Episode 138. School of Thought: Detention (2019)

Bye.

Everyone, welcome back to the Faculty of Horror podcasting from the horrid halls of academia. I'm Alex West with Andrea Subasati. And we are back for a very special episode. And this episode is so special, Andrea. Because you picked it. Is that why it's special? That's nice. That's nice to hear. Yeah, this was my pick. From winning our year roundup annual trivia face-off, which I think-

you kind of let me win maybe a teensy bit. She's got that look guys. She's got that. Oh, never tell. I'm not going to say anything. But but yeah, it was my opportunity to pick. And so I kind of cheated and I picked a movie that like. Is it the greatest horror movie ever made? Is it the most influential horror movie ever made? No, but I thought it had a really interesting story, really exceptional position in the genre via its format and what came before.

subject matter it approaches and the way it does that. And so, yeah, I chose detention and it's been so totally annoying because there's so much stuff out there called detention. Yes. There are other horror movies called Detention. There are cartoons called Detention. There's also a series based on the video game. There's a mini-series based on the video game that takes place after-

After the movie and the game, as I understand it, I've yet to check it out. It came out on Netflix a couple of years ago. But yeah, all that to say that we're trying to be really clear in gearing up for this episode that your homework is the 2020 movie.

2019. Well, I have 20. 19 and 2020 so i think it might have come out here and kind of come out there i see um but yes that is the one because yeah we need more slipperiness for this one uh directed by jean sue who's only made two films he made this and last year's dead Talent Society, which I haven't seen yet, but it did make the festival circuit and it gathered quite a buzz. And it's kind of crazy, like only two films and this far apart. Yeah. And to kick off with the film like Detention.

I mean, I was not aware of the video game. I mean, I'm not a gamer. So this should come as a surprise to no one that I was not aware of this film detention. But it was completely new to me. There are some parts of it I thought were really good.

There were some parts that I'm like this just because I don't have an entry point into the fandom through the video game. I think a lot of it just didn't make sense to me. And then there was some stuff I had some problems with, which we'll talk about probably towards the end. But. It's a very confident film. Yes. And I think that's a really pretty incredible debut film. Like it's taking big swings. It's doing a lot.

And sometimes it really succeeds. And so I think clearly Chu has a lot of talent and definitely he seems to be someone to watch. I think it's a really tricky prospect, and this isn't the first time that we've talked about horror movies that were based on video games. I know that we've talked about Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Did we do an episode on that? Yeah, I think they were part of the same episode.

So I think this movie does have quite a bit of fan service. It's just like it has to please cinema goers. It has to please fans of the game. And then it also has to do justice.

to this fairly... profound subject matter i'd say and you know i think when you look at video games as a medium and you look at which video games are the most influential if you were to google that and i did just for fucks you know we're seeing video games like well super Super Mario World was the biggest game to sell in the year, blah, blah, blah. And Doom gave rise to a new format. And Resident Evil introduced a new subgenre in gaming and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

However, I feel like detention really stands alone as a narrative video game that really had something to say. Video games are very narrative right now. The writing in them has gotten top notch. And now it is like a literary form, I believe. But I think this is perhaps one of the earliest examples of how powerful it is as a visual storytelling medium. And so I wanted to talk about it. And I think talk about it, we will. So let's get into it. This is 2019 or 2020's detention. I'll raise you.

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The story is set in Taiwan in the 1960s, where student Wei Chung Ting is a member of a secret book club reading forbidden literature under the guidance of Miss Yin. He's discovered, arrested, and tortured. And back at his cell, he has a nightmare where he's at his high school with a fellow student, Bang Ray Shin.

Both kids are totally confused as to why they're there, so they start exploring the school grounds, discovering that they're trapped there with some scary creatures. Eventually, they learn that Ray was the one who turned the book club in. And our perspective shifts to her backstory in act two. She's a lonely academic overachiever with an abusive military father and a largely absent mom.

When Ray is sent to Mr. Chang, the school counselor, they get inappropriately close and Miss Yen confronts him about it, that he's playing a dangerous game with the book club. Sure enough, Ray gets jealous and uses Wei to get one of the books, which she turns in to inspect her by. From there, we return to the nightmare realm where Ray rescues Way and is able to defeat the lantern ghost by facing her reflection and accepting what she's done.

Wei escapes the school, but Ray chooses to remain and reiterates Chang's final advice to him, that he do whatever it takes to survive because someone has to live to remember. In an epilogue scene, an older Wei returns to the school and finds a hidden letter to Ray from Chang that they'll meet again in the next life. So, I mean, that's, that's...

My interpretation of it, I dare say that this film kind of takes place in a very, I don't want to call it expressionistic, but like kind of a nightmare realm where there's a lot of metaphor. I personally found that really genius because it really, it reminds me of traumatic events remembered. You know, like when you remember a time where something really fucked up went down, you remember it as rotten and dripping and greasy and fucked up when in fact.

