V For Vendetta (Part 2)

major who took one polly Side class. Welcome back to Popcorn Book Club. This week we continue our discussion on Viva Vendetta with book two, this Vicious Cabaret. I'm Dani Schwartz, joined as always by Jennifer Right, Tantran Karamadanqua, and Melissa Hunter. Welcome back, guys. Hi Hi. He right off that, I want to say I love that this star with a song. Yeah. Yeah, There's a lot of work involved and it's like, oh, I have to read sheet music and look at comic panels.

There's a lot that's happening. And it goes again into the theatricality that we talked about last week, and I like the title Vicious Cabaret. It did also take me nine chapters into this book book too, to realize that all of the chapters start with a letter V. I am stupid that until you said so, I'm sorry. I'm gonna brag and say I figured it out right away. Can I read sheet music? Because I can't, and I don't have a piano. I can, but I am not

good at it. So I kind of looked at it and I was like, oh, that's cute, it's music, and did no effort to figure out what it sounded like. I'm sure if we went online we would find super fans have performed this song in its entirety. It's kind even a little bit. It's kind of funny, little like ironic racist ditty, you know, like an ironic ditty about racism in the way that the film and musical Cabaret are. Uh. Yes,

I thought it was like a good song. Good for you be writing a song for no one to hear, I guess except Ev maybe at this point he can hear it's for him, Dana. Some people do things for themselves. No, you have to document everything, so no, you don't independent and self possessed. He can just do things. It's all self care, Dana. He does have an un level disco

room in his in his bungalow. To your point about documenting everything, though, the fact that it is sheet music is interesting because it does leave a paper trail for people to then follow, and that's kind of one of the things about fascist governments is that they don't want art first of all. So it's interesting that it's music, not a manifesto. It's a song. And songs also because you can hear them as well as write them down, do contribute to oral tradition. You can't take away some

of these memory. One thing that I do love about v as a character, I think he's a very fun character just in terms of everything, all of his weirdness and contradictions. He's someone who believes that the revolution I mean to quote him should have dancing, but he like fundamentally loves the power of art, and he's like, this is what we're fighting for. This is, you know, movies

and songs and dancing. Like I I do think that that's always an important an important thing to remember and dramatic artistic yeah, singing murder daddy, Yeah, this goes right into murder daddy stuff, because it goes from there into them dancing, and she's like, I've never thanked you should be and he's like, don't fancy me and then kicks kicks her out and then he says I'm not your father, ef, which maybe I don't know, and then I'm sorry, was he a broom? At the end? What happened? He made

like a dummy? A dummy, Yeah, like a scarecrow. I meant, I said dummy, which is a really beautiful I think foreshadowing of the end of this book, which we won't get into the details yet, but um, there's this sort of elaborate ruse that happens where she's outside, she's been blindfolded, and now she thinks she's talking to me, and then it turns out it's not him at all, and that there's been a trick that's been played on her, and she is sort of she has rug pulled from under her.

She's like, wait, I'm alone. She realizes, boy, she's gonna have a lot of tricks played on her. What a way to be ghosted If someone did that to me when I was dating them, and I like walked out and then they were a coat rack. This is also the lowest tech of all of his little little thing. Yeah yeah, and then she's just out in the world for herself. He also must have recorded in advance because then when she's out on the street and listen to him talk, he says things like I'm not your father, Evie.

So presumably the day before he was inside with a recorder planning your your father is dead, Evie, I'm not your father, waiting and hold a beat one too. He definitely recorded a few times because he didn't get the timing right. He had to imagine what she would say bad kind of play out a different a few options, do you all? I like thinking too, that she's walking around around him, like in the same area that he's recording, so he has to be like, I'm not your dead,

just like sneaking in recordings. The logistics do not hold up if you think about them for more than four seconds of anything in this book, And I love that. I love that about it. It's but it's like refrigerator refrigerator logic, right, like logic and movies and visas and books.

I've been taught, But maybe I think people have different explanations but I've been told that a movie or screenplay with refrigerator logic means it as you watch it, you're like, that's so cool, and then as you walk away to the refrigerator to like get a drink or snack, you're like, you start wait a second. In writer's rooms, I've heard two versions of it. It's that or it's that like you put something in the refrigerator and then you don't

think about what happens to it. But in between the time that you go go and check it out when the movie Sausage Party came in exactly, it's basically about writers not wanting to do the do extra work. That's what it is. Um Yeah, So to say the big thing that sort of happened next and I want to get to the Jordan's Tower break in and then Gordon and then Evis end of book two thing which is big, and we're going to get to that before we do.

