First Lady and Final Girl

this recording. UM, there's a lot of conspiracies around her, and it's been a while since we've had a good UM White House. Well, no that's not true. Yeah, come on, I was gonna say, no, this is the best time for conspiracy theories and the worst time for everything else, I guess non political ones. But there hasn't been a good first lady conspiracy in a second. UM, she may have resurfaced as by the time you hear this, but I think yesterday they announced that she wouldn't be going

to the G seven summit. There was some statement issued about how she has just not been appearing anywhere because she's starting to focus on her kids and family, which is um. There have been similar statements like that in the past. But she's she's got to be best. She's

just being best wherever she is, she's being best. Um. But I like, uh Audrey Woolen, a good follow on on Twitter, was was talking about how this is sort of it feels like a kind of gothic mystery that's evolving around Milannia being gradually turned into a ghost and and sent up to inhabit the rafters of some unknown attic in the White House. It's funny too, because Iron Madison has also been doing these really funny threads on Twitter about sort of like the soap opera version of

what has happened to Millannia. He's like, oh, she's been replaced with a body double, and then the body double has been sent to like a farm or something just like Very Days of Our Lives what it would be, which would be that like someone has a secret twin the Secrets and she's in a coma. Yeah, there's been a double rumor going around for a while. I think because there were some photos of her where her face was mostly covered by sunglasses or like her hair or

something like. She's just styled in a way where you purposely can't seem to make out her face. So who knows who that could be. I think it was this one video where she's wearing a hat and glasses and it just looks like a prosthetic face. I just looked at the Snopes on this and they were like, no, it was a distortion, Like it was like a screen distortion. She the hat man, I think she's Carmen san Diego. She is like in a trench. It's so close. I gotta say, this is one of those ones where I

was like, who cares? I don't care? Why don't you care? Because there's so much other ship. There's a lot of other actually important and this just seems like a distraction. All that's true, but it's an interesting distraction. If you

acknowledge that it's a distraction, it's interesting. But I'm also like, having made the mistake of watching cable news for the first time in a while, I was just like, this is what like if you turn on cable news, all it is all day is like not talking about Puerto Rico. They're not talking about anything anything real. All the talking about is like Roseanne and Melania and like Russia and

none of it is ever real. And I've heard that it's like they're getting really good ratings for it because it's become just like Fox News for neoliberals, where it's like I'm gonna watch TV all day and then like something's going to break in the Russia scandal that will like crack this whole thing open, and so it like

gets people addicted to watching this sort of meaningless news programming. Well, this is yeah, this is the great prank that the this administration is actually played on people on the left is that they've it has made like raving paranoid Fox News esque lunatics out of all of us. Uh, which is it's definitely been a thing where you see some people just like go off the deep end never to return.

It's become just more and more of a thing, and some people just turn into these like Russia conspiracists where it's like, hey, it's not like they're not going to be like whoops like Mulligan. But and this most side is they we all learned a lot about game theory, and so much of that game theory. I don't think

twelve dimensional chess is really guy. It's so funny because I was remembering, like maybe a year ago or something, meeting up with a friend of David somewhere and he was like, did you hear Like we hadn't looked at in the news maybe for a day or something, and he's like, did you hear like the indictments they're coming down like everybody's going to jail and saying that every day. Well, we're like really really, and we like search Twitter and

we couldn't figure out. I was talking about it, and of course it was like a Louise Men thread probably, But like people, there's always somebody that's like, you know, my inside source said, like Mueller's prepared the report and like Trump's from president for like over a year, I mean fifty years. He's going to get re elected? Molly, Yeah he is, because what are we What have we changed about anything? We haven't like fixed how voting is fucked up? Can that be like a rallying cry, not

a prediction? Can that be like he will be re elected unless I don't think there's an unless I think he's gonna get re elected because I think that the people that are like Russia did this. It's like no, like American racism did this. We could be both, it could think it could be both. I think it's possible for it to be. You can't you can't bait people with like racist Facebook memes that aren't already like prone to racism, that are going to believe them. If they're

not racist, they're gonna be like, that's bullshit. And clearly there are a lot of people that are primed to believe all this garbage, but they also believe it. So I don't think those people don't exist. I think they voted him in not Russia. Do you think it's possible for him to disappoint those people in a meaningful way where they'll go to the third party? And I think

it's like Kanye. I think it's like the people that have drink the koolid or like I drink all the kool Aid, and I'm not going to stop now, you know, Like to stop would be to denounce everything that I've done in my entire life until now, So like I got to just keep rolling with it. Hey night, collars. You know, Tests and Molly and I often talk about how we all wish that we could just be brains

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can say about. Yeah, it's one of these things I've decided I don't have time for at this point in my life, saying it's like, I think it's okay to be like I don't have time for this at this point in my life. It's not even like Kanye is trash thing. It's just like I simply do not have the bandwidth to get into like figuring out how I

feel about the new Kanye album. I'm not even I think it's perfectly fine to say that in light of what's going on with Kanye, that you're just sitting this one out like I'm I don't plan to listen to it. Maybe I will, but I mean, and honestly we've talked about this before. There's something that's so sad and feels um predatory at some point about like feeling this responsibility of having an opinion on what's going on with Kanye when he's very clearly in a place where he should

just kind of go away for a bit. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think I brought this up before, but Jay Kang had a good thread. Um Jake Kang, the intellectual dark web of the Left and being to are superstar was talking about just like I don't know, like, yeah, we don't, we don't have to care about this stuff. He was like anyone who ever wrote a think piece

about Kanye is responsible for this world we've made. Yeah, he was like, we all graduated from college with no skills except being able to like write pop culture theory.

