaker 3: Right, So the.
Speaker 2: Film invites us into this realm where we're imagining a
Speaker 2: world in which, like the mom is bad, the grandma
Speaker 2: is bad, but the person who is really the ultimate
Speaker 2: driver of all this evil is the male demon. So
Speaker 2: like this idea as in the Exorcist, And I have
Speaker 2: to say I think that they had the Exorcist in mind.
Speaker 1: So when I think of other movies where we have
Speaker 1: a woman who is the main character and there is
Speaker 1: all of this awfulness happening around her and she wins
Speaker 1: prevails at the end, can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what that is trying to signal? And then I
Speaker 1: had a specific question about a more recent film Midsommer,
Speaker 1: where we see that happening. Could you talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd love to.
Speaker 2: So as to the women kind of winning in the end,
Speaker 2: I don't have an answer that I'm totally satisfied with
Speaker 2: for that question, because I ask it to myself often.
Speaker 2: My provisional answer is, I think that you know, American
Speaker 2: film goers are like everyone living through the twenty first century,
Speaker 2: really tired. No matter what your politics are, no matter
Speaker 2: how to vote for, I think we can all say
Speaker 2: that were exhausted, emotionally exhausted. Our culture has been in
Speaker 2: a state of embattled fighting for a really, really long time,
Speaker 2: and I think that we as a culture need both
Speaker 2: to continue to practice the kind of vulnerability that horror
Speaker 2: teaches us to practice, and we sometimes need to win.
Speaker 2: One of my absolute favorite horror movies of all time
Speaker 2: a minute ago, Jordan Peel's perfect film Get Out. Yes,
Speaker 2: that film, as you may well know, had an original ending.
Speaker 2: Jordan Peel changed the ending specifically because he felt that
Speaker 2: they needed to get He needed to get them away.
Speaker 2: He wanted to land the film on a happier note
Speaker 2: than what the original film ending was. And for those
Speaker 2: who don't know the originally shot ending to the film,
Speaker 2: the main character doesn't get away and winds up getting
Speaker 2: the rest of his life in prison. Right if there's
Speaker 2: like a truly brutal ending to a horror film like
Speaker 2: that one. That's it right. Not only did he have
Speaker 2: to deal with this horrific violence that people try to
Speaker 2: perpetrate on his body, he then spends the rest of
Speaker 2: his life in the penal system, which is all too
Speaker 2: often a reality for black Americans anyway.
Speaker 3: But Peel shot that ending and you can see it.
Speaker 3: You can see it on YouTube. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yes, I the theatrical release is very very different, and
Speaker 2: he has said, and I think this is right.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes we need the win.
Speaker 2: I think that filmmakers who are doing domestic horror are
Speaker 2: feeling some of that energy. Sometimes we need the win.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we want the girl to get away in the end.
Speaker 2: So but then you do you get other movies like
Speaker 2: the movie Men, oh.
Speaker 1: Oo, Men that came out in twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 1: it follows Harper and so Harper is a woman who
Speaker 1: goes to the English countryside to deal with her grief
Speaker 1: and heal from trauma after her husband's death. Now, once
Speaker 1: she's there, she begins to encounter a series of strange
Speaker 1: and increasingly threatening men who all share the same face,
Speaker 1: and they're reflecting her fears and guilt. So the film
Speaker 1: kind of blends like psychological horror and body horror to
Speaker 1: explore these themes of grief, gender violence, and the lingering
Speaker 1: effects of abuse.
Speaker 2: It's a great fath and I have a substack about
Speaker 2: that actually on my substack Eleanora's horror dot substack dot com.
Speaker 2: And I love that movie because I think that movie
Speaker 2: is a beautiful meditation on how patriarchy itself is to
Speaker 2: blame for domestic abuse. It's not one individual man, it's
Speaker 2: the fact that all quote unquote men are animated by
Speaker 2: this predatory spirit of patriarchy, and we'll just do what
Speaker 2: they want to a woman and to her body, into
Speaker 2: her space and to her home, into her mind, etc.
Speaker 2: And the fact that in the end, the character of
Speaker 2: that film survives, and the last shot of the film
Speaker 2: was like her kind of perched on a wall, she's
Speaker 2: got blood on her and she's waiting for her girlfriend,
Speaker 2: her friend who's a woman, to up and be with her.
Speaker 2: That is like the happiest ending to a horror film.
Speaker 3: Really, really long time think it.