Before we dive in, we get in the head of Rosemary Almond, who is this poor woman who's a violent, abusive husband was murdered by the um good good but now she's sort of bad for her she feels sort of helpless. And then creepy co worker Dascomb, who I thought was gay but or maybe it's gay or by you don't get to be gay. Oh but like in this not you. You could be gay if you wanted. But in this book yes, in Creepy Infravenda England and

in Norse Fire England. But Roger Dascombe, who was like had a prickly competition with her now dead husband, hits on her and kind of like makes her, uh makes her date him, and she sort of has to know she's not getting any state support. Like it's made really clear that the only and she's going to survive is by finding another husband. And we've kind of seen what the alternative is for women like Evie who don't have

traditional male support in their lives in this society. Um, she's going to have to prostitute herself to someone and we will find out. Luckily there's a cabaret and uh we hope she can dance, because that is our only career options Mary. This is Rosemary storyline. That's this is what we get. She's in a downward spiral from like the abused wife of a high party official to having

no options. I mean, she's also a really good representation of kind of the casualty of these war that he's killing these people and we feel good about it, but there are people left behind, and people who might have been completely innocent whose lives get a lot worse as

a result of beast murders. That's the frustrating thing I feel about revolution is that there's always like people are like, we need a revolution, we need a revolution, and they don't disagree, but like, even bloodless revolutions still have casualties.

And it is interesting to me that she's sort of in the position of if any of you watched her read The Handmaid's Tale, like the wife of them, the guy whose name I'm forgetting now, where it's like Serena Joy where she is in a while her husband was alive, she was sort of in a rarefied position where she

was sort of comfortable within this system. But this is a system that is incredibly harsh to women and which you know, options don't exist for them, and so once that support drives up, she is very helpless, you know what I mean. It's the women who sort of like find ways to help themselves within the system and then unfortunately do or don't realize that the system is not

designed to help them. Yeah. Uh but back to our So that's sort of happening in the sideline, and you're like, I bet these stories are gonna come to a head at some point. Uh. But we get a V story where he breaks into the Jordan Tower, which is their like transmission tower, and pulls that same goddamn stunt or he has a fake V mask he was practicing. He he has a stunt coordinator, a stunt coach that he works with for all of these masks. Flip flip a use.

You know I love about the break into Georgian Tower is that it starts with the security guards watching a terrible TV show they're watching like Storm Saxton, which is just about off white men forcefully gripping a blond lady named Heidi and saying that he's going to kill black people. Um, and then comes in and does something that is so much more theatrically interesting. Yes, and Coroma's face. I wish

the Pike else can see. It is the most racist, uh propaganda since Brave New World, I would say, and the thing but like, I want to compare this to Brave New World because I feel like Brave New World I felt like all this Huxley was a fucking racist, but not that the world was racist, but that he built a world that was racist because he was racist. And this felt like Alan Moore was documenting the way that if our society continues to go unchecked, the racism

will continue to jump out of society. And it didn't at any point feel like Alan Moore is a racist, and in fact, it felt like he was very aware of the position that he holds as a white person and the position that white supremacy holds in our society. Yeah, I think so. And storm Sex in itself is a very Nazi name, like Storm is the thing that's associated with like you know, the Daily Storm or like the Q Store, like like neo Nazis used storm Front. Yeah

it's like but like it's like Nazi thing. And and Saxon is like like Anglo Saxon, like it is just like his name is like Nazi mcnazi And yeah, it's not subtle, but it's funny. I feel like Nazi mcnazi would be a little great propaganda cartoon for like Nazis for like a little child nazis Nazi mcnazi. We ad mentioned the Nazi Mcnazi. We are not pitching that as an idea just to letting every No, no, I don't want to. I am pitching that as a satire, sort of like a um, what's the what's the Nazi one

with with like a springtime or the producers? Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, that's his name. I just completely butchered and sorry Jews, Jews and people of color. I think can make fun of Hitler. That's my I like when they do that. That's fun for me. Yes, people, I like when vu The broadcast that he chooses almost feels like a sketch comedy pitch where he's like, I'm firing England. I am

your boss, England is my employee. I'm gonna fire her. Um, that whole that whole little section was incredibly theatrical and so fun to watch. And again another highly produced. He who was the camera operator on that maybe set that up on pay at a ring light and he had a type section. You know, fortunately the contouring already came with the mask. I didn't have to go through and make up. Yeah, he does this, he does this really

cute little speech. She doesn't sketch, and then he jumps through the glass as they shoot him or vice versa. I guess he sort of comes. He maybe throws the fake V dummy through and gets away because he pulled it off. Meanwhile, our our other detective, detective Finch punches dead Almonds replacement whose name is Creedy, who's even creepier than Almond. Um. And so now he's on a nice little break in uh in somewhere because he punched a coworker, which are not allowed to do m hm um. And Evie.