It was perhaps clean and the lights were on, but your emotions kind of like color that nightmare. Right. So there's speculation as to like, this is kind of a purgatory dreamscape space. And I subscribe to that, but I. think there's a lot of interpretations as to what goes on in this film yeah i mean i definitely buy what you're selling with your synopsis and for me it did take a little while to get oriented in the film sure yeah um again not having any background with it i kind of was

I wasn't sure where I was for a bit. And then I was like, okay, it's kind of, again, just for me and my knowledge, I was like, we're doing like a silent hill thing. That was the parallel I could jump into. And then as- fang took over as the main character it became like a historical drama

for a while that was kind of punctuated by these horror scenes. And I was kind of like getting snapped back and forth between them. Yeah. Which is disorienting, right? And I feel like it's unconventional for a film and it's unconventional for a game too, but that is what- game does is that you change protagonists and you change perspectives in terms of like these.

Two people are both involved in what went down, exactly how and why, and it unfolds much the way it does in a movie. I think in a cinematic sense, it doesn't maybe flow as nicely as it does in the game. Yeah, so Andrea just had me play.

a bit of detention before he started recording. We're going to put that footage on the Patreon. Oh, good. Yeah, if you're so glad. Why? You were great. Thank you. was like playing it and i was like and you were like oh yeah look it's that thing and it's that thing and i was like okay now i see how how much the game informs the watching of the movie i wanted you to play it for that reason i wanted you to to recognize how Aesthetically, this film hits the atmosphere of the game

Right on its head. And I think insofar as horror narrative games and visual novels have become de rigueur where like people are just basically they have a text and they have a story and they use a video game format to tell it. And you're not actually making that many decisions. Detention isn't quite like that because there are two endings that we're going to get into. But you're solving puzzles. You're moving around. But basically, you want to be drenched in this.

atmosphere. And I thought you were great. I felt like you were really- nervous like like a lot was going to be expected of you but yeah you're just clicking around clicking around and you explore and so like in the time that i had her start in chapter two where you wake up as fang or ray and

And she's like doing some exploring and solving some puzzle. And she goes into the video room. The video is pretty creepy, right? Video is pretty creepy. And then I got like unalived by some lantern man. Yeah, you totally got strangled by the lantern man. It was awesome. She screamed. It was great. If ever there was a reason to subscribe to our Patreon.

In the middle of a recession or looming recession, do you want to watch me scream? Let it be just that. Let it be that $2 level, friends. But let's start maybe just kind of by broadest strokes. The title literally means return to school in Chinese. But I feel like it takes on so many more meetings.

in English because, you know, we think of detention as punishment for high schoolers, but also as political detainment for suspected traitors, right? Yeah. And I truly, I also had no idea about the white terror. I was very unaware of so much of Taiwanese history. So just getting to research it and being told part of it through the film and then going back into the history for myself was really, really interesting.

And especially now, like Taiwan is in the news on a global political level. I don't know if all of y'all have heard about semiconductors. Semiconductors are a big export of Taiwan and they are basically like. little things that allow electricity to pass between different things like plastic and metal. So they're very important for a lot of building and industry based on what I understand. However, most of the manufacturing of these semiconductors happens in Taiwan.

And the rest of the world has been reliant on Taiwan largely for these very important little things. So there was a big thing under the Biden administration with the CHIPS Act, and they were gonna bring all the industry back to America now. That's all up for grabs. And then as well, as we talk about the war in Ukraine, there's a sense that as Putin becomes galvanized and allowed to conduct this war and possibly go further into Europe, that

China will once again try to seize control of Taiwan. And Taiwan, due to its innovation, its technology, has become a very important island nation in the political landscape. you know, the last few decades, 50 plus years, I think the U.S. has been arming them quite heavily.

Yeah, this was also a huge wake up call to me in terms of what was going on over there. The white terror. I was astonished to find like this game takes place in the 60s, even though there's like not much to denote. You know, when you think the 60s, you think of. and the music and the wars and the do, do, do, do, do, do. It's not like that.

But like for me to learn that the white terror continued on to 1987. Yeah. It was fucking yesterday. Yeah. I was astonished at how ongoing and how relevant this story fits into what's happening now. as you just alluded. So let's perhaps start with the white terror. Yeah. So the white terror, and again, people have done like entire books and documentaries about this. So we're going to give you a really high level summary to help ground you in all of this.

history, and culture. So in 1949, Mao Zedong's Communist Party won a decades-long conflict on mainland China. And the losing party, known as the Kuomintang or KMT, led to Taiwan, which is an island nation, as we've discussed, very close to mainland China. And they were greeted. as these new, hopefully benevolent rulers of this island who had freed them from Japanese imperialism following World War II. And unfortunately for Taiwan, the KMT almost instantaneously

decided to seize control by instituting martial law. And that martial law, well, as Andrea just said, martial law was only a... officially lifted in 1987, 1988. Yes, at the time, it was the longest consecutive martial law period in history at 38 years. That record has been broken by Syria. And what was fascinating to me was that what precipitated...

The martial law was an incident called February 27, which was some agents basically beat up a Taiwanese widow suspected of selling contraband cigarettes. An angry bystander was shot in cold blood. and demonstrations popped up which were met with violence and in the end thousands of civilians were killed. And I don't know about you Alex but I've been thinking a lot lately about inciting moments.

you know, I don't think I need to set the stage with what's going on right now, but it's like, what would it take? to send people into the streets? What would it take to set off civil war? I think it's something that we've all been asking ourselves, certainly for the past couple of years, because things have happened that I would have thought would have precipitated civil war in the West.