And I was like, maybe he's not wrong. Maybe speculating about celebrity is bad, and projecting things onto people that aren't there, or treating people's careers and lives by extension as a sport that you watch and prognosticated about is maybe not We also we talked on girls and hoodies a lot about like monarch mind control, like the kind of conspiracies about what happened to young stars and they all have these nervous breakdowns and stuff, and I mean

a lot of it was supposedly like a machine that was kind of conditioning them to be these like ciphers, but a lot of it was just growing up feeling that, you know, creating attention around oneself was was the ticket, and then coming to like a point in your life in your career where you kind of feel like you have to like step it up and step it up, and it just leads to such sad things and then you just don't want to like have any of that. You say, also there is a machine, and the machine

is capitalism. Oh, there we go. You know what, though, there was this there was this post about VICI that was really sad on ont D where people were talking about like, hey, this guy kept saying like if I keep doing this, I'm going to die, and everybody around him was like, you have to keep doing it because you're making all these people money and that's all that matters.

And then all these people were, you know, they were kind of like, hey, it kind of seems like this is a pattern that happens to like every big star that we make that that that has a nervous breakdown is like they should take time off, and they can't. I think a problem with that too is that when an artist expresses vulnerability, it almost seems as though it's an invitation for fans to closer, when really it might

be their attempt at stepping back. So I think that with Kanye, when he would be on these tweet binges and and expressing very personal sentiments and like really controversial opinions, it almost seemed as though he was inviting people to relate to him more or to like try to figure out what was going on with him. In a way that was really invasive, but it maybe wasn't that you

can see the reaction. I mean, I said, we said we were't going to talk about this, and look, but you can see in their reactions it's like it's not even about Kanye or the album. And I feel like the same thing is going on with like the BUSHETI and Drake fight, where it's like it's about people's personal investment in those artists and a lot of it has to do with nostalgia for like that you know, any

time other than now. Yeah, just like something that mattered to you at a different point and if you if you no longer connect to that thing, then like everything you ever did was a lie. But it's like, no, if you no longer connect to that thing, it's because there's nothing to connect to anymore. Um. I have always like joked about Kanye like becoming just like full psycho. But it's not funny. It's a bad album because there's

no humor to it. It just feels like sad and you're like somebody, like he should just take time off, he should get help. I would rather get help than like keep making music that it's bad, or just even keep making music that is good. Even it's like there

are things more important than making art or money. I was just gonna say, I just feel like we're just starting to begin to realize the ramifications of like this gray area where the thing we used to communicate is also just like culture, like as like it is like the matter of culture. So like somebody's tweet or something about their well being or their inner life, it's not

just a mode of communication. It then becomes a piece of culture to molo or and and that can that can you know, either make somebody money or affect their career or result in fewer tickets sold for a tour or you know whatever. And I feel like we're just starting to realize that what happens when like you can no longer just talk anywhere, that everything becomes something that comes back to your bottom line or that like you can say things that can like funk up anything else

you've said that was good. Like if you didn't get off the Kanye train at Slavery was a choice, then like I can't help you because like what are you doing? You know, like what you like, what are you waiting for? Exactly? It's a lot, I mean, it is a lot like Trump. It's like the people who are still like, no, no,

he's playing twelve dimensional chess. This is all like a big performance art thing, and he's going to do a big reveal at the like you know, listening party, and then it's like no, you know who knows a lot about performance art, Kanye West, Well, no, there was like one of the conspiracies was that like he was recreating this piece of art by this like famous like fluxus artist or something. And I was like, how delusional do

you have to be to think that that's true? And it's like as delusional as people who are like Trump's, you know, the indictments are coming down any second now. It's like you believe what you want to believe. Uh. But some I don't know people talking about Brittany too, they were just like everyone around her failed her because like she could have gone a different way if people hadn't been so like, you have to get back on

that stage. I think everybody. I don't know. My only hope for the future is that like everybody starts taking care of each other instead of being being tweet tweet crazy. I mean I think like going back to the Milannia thing. Yeah,

we're back. Sorry, guys. What's interesting is that, so we're recording this podcast, Milannia is supposed to be um appearing before a group of people with no press allowed at I think two thirty Pacific, so it's but it's on the five thirty this evening, so we don't know if that's going to happen. Regardless of if it happens or not, the press isn't allowed, so we'll be relying on reports of people who are in the room exactly. And there was a CNBC reporter I think who said that he