Evie also has this sort of sad moment where she and Rosemary are sort of having these parallel nights where they realize how hard it is to be a woman alone in this society. And so she starts taking up with this old guy named Gordon Gordon who love Gordon. Just dude, What did he make of Gordon? Melissa? I was just like, he's just a dude, right, He's just a dude. I think, I mean, I think he has some criminal relations because he has people like knocking at his door. Um. But he takes her in as like

a like just she's sleeping in the second bedroom. I think out of like the kindness of that, She's like, I think he implied oh, I thought they didn't want In the movie, they weren't happy about it. Okay, No, they have in this it looks like two this picture right to show. It was like it's like out of like an eighties like rom com, like up Here we Go, Like it kind of looks like Helen Hunt a little bit ages all of a sudden, evis forty in this section of the and then she becomes baby at the

end of the book too. Um. But yeah, they they have a little suburban time and he's like I need to get I need to use that second room and she's like, okay, I'll leave. He's like, you don't have to leave. There's my bedrooms. I thought you didn't want to and then they have intense sex. It seems like, well, I feel very weird about the sexualization of Evin, sort of like it seems like Evie on one hand, like you know, needed sort of a man in this society because being a woman on your own sex. But it's

like kind of cute. I don't like that. Ellen Moore again, it is like it's daddy issues daddy, non murder daddy, non murder daddy. That's better than the murder daddy. Get murdered like immediately they like, I think it's like eight weeks six weeks later, up he gets murdered through a door. Um, and then she's on her own again. I Am going to go and make a box of chocolates for a statue. I'll be right back. This is when we meet um Ali something, who's the the Ali Harper, who's the Scottish

gang leader. So we just sort of now enact to you know, the players are coming to the board in a chess metaphor and one of the you know, if if Gordon is watch in Queen's game, I have answering playing chess on chess dot com. Um, I'm really bad

at it. But like, so the other players now are Ali Harper, who's the Scottish gangster, Creedy who's the new head of the police, who's paying off Harper for like when the coup comes, you and your your gang members will be behind me, and then uh, yeah, the gang kills Gordon. Evie tries to get revenge because she's been having a hell of a sixteen years. Life has been hard for Evy, but before she can shoot, she is uh apprehended. So, uh, Jennifer, do you want to take

it from there. About what happens to Evie after she is caught trying to murder who they think is a party member creedy, but she was actually going for it the I think she was going for the gang guy. She loves to become the murder daddy. I'm going to let somebody else to take it from there, Um, Melissa, you want to take it. Sure, So she comes into her power and become tries to become her own murder daddy, and you just needed to repeat that line. And then

she gets got by an anonymous person. Um. And then she has a funky dream. Um, such a fun real, funky dream. A daddy is your dreams. Daddy is totally unnecessary. Daddy is unnecessary. And then she's sorry quick energy felt bad that I did not understand what was happening in the funky dreams. So I'm glad that that was not deeply It was like an amalgamation of like it was the priest, her dad, it was v I think a little bit. And she's like, she's about to have sex

with her dad. It's allah great. It's bad dream. I will say on the record, I think most dream sequences are bad and unnecessary. I agree. So she has a weird dream, it goes on for too long. She wakes up in a prison cell and she's with like, there are these like guys that are interrogating her, and she's blindfolded and she's starved and tortured. And then she's, uh, does she shave her? They shave her head? Um, And then she like she's like basically on the brink of death. Um,

and I'm just kind of flipping through. So then she reads this letter and maybe someone else should pick up. So she finds in her prison cell handwritten letter. So a few a few just like details I think you but that I want to just make clear is she is kidnapped and put in a what we what we spoiler alert believed to be a government prison. You know, the government stuff is on the wall, the guards are there.

She has been captured by the government and they're interrogating her like you were, you know, trying to shoot involved with creating you're involved in this murder. You know, you're involved at this terrorist named V. We have you know, CCTV of you and the terrorists V. They're trying to enshow her. The video I think was really key in terms of making her belief because this government has it's the I, the nose, the mouth, the fingers, all of that, and it's like very clearly the eye. So they know

she's associated with her. But now she's in prison. Uh, they you know, shave her, they torture her, they're interrogating her. They like I don't know what it's called, like waterboarding when they put your head in like like forward water boarding. And then she finds like a scrap of toilet paper in the corner scrolled up and that's when like a in a like mouse hole in the corner, and that's where she gets, uh this story, And Karama, do you want to give us Valerie's story if you don't mind, Yeah,

I don't mind it all. Valerie story is actually one of my favorite parts. And again not to get too far into the movie, but it did feel very much the same in the movie, and I'm glad because I think it's so powerful the way that it exists. So there's a there's been a rat in eb cell this whole time, and that's sort of like the repeated thing in the beginning. She's like, there's a rat, there's a rat. There's a rat. And in the little hidie hole where

the rat you really is that she's focusing on. That's sort of like the only thing that she has to think about other than torture is this piece of toilet paper and Valerie is the name of the person who writes it. Evie does that thing that I hate where she goes straight to the end to find out what's going to happen, and see said it's signed Valerie, and she says, I don't know who you are, and uh, I may never see you. And I can't convince you that this is real and it's not one of their tricks.