And as Canadians, it feels a little bit like a tinderbox right now. Totally. With a lot of threatening talk. Yep. Threatening talk, but like, you know, I thought of George Floyd and I thought about how these incited, like how activism kind of happens online and it can elicit change in awareness. But, you know, we live in such a.

technological age where discourse largely happens online and like that. And insofar as, you know, we have participated in demonstrations, there's like the US boycott of commercial goods and stuff right now. But what would it take? for things to tip over into total and utter fascism. And that's not an irrelevant subject right now. No. And so basically under the totalitarian regime,

It was brutal. And just a quick refresher on totalitarianism. Yes. It's basically a nation being forced or willing to subscribe to a leader. or a particular family and their set of beliefs. There is no democracy. There is no discourse. There is nothing except dear leader and the rule under dear leader. And so during the white terror.

Thousands, as Andrea was saying, people were killed, even more were imprisoned and detained. Estimates of those who died range from 10,000 to 30,000. And for context, Taiwan has a population. of 23 million people. So not the biggest population. And it's a very small nation. So you start to feel that tension and that fear real quick.

So daily life under this regime was hard and full of fear. Schools and media were tools to propagate propaganda. The government controlled. Not only the schools and what was taught within them, but their daily life. We see that throughout the film where they have to kind of go into the yard and like chant and do stuff. And then everything they were watching was.

basically just giving you the letter of the law. I liked how the film did that. And I think, Alex, when you were playing what little of the game you just played, you kind of got a taste of how- snippets of historical context were dropped in the form of clues in the form of news clippings whereas in the film we're just seeing everything through the eyes of these kids and i really liked the way the film kind of uh

kind of showed that in terms of they understand that things are not allowed and punishments are very harsh, but that is kind of underlined by seeing one of their teachers apprehended, clubbed, disappeared. People disappear and you never hear from them again. again. And, you know, these are teenagers. And I think we can all remember when we were teenagers and we had a sense of right and wrong.

what rules can be bent and what rules can be kind of played with. But the understanding of the political backdrop is largely up for the viewer to seek out on their own. And so what prompted the end of this regime?

was not only some deaths that were happening within the ruling family, but also that the influence of this regime was spreading beyond the borders. So there were increasingly international incidents that were involving people of Taiwanese descent. And so that started to become a bigger issue on the global level. And as I was saying, Taiwan, their semiconductors or innovation, the way they were producing materials.

was becoming increasingly important to a global market. So then the US got heavily invested in like, well, we need to make sure these people are okay by heavily arming them. Yeah, that'll do the trick. Yeah. So-

When something traumatic happens, we tend to repress it, whether it's individually or collectively. I wrote about this in my book on New French Extremity, there after the occupation. of the Nazis in France during World War II, there was a need to forget, a need to push that part of their history away from them and modernize so they were like this new France. And within Canada-

We have had our own issues surrounding this with the indigenous communities. And in 2016, Taiwan instituted their own Truth and Reconciliation Act. which went from 2016 to 2022. It was a commission that was designed to preserve the history and atrocities of that period as many people, especially in older generations, felt that a lot of it was being forgotten.

So this commission worked to maintain and organize a political archive and also remove authoritarian symbols and promote transnational justice. Yeah.

I think this game kind of goes a long way. Like it fits into that so well. The game itself came out in 2017 from a developer called Red Candle Games. And I mentioned before I had the perspective shifts back and forth as they piece together what.

happened and there are actually multiple endings for bang in the game the one where ray accepts her past and is forgiven by chang and then the bad ending where she doesn't and she's doomed to remain in purgatory where she hangs herself in front of the applauding auditorium and i feel like the the movie kind of like

Taps on all these things in ways that are confusing. But again, just trying to please fans of the game. Okay. This makes more sense now. But as long as I live, I think what was so crazy is. Insofar as there are moments where you can choose what happens, I'll never forget the sequence where you're playing as Fang and she has to cut Wei's throat when he's hanging upside down. Like you played it. It's a point and click, which is to say that you have this tableau and you can manipulate things.

If your cursor allows you to. And he's hanging there and you've got a knife. And I remember clicking everywhere on the screen wanting to do anything but. choose to cut his throat but it makes you choose and that dread was so inevitable it truly felt like a nightmare

like having to relive a horrible, horrible memory. But I think being afraid to remember and the importance of remembering is something that was really hammered in in the movie. Ray. is afraid to remember because of what she did, duh. Way because of what he might do in uncovering the story, he was worried that, did I rat out the others? Did I fuck up? And he kind of did.

He was involved in it innocently enough. But then, of course, on a national scale, as for what you were talking about, remember what you know of freedom. the outside world before the white terror. Remember what's important, like these heroic and seemingly very young educators who are risking their lives to make sure these children have access to not only literature and

documentation that shows different viewpoints, but the puppets and the art and the way that important political ideas are conveyed through something like puppets and art and like we know Shakespeare. Sure. And then, of course, remembering all the knowledge you were forced to throw away throughout it.