saw her. I guess her last appearance was May tent and he said he saw her in the White House at some point after that, but wouldn't really elaborate, said other people saw her too, So I think, you know, Molly and I were talking about this just before we started recording, and you know, she was like, it's just a distraction. It's just a distraction. And it totally is a distraction. I mean, it just seems like that has

to be the case. That's like, I'm also like, hey, the Trump administration is disappearing a lot of women that we aren't talking about all the time in the news that like I would rather be focusing on well, I just think, but it becomes an interesting part of the story if you think about them concocting this particular distraction shouldn't be something that takes up your time as much as as you know, Puerto Rico obviously being something that's

just been completely ignored. It just feel like two with Milannia. It's like there seems to be this desire people have to like project humanity onto her or to be like she's trapped in this horrible situation. It's like people in this situation, I don't know, I'm like a lot of like white women are like always like poor Milannia. Like, no, not poor Millannia. She's like married to her to a white supremacist she said, crazy birth or things like she's

a bad person. Not. Yeah, I totally agree. However, it becomes a little bit tricky. I think when people start like slamming her use of English and stuff, like I mean, attacking her for things not based completely on her personality and life choices that have led her to the White House. No, and like, I don't know, I just feel like it doesn't matter and she's probably fine. The thing about all

the weird ship around this administration. So like Milan like mo Lonnie having a body double, that that's actually something that feels like in the realm of possibility. I don't think it matters. But there's the actual matter and substance of this administration, which is all the ways in which

they're sucking over immigrants and all this other stuff. Um. But then there's like the color of it, like that it wasn't just that people were having their human rights violated, it was that we were living in this weird twilight zone where it was possible that there was like a body double for the first lady. That's like just like it goes also to the idea of like people seeing memes that are like clearly photoshopped and not knowing that

they're photoshopped. Like there is this way and just like you literally can't trust anything you see, especially if you see it on the internet, even if it's video. It's like, no, it could just be all shopped. Like anything can be shopped into the thing that they want you to think it is. And so it makes everybody feel crazy. Oh, speaking of crazy people on the there you go perfect, speaking of women locked in a tower of their own dividing.

We were going to talk about Julia Allison um a person who was on the Internet a lot and then kind of disappeared off the Internet and then re emerged like a butterfly, like a person wearing butterfly wings of burning Man this week with an editorial uh in page six or past about how sex in the City ruined

her life. It's such a college paper essay, Like it's like, what's your thesis and give me, you know, in this case, like twenty five things that support this thesis and completely ignoring anything else that might be going on in the world or with yourself given time. It's just like a

blindingly unself aware piece of writing. But it was really rough. Yeah, it's pretty I think the worst part is when she claimed that a man was attempting to um sexually assault her and it was horrible, but then ended the paragraph off with and the worst part he flew me back home. Yeah. I mean what I thought was a huge bummer about this was that it was like, it wasn't that she

regretted trying to sell herself. It was that it didn't work the way she wanted it to, which is I think a thing A lot of people actually can identify with. Is that you're like, I'm going to be a brand and then you're like, wait, I'm a cheap brand, right.

I think there's a lot of assumption that like we all bought into the myth of Carrie Bradshaw, right, and it's like, you know what I did it, Like, I'm I know you guys like Sex and the City a lot, but I was never a Sex and the City fan, aside from like if I was in the tel and I had to watch a couple episodes, But like, it's not that we bought into like buying a lot of ship will make you copy, it's that it was like it would be nice to have a column, right, Yeah,

I was where I came to it. We were never I don't think Molly or I were ever huge Sex in the City fans. I think it was almost like our soap opera. I mean it also like started when we were teenagers, so I feel like it was just like maybe if I had been like an adult woman in that world already, I would have been like this is so fake, like nothing like it. But because I was like a teenager, I was like, yeah, sure, I'd like to have a column. And an apartment Like that

sounds great. Yeah, I mean there's something though, like in the in the article, like they've chosen intentionally extremely unflattering photos of her during the height of her career and being like a Gawker fixture and all of that. It also maings you'd be like, ah, the two thousands, which I keep thinking about, Like the two thousands were like Vimar Germany. You know, we were all just like carefree and everybody was just like I feel about to tea

that I thought you hated. I do hate them. But now when I now, I've been thinking about it a lot where I'm like, oh, everything was so frivolous because fascism was coming. But there's something about those outfits and the color and how everything was just like neon and like made for the lowest attention span possible, and it really kind of sent a chill down, right. But it also just seems like such a different time when it's like, oh,

remember when nothing really mattered, like the things weren't real. Well, it's also such a waste when you think about it, because you're like, we had Gawker, but they spent all

this time talking about Julia Allison. But you know what I was like, she was one of the people they tried to turn into a micro celebrity, but the other one was Mark Zuckerberg, and like that turned out to be like a person that you did want to be paying attention to more than he wanted you to, because you know, people who want all the perks of like power, but don't want the downsides, which is the constant analysis. It's like, no, you get both. That's the thing about