But this is my story and I have to tell it. This is the only autobiography I'm ever going to write. I hit a tiny pencil inside my body so they couldn't find it, and I'm writing this on toilet paper. And she talks about how um she was born in the fifties, in the late fifties, and she fell in love in middle school with this girl named Sarah, and she got a talking to at school. They're like, this is normal for young girls to sort of have these

strong feelings for each other. You'll outgrow it, and it says Sarah outgrew it. I didn't. And then she takes a woman home to meet her parents. Her parents disown her and they say that she's broken their heart, and then she's like, I don't care. I have to be true to myself and like, I have my integrity and what's important to me is my integrity and I and she moved out to become a movie star. And actually, one of the things I really appreciated about this was

earlier in the book. In book one, there was a poster for a movie called The Salt Flats, and I was like, what does that seem familiar to me? And because I had seen the movie before and they mentioned it. And so she started in this movie called the Salt Flats, and she met the love of her life, this woman named Ruth, on set for the Salt Flats, and they moved in together and there were roses all the time,

and she was so happy. And then they started to take people away, and they were taking away black people, and I'm sure they were taking away other people of color too, but I think they mostly say black people in this Uh, they were taking away black people, and they were taking away queer people. So they got Ruth while she was out shopping and Ruth then implicated Valerie and said, she seduced me. Uh, this is where she is, but they tortured I have to say they did. It's

not like waiting to give it up. Yeah, she was immediately after exactly. Yeah, And sort of Valerie ties that back to the idea of integrity, and she's like, she gave away that last inch of herself, her integrity, and that's what Ruth couldn't live with. And I will say Valerie also does not blame Ruth for it. She specifically says, I don't blame her. I understand. Uh. So Valerie talks about being in this cell and this is the moment where I realized reading it. I already knew because I

had seen the movie. I know what happens, but this is the moment where I realized, reading, oh, this is not this is not what's what I think it is. She mentions another lesbian who's there who has recently died, named Rita, and Rita is also specifically mentioned in What's Her Face Is Diary Delia's diary from Mark Hill, and she talks about how she has vestigial fingers inside of her body, which was really gross in a detail that

I've remembered. So that's when you sort of realize, wait, this isn't actually a prison or some this is a trick of some sort something that is such a subtle detail that I did not realize until I really reread it literally this morning to prep for the podcast. Like that is a tiny and subtle detail that hat tip tip of the hat to you, Karama, thank you. I also was like, nobody's name is Rita, so it's the same person, not nobody's name is Rita. If you're a

listener in your name is Rita. No offense, but like it's not a super common name. I've probably met like two Rita's in my life. My sixth grade history teacher and this girl that I know who's a friend of a friend and her name is not even Rita legally, her name is infant because her parents never filled in her birth certificate, which is really fun fact. But back

to the um. So, Valerie Um talks about how we can never give up our integrity and she talks about how um, you know, she was glad that there was a time where she had roses in her life and she wished that she could kiss the person in the cell next to her um and like how keeping holding onto her integrity is the one thing that has kept

her going. So then ev is then taken into a room and they're like, will you sign this statement that says that you were kidnapped against your will and um, sexually tortured by enforced to commit terrorist acts by the man code named V. And she was like, no, I'm good. I'm not going to say that because that's her integrity. She's like, no, that didn't happen, Like I didn't mean to she didn't mean to kill the bishop, but like,

that's not what happened. It wasn't like that. And then they say that they're going to execute her, and she says, well, that's fine then, and I'd rather go out behind the chemical sheds and get shot. And then the guard says, then you have nothing left of fear. You're free, and she's like wait what And then she's just able to leave her cell So I'll leave it there and we can keep And he's a toy, life sized toy army man. Oh yeah, he has a literal dummy. Yeah, so be

very good at making fake people and propping. It is infuriating to me that he has taken like a teenage girl, and no matter what, he has kept her in a cell in shape dollar hair and towards your psychologically psychologically yeah, yes, and then she gets to walk out into his beautiful house and have him say basically that this was for her own good. He goes basically, you're welcome, You're welcome.

He has that Maui moment from a while. He's like, what can I say, chapt You're welcome, and she's like, the funk is wrong with you. He's like, you literally have been torturing me. Um, I have to say. At one point he says, happiness is a prison. Oh my god, all I definitely. I actually had a teacher in college who said something that was a lot like something in this section where she said the opposite of love is freedom, and I was like, that's really interesting as an idea.

I don't know if I think the opposite of it again. And I say that, but yes, sociobists have no competitor to love and they're very free. UM like that line, and it is like you are already in prison, Evie. I just showed you the bars every every poly side theater majors guys like he's a theater major who took one poll side class. But I have things that I want to say about Vall. I don't want to say them right now, but I think, okay, I will say one wick thing, which is that I do think this work.

