There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Toad and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.
Happy Halloween. Halloween is my favorite holiday.
Yes, I am one of those people who starts preparing for spooky season even while we're still solidly in summer. I live for a horror movie, and I think there's just something about how horror is able to do sharp, sadhire or social commentary against the backdrop of a spooky story.
So when I sat down to rewatch the nineteen ninety six horror classic Scream last week, a movie that I had not seen since I was a kid, I realize this is a movie that is desperately trying to tell us something about our collective rights around media and technology. I joined my friend Samantha and Scream scholar in residence Annie over at the podcast Stuff Mom Ever told you to discusse how Scream is a commentary on all of our collective tech and media anxieties.
So listen if you dare.
I do think that there's something about anxiety around technology communication systems. How many scary movies had the trope of like the phone's gone dead, or like some bit of technology that we maybe don't fully understand or don't fully
respect or appreciate coming back to get us. Like that is a common I believe, like a common trope that is really related to our anxieties collectively around technology, particularly new technology, or like over reliance on technology that really sets us up for a kind of horror situation.
Yeah.
Uh, And I've noticed there's like a whole new ish genre of like movies like Unfriended or movies about like social media and these kind of technologies that are part of our everyday lives. It's also interesting to see other movies like Missing or Searching where they're trying to explain because a lot of horror movies, Yeah, it's like, oh, the phone's not working, really like trying to explain how technology can fit into that or how it doesn't and can't or yeah that dependents on it.
Yeah.
So I just watched on the plane to Berlin, I watched Missing, and I also I haven't seen Missing. It takes place almost entirely through screens, and so you're watching someone's laptop. You're watching like they're having a video chat with somebody. They're they're messaging somebody like you're watching security footage from a screen, like the whole thing takes place
on a computer. And I also there is like a thing that I'm really interested in, mostly because I really like she the movies that are kind of like trying to make a social commentary but it's actually kind of funny, just like Scream.
So I watched this movie The Influencer recently.
Which I thought I didn't love, but like is about anxiety when it comes to people who share their whole lives on social media. Another one that I watched that's kind of similar to that is Sissy.
Have you seen that?
We just did that?
As okay, what thing?
It made me think a lot about it stuck with me, I will say, yeah, yeah, it was definitely one of those where I left like, uh, that did not resolve how I would have wanted it to resolve. But you know, the kind of making money off drama thing, which I know we're also going to talk about in here, left me unsettled.
Yes, I agree, and I will say, like to set up this conversation, the reason why I wanted to talk about this today is that I watched Scream, the first one the original from nineteen eighty six yesterday and I was like, Wow, you know this is a movie that is really about the anxiety around technology and media.
Right I had seen Scream.
Maybe I saw it when it first came out when I was like a child, but when I don't, I've only seen it twice in my life. The first time I saw it when it first came out, a lot of the commentary about media and technology and tropes was really over my head because I was a child. Watching it yesterday, I was really struck by how this movie is really a commentary about the anxieties people were facing in the nineties around media. So I should say right off the bat, I saw Scream three in the theater
with my friends. I think I must have seen Scream two, like partially on television every now and then, because I remember the Jata Peketts Smith part viscerally. So, but I don't think I've seen the whole thing because I'm looking at the plot on Wikipedia and I'm like, none of this seems familiar to me.
Oh dear, I love Scream too. This is filmed in Georgia, Agnes Scott.
Made in Georgia. Have you ever seen that?
At the end of shows. No, okay, it's what they say at the end of bad Reality TV when they've been filmed in Georgia.
Okay, okay, well, yeah, I'm so excited to have this conversation. And the second one definitely plays into to this, so does the Force one.
I'm excited. Let's yeah, let's get into it.
Okay. So, if you have not seen Scream, the first one, this conversation might have some spoilers, but like, it came out in nineteen ninety six, so you know, what are you doing?
But having watched it, I was just really struck by the ways in which it is like a commentary on the anxiety that folks have around youth and media. So the rough plot outline of Scream, actually, any as our scream kind of sword? Do you want to hit us with the plot? The plot outline?
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Yeah. So Scream is like many slasher movies that follows a group of high students and the movie opens with a very violent death scene Drew barrymore by the way that traumatize me and introduces you to the killer, who asks, like, what is your favorite scary movie? Quizzes Drew Barrymore's character Casey about what it is, and then from there, of course, we
get various other deaths. The Rose McGowan's garage death also stuck with me, but but yeah, It's one of the things I love about Scream is you're following this group of kids and they really make you suspect everybody. But as a story kind of unfolds, you learn that the main character, Sidney, her mom had been murdered and she had testified about it, and it was this guy caught and weary.