Speaker 2: Is because they want the answer to be this is
Speaker 2: what survival looks like. There is the way of surviving
Speaker 2: in which the victim of violence is not like a
Speaker 2: broken shell of a person like Rosemary at the end
Speaker 2: of Rosemary's Baby. Nor is she as like fantasy impossible,
Speaker 2: as like an Ellen Ripley, like jetting away from the
Speaker 2: exploding spaceship alien movie.
Speaker 3: She's like a real person.
Speaker 2: She still got blood on her clothes, so she's not
Speaker 2: it's not pristine, it's not astheticized.
Speaker 3: But she's there sitting and waiting for her friend.
Speaker 2: And I think we are going to see more sort
Speaker 2: of experimental horror that looks at gender and thinks about
Speaker 2: what does survival actually look like, what does it look
Speaker 2: like to be at the end.
Speaker 3: Of the story.
Speaker 1: Are there any little nuggets that you're noticing in recent
Speaker 1: horror films that you feel like, ah, yes, they are
Speaker 1: speaking specifically to this. I know that we talked about weapons,
Speaker 1: but are there any other films that you can cite?
Speaker 2: First of all, I'm very pleased to report that I
Speaker 2: think that the horror industry, such as it is, is
Speaker 2: getting braver and bolder, claiming political relevance for itself.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: And I hope that anyone who listens to this, who
Speaker 2: might be an aspiring filmmaker go make horror movies. Because
Speaker 2: it's a good avenue for change, positive change. Twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four was the year in which women's reproductive coercion was horror.
Speaker 2: That was a really, really important year. I think we're
Speaker 2: going to see more work like that. I really have
Speaker 2: no doubt, because I think that filmmakers have realized this
Speaker 2: is a powerful vehicle for trying to inspire social change
Speaker 2: and changes in public consciousness about many different dynamics, one
Speaker 2: of them being the status of women.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so interesting. I've been playing around with
Speaker 1: this idea of dilating my pupils. I got it from Moonless,
Speaker 1: not physically dilating my pupils, but metaphorically like sitting with
Speaker 1: things and looking at them. You know how when your
Speaker 1: pupils are dilated is like you can't really see well,
Speaker 1: but you just take some time and really look at
Speaker 1: things and it kind of comes into focus. I feel
Speaker 1: like this lab did that because I'm a horror lover.
Speaker 1: But what I've pulled out the feminist angle, the feminist
Speaker 1: lens here and seeing all of those patterns without doctor
Speaker 1: Johnson explaining it to us like that, absolutely not. I
Speaker 1: feel the same way. I mean, I even just recently
Speaker 1: watched this movie called The Oddity, and it's a scary film,
Speaker 1: and I was glad that I watched it after reading
Speaker 1: this book because it let me come into it and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, patriarchy, that is what is driving this
Speaker 1: whole thing. And it's such a refreshing way to consider
Speaker 1: this art form because it helps with us our understanding
Speaker 1: of what we are currently experiencing in real time. And
Speaker 1: Eleanor brought up how all of these things very nicely
Speaker 1: parallel with what's going on present day with women losing
Speaker 1: their bodily autonomy, with the rollback of Roe v. Wade
Speaker 1: and all these different things like that, and so it's
Speaker 1: showing up in film makes complete sense, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Yeah? Absolutely, if you are partaking in spooky season,
Speaker 1: particularly if you are celebrating by watching scary films, I
Speaker 1: hope you take something away from this lab to help
Speaker 1: you kind of reflect and look at your favorite horror movies.
Speaker 1: And even if you don't have one, think about one. Okay,
Speaker 1: try them all out and see if you don't see
Speaker 1: some of these themes that we talked about today in them.
Speaker 1: Boo boo. You can find us on x and Instagram
Speaker 1: at Dope Labs podcast ct is on x and Instagram
Speaker 1: at dr Underscore, t Sho, and you can find Zakiya
Speaker 1: at z said So. Dope Labs is a production of
Speaker 1: Leimanada Media. Our supervising producer is Keegan Zimma and our
Speaker 1: producer is Issara A. Sevez. Dope Labs is sound designed,
Speaker 1: edited and mixed by James Farber. Limanada Media is Vice
Speaker 1: President of Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer
Speaker 1: from iHeart podcast is Katrina Norvil. Marketing lead is Alison Canter.
Speaker 1: Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
Speaker 1: sugi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs
Speaker 1: is executive produced by us T T Show Dia and
Speaker 1: Zakiah Watki