This book works much much better symbolically than literally, which is because when you start thinking about it literally, you're like, oh, this is deeply fucked up. So you just have to be like, it's a it's a allegory, like the boy, I mean, and she is like awakened at the end,

and we can get into that. But that's what I like about it is that v is not a good guy, like he's you know, the hero theoretically or ev you know, one can argue either way, but like he is a funked up anarchy murder daddy, you know, and it is more interesting that way. I think that's very well said. He does have a beautiful shrine to Valerie, and that's nice.

Oh right, And then we also find out that Valerie did right, that Valerie is real, but she wrote it and sent it to V. She was the woman in room f Yeah, that is a very important detail because I feel like that was one of the biggest almost immediately. The things that ev is like, you cut my hair,

you tortured me. And the next thing that she thinks is like and then you you know, lied to like that story wasn't real, Like I feel like she felt as we maybe felt like I definitely felt reading it like Valerie does feel so real that it would feel like such a betrayal if someone was like, he couldn't write that well in a woman's voice, you know, yeah, and so yeah, Valerie was real and as Karama psychically predicted, was at Larkil you know, I mean I didn't I

used the clothes in the psychic Nope, you just knew. Please don't make me a magical black woman because I can read better than you said. I didn't read that that section of the book. Ye I told you it's the best part. Ten you stopped at Valerie's I started. I was well, I was trying to finish right before this, and I didn't. I was like, the gayest part because it's a bad I think it's my favorite, ka retelling

it truly. I think I'm also vulnerable and tired and vulnerable as and I didn't sleep well, so like I'm like almost I was like Oh, that's gonna make me cry. You're welcome. No, it won't make you cry. It makes me cry every time, like in the movie, it makes me cry. And reading this, even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, I was like, flowers flats

of Salt. I wonder if the name of that film Salt Flats and Herbie in Valerie being a lesbian is at all inspired by the price of Salt, the like book that Carol, Yeah, that inspired Carol, just because I'm like, that's a lot of salt going. That's a lot of lesbian salt connection. Interesting British. So Alan Moore would have you know, like that, let's take a quick break. I have to run the spotlight on an anarchist pulling a stunt. His lighting is always great, it's always fabulous speaking of

people who are gay. So do we think he is gay? I feel like he's not a person. He's just a mask. He has no sexual or just one way or the other. Well, but here's the thing. He's at lark Hill. Why why is he at lark Hill? That's the And that's something I'd never thought about before, even though I've had experience with this story I realized that lark Hill was a camp for quote unquote undesirable people that they rounded up. I'm pretty sure he's not a person of color. The

movie makes this different. He could be a political dissident, that's true. He could have been a socialist and anarchy. He could have very It seems like he's he was probably in. Evie's dad was a socially there. But they just killed Evie's dad. We don't know that that's there. They could have killed him at larka was a concentration camp and they did medical testing on some of the people there. I think he's gay, Karama. I like he's got like some queer energy for sure. Here's the well.

First of all, clearly a theater major, not doing it many favors on the straight side of things. Um. But the other thing, no, but actual textual analysis, not just me making stereotypes about gay people doing theater. Um. He there's this whole thing in book one where Evie's kind of like, why aren't you trying to fuck me? And he and then that's when he kicks around. Yeah, that's what I thought. We'll get to the movie in two weeks.

But I do think the movie very clearly makes a gay supplot explicit with a different character and sort of a different character, and changes what lark Hill is in a clear and explicit way that is eerily relevant to today right now. But and also the movie does take place in the year good, very good. That's why I

suggested this book just to close it out. I feel so at the end, after she has this like breakdown, you know, in spite of how it was done, she does have this awakening right and she is grateful to be um it does. It made me think of when I was rereading it this week, my friend was talking to me about her cats and how they're like we're talking about like indoor cats versus outdoor cats, and how like when an indoor cat becomes an outdoor cat, like it blows their mind. And she said it in this

perfect way. She's like, it would be like because we were sitting outside, distanced, hanging out, and she was like, it would be like if someone came over to us right now and said, do you want to go outside? And then we went outside, like outside of the outside, there's another there's a there's a whole outside that we didn't know about. That blew my mind. And that's happening,

Like she went outside, like that's what happened. Also, isn't that kind of the plot of flat Land a little bit where it's like there's another dimension that you don't even know about this flat Land. It's kind of matrix. It's like a math thing. Flat Land is literally a math thing. Yeah, the pills, and I think that what wak Wakowski, which the sisters. I think the Wachowski sisters are very interested in that theme of like the reality outside the reality. I think it's the reason they were drawn.