Elon Musk too. You're like, if you're going to be on the internet all the time tweeting your opinions, people are going to tell you their opinions back. It's not a one way thing. It's not how it works. And that's why all these billionaires keep buying publications and shutting down newspapers or making them into sort of censored versions of those papers, because they're like, you can write about anything you want except me. You know, even people that

are like, oh, Jeff Bezos, one's the Washington Post. It's like, yeah, that means you can't like criticize Jeff Bezos the way that you need to for being like a psychotic monomaniac. Think those people shouldn't be in charge of anything, and Gawker when it was good, was like, did make you feel like it was like the little guy taking the big chis some window of the sales or something. Yeah, I mean, I I remember reading about Julia Allison just because I read Gawker all the time. I never really

cared that. But I mean, even though I read everything about her, like, I did not understand how it applied to me or why I should care. I think because I was in Los Angeles and wasn't in the media, and I just didn't really I was like, who is this woman again? No? I mean it was like she couldn't see how clueless she came off all the time. And so you know, they're like and even in this essay, you're like, she starts out by being like, I lived

the most glamorous life. I met everyone like Henry Kissinger. She's like Henry Kissinger and Richard Branson. Those are her two examples for glamorous, celebraamorous, multi murdering war criminal and member of the International Olympic Committee, Henry Kissinger. And then she did the thing that all the most annoying New Yorkers do, which is to move to California and be like, guys, I'm so different now, like people who go to summer camp and come back and are like, I have a

new personality, forget everything you knew about, have a Bravo pilot. Uh. And then she really just kind of shows shows herself by being like, also, I dated a woman Carrie Bradshaw would never do. That was then incredible. And then she was like and then I dated a man, but he wanted to be polyamorous. And I was like, oh, honey, you live in Silicon Valley for sure. Yeah, I said that he was Samantha boys. Oh honey, honey, those Silicon Valley guys all want to be polyamorous. I said, not

unless they're poly bank accounts. Sorry, very sorry, advised. Um, that's the thing too. I was like, oh, I forgot. She actually did have a reality show. At the end, but she was like, but I was over it, so like goodbye. But then at the end she says this thing where she's like, and now I'm thirty eight and if I hadn't done all this stuff, I'd be married with kids. And you're like, where do you get that idea? Right?

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Lisa dot com forward slash nightcall. That's a hundred and thirty dollars off your Lisa mattress at Lisa dot com Forward slash nightcall. Maybe this is just everybody once they hit like a certain age where you're like, what if I've done everything differently and been the opposite person of who I am? And I feel like Julia Allison is like I should have just like stayed in Chicago and

married a rich banker. And I feel like she wrote a thing once about how she had like a boyfriend that she like dumped to go do New York stuff, and maybe she just regretted the fact that you remember that is terrifying because I followed her narrative for a long time because it was like, I'll be engaging. I felt really bad for her because I used to read this horrible website. I read that website. I know you're about to say, the one that was just like a

mean tumbler about her. Well, there was a mean tumbler just about her, and then there was the mean blog about every everybody, but mostly just women who wrote for the internet, and they just I mean, they gave her a name. I think they called her Donkey. It was just really rough, Like it was the kind of thing where you wondered what a person who feels like they've decided that they're going to have a career that's just based around their personality and kind of banking on that.

What do you do if if it seems as though the overwhelming response to your brand is negative? Right, what if you don't have it and that's why you can't

be an it? But you maybe also don't have any other It's where it's like that might be something that someone else if you were again, if you were a completely different person leading a completely different life and making different choices like she she was like charming ish at at a point maybe or just you felt like you know what, I just remember, I'm having so many weird flashbacks now to like specific to thus And do you remember when she started dating a guy who was like, no,

she started dating a nerd like internet guy? When when yeah, yeah, who was like wanna be Silicon Valley guy? And so they started a blog together about their relationship called Jacob And remember I read that, Oh no, and I knew it was doomed because she started like, and this is the thing I see other people do it. I'm always like against Samantha wis. I was like, oh, honey, no, that's not going to do anything good for you. Like they would put their fights on the internet and be

like who's right? And I was like, uh, no, that's not a relationship. That's like you're asking the internet who's right, Like you're doomed, you know, like even if you're right, like your relationship is fucked. That's that creepy like pseudo or like we of in public type show, or you're just like no, no, all the wrong impulses are being acted on here. You can understand the basic impulse to be like I'm having this disagreement with my significant other.

