Push it. Hey, everyone out there in podcast land, We're gonna be back next week with a whole new episode, an incredible episode, but we wanted to introduce you right now. Some of our other best friends are that's right. You know, we have lots of friends. I mean we are best friends, but we have other best friends. We know tons of interesting people. Yeah, some of our other best friends are is bonus content where we interview friends who do really
cool and interesting things. I mean they are on the front lines of making things happen in the world and we are learning from them every single day, and now we get to share them with the rest of the world. That's right. And in this sneak peek, we have Jacqueline Stewart, whom we know as Jackie. I mean we know that together we bring the heat every week, right, you know, lots of smart, timely, in depth commentary. But we're like,
we're like tepid compared to her, is what you're saying. Yeah, we're like on low, low, medium and she's on high heat. That's right. So we spoke to her not too long ago, but since then she has won the MacArthur Genius Award. We are super amazing yep, yep. It's incredible, just life
changing and so well deserved. In her other job besides just being a general genius, she's now the chief Artistic and Programming director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which is like this movie museum out in Los Angeles had just opened up, and it actually opened officially opened since we last saw her. That's right. So we talked to Jackie on this episode of Pushnik about a show that we already did, our first show about interracial buddy films. Yeah,
and I mean it's my favorite. I got in it. I mean, we have had some incredible episodes this season, but it's just so magical to be talking about Eddie Murphy in his first film and so many surprises that looking back now, what is it thirty years later, no, forty years later? Just incredible. So everyone should go back and listen to that episode of our show about interracial buddy films. But in the meantime, you get to hear
Jackie and she is a brilliant film scholar. She knows more about movies, and not just movies, but who watches movies and what the movies mean culturally than really anybody out there, that's right, and that makes her all the more important for being one of our other best friends, because this is a show about drawing on relationships, about having honest and authentic conversations, and sometimes we need help, and Jackie comes through big time. Trumps. Check it out.
She's she's now officially a genius. But we already knew back let's go. I mean, it was always really clear that your friendship was more than just a buddy ship, right, that that you felt like family, and that your families saw us family. So, um, you know, the Austin's just always, you know, from what I saw, treated you like another son, Khalil and uh mom, you know, Kali, I love your mother to death and um, and you know the way she would talk to Ben was like she would talk
to you. It wasn't just like this was her son's friend, but she could set him straight. She might pop him in the head like or at least scross at the board. Yes, yes, yes, so there's there's an intimacy there that's really meaningful. Yeah, you've known us as long as we've been friends, really thirty thirty five years. All right, So so you're an expert on film and you're opening this amazing museum. Um, and so I have a question specifically about the topic
of our show, which was interracial buddy films. So imagine that at the Academy Museum you're putting on a big exhibition about interracial buddy films. Okay, So what goes in what goes into that exhibit and what's the bigger meaning that you would want it to convin? Wonderful territorial question, great question, yes today. Yes, actually, I actually don't even want an answer. I just wanted you to got it.
I was genuine, you know. Um. I guess I would trace it back to the Cindy Potier films, especially the Defiant ones, although it's hard to say that they became buddies in that film, but I guess it launched a few of the important things that come up across the history of these films, primarily that they are male focused. So the idea that you can isolate questions of race by keeping other things steady, and the steady thing has
to do with masculinity. So so much of the conversation about race relations in this country, and you can even look at the language right, the Negro question, the Negro problem, was always masculinized, and so that would be an important starting point for understanding how it is that our notions about how racial reconciliation needs to happen, or understanding you have to hold everything else still in a way, so
you can't really explore what that means. In terms of gender, there has to be this kind of shared outsiderism that happens, that is through what it means to be a man in this society. Yeah. Yeah, the Lethal Weapon films are really important. I think that when you ask the question, like, what would the larger kind of you know, argument be about the meaning of these films, I guess one important through line is that these films are trying to get us to think about what it takes to see humanity
across racial lines. So those films are interesting because the roles are reversed in a way, and so with Danny Glover playing the kind of straight man, it invites audiences to identify more with him general audiences meaning white audiences in some ways to identify more with him as the as the center, and that's a pretty radical thing to do.
So it's not just happening at the level of the story, but in the casting inviting that kind of identification with the central black male character is a pretty extraordinary thing to do. But then, you know, knowing my curatorial team at the Academy Museum, you have to mix it up when you start looking toward the you know, more contemporary moments. There are other probably obvious examples that you can use with men. But then the question is do women ever
come into play or does it ever? Are the buddies ever like men and women? So I wouldn't throw in something like driving Miss Daisy because that's also about a kind of unlikely black white relationship, and it is completely has that same kind of like, you know, dependence narrative. You're the only one who really understands me. This is typically the black person is the only person who really
understands the white person. And not at all to say that it's a positive example, but at the very least it's one that begins to sort of like get at some of these intersectional questions around I did that race is always inflected by lots of other vectors. If you'd love to hear the full conversation, consider becoming a pushnick. Pushnik is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for four dollars and ninety nine cents a month.
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