I mean, there's maybe many reasons to be drawn to this book, but you know, it does sort of share a similar theme between the Matrix of like we are cogs in this system and there's a way to see

beyond this system and fight back, fight back. Um before uh, I just want to do a quick also plot note, what else is happening at the end of book two other than Evie is we find out that Creedy is planning to pay off Ali Harper, who's the Scottish uh gangsterish accent um Rose Almond, the rose Rosemary Almond is now a burlesque dancer for money. And also it's she's sad.

It's a bad, bad scene for her. And also um, the head of this Norse Fire system, the head of the Norse Fire Party, the head of state UM is this guy named Adam Susan, And he's the one who man's what they call Fate, which is like their supercomputer that like tells them like the weather and stuff. And he is having a weird affair with it. He is in love with the computer and he's going you. So he is having a weird uh moment. He's having her moment.

And I think that all of the other men of like the party system, you know, like at this point, like Creedy, who's now getting like gangsters on the side, are feeling very like Game of Thrones little Finger moment of like chaos is a ladder where they're like, Okay, he's going crazy. There's gonna be chaos, and I'm gonna

be the one who shuffles on top. And so that's what I feel like, that's what's happening, not to be like that's what's happening to the US government right now, but like that feels like it like chaos is happening, and there are some GOP senators that I want to climb up the ladder because of the chaos. Yeah, do you think we have a supercomputer that loves people? Secret in the government is not mad at that idea? It would if there's like a tiny horror going on at

the Pentagon. It both makes I feel I feel scared by that. If that was happening, I would be worried by that. It's I have like a dumb thing to confess that has nothing to do with the book, but does relate to something you just mentioned. Um No, it's not bad, it's just stupid. I like, forget the Pentagon doesn't exist unless that the Pentagon exists unless I'm talking about it, Like, I just forget that. I never think

about the Pentagon. They probably are that. Yeah, I think it would be weird if we were constantly thinking about the Pentagon, you know, hones, not constantly like let's spotlight them they are yesterday. Well, you think I've spent more time thinking about a building that's named after the shape it is. I just think that's so weird, Like that's it's pretty. It's kid, they built it, Like, Wow, we made a perfect Pentagon. What are we going to call it? What else can we call it? That's the name of

the movie. Like what if every building was just called like square, right, It's not. It's also kind of insane, how press prescient? Prescient? I feel like I always suck that up Press. Alan Moore Ellen Moore writing about the supercomputer, probably in his wizard Hut, was so excited, not the opposite of excited, but like when when iPhones came out,

he was like, I knew it. I fucking knew it. Yeah, like serious, she loves you though he got tickets for the opening of her just really do you think he and Charlie Brooker are like buds British and hate technology, yeah, and hate the government. I feel like they're buds. Have you Brooker, if you listen to this, please love us. Have you guys all seen a picture of Alan Moore? I know that you don't like to. I know that you don't like to and we've said this he is.

He is a wizard. But look look it out, look up Alan Moore right now, mine he's a forest wizard wizard that's also really into like a C d C and like like a lot of like seventies rock, you know, and he's like like the sex pistols. I feel like he likes the sex pistoles he likes. He looks like Haggard's like creative. Okay, wait, also he's like my absolute favorite picture of Alan Moore if Haggard was a heavy drinker. Yeah, okay, wait,

we got I have to see this picture. Okay, we're looking at a picture of Elmore that Jennifer just sends to the group chat Lighter Wizard. Mall Santa respute in person from a tumbler called feet Lips. It kind of looks like his hair, Mall Santa. His hair was flattered. It depends on the mall, Melissa. I think not everybody has representation of a lot of the And when I was growing up, I lived outside of Philly and these

were what the Santa's looks. Oh no, oh god, tamn, Melissa, I think you're too used to that sleek l a mall Santa. Look. They all play Santa's in various Hallmark movies. Santas in l A are in fth leisure. They're just like red My Santa was Jeff Bridges, Was that not your Mam Santa? They're all sad as tag After all, the moll Santas in l A go to Equina. Uh so, yeah, Ellen Moore hates hates fascism, hates racism, and enhanced his

adaptation of movies Yeah, and Loves Loves Beards. I was gonna say there are very few things on the love list.