So as I mentioned before, that historically, this was a very big occupation. This is a very big black hole. This is a very big chunk of Taiwan's history that has been burned. and repressed. And I found this fascinating article called piecing together the past, the notion of recovery in fiction and film from Taiwan. And it was written by Steven L. Riep and I will link it in the course notes. And basically he's talking about the white terror, 38 years lost.

The cultural texts and documents were destroyed, but also all of the accounts of the evils of the Nationalist Party, the lists of the people who died, how long they were detained, how badly they were treated, etc. Beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the early 2000s, Taiwanese artists started really exploring this black spot in their history. And those are called recovery narratives. And the article points to the short stories of Chen Yingzhen.

the feature film Super Citizen Ko of 1995, one of the first visual treatments of the white terror, and a 2001 documentary called Spring, the story of Shu Jin Yu on the life of a white terror survivor turned actor. And this article was seeking to explore how these literary and cinematic accounts of the white terror often draw from the techniques of golden age detective fiction of the Anglo-American tradition.

which is to say it's told from the perspective of a detective protagonist who pieces evidence together. But unlike this tradition, a la Arthur Conan Doyle, there's rarely a resolution nor even a firm assignment of guilt. It's less about crime and punishment and like, here's what happened and now normalcy is restored. It's more about the recovery of narratives that have been lost. And I have a quote here, recovery narratives like classic mysteries.

may reaffirm the validity of the events they portray and fill in chronological gaps in records of the past, but they are not able to neatly affix guilt for the crime nor provide a resolution.

Issues of guilt and responsibility associated with atrocities like the white terror cannot be dealt with so neatly or easily. And I thought that was very powerful. I thought that also hearkened as to how the game works, where it's almost like detectiving and uncovering clues and stuff that not only illuminate the individual stories of Wei and Fang, but also of the white terror and what happened.

And this article was written in 2012, so there's no mention of detention at all, which is a shame because I can see so many aspects of what the author is talking about, particularly with regard to the spring documentary. Because the author describes it as, quote, a portrait of a woman white terror survivor turned political activist living in an era when the white terror has been commemorated but remains poorly understood.

And I remember that phrase was in the abstract and I was like, yes, let's talk more about this. But I wasn't able to find a whole lot more about this, about how... the efforts to make sure it's understood. And like you tapped on this a little bit, you had a couple of resources and I'm sure more have come out since then. But as of 2012, as of this article, they were like, we need engaging ways.

to help the kids remember. And I think that that is such a testament to how powerful narrative video games are to tell this story in a manner that will resonate. with younger generations experiencing not only the terror and the peril, but the horror at how easily teenagers can be made complicit into this horrible regime. And for Wei and Fang.

Understanding what happened to them and reconciling and the forgiveness and the closure and like all of our new age words for psychological peace. It's too much to ask for. in this setting. And so we don't get that in the end, which perhaps makes for like a less satisfying horror film than, than maybe most. And I didn't fucking know about the white terror. Like you said, I didn't know any of this goddamn video game. Like, are you kidding me?

And I was talking with some friends last weekend about like this Nazism that's happening. Do you suppose it's because this generation didn't grow up with Indiana Jones and they don't know that it's unequivocally okay to punch Nazis like across context?

let's talk about that. Because again, as a non-gamer, I was also just like, wow, I really learned something from this piece of media, from this film, which is based on this video game. So I had a little think and then a bit of research into history in video games. So, you know, the first thing that came to mind was Oregon Trail. Oh, my God.

And then, you know, it started pinging as I was researching it, like other historical or historical adjacent games like Assassin's Creed, Red Dead Redemption. Wait, did you play the Oregon Trail? Yes, in school. Yeah. And you died of dysentery. Oh, how could you not? Okay, okay. Sorry, go on. Yeah, Civilization, Call of Duty. Yeah. Those were just some of the titles I, as a rube, recognized, and they had a whole ton of others.

And I found this really interesting article, and I'll link it in the show notes. It's from the International Federation for Public History, and it's called Does Historical Accuracy in Games Really Matter? And it kind of takes a pro-con approach. So its pro is largely that it's a passive teaching tool of history, which could spark further investigation.

emphasis on the could, but in order to do so, you have to make it entertaining. You have to make it playable. You have to decide who you're going to play as and the developers have to decide. who you're going to play as and how. So that kind of puts a lot of onus on the developers to kind of moralize these historical events. And then there's also...

Historical inaccuracies that can happen in any fictionalized piece of media, book, movie, music, whatever, that can be taken as fact. So that can cause some disconnects. And often this article states that there is a lot of regressive roles for minor characters. Oh, hell yeah. And that can, again, affirm some pretty not great ideas. And in reading and thinking about all of this.

And I've been thinking about this more and more these days because of the world. And I really feel like the rise of fascism, the rise of Trumpism, it's so... connected to the steady gutting of public education. Yes. And the glee that particularly conservative politicians have taken in stripping education away from-

everyday human beings. And this is part of the surf uprising, the peasant uprisings. They wanted and demanded education and rights and sovereignty of their own lives. And so it got me thinking about our old pal.