If only I could have some kind of objective judgment come down from the universe. But like, you don't do that. It depends what the disagreement is, you know, like I someone else I know on the internet how to post about Like my husband thinks that you should wash lemons before you use them. Like he's crazy, right, you know, And I'm like, Okay, that's fine, you can put that

up for a pole. But being like my boyfriend thinks, like just like getting into too much detail, You're just like, oh, I'm going to read this, but also it's not good for you. Do you wash lemons? Lemons? You? It depends on my moves, It depends on the application. This is Katie, a topless who was also an Internet legend. Um, and I thought it was really funny because I was like, I've never washed a lemon. I think her husband was like, you have to wash lemons when she was like, no,

you're crazy. Well this is a slippery slope because I just saw a video today on Facebook. Sorry, guys, I saw a video on Facebook and now I'm to tell you about it. And it was like, are you washing your produce all wrong? If you just rinse it with water all those pesticides. It was telling you abougtable wash. No, it was telling you that to get off pesticides, you had to soak your vet, your produce in water with baking soda for twelve minutes. And I'm pretty like, is

this fake? It must be fake. But people were sharing it like okay, guys. And then you just see these big bowls of water and baking soda with like lettuce in them. It's like, you're gonna eat baking soda lettuce. Life is too short, y'all. It's too short for this lived dangerously. Just don't wash it. I mean, I think too.

It's like there was a time when we were all on the internet a lot, but people weren't being necessarily out about the fact that they were spending all of their time on the internet because it was like you wanted to create the illusion that you had a cool life. Thank god, that just kidding. We're all just online all the time. And it was like people Julia Allison who are like, I'm putting myself out for your consumption. My

life is an open book. Tell me everything you think about me, and the people would be like, you're a dumb bitch, and she'd be like, not that, don't do that. I don't want to hear that, um, which you know, it's very he wants to hear that. Well. The thing about forcing your way into being an it girl is so like I'm of two minds of it because out of the idea that if you're going to be an it girl, you have to be chosen by somebody else, you have to be like submissive in that way and

let somebody else like foist fame upon you or something. Also, they're all like born rich is the secret, And I think Julia Allison was like, I'm rich, why can't I be an it girl. I'll come to New York and I'll wear Chanel and then like attention will just follow, and it's like, no, there's a million people just like

you who also think that. And it's not sex in the City that made you think that you would get all these things like that's some bullshit American dream stuff that you just were like, Okay, well, I'm a rich, like pretty girl, so I'm gonna get like a house and a family and like a hot husband, and then being like where is he I want him? And if

I and it's sex in the City's fault. And it's also like that's not what happens on sex in the city really, Like the second the city is kind of like depressing, and then at a certain point they took it into like fantasy mode because they were like this is too depressing, because there was that like a you know, early on like Sarahessica Parker. Parker was like, I think carries an alcoholic And then they were like, Okay, this

has become like a fantasy aspirational thing for people. We can't they can't have real problems unless it's Samantha and then we'll get her cancer. Yeah, which is why she's the only only good one, good one. I have to say that, for me, the most depressing thing about the Julia Allison ed was that if you leave the Internet for all intents and purposes, as she claims to have done. She says she posts occasionally on Instagram, but it's like,

look at the Internet, especially Instagram. If you do that, then offered the opportunity to come back as kind of like a version of the man who knew too little, you know, who like lived in upstate New York and didn't read any news at the election, thinking about, yeah,

just like you stay in the bubble. Well, I'm I was like, I saw her picture and I was like, Okay, come on, girl, come back and be like So I quit the Internet, and I have spent some time reflecting on the fact that, you know, I made a huge ass out of myself and also had to weather being

kind of bullied and it was bullshit. And then I left and now I'm like so happy, and here's what I've been up to, and here's like a lesson from me, which I would have probably been like, fair, I'll listen to you, but right instead, she's like, Hey, I'm the exact same person and I haven't evolved at all, and I'm just writing something that I totally could have written like eight years ago. So it's like she couldn't scam her way into New York, but she scammed her way

into Silicon Valley. And now she gets paid to like speak at seminars, which is like the biggest scam of all, Like such a such a good job. Yeah, iire us to speak at your seven. Now I'm like a change activist. And it was like what is that? What do you do with the irony? Because I remember she quit the internet after like going to Burning Man. She was like I went to Burning Man and like nothing. I don't know. There's something about like people who have revelations and then

learn nothing from it is like a fascinating thing. To bring it back to Kanye for a minute again, You're like how can you be self aware and then be like not self aware at all? You know? Or like how how are you trying to like acknowledge that you know your critics in a way that's like yeah, yeah they've got some points, but also fuck them all they

know nothing. It was like kind of to a lesser degree like Katie Perry's whole last album cycle too, which was very like like I'm going to listen to my critics, but like in a very kind of cosmetic way, or liked her for like getting out you know what I mean, Like I don't know. I watched that whole Katie Perry livestream, which was amazing. Oh wait, you guys, by any chance to either of you see that they were broadcasting Fleetwood

Max the dance on Pobs last night. See. That was like another thing where I was like, oh, okay, they've figured out that, like we need this nostalgia so badly. I mean even thinking about Katie Perry and like the Audies when we were first introducing they were cold in the story yesterday and I was like, oh my god, this is like what storm was ragtime jam or something like yeah, totally, this is from a million years ago.