But in terms of book two, um, I think it's really interesting that it's called Vicious Cabaret the the entire book, which also starts with the the because of again the constant theme of theatricality and how Rosemary does begin working at this cabaret and it starts off in this cabaret, and it's sort of weird to see because we think of it as so Like they talked about food rationing and stuff, which was something that I thought was cool in the Jordan Tower scene where they're like have the

propaganda TV shows where it's like, you're gonna get caught food rationing. This is what it's say when your neighbors are like hoarding food, and this sort of like narc mentality where it's like tell on your neighbors and it's sort of it's become something, it's become normalized to the point where it's like a sitcom joke, which I thought

was very smart. Yeah, it's also one of the reasons that they keep be alive, that be so good at gardening and growing food for them, that that he's really useful in the camp, and that's how he starts to get the things that he needs for his bomb is because they start to trust him. And it's interesting how oppressors can sort of forget that they are oppressing sometimes and they're like, oh, well, we're working together. We're all in this together high school musical, and they're like, oh,

we forgot that this is a concentration camp. He's not allowed to leave. He hates us. We've injected him with

a disease that's made him insane, but we'll let him. Yeah, we'll let him have things from his like Amazon wish list, because he's good at I also think Cabaret, obviously the name and like the juxtaposition of Cabaret with fascism comes back to like the play in the sixties and then the movie musical in the seventies seventies, definitely like a decade before this, which is if you've never seen it, about a Cabaret and Vye mar Republic Germany as the

Nazis gain power, and it's a really dark and funny musical, because you know, it's that like idea of like, Okay, whatever's going on at here, we're putting on a show in there. And I think that that's uh, definitely a a proper a creative thing that v would respect and and like and enjoy. I imagine, I think not to be a theater major, but he's in uh in candern

Ebbs Cabaret. One of the interesting things is that there was a mirror at the back of the stage, and as the show goes on, the mirror gets tilted more and more so the at the end you can see yourselves and the show is supposed to be a mirror, and it's like, this isn't something that happened outside of our society. This is our society. You are a part of this. You are at the cabaret right now. Think

about it. You're the audience. You're watching things, um And I think that it's really interesting that through this we are in all of these situations and like we don't get any agency, we can't choose what happens, but we do become sort of like watchers in the same way all the people at home watching the TV are the audience. And they're like, oh yeah, we're just And when the TV goes out, nobody's like, thank god, all the fascist propaganda's gone. They're like, the telly is broken, Mom, come

fix the telly. That's my very bad British accent. I feel very exposed whenever, and I remember this in the book too, whenever I see people on TV that look sad on the couch watching TV right whatever. It was like a depiction of a depressed person is sitting in sweats watching TV. And I watched that, I'm like, what a fucking loser it is. And that feels like a mirror to me, Um, like I came here to have a good time, Please don't attack me. It's almost as

if the screen becomes a black mirror. Something I really liked about the depiction of this cabaret in the book is that eats an incredibly joyless cabaret. As far as I can tell, nobody there is having a good dude. Um. We see one scene of enough close. They sing a very fascist song. Then one guy's informed that he has to kill his mother by basically putting her into the gas shaper that he thought that he hadn't understanding with the government that that he's like to just keep her

at home. That guy's in there new guys, and they're like now that guy's out, like your mom's dead now. Um, And then he obviously becomes hysterical after finding out that they're going to murder his mother. So yeah, I thought a lot about how in Cabaret, the movie musical, the Cabaret ends when the Nazis take power, the cabaret functions up until that point because cabaret can be a haven for weirdos and outsiders. The cabaret depicted him before Vendetta

really does not work. The women. They are not happy, They are not happy to be performing. They are not having fun and singing and dancing and becoming famous. They are all there is the last resort. The clients do not appear to be happy. Many of them seem to be crying. It's just it's this is the worst club you have ever been to. And I do think it's

important to note Uh. Sex work for women can be empowering and financially fulfilling if it's voluntary, and this is clearly a system in which the women are not doing it by choice. Rosemary Uh does not want to be dancing at that cabaret, but she feels like she has no other options. And at the beginning, you know, Evie, as a child prostitute, isn't doing that for for for fun or financial freedom. She's doing it because she has to.

And Rosemary starts off as a patron at the cabaret and she gets kicked out because she has no money and uh and Evie even notes because she sees her, She's like, nobody's sitting with that lady because to the last men that she dated. Yeah, this cabaret is so bad that even in this time of the pandemic, Like any time I see bars restaurants out like on TV show the I'm like, I want to be there so bad. This cabaret is so bad that I'm like, I'm happy to be home. Yeah, I have the exact same thought.

Yeah it is. It's the most bummer cabin, Like even in COVID times, like I wouldn't I wouldn't rewind to go to this cabrett still go like if it's like, I'd still go murdered, screams why do we have to live this way? And then other people killing the women are miserable. I'm staved I'm so bored in my house, screams, I wish we were dead. That's what I wish we were all dead. It would be I guess it sounds

like a fun party to me. Where people are in the quarantine is whether this is a fun caburette today, this particular day, I would go. If you ask me, like in three days, maybe not, depends on whether or not I'm watching enough Netflix. But right now I'm like, this sounds fun? Sure? Why not than cables? Now? Even if been watching The Queen's Gambit, which is a period thing, and I saw people walk around a hotel like what

they do we mask? I had my first mask trees, just a normal dream where everything was the same mask. I haven't had any of those. I had the I've had the opposite dream where I've realized I'm not wearing a mask and that I'm around a bunch of other people who aren't like, oh no, we're gonna it's a super spreader event. Anyway, what a bad tone to end on.