Our old Canadian pal, Marshall McLuhan. You know, Mr. Medium is the message. And he was talking in this era in like the 1970s, like early 1970, about his issues with Sesame Street. Okay. And he wasn't saying it's like this terrible thing, but he was concerned about it because he was like, we have turned.

education into entertainment. And now we're going to have a generation growing up being entertained as they learned. So they will always expect that when they learn something they should be entertained. So his concern was that they would no longer just go out and research. They would no longer go out and learn and get pleasure out of learning something. It had to be kind of coerced into them. It was like spoonful of sugar.

medicine goes down kind of thing. And I kind of come down on two sides of it. I do understand that, but- Here we are. I can see that. It does have a streak of boomery. Like, yeah, heaven forbid learning should be fun because in my day I walked to school in the bare feet and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And also especially Sesame Street.

Like I have such a big softy for Sesame Street. That was a very, very pure edutainment type of thing. And I think for like a podcast of ours where we're saying, you know, power of horror movies which are intended purely for entertainment and we can pull so much education and elucidation and reflection out of them uh it doesn't discredit his argument, but it does present another side of it. Yes, and so we're kind of stuck in this place where trauma happens. Yeah, nationwide trauma happens.

And the human instinct is to turn your backs and forget because it's too painful to deal with what you have gone through, what you have lost. But like this week, it's the five-year anniversary of COVID. And we have suppressed that trauma of like going into those lockdowns early on and not understanding what was happening. I guess so. I didn't think I had tamped it down. I felt like I was kind of like living the aftershock of COVID all.

time. And certainly like on my Instagram, the memories, I was just like, oh, these are lockdown memories. That's for sure. And so we do need to remember these things and we need to understand and we need to learn from them. We need to know how to prevent a bird flu epidemic. We need to know how to prevent the rise of Nazism. But we are now several generations in to people don't want to sit and be lectured.

People don't want to do that. So now they're like hiring influencers to teach democratic politicians how to talk to people. Yeah. Yeah. Like who? Who is being listened to? Who are the artists and the platforms that actually grab our attention? It's perhaps a sad state of affairs, but at the same time, it's, you know, it's kind of the inevitable cost of progress.

I'm not saying like boo to all this stuff. I'm saying like this stuff is great, but we have to keep in mind like so many people were losing that curiosity. Yeah. And that loss of curiosity is what scares me because I was watching this movie. I'm kind of eh on this movie, frankly. I love the ideas in it. I love that I got this insight into the history that because of this podcast, I then had to go and research. But I think I would have researched this anyway.

Just to know, because to your point, they give you glimmers of what this history is, but there's not like a fucking, you know, rolling text about what the white terror was. Right. So I just always want to encourage people to like be curious. Yeah. and have a think and do some research and come at it from multiple sources. And through the stripping of public education, so many people.

have lost those frameworks or never been taught those frameworks. Yeah. And that's why people listen to Joe Rogan. Yes, it is. Tell me what to think and make it fun and funny. And make it in a way that doesn't threaten my privilege. And make it not serious. Yeah. Because nothing's serious in that world.

It's actually funny because I was thinking about I was thinking about the history of gaming. And obviously, I think when people think of video games, they tend to think of the violent shooter games, which is just a subgenre of gaming. And indeed, in 2020. it is actually a teeny tiny part of the gaming that actually fuels the gaming industry. Like you probably don't know a whole lot of people who play Fortnite or Call of Duty every single day, but your mom might play Candy Crush.

11 hours out of the day. You know what I mean? Gaming has become so pervasive and so almost like a fidget. dim on our phones these days but i certainly do remember a time where in those fighting games everything is so black and white right the good guys and the bad guys and you're a good guy and you kill the bad guys uh george a romero had very strong ideas about

the emergence of zombies as the bad guys in video games. He didn't like it. He didn't like the idea of having a chainsaw and just mowing down zombie after zombie. He's like, that's not what this metaphor is about. And when I think back to like, I remember Wolfenstein. Where you're shooting Nazis and they're like, oh, my name.

and it's silly and it's funny, but you're like, Nazis are always the bad guy. Even Call of Duty, there's like, you know, you're killing Nazis. It's the bad guy. I never got into games where it's like a war situation where you're killing other humans. That never really felt. nice to me for that reason because without context i don't find war fun to engage with and think about but i would prefer the games where you're

you know, destroying monsters on the basis of humanity or something. But since then, you know, you look at The Last of Us, you look at like independent games have been killing it lately. It is such a big, wide world. That makes tons of money and like you really can't understate its importance. And I think Marshall McLuhan was kind of like right on the cusp of that. Yeah. But probably the best work on the.

impact of the medium and the development of the medium and, you know, including Twitch as a discursive platform, like that's probably still being written as we speak. Yeah.

I've been watching a lot of J-horror in the last little while, and it just got me thinking about the proliferation of schools in Asian horror or A-horror. We've talked about several of these kind of films. mainly from Japan. I'm thinking like battle royale, suicide club. Also part of house takes place within the school. Like that's how those girls know each other. Yeah. There are elements of like.

Ringu and then even you know as you get into the grudge and like all of them like there's a lot of school yeah I feel like I experienced shades of that just because I had a dress code and you have this uniform and the uniform has, you know, myriad purposes in terms of conformity. There's a safety element where it's like we can, we can.

identify outsiders who don't belong to the school because they're not in dress code. Within Asia, you can identify someone's social standing. They're a student. They are of a certain age. They're not old enough to drink if they're wearing that. So like a lot goes into that school uniform. that phase of life. Yeah. And in East Asian culture, school is incredibly important. Getting good grades within standardized testing is hugely important, especially in Taiwan.