The names are also great in this movie. They really are, They really really are.
And there's also some media happening around that in Courtney Cox's character Gail Weathers, who is this like really ambitious reporter, is in town and trying to ask her ask Sidney get an interview with her about all of that. And then we have our character Dewey played by David Arquette, who had a crush on from this movie, who is
like the deputy of the town. So you've got all these characters and they're just sort of slowly dying off or friends of theirs on the proof we are anyway, and our character Randy is sort of our meta commentary guy. He is the guy who has seen all the horror movies, and he is the one who lays out the rules of surviving a horror movie, which at this point there's a killer around, so they're kind of joking that they're
in one. Every screen movie has a party in it, so they go to this party even though there's a curfew, even though there's a killer.
It makes no.
Sense, like being stopped.
Dewey, as the deputy, has been told like by his higher up, like make sure she stays safe.
So then in the next.
Scene, he's literally dropping her off at a party and like be like, Okay, we'll have.
Fun, right, But he's trying to He's got a crush on Gail, who he knows will be there, and they kind of form a.
Duo Mary Gale life at the time.
At the time, Yes, and Gail leaves this camera inside the party to spy on the kids, which is really funny because it's like a fifteen second delay or whatever becomes important later. But Randy lays out the rules of like you can never have sex, you can never do drugs, you never say I'll be back, you won't be back, You'll be dead. And then we see kind of people drinking and dying, people having sex and then almost dying.
But all these things is build up, and then it's kind of hinted that it's her dad who is the killer, but there's been this through line of her boyfriend Billy who's been pressuring her to have sex, and no, you don't do that if you want to survive a horror movie. And she also has to hang up around it because her mother, after she died, all this commentary was she was a slut and deserved it, so she has a real hang up about it, understandably, and she eventually is like, Okay, I want to have sex.
I really want to.
They have sex, and then it's revealed he is the killer, along with his friend Stu Matthew Lillard, and that they also killed her mom because they Billy blamed Sydney's mom for why his parents got divorced, so it wasn't Cotton Weary, it was Billy Loomis. And then they say that we're
gonna blame the movies. We're gonna blame the movies. But then Sydney like steals their little voice vocoder thing and comes out and basically kills them with the help of Gail's returned after her cameraman was murdered and reports on the w whole scene as a I think it's Moby plays Yes movie.
That was a really great rundown the character Gail Weathers. When I first saw Scream as a young person, I didn't really so I've always liked bad characters, like not necessarily the like the like ultimate villain, Like I didn't like Billion stew but like characters.
That are meant to be bratty or annoying or dee.
I've always been like, that's the character that I liked, And so I was obsessed with her character, her little suits.
I thought she was so cool. I guess I like took away all of the.
Wrong messages from this movie because I then grew up wanting to be like a careerist, a career woman's journalist, ballbuster. She also had a lot of the good lines were hers, Like, she really had good one liners, so that you have set the scene beautifully.
So when Scream first debuted in nineteen ninety six, the country was really engaged in this like national dialogue about the impact of violence in media on youth. In nineteen ninety six, President Clinton signs the Telecommunications Act of nineteen ninety six, legislation that has gone on to shape a lot of our internet and media landscape even today. It was a huge change in the telecommunications law because it was the very first time that the Internet had been
included in like broadcasting. A lot in net right was being was being legislated.
Of, like how they were metering it out and how people could access it and all that. So as part of this legislation, the Clinton administration rolled out technology called the V chip.
Do you remember the V chip?
I don't remember the V chip.
It was kind of.
A blit in our I guess tech and media landscape, Like I remember a lot of conversation about it, like on television and in you know, with lawmakers. But ultimately it had a pretty a relatively like small impact, which we'll talk about in distant moments. So if you don't know what the V chip is, the V chip was technology meant to allow parents to block like racing or
mature content from televisions. Television's manufactured in the United States market since January two thousand were required to have vship technology. So V chips worked by allowing your TV to receive a special code in the broadcast signal that was broadcasting shows and movies that indicated a rating of what kind of program that was and like whether or not it
was suitable for different audiences. So you know when you watch TV now and you see up in the corner that little black and white logo like TVMA or TV why that is related to V chips, right, So like TVMA would be content that is mature. So if you had your V schip programmed, there would be a code and you're in the programming that would allow you to block mature content from your household if you were worried about your kids seeing it.