Let's talk about it, Well, I want to talk about what I want to end on a possibly worst tone, but I thought it was interesting how there was the idea that they just throw they They're like, oh, take your mom to the old folks home. He's like, that's not an old folks so it's a gas chamber and they're like no, no, no, no no, they beat them to death. It's still a home. It's still a structure

where old people go into. We're talking semantics well, and recently Joe by Aiden has started to announce sort of who's going to be in his cabinet and stuff. And there's this guy who is ram Emmanual's like brother or something that Joe Biden has said might be on one of his task forces. There is a doctor, the other the third Emmanuel as a doctor. Yeah, it's not that one, but it's a different one. Uh. And he said that people should die at seventy five. He's like, you're you're

not useful paste. Yeah, yeah, that's a that's that's cool. That's a cool thing to say. When you're the person president alone hired you like older than seventy hire him just to be like a looking counter art would be. Yeah. But I think it's really I think it's really interesting the idea that people hold that old people have no use in society and how we get to see this in action in view for Vendetta, where they're like, you

gotta go. And I realized when I was reading that I hadn't seen a single old person on the page. I guess even in the back. The oldest guy we saw was the sort of wrinkled pedophile priest who had like a but whose wrinkles were like meant to be grotesque, like they were drawn specifically as like grotesque ory looks. And I don't think he was. It might be different for men positions of power, women who see his like weird grotesque face. Yeah, it's not a great face, but

it's likely because they're like, he's a pedophile priest. That's that's dry, creepy. It worked. I was gonna agree with something you said. It's different for men in power, um, And I don't think it's just that he's a man, But I think it's the power part because when we think of religion and religions stitutions, we think of like, uh, prestigiousness and tradition in an institution, and old white men

sort of embody that in our society. So to have like a hip young like youth passed their voice like uh, well you know, w a p stands for worship and praise, Like that's a whole other thing that doesn't work with fascism. And I think, like a lot of things, yeah, it

doesn't work. But also in a fascist system, and I think Margaret that would gets this well, like women's use is reproduction, and when that stops working for women in a fascist system, they're like, well, what's the point of a woman now, I don't know, I don't agree with that. To get to suffer the same fate as all starlets get to go through at the age of thirty five. For suddenly they have a cooking line and they put out a book about how like their real passion, how

is feeding their family? And uh, but they're still very beautiful, they're very But it's also how actors at thirty five, actresses at thirty five, at like thirty one, two thirty three, they're still playing like the ingenu that's like, you know, the lead. And then they turned thirty five and then they're the mother of a yeah, of a sixteen year old, Like there's no all of a sudden, it's like, well,

that's what happened. All of the moms get pregnant at nineteen. Meanwhile, every actress has to wait forever to have babies because they can't afford them. I need to save their body, you know. Yeah. Amy Poehler is like six years older than Rachel McAdams and plays her mom and mean girls. Well, on that fun note, let's leave it at that. Wait. One thing that I do think was very, very nice.

The last page ages of this chapter are V and ev dancing, and they're dancing under a disco ball, and it seems really beautiful and like a really nice moment for both of them, and they're both really happy, and there are very few moments of real happiness in this and I think it's such a nice contrast to the horror that is the categat that this is how how dancing and and uh dancing with someone should go. There as private, textual more textual evidence the V is gay,

just throwing it out there. Also, I will say, as Sienia might feel a way too. As someone who has not seen the movie and this is the first time reading it, I'm really excited to see what happens with Evie in the next because when you read this book one and two, which is what we've done so far, it's like she's this innocent sixteen year old and that gets kicked out at the end of book one. That has gone through a lot of ship but she's still very naive and doesn't want to murder anyone. And then

this transformation in book two is so powerful. And that's what I've seen, and you know, all the Natalie Portman shaving her head stuff, but I'm really looking forward to scene she now is a Hollywood that's that's yes, she's going to have a sixteen year old son in the next book. That's like, have you done your homework? And yeah, but I think that is a really this vicious cabaret. We get this misery cabaret, and then we end with

their their private disco. That's a great now, Jennifer, thank you. Yeah, start with a song and with a dance. That's our show for the week. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Danish Schwartz and you can find me on Twitter at Danis Swartz with three z s. You can follow Jennifer Wright at jen Ashley Right, Karama, Donqua is at Karama Drama, Melissa Hunter is at Melissa ft W and Tian Tran is smart enough to have gotten off Twitter

but she is on insta at Hank Tina. Our executive producer is Christopher Hesiodes were produced and edited by Mike John's Special thanks to David Wasserman. Next week we'll finish up book three of Viva Vendetta before moving on to the two thousand five films starring Natalie Portman. Popcorn Book Club is a production of I Heart Radio.