Teaching is considered a prestigious job. It's a good job to have. It's like a white collar job there based on all my research. And what comes with all of that is the pressure to perform. And this pressure to perform is generally pretty consistent in East Asian culture. While this kind of rigid education system may work for some, it may propel them to succeed. and give them structure and discipline. For a lot, that kind of rigidity is too intense to actually learn and grow.

develop all those skills you need to, to become a successful adult. Well, there isn't a whole lot of nuance for disability, for like competitiveness, you know, like we've got the West kind of grappling with this idea of. participation ribbons and meritocracy, like that anxiety plays into it. Yeah. And then also the kind of like.

policing of certain elements of schooling here in the West, not only the resurgence of banned books, but also kind of any differentiation from a heteronormative way of life that is being introduced. to kids is like terrifying to them. Not to mention high school is a literal peril to your life in certain spots. But within Asian horror,

there is this proliferation of what has been called across several academic articles and texts, the haunted school. And we see kind of the downfall of these young teens. who then become kind of entombed within these buildings. And they are either trying to escape, as in detention, or they are being held there as a warning. for the living, which also kind of goes into detention. Yeah. But it is this reminder and this warning of fear of failure and that if you...

fail, quote unquote, out of this school system, you fail out of the culture. I love this idea because I think it applies across. borders really like, you know, I'm 43 now, but have I ever really left high school? Like when I am stressed out to shit, what are my nightmares? They're of high school. You know what I mean? Like it is such a formative time. And you know, like I was saying before, about how you remember sites of trauma as rotten, rotten places. When I think of my high school, ugh.

It's not a nice place. Yeah. And I was also really gobsmacked. This doesn't pertain to what you were talking to, but I meant to look more into it, but I could not believe how exactly. the school in the movie looked as the school in the game. And I don't know if that's because they all look like that. I don't know if that's because that was an actual historical site.

But yeah, portrayed in this film as very, very military. The national anthem, the observing of it, the surveillance, like I remember high school to be like that and I wasn't living in the white terror. Yeah. That's just an age where you have no agency. You push your boundaries. You test things out. You try to understand things that are way beyond your yen. Yeah. I would like to move now into...

the sequel to the game. There's no, I mean, there's the miniseries that's ostensibly the sequel to the movie. Yet to check that out, but there is such a fascinating story about Red Candle, which is the studio that... that put out Detention, and the sequel, Devotion, which was very deeply controversial, and I am so excited to tell you why. So this game was set in Taiwan.

In the 1980s, in an apartment complex, not nearly as political as this 60s game set under the white terror, but this game was pulled from steam within a week. for a controversial Easter egg reference to Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, who is a big old fan of censorship. Now, in the game, there was a Fulu talisman on the wall that read, Xi Jinping, Winnie the Pooh, referencing an internet meme.

that the man resembles the cartoon character. And that internet meme made this guy so mad that the meme was banned in China in 2017. Do you remember that from the headlines? No. Remember that kind of being a blip in sociology Reddit that they were just kind of like, yo, a meme just got banned, which of course is just kind of like, wow, you're super triggered by being compared to Winnie the Pooh. Like that's all we're going to do now. But China really cracked down hard on it.

And there's also some script on that talisman that sounds phonetically sort of like a your mom joke, calling the secretary a moron, like he's an unpopular guy. And Red Candle apologized. They claimed that the silly talisman was like.

placeholder that was supposed to be updated like you can imagine making a game you're making it in like like you do it when you're writing right you're like here i'm gonna say something stupid about how this game is fucking stupid shitty racist and then you go on with it and then it's like oops if i forgot to revise that part and it made it into the game um they apologized it was supposed to be replaced before release

They claimed to have pulled the game from Steam for technical issues, but they did reference the controversy and they promised to comb the game for any other. unintended materials. But after that, there was such a stink on this fucking game that Chinese players were finding reasons to take offensive to other stuff, leading Red Candle to release a statement.

pleading with players not to let that little joke detract from the message of the game, which is about religious fanaticism and not directed at China in particular. And As of today, it's still not available on Steam. That game just got squashed because of this tiny little thing. But as of 2020, Red Candle said that they'd re-release the game if the public would be willing to view it.

rationally, and they did re-release it on their own site in 2021. So you can't find it on Steam. You need to buy it straight from Red Candle, and you should. Because holy fuck, they're just trying to make games, man. Like it's one of those things that I want to, even if I never play it, I want to buy it just to be like, this is fucked up. And it's so ironic when it's way less political than its predecessor. In fact.

Taiwan's vice premier Chen Chi Mai spoke out in defense of the game, saying only in countries with democracy and freedom can creation be free from restrictions. You're talking about a fucking video game and it's giving rise to these like lofty sentiments. But, you know, that is it speaks to the power of the medium as far as I'm concerned. But I feel like we need to talk about.

the story independent of its political implications. Like I feel like I didn't. expect you to love this movie i don't know that i love this movie this movie was simply a conduit to get at this really interesting story i think yes this moment in history is super interesting The video game interactivity and the way it treats the idea of repressed trauma and purgatory is really interesting. And I think Red Candle's journey dealing with censorship.