So the phrase V.
Chip was purportedly coined by then Representative Ed Marquee of Massachusetts. According to him, the V stood for violence because they were really concerned about blocking out violence. But if you asked Tim Collings, who is one of the people who claims to have invented bea chips, he says, the beastood for viewer control.
Who what is the truth? I'm not sure. So parents at.
That time were really really had a lot of anxiety that violent movies and violent programming that kids were consuming was linked to violent behavior. There are like I wanted to include here, like whether or not that is true. There is way too much research out there for me to summarize. Like some people are like, oh, there's a clear link. Most researchers are like, oh, the link is like needs more studying, not clear. Do you have any sense of this as somebody who enjoys horror?
I am under the impression because I remember this too, especially a somebody who plays video games. This argument comes up all the time about violent video games that there has not been any like definitive link proven, And I think I found one that said, yeah, I mean, it's not like.
A lot of us who see horror movies are not a murderer. I don't know.
Most of it has been kind of yeah, there's not There hasn't been any science to really back that up. But there is a lot of anxiety around it, like we were talking about before, especially around kind of parenting and like what should I let my kids watch? Is this going to make them more violence? I'm much more. I have much more knowledge about like how certain entertainment and games actually help you work through stuff for form
some skills. But yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot of conversation happening and a lot of back and forth.
For sure, I know around this timeframe with all the movies,
as this was getting in conversation. Unfortunately, the Columbine shooting happened, and that was the biggest blame, not gun violence, not bullying, but that it was the violence on TV and the games that the kids played other the two perpetrators played, and they focus on that really hard because it seemed to fit the narrative that they've been trying to set up since the nineteen ninety five So like four years later, ninety nine was when the shooting happened, and like the
conversations about bullying and the conversations about being outcasts, the conversations about gun control really was sidelined to violence on TV and violence core for video games. I remember that being a huge thing.
Yes, I've definitely seen that. Like do you remember how the musician Brian Warner, who you might be more familiar with as a stage name Marilyn Manson, like he was really thrust into the national conversation about like what's wrong
with our kids? And looking back at that time, even though my research, you know, I'm not a researcher but when I've looked into the link between violent media and violent behavior, that link does seem fuzzy at best, Like it doesn't seem like there's a lot of information out
there that really proves a, you know, a correlation. But I really understand how we still get so much like handwringing and anxiety about it, because if you're a parent and you're worried about your kids, you're worried it's about sending your kids to school. You can't really control the legislation around guns in the United States, right, Like we're just we've just like lost the ability of to really
have any kind of like direct impact on that. I think you really can't control what's happening at your kid's school when you're not there. I think one of the reasons why you see this anxiety around media is because it feels like something you can control, Like, even if that link is not really there between violent media and
violent behavior. I think that in absence of feeling like they have something they can cling to, something they can control, something they can like, it just becomes a backdrop to project your anxieties onto that. I but even if it's not really the appropriate thing to handring about I understand how it becomes like in absence of anything that you feel like you can control, you feel like you can control the kind of media that comes into your home.
And one of the things I find really interesting about Scream is that in the end, almost every killer realizes this. Almost every killer comes out and says, Oh, we're gonna blame the movies.
Oh I'm gonna blame this. Oh I was on Reddit and now look at me.
Like they know it, and they use it, and that's what their defense is going to be in several cases, like actually the defense they're.
Going to use in court. So they recognize that this is a thing.
And I think it becomes like almost like a red herring where it's like, if you're so busy focused on Reddit or the movies or the this or the that, you're.
Not actually focused on the real issue.
And the killers in these movies they know that, and they're using that as a way to evade their accountability for their crimes or like I can just blame this. And because of all that anxiety, because of all that handwringing, my actual motives, how I've actually done this just goes overlooked, right.
And It's part of the fun of these movies is they are so meta. So it's you're watching a slasher movie that's basically telling you like, yeah, we know, uh, people are going to blame us for stuff, and we're going to talk about it.
Which is one of the things I love about them.
Right, And so the way that the scream movies really were a commentary on the conversation around violent media that we were having at that time in the nineties plays into that so much because with technology like the V chip, the burden was shifted off of like the government or TV people who make media onto parents to be the soul controls of what kind of media their kids are consuming, right, And so like, if I'm Stu and Billy and I'm
just blaming the violent movies, really what that's actually saying is like, oh, it's the parents.