I think that's the thing. That's what's dangerous about nostalgia is like anything that you're no longer in, it can become crystallized until like oh that was nice, but then you're like, no, it's terrible, Like the two thousands were terrible. It just didn't occur to me that things would get worse. I mean, there's so much worse now. Any other time there's this is so bad, things will have to get better. And it was like, no, no, hold my beer if you're a fan of Nightcall, you might love true crime.

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com Slash Criminals to listen now. Um, one more thing, speaking of horror and ladies, there was a post by the director Anna Biller, who made The Love which which we are all great, did a series of tweets a few weeks ago about horror and misogyny and was talking about the trope of final girls and horror, which is the trope whereby there's like a group of girls or a group up of guys and girls with a group of horny teens usually that are killed off one by

one and then one girl remains and it's because she's smarter and better than everybody else, didn't didn't try to have sex, and she's a strong female character. Um. And Annabella was like, this is bullshit. Uh, strong female characters, Like that's not what that is. And it's become such a thing in horror, especially with like male directors, where it's like, yeah, you know, this is feminist because like

one woman survives. I love to show strong women after showing a bunch of other women getting slaughtered, that's what she was saying. She was like, it excuses people morally from having to think about why they enjoy watching a bunch of other women get killed first for like cinematic pleasure. And she was like, this is like the basis of all modern horror and like grindhouse movies. It's like the rape revenge movie. But then you like see the person get raped usually you know where it's like you do

the thing in order to excuse the other thing. Uh, And she was like this sucks. And then dudes just went off on her on Twitter for like many days, really proving her point by being like wrong, I didn't see so much as a response. I mean, I saw like a couple of bog posts that were just about like what she wrote, and I listened to a different

podcasts we were talking about it. But um, I mean it's kind of part of this larger argument that she has just about like what actually constitutes feminists film or like feminist oriented film, and it's not usually the thing

that's being called a feminist film. And also the title of feminist film usually doesn't mean anything, especially when you're talking about a film directed by a man like the most Like a film can really only be feminist in like a medicine as far as like how it's being made and whose point of view as being prioritized, and which is why that Brian de Palma movie about Harpie Weinstein that he just announced he's making maybe not something

that I'm like expecting a lot of. Oh. I mean, it's hard because I love Carrie and I think it's a very feminist horror movie. I also am like, well, I mean, it's better than not doing anything, I guess, but it's really hard when you hear a man, a white man in their seventies, be like, you know, I really want to show a woman's perspective. It's like, well, I'm a woman. A woman might be able to do that pretty effectively that a woman this interesting exploit can't.

Why can't men have opinions with others like you can have opinions. You just also have fifty million movies made by man about this and maybe a couple because Anna Biller is also saying like she's making a blue Beard movie. We're all big fans of the blue Beard. But that's you know, that's why men would like some men that would like robots to just replace women, because then you don't have to feel bad about putting them in the junk Room. It's a horror movie, so you have to

be able to show the horror. I get that, right, But she was just saying, like horrors becomes so narrow that like nothing has advanced in the genre, even like the meta thing meta critiques of the Final Girl genre kind of just like reinforce. You know, this one girl

is better than all the other girls. And I think the thing that's like more egregious to me is like, sure you can, you can have that structure, but like when you can feel the film is trying to be like, look girl Power after watching you know, usually the same girl, even the girl who prevails in the end, getting brutalized throughout, it just feels like I'd rather just have the straight version of that instead of you trying to pose it as being some kind of political statement, which obviously if

it is at all, it's very lacking in the actual feminist department. Like I feel like there's some quote maybe it's like an Antonioly quote or something like that that I saw recently. It's just like like films really aren't like I mean, yes, there's like political documentaries and stuff like that, and there's like more didactic narratives, but in general,

films are more are are emotional and not political. I feel like the politics have to be how it's made because if you try, if you start trying to say, like this is a feminist horror film or something, then like then you're trying to teach or something through the film. And that's ultimately not what I want from the movies, especially like it's not what I want from movies made

by women. Like I want women to be able to explore all sorts of like crazy horrific nightmare scenarios and like all like unleash there, you know, darkest nightmares on the screen in the same way that guys have gotten to And like I think that that is inherently feminist because you've prioritized their voice. It doesn't mean the film itself, the text of the film is feminist necessarily, you know, Like it's not. It's not feminist just by virtue of like having women in it, you know, which is I

think that's what happens defending this kind of horror. Like oh, but like it stars some girls and it's like yeah, yeah, and they all get slaughtered except for one, and then she's like haunted, Like you can be a woman who likes something that has girls in it or has women in it, like a story, and that doesn't also make that a feminist story. Like, I think that people just have a limited vocabulary and how to talk about these things because honestly, we don't get that many of them

to talk about. That's what I'm saying. And I think like some of the things that have become like feminist films, Uh my mom's friend be Ruby Rich, who's a really great film critics scholar, wrote a book called chick Flix that talks about just like Rust Myer movies, how Rust my movies like feminists love them because they're all about like groups of women, and most of them don't involve

as women getting caught killed off. It's like they're incidentally about a group of like female characters that are really interesting even though they're just meant to be like sexploitation movies. They like are better than most movies that have female