When they made a very actually inflammatory game, that was no problem. But Winnie the Pooh reference in your band forever is really interesting. But independent of that, we are the faculty of horror and... There's a little bit of Vickiness going on in here. A little bit? What in the Humbert Humbert is happening in this movie? Well, listen, I think... I'm inclined to say that this is a video game that wanted to tell a story about some kids.

And their journey through repression and how I think I alluded to it earlier, how they were perhaps unfairly positioned in. political positions of power when they're just trying to fucking be teenagers sure so i think that that's happening and i i think when i was doing my research and i was watching a lot of twitch commentaries and a lot of reviews of the game there was

a lot of hate for Fang, and I did not like it. See, I don't have hate for Fang. I have hate for Mr. Chang. Okay, Mr. Chang. So their relationship was inappropriate? Yeah. I would gladly say that across the board. I feel like the movie tried to kind of pussyfoot around where the line was and whether or not that line was crossed.

I was really trying to give this movie the benefit of the doubt. And I'm like, okay, Fang is a imperfect character, like any good character. Maybe this is all a bit more in her head. and what we're seeing. But then as it becomes clear, Mr. Chang is like, let's go watch movies together. Let's do all this. And I'm like, nope, nope, nope, nope. And then by the end, when he's like,

Maybe we'll meet again in the next life. I was like, you know what? Let her go. This is bullshit and I hate it. You hated it. I hated that aspect of this story. Yeah. It didn't need it. It didn't need it. You could have had her be, you could have had her have a crush on him and be jealous. And that leads her to kind of out the whole book club. Yeah. And not have him be like Mr. Fucking Creep, who's like the hero of the movie because I'm going off to a noble death. Yeah.

Like you didn't need it. You did not need. It's so creepy to me. I was like, I'm shocked that a film this sensitive and that this thoughtful about so many things has to me, it was like a siren every time it popped up. I was like, no, no. Absolutely not. Yeah. I don't.

No, I think it did need it because I think it did need to be the motivation for Fang. Not only that, but I think in service to what was going on with the white terror to be on the side of these educators. And like I said, Mr. Chung and. And Miss Yin, they seem so young to me when I watch this film. And I'm like, fuck.

I'm in my forties. Like these guys are probably in their twenties. And do you feel that way too? When you think back to your high school teachers, how they were such like pillars of authority and morality, but they were like.

just out of fucking undergrads themselves. You know, like when I think of the courage that these characters must have had to take their lives into their own hands, you know, they're not doing it for the paycheck at this point. They fucking really care about these kids. And Fang was... Pretty fucked. And so, yeah. Was it inappropriate? Yes. I just can't seem to hate him. Yeah. That's fair. I can't seem to do it. And like, maybe I'm thinking back to like, again, like my own childhood when.

things were tough socially. And I used to kind of have my lunch in the chapel and the chaplain used to come at like, I'm sure people pointed their fingers and we're like, he's a molester and she's a little slut. And it's like, well, I need an adult. And like, but were you.

You guys going to watch movies together? Watching movies under the white terror is kind of different. But that was like they're in a romantic relationship. Listen, it wasn't physically realized. Feel icky about it. But this is the thing. It's like I'm not. And I think this is where the impasse comes of you having a very personal relationship to the game.

to the game and not only to that kind of extrapolates into the film. Sure. Whereas I'm coming to the film, like not knowing shit about fuck and being like, that's fucking gross. And I'd be like, child protective services. Yeah. Where are we? Yeah. Again, to me, it just didn't need it. I'm happy to see a teacher care about a student in a way that is, again, it didn't need this romantic context because it perpetuates a harmful narrative.

that we are still pushing against constantly in feminist critique. Yeah. I mean, I think the fact that Fang had a huge crush on him, a lot of the romance was kind of implied as... Per her perspective, I think, if the act of going to the movie like.

is the line that you draw then he absolutely crossed that line i definitely found a critique of the film from variety that i thought was interesting made some interesting points that i can put in the show notes did you read that one i don't think i did uh the writer wrote that a whiff of sex

in the treatment of naive, jealous schoolgirl Fang, while the underlying ickiness of the teacher-student love affair goes largely unmentioned. Yeah, I agree with that. You found it unmentioned? I thought it was pretty central. I mean, I found that I understand Fang being like jealous or whatever. Like I don't, I don't care. Like that's fine. That's her character. I find the, any kind of critique of him is unnoticed except from like.

miss yin yeah she kind of goes at him but then she's kind of cast off to the side yes and then again it's through that kind of ending of like We're going to meet each other in the next life. That kind of sanctifies this relationship. And again, if you've taken that out, if you've taken a couple other bits out, they had a connection.

which is totally understandable sometimes, you didn't need to go that far with it. This was like their star-crossed lovers. And I'm like, film, you can go fuck yourself. How about that? Like I said, the game, it's uncovered as perhaps a parallel evil on par with all the censorship is just like, look what these kids are fucking having to deal with is a curvy guidance counselor and a this and that. You're right that.

the film kind of romanticizes it and it valorizes him in the end which again if you take out what he's doing with fang Sure. That is a noble character. Yeah. He fought to educate his students and protect them the best he could. And he's going to go to his death with his head held high. Yeah. Cool. I didn't need the other stuff. That's fair. But as I say, when you look at all the critiques of the game and they're like.