The parents should have like used this V chip.
To block their kids from seeing prom Night or Halloween and they didn't, and now he's a killer. It was just a real way to like expertly shift.
The blame around.
And I think it mirrors the conversation that folks were having in the nineties. And so even though there was all this conversation and also public support around technology like the v chip that was rolled out in the end.
One of the reasons.
Why, like Annie, you were like V chip never heard of it is because it wasn't really being used that much by parents. A study that followed one hundred and ten families from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand found that just nine families regularly used their v chip to control mature and violent programming. I have my theories on why this is. I think setting it up was kind of cumbersome. I think a lot of parents were like, oh, this is a little bit complicated.
I'm not going to do this.
So I went back to check the different rating systems like we're most familiar with, like TVMA and things like that, but there's so many of them. There's TVY, TV Y seven, TVG, TVPG, TV fourteen, TVMA. Then inside of that there's different content descriptors right D stands for sexual or suggestive diet, L stands for course or crude language, s A, sexual situations, V is violence, SV is family violent, exclusive to the
TV Y seven rating. So it's complicated as hell, is what I'm saying, And so I can understand why parents were like, h, this is way too many acronyms.
I have work in the morning. I am not setting this up.
I also suspect, like, if your household was anything like my household, if you were a teen at this time, the responsibility for setting up the technology and like telecommunications in your.
Home probably fell on your shoulders. Your parents were like, I don't know how to set this up. You do it.
So if you're the young person who is being asked to, like, like, you're not going to be setting up parental controls on your own TV, if you are the person who is responsible for setting up how TV happens in your home right, So that's what I suspect might have been part of why this like technology just did not take off.
You Know what I find funny though with that, is Yes, I was in that generation. I was a teenager when the internet came out, Like, I did not have the access to internet until I left for college because my parents were not buying the new things and at this point it was a new thing, and I would have
to go to my aunt's house to use AOL. Yes, and you immediately think of that sound when you connect, and then immediately know the sound when it hangs up and you get real pissed off because someone picked up a phone. Yes, I was in that generation. I find it funny because yes, we were part of that. Me and my brother, who are around the same age, were
the ones who had set it up. But even today, for my boomer parents, we have to set up any day with the smart stuff and the likelihood that we know even more so than the younger generations because they're so used to just having it around on how to get it connected, because we're like the og of all
of these things. It kind of makes me laugh because somehow the genetic slash millennials are the ones who know how to set these things up more so even than most of the younger generations because they just always have had it.
Yes, I've actually read some really interesting research and commentary that suggests that the younger generation, like gen Z they might like because they've always had things like iPads and smartphones that are so sort of like drag and drop, so sort of like intuitive, and if you've always had them, the sort of inner machinations of like how they work and like what is being represented when you do things might be a little bit vague, a little bit vaguer
to them than they are to somebody who is my age, who like grew up having to understand that kind of thing just to like make it work right, Like having to understand like when you save a file what that means, and like how to find it and all of that.
None of this stuff when I.
Was first using computers was like easily laid out through user like easy to navigate user interface. It was a lot of like squinting at the screen and guessing check and like it does the coding.
Yeah, we only have to coding in order should get access to specific signs. You're like, what the hell is I have to control all be what?
F three? What?
Yes?
But I do find it funny coming back to that when you'd have most of these classics, because when I was growing up, I watched a lot of the cheesiest seventies eighties horror movies because they were amazing and they were so bad. The effects were so bad, but it
was so good because you still love that idea. I also loved the horror stories y'all know I'm talking about, like the classic horror stories, Appalachian horror stories that you came back like the scariest stories like those are the things that I grew up with and haunted me, still haunts me. I was telling I think any I had told you no mayb. Yeah, I told my partner when I was in middle school. So this was the way
before y'all don't talk to me about age. We would go into like different theater companies coming perform I think I was in the fifth grade and they were supposed to do a Mark Twain show and we're like cool, cool, cool, old school and then it flipped real quick to an Edgar Allan Poe Telltale Heart. So for those of us who didn't know what was coming hearing because they would have like the surround sound of the beating heart, and
it haunts me to this day. That's scary, Like that story was one of the scariest stories I've ever heard in my life. And I'm thinking back into like back to like would the kids today would that have scared them or would they have been like laughing because they're like what is that?
What is this?