characters because they treat that female characters as people. But Annabella talks about like rest Myer movies in this longer essay that she has on her website, kind of you know, being like, yeah, those are fun, you can enjoy them and enjoy them apart from them being feminist or whatever. You can enjoy them because it's fun to watch these characters like do silly shit or whatever, you know, like or or have revenge on guys or whatever. Like just

because they're killing a man doesn't make it feminist. You don't know. And it's like they passed the Bechdel tests, like incidentally, yeah, you know, but yeah, that's the thing. Else, Like I'm glad they were kind of past that, But I used to be a huge thing of like, well, it passes the Bechdel test, it must be feminist. I mean, like and people, you know, I feel like there's a lot of discussion around this with like Wonder Woman too, because you know, that's obviously a superhero woman about a

female superhero directed by women. But I wouldn't necessarily call it feminist exactly. Like it's still about like war mongreem. It was anti war. That's why I liked it that it was an anti war war movie. Annals, So I liked that it was World War One because the World War One, the World War One so much. Oh, it's like the least favorite cinematic war are you talking about? Like come on the barracks. I hate the barracks. I

hate all the blood trench trench warfares. So I'm just saying, like, there are way too many World War two movies and way too many Vietnam movies, and like no World War One movies, and it's such an interesting war. I also thought, I mean the thing to me, I liked Wonder Woman, I'm not a superhero movie. I like it fine, I didn't think it was feminist, That's what I'm saying. It's like I liked it, okay, but it's like not a

feminist movie to be. What made it. The thing that I thought made it feel feminist as opposed to other superhero movies was just like the lack of jiggliness in it, and compared to like every other version of One Woman I've ever seen, I was like, this woman is outfitted for battle, and we never saw her cleavage on display in the way that you do in any other superhero movie, which bring just like the comic book character costumes that are always like, you know, have the tit window or

it's just like the camera like leering of the body or whatever. Right, there was none of that, and I was just like I'm so unused to that that I noticed it constantly during that movie because I was like, oh my god, a woman made this movie, That's what it was. And like the one really leering shot was like Crispin's ask, you know what I mean when I was just like, oh, what if women were in charge of everything? It would be different? Um, I don't know.

I think you're right though too, that like the solution is not like more tent pole movies, but like with A Ladies Touch, it's like more weird indie movies that

are specific. Yeah, I mean. The good thing about Wonder Woman is like I think, not that she ultimately decides to fight on World War One, but that like she she her whole point of being is like I am, like I want to promote the causes of love and beauty, which is basically like Sailor Moon's catchphrase like which is which is not a thing that you usually hear superhero say. But then she uses that same philosophy to like go fight World War one, So I don't know, she doesn't fight.

Though she crosses the battlefield, She's like, everybody stopped fighting. This is stupid? Why is warm? I related to Wonder Woman because she's like an alien who's like, I don't know what sex is, m is, so I just don't know that it like if I encounter it, I'm just like Hall, which is how I went through life until like probably like twenty one was just like none of this applies to me because I come from the Amazon, you know, um, and then the world beats you down.

But it was very I don't know, I think I was also just when I saw that movie, I was like crying because I was like a woman got to make a dollar. And there were all these little girls in the screening that I was in who were so stoked, and I was like terry just looking at them because

I was like, this has for you. I'm sure, yeah that we have things now like Wonder Woman in Black Panther, and it's like stupid that it took so long to get them, because like the whole point I thought always of comic books was like these inclusive universes, were like everybody has powers that are special, and then they just kept making the same kind of Batman, boring Man pain movie over and over again. So I just want to say though, like I'm a big fan of Fatman and

Batman is a millionaire who works for cops. He sucks. He sucks, and that's exactly why he's an interesting He's an AUNTI here. I I was always very drawn to Batman. I'm just I'm just standing for Batman. Really briefly, there's nothing feminist about Batman, but I like I only like ban and I didn't The cop thing I never connected for me. But I liked that he was like a rich man who was a goth kind of. I liked that he had a very like violent beginning, like the

parents were brutally. I was just like, Okay, this sounds pretty good. This is a fascinating movie for grown ups that here I am watching. It's clearly not made for children at all. Got tricked. The only good Batman movies are the Tim Burton Batman movies. I love them Batman movies. If a woman made a Batman movie that objectified Batman so that he was like just super hot and it was just a cat Woman, yeah, yeah, I'm not interested in Catwoman. I'm oversaturated with cats by Now, what if

Catwoman made the movie? If cat Oh yeah, okay, speaking of horror that seemingly objectifies Matt and it's weird. Emily, you saw Upgrade a bloom House. It's not how you say blum House. Somehow, I'm house production, but it's a house hilt, which is there like micro budget sub shingle. I was really stoked about that because you wrote a really really great rave review of Upgrade for New York Magazine, just being like, hey, this movie was fun. I expected.