Fang the Snitchy Rat. Yeah. Well, and I think that's actually at the heart of the sexism where it's just kind of like it's going to fall to Fang no matter what. And I don't subscribe to that.

No. And I don't think she's in the wrong because again, power structures. She is not the responsible party. He is the responsible party. I feel like the game, it takes pains to show Fang repressing and like- having a really hard like there's so much even the stuff with her dad she's sort of trying to buy her dad's freedom with this situation even if mr chung was absent from all of that it's a big complicated sticky wicked and then you've got

way whose narrative is decidedly simpler yes but he also has to forgive bang Yes. And he has to kind of carry things on. And, you know, I think some of the I'll see you in the next life and remembering it as a story of romance and not remembering it as a story of petty jealousy. is perhaps nicer narratively in the context of what went on in history. Yeah. I don't know. It's mucky. It didn't set me off, but I don't love it.

Yeah. And I think, again, I wasn't I wasn't in the warm bath of a love for detention when I sat down to watch it because it was so it was brand spanking new to me. You were like, what the fuck is this? It was. Yeah. I was like, what am I watching and why? Yeah. So, yeah.

That was my little rant about it. Well, that's totally fair. And we would love to hear from you guys, as always, as with every single episode. Let us know what you think. Did you play the game? Did you play the sequel? And what the fuck do you think of this miniseries? I don't know about you, Alex, but I have been—

fucking dissociating so much lately. Like at the end of my work day, I don't know if it's the news. I don't know if it's the season. I'm sure it's all of the above, but like I found out about the mini series two weeks ago and I was like, there's only eight. episodes. I have all the time in the world to watch it before we record. I cannot bring myself to look away from the wall. Oh, wow. Yeah. No, I've just been...

working on other stuff and watching the housewives. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that's our episode on detention. Uh, thank you for listening. Thank you for humoring me. Alex, for letting me win and letting me pick this movie you did not care for. Despite my issues with the film, I'm glad I watched it and I'm glad that I had an opportunity to research it and learn about it for myself and then hear more about it from you.

And I think it's been a really edifying conversation for me. Yay. Well, the conversation continues, guys. We are careening into spring. I am going to look away from the wall.

for at least two hours. Exciting. To do research and homework for our next episode. And our next episode sure does put the problematic and problematic fave. We are doing... The cultural flashpoint from the early 90s. Wow. The hand that rocks the cradle.

was it a flashpoint i remember there being like a moral panic about this interesting well i'll be excited to dive back into it because i actually had a hankering for a nice erotic thriller is it erotic though yeah it definitely into the erotic thriller subgenre but it's real icky it's real weird it has some real stuff where like oh boy we're gonna have to talk about it rough

But I'm excited to talk about it. I love a film that like at its core is trash, but it has this like veneer of perfected Hollywood on it. Like it looks great. The actors are good, like generally good performances across the board. But at its core, it's like utter trash. Oh, yeah. Like doing horrible things. And I'm like, yeah, that is total Alex bait. And then we decided and we've been given the green light, frankly, that obviously we all know.

Salem Horror Fest is coming up. Tickets are on sale. It's the very last days of April into the first weekend of May. So our live show is on the Saturday, which I believe is May 2nd. I think so too. It is May 2nd. And Andrea, I'm going to give you the honors. Tell the folks at home what we're doing. You guys, this is a film that we all know we were going to talk about eventually.

We weren't sure when. We like to give these films some time. I think just enough time has passed, and I think Salem Horror Fest is the perfect venue for us to tackle the substance. It's happening. You gotta pump it up. We are going to screen it. We are going to talk about it. It was our first choice when we were offered. We were just like, so is this a possibility? And boom. And the theme for this year at Salem Horror is the horror within. Fucking.

Perfecto. So we're going to be there for pretty much the entirety of opening weekend. We're also going to be around for the opening night. I'm doing the Q&A with a special guest who is Ashley Morin. Lawrence Tananarive Dew is going to be there as the keynote speaker. So we're going all in, even though...

We're feeling feelings about going to the US right now, but we decided that since we are going to do the devil's work and Trump would hate everything about everything we're going to say, we're going to do it. Yeah. And Salem Horror Fest is so important to the community, to us. And we just, we wanted to go and we wanted to stand in support with that community in the U.S.

We'd love to see you there. That live episode is going to be on our feed for May. So look for that and we'll drop a link to tickets in the course notes so that you can book your flights and join us. Please join us. You know half of the live show is just going to be us. That and Sue. Sue. You're better at it. I need to practice. Sue. weirder with eye contact. Stop it. Look away. Look elsewhere. Anyway, guys, until your co-host hates the movie you pick.

Maybe I hated it. You come up with one. So until the next time you're locked in a purgatory with an age-appropriate boy who's real cute. Oh boy, office hours are closed. Why don't you get together with Wei? It never even occurred to me. He was a hottie. What's the fun in that? Okay, office hours are closed.