Because in my mind, like it was scary as hell. I've been realizing how technology has quickly changed and how like the graphics have changed, and again, yeah, people don't even understand what the phone is, like, why would you why would you have to connect to what's the landline? Why do you have to do what is with the pressing? Why can't they just like call a number or say
Siri call this thing? Like it's quite funny to me that I'm like, yeah, y'all probably don't understand how scary it really was.
Yeah. Oh.
Do you ever watch a horror movie like from like the nineties or beyond and you're like, why doesn't she just use her cell phone to call her help?
And you're like, oh wait, it's like a huge phone.
In Scream, there is that like the scene where it sets the audience up to think Billy is the killer and a self because a cell phone drops out of his pocket and it's like a cell phone why? And the cops are like, why do you have a cell phone? And he's like, people have them now, like it was so unusual for somebody to just have a cell phone.
Yes, nothing, you're rich or you're up to no good.
It's kind of like the pages of the like Mint.
Immediately you were you were no good exactly.
Bridget you need to watch all the rest of the screen movies. It just keep updating us because the newer ones have things with like Siri and you're ring camera and like using voice commands and all this stuff.
So would you say that Scream is one of the more tech savvy horror franchises.
I yeah, I would say that, But I also don't have that kind of stuff, so I never talked to Syria and I don't use ring.
But I think so, I mean, at.
Least like it's definitely addressing the question of, oh, hey, this is the world we live in now. I think the fifth one as a whole thing about like Netflix and Reddit and fandom in that way. So I mean they are definitely at least engaging in this is the technology that we have, and this is how we think it would impact or fuel this horror story that we're telling.
Yeah, I think it's really interesting when horror movies use technology as a way to like buttress whatever story or message you know, they're trying to tell, which.
I feel like Scream definitely does.
So after this V chip technology is put in place, television programs are then rated for how much like ricey or mature content they contain, and so to give parents ostensibly the power to like block their kids from them, even though parents aren't really doing this. However, the news news programming was exempt from these ratings, and so there was no way to block the news from your home. Using this technology just sort of like giving it a pass to.
Come into people's homes.
This coincided with news media becoming more and more solidified as a form of like always on entertainment, starting famously with CNN as like the first twenty four hour news network, later with Fox News and MSNBC. According to NPR media reporter David Folkenflick, the subsequent arrival of Fox at MSNBC, it made nineteen ninety six a seminal year for cable news. Remember that in the nineties you had these like big,
splashy gory crimes that played out in the news. Nineteen ninety four you get Oj Simpson, nineteen ninety three, you get Loraina Bobbitt. The murder of Scott Amador in nineteen ninety five, who folks don't know who that is. He was shot and murdered after an appearance on the tabloid show The Jenny Jones Show, where he revealed his secret crush on a man who later shot and killed him and used gay panic as his defense during his trial.
In nineteen ninety six, in a piece called how Scream Explored the exploitative nature of nightly news, the Smithsonian Magazine spoke to Jamie L. Flexen, a profess served criminology and criminal justice at Florida International University, who said the onslaught of around the clock coverage of bizarre, outlier incidents powerfully shaped americans perceptions of crime, saying, I believe because of this,
society is much more afraid. The boogeyman does exist in this way an interaction between the human condition and the business of media amid a context of exploring rare situations to symbolize problems. And honestly, despite all of the anxieties and handering about violent media and violent crime and the anxieties around it, violent crime was famously down in the nineties during this time where people were so concerned about it.
Yeah, And I think one of the things Scream does also is that it this was before true crime had really taken off. People were still fans of it, but there was no Netflix yet, there was no places where it could bringe it yet. But there's a point where as the daughter of this woman who had been murdered, that people are constantly talking about, like constantly kind of sharing their theories like, oh no, you're wrong, you lied
about her. There's a point where she like vocalizes this this fear that she has that if she says something like out of place, they will blame her dad, because it's usually the like husband or the like. She has this in her head that there are people watching her her story what has happened, and trying to dissect it and having to like live with Okay, I really don't want them to think it was my dad, which feels like now watching it, almost like premonition or something like it.
It was very on point with that.
And then going back to something you said earlier, Bridget, the second one spoilers the one of the killers is Billy Loomis's mother. Oh yes, and she has a whole speech that's like they always blame the mother and she did do it.
Oh yeah, that's why they're lighting her because she did it.
But it was interesting because it's like they were it was her.