I knew nothing about it and expected nothing, and then it was great. And then a bunch of people I know went out and saw it because of your review's great thought. I was like, this is great. Also, I love the idea of like critics doing what you really would like them to do, which is like pointing out movies that would otherwise maybe not you know, hit because

people are so inoculated. I wish that that was most of the job, because that's the most fun thing, is when you feel like you have a cause and you can be like, go do this now, go see this movie most of the time. That I also renew to a drift this week, which I did not even pal media. But yeah, I mean, I've heard you complain just in general about like tent poles and sort of like the ways. Also now in which critics are like sort of bribed

to not give tentpoles bad reviews. You know, I don't think their critics are bribed not to You're not bribed, but like that you can only come to the premiere if you're giving it a good review or whatever, right, I mean I think like, I think that more in a more egregious way, Like you saw what happened with like l A Times, um like not not giving not giving them a bad review for I forget what movie

that was at that point. It was some I think it was Last Jedi Maybe I can't remember, honestly, um, but not getting invited to the premier because LA Times had done a big investigative report on Disneyland and like how much it's paying its employees and everything, and they kind of got this blowback in the form of not being invited to this premiere. There's like a whole long or like a discussion to be had about access or

in a journalism. I mean, there's a reason that, like, and that was crazy because that was like it wasn't it also wasn't like you gave a Star Wars movie a bad review. It was like you talked about how like custodians at Disneyland are dying in their cars because they are so underpaid and overworked. Uh, and that's what they don't want you to report it, and they don't care what you think about it doesn't affect their bottom line.

If somebody from l A Times no offense to Justin Chang, who I like a lot, but like his review of like the Infinity War movie or whatever, isn't going to really massively affect. Uh. This idea that like those movies are too big to fail obviously, like with Solo not doing as well as they wanted it to, is like I don't know. I wonder if there will be pushed back on that of like, yeah, you know, these movies are just gonna come out and you're gonna eat it

because that's what's for dinner. People didn't eat Solo. It did not do that well, which is interesting, Like it feels like even Star Wars doesn't have the power of Marvel at this point. But right, well, it's also like I saw a couple of people being like, oh, movies starring white men, Like, guess we better not make any of those anymore. Yeah, that's how the coverage was, like is for other things, but like the upgrade is fun just because it does feel like a kind of thing

that doesn't get made anymore. First of all, it's like super gross in like a very carpentery way that I really appreciate. Um. I mean, it's made by Lee Whannel. I don't know how you say his last name, but he's like the guy who like he co created this the Saw movies, which I don't care for, but like he obviously has a great love of like on screen viscera. But I think in the in the context of a kind of sci fi gross out, it's all semi slapstick movie.

It's really fun. The premise is that this guy uh becomes a quadriplegic in his accent, he gets like hijacked by these like nefarious like cyborg dudes and it becomes a quadriplegic. But then a like Zuckerbergian teenage like techmogul does some experimental surgery on him that like reconnects his brain with his nervous system so that he can walk again.

But the thing that reconnects it is like an a I that also talks to him in his mind and can also do autopilot on his body if he wants, and just take over for him and like do insane martial arts. It's great. Yeah, I mean that also sounds like what I want horror to be is like a commentary on now right, you know, which is what I feel like. What Anabeller was really saying was like these

genre tropes are like not fresh anymore. Like anything you think you're doing with Final Girls have been done, you know, Like when the Screen movies, which are like great movies that I love, like okay, like she has sex and she lives. That's like the last time I can think of somebody doing some And what I liked about the Screen movies too is that like as they go on, Sydney like doesn't get more badass, she gets like more

and more traumatized and freaked out. With the third one, she's like living off the grid and it's like no one can be in my life because they'll get murdered, so it's just me and my dog. That's like the one one good thing about the Insidious movies. I think

those movies are super boring. Otherwise, for ust of all, I like that one of the main carryover heroines of them is like an elderly woman that doesn't happen very often, and that she's also like, you know, it's about her getting increasingly just like freaked out from all of her ghost experiences, and like, oh, is that what Insidy says? Which ones are the found footage ones? That's paranormal activity. I get all of these confused. And the conjuring is

the haunted doll. Conjurine is like a conjuring and the Annabelle movies are related. Yeah, I'm realizing in our discussions about haunted dolls, might it might not do anything for me. I might just like, like dolls, you're immune. I might be the haunted doll. Then we'd be night doll. Speaking of night dolls, you can give us a night Doll at two four oh four six night or send us a text message to that same number, or send us an email to Night Call Podcast at gmail dot com.

You can also follow us on our socials. UM hit us up. The socials were on Twitter at Nightcall Pot, Instagram at Nightcalled Podcast. We are on Facebook at Nightcall Podcast. Guys. Thanks for listening. We'll see you all next week. Yeah, go see upgrade. Yeah, we'll see what happened to Milannia by the time this comes out, What if Milannia is a haunted all that would not suppose? That feels like

the most most credible story, and you cracked it. We predicted it here first, even though by the time you hear this it will have already been confirmed to no wonder. Did anyone predict this? Well? We did. We did see you next week.