And then Timothy Olifant's character Mickey, who was like, I'm going to blame the movies and she was like, I never believe that defense never wants she kills Mickey. It's like, no, I just am so upset about what happened to my son and that you did it. But like that idea of you know, that story that we want to believe or that it's being told that we're seeing in our media, that they really because I mean, I could go on and odd, so Mantha knows. Like the fourth one is
all about true crime as well. The fifth one's all about fandom, and in fact, one of the actors went on to Reddit to learn about toxic fandom to play a role in there. But also like going back to the internet was just becoming really big for a lot of us around the time this movie came out. And just for a fun fact, this is one of the first movies that had they were worried about spoilers, so they wrote different scripts after the first one because they
got leaked online. And so it's really interesting in that way too, of like, and they even talk about it in the third one about how they have multiple scripts and they don't know which one the murderer is following.
As I said, Annie's Annie's as an expert on all things. But you know how they went back to she is she don't. I don't think she doesn't already know. She's already she's already read the article. I know I read this a while ago.
I was exactly.
But you know, one of the things coming back to how like news had become a whole thing. I would just remember, like the eighties, late eighties and nineties were filled with like unsolved mysteries. Rescue nine one one was a regularly played at our house, and that started in nineteen eighty nine. And then you also had things like the Top ten most Wanted, which was like talking about
that boogeyman that comes around. But there also had been that moment where news anchors were getting Pulitzers or being big storytellers so they could solve a crime and do it while on air. They would get these accolades, and I remember that being a huge thing. Barbara Walters was huge at that point in time. Sixty Minutes, which is still going, but like that was coming on huge because they would follow people like oh Ja Simpson and then
have that exclusive interview into the behind the scenes. Lorena Bobbitt, I remember this case specifically because the husband came on talking about his thing and had his huge thing of fame, like so many things now, Like Lorena Bobbit wasn't so bad in my mind back then, yeah, but today I'm like, oh, okay, I get it. I don't condone what she did, but
I'm just saying I get it. But like the early nineties, which this is that it is if you look back, I didn't about it then obviously, but it was going after those reporters who are just willing to like crawl over all of the victims, which has become a circus today and there is a huge different, whole different conversation and now as a podcast, But that was really kind of that beginning of like, oh, they want to see the gory details, they want to know the depth of
depravity of men, and then if we can say it in a perfect story to haunt everyone, we're going to be famous.
And you even see that in Scream with Gail.
You know, she's writing a book about the death of Sydney's mom and has kind of gotten personally involved in the case, advocating for the innocence of Cotton, the person who's been charged with her mom's death. And it's clear that she's not doing this because she like like maybe she genuinely believes that he's innocent, but when she's talking about it, she says.
If I'm right, I could save this man's life. Do you know that what that would do for my book sales? Again, iicnic wine from.
Gail Weathers on this one, But I do think that that that I don't mean that you're explaining Sam about
how the news media felt. Then is what scream Is is meant to be a commentary on so Screams writers Adam White and Michelle Delgado said that scream Is meant to be an exploration of this exploitative nature of tabloid news that minds people's worst and most traumatic moments for entertainment, but doing so under the guise of like informing the publics through news, and it highlights this kind of interesting inconsistency we saw in media at the time, that the
news could cover the minutia of these gory, splashy cases and do so in a way that was exempt from this government VAT chip rating, But had those plotlines been happening on an episode of like melrose Place, they would be rated as mature. I think this moral inconsistency that we saw in media was exactly what Scream was speaking to, you know, like the Scream teens are scolded for watching
too many gore slashier movies. All of this happening while Gail Weathers and these other their news anchors are really like essentially stalking and surveilling these teenagers to breathlessly and relentlessly cover the the minutia of this trauma they're experiencing under the guise of being like, well, the public has a right to know.
Right, And it's no we talk about this all the time when it comes to horror movies. Kind of that how it reflects what we're anxious about is a society, but also kind of that judgment of like who is the who's going to be the victim here? Those rules that Randy lays out of like don't have sex, don't do drugs, all that stuff. So it built it also feels very like these older people are watching these younger people and like, yeah, you should have listened to me.
You deserved that, and now I'm going to put it on the news and make money about it.
Like it's it's very Oh, you are a young person who's basically living their life, but she shouldn't have done that, and now you're dead and that's that's your fault.
Yeah, it's very voyeuristic, and I think I think Scream really does a good job also of like I don't know asking the question of like sure, Gail Weathers is not out here murdering teens, but she is making money off of that. She's profiting off of that personally, so like, sure, she she may not be a murderer herself, but is she really that much better than whoever is murdering these teens?
Yeah?
And I love like, I love how every time Gail Weathers has this thing, there's something you have to appreciate as women, because we're always told like ambitious women are terrible that we were watching Gil Weathers. You're like, yes, go get it, Gail. But like every movie ends with her realizing like, oh, I've lost all.
Of my friends. Maybe I should And then the next movie starts, She's backward.
She's I'm so buddy brought this up. This is why I love.
This is why I like I ride for Gailee Weathers in this movie and then the other screen movies that I've seen, is that I feel like the movie is setting us up to be like, Wow, what an annoying, conniving, She's gonna have a gory death and really get hers and won't that be great?
But Gail Weathers always comes out on top. And not only does she come out on.
Top, she doesn't learn a damn thing. By the next movie, whatever lesson you think has been internalized by.
Gail, she's back and worse. And I love that.
I love when this is just like I mean, I'm I wanted to try to like connect this to some larger like moralistic thing of like it's feminist to like it when like women are is actually I just like.
Think that's cool.
I just personally like to see when a female character doesn't really learn anything and like, you know, I don't know, like is it so wrong that Gail Weathers wants her Pulitzer? Like is it so wrong that she cares about her career? And like it's kind of going to exploit some teens to get there.
I mean, the few movies that I actually thinks to Annie, I've seen more than.
I think you've seen. Everyone but the newest one.
The newest one, Yeah, has made that this is her gift. I will say, when she's in crunch, she's gonna help out, like she's gonna be there. She's got her back, she's gonna take the perpetrator out. She's going, she's gonna, she's gonna fight. So when it counts, she's there. And then she don't get her She saves.
She saves, the saves the day like and also it really you don't count out Gaie Weathers. You might think she's dead in that van. She might look man, but don't cut out Gaale Weathers.
She'll be right back. She'll She's got nine lives. That's the joke.
Does she is? She?
Is? She?
In the most recent Scream Yes, Oh thank god?
Yes.
I also like in the fifth one, it opens with Dewey like drinking at nine am and he's watching Good Morning America and she's on there and she's like talking about how bad her hair used to be, and I'm like, yeah, good for you, Gail.
You know, honestly, I as much as I love the like horror women in horror movie tropes like Final Girl, I would read a deep dive analysis of like g you know, character that we're supposed to hate, but like actually we kind of love. I you know, if you ever see like there's a I think there are a lot of them horror movies, Like if you've ever seen it's not a horror movie, I guess it's a thriller.
But the hand that rocks the Cradle, I think it's Julianne Moore's character, who's like the smart mouthed, like bad real estate lady in a House of Wax. I remember famously that Paris Halton is kind of the annoying friend and House of Wax, and they really make a meal out.
Of her murder in that movie. They really like, are really.
Excited to kill Paris Halted in a gruesome way in that movie because she's like the annoying girl in the movie.
One thing I do like about Gail Weathers, though, is like I like gil Weather's That makes it sound like I don't. But one thing I like about it is that her and Sidney have this really adversarial relationship. They become friends and they still fight, and I like that they show that they still show like there's a because Gail still wants the story of Sydney and Sydney is
still like no, that's but they are still friends. So I like that it kind of plays out that way that eventually you're like, oh no, they're buddies, and they show up for each other and they have.
A complex relationship.
Yeah, I think like showing they've been through a lot together, so they're not like braiding each other's hair, but when it matters, they stick up for each other.
When it matters.
Gales out of that van with a gun, ready to save the day, like, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm like so like in deep in this converse.
I know from the beginning, I told you from.
The beginning, and.
It's just a really I don't know, I don't know where to go with this.
I think Scream really they were onto something about making a commentary about media anxieties and anxieties around violence. And it's interesting to me that it's had such an enduring legacy of making commentary for like a decade now, Like I guess.
Scream came out in nineteen ninety six. The most recent one was what two thousand.
And twenty two. Yeah, so like like last year, a decade's.
Long legacy of commenting on our collective anxieties around technology and media and violence and our behavior.
And I think you know that iconic line that.
Billy says in the first movie where I think it's Sydney like you've seen one too many movies, and Billy is like, movies don't create psychos, movies make psychos more creative.
And to me, that's like the ultimate encapsulation of the entire anxiety and conversation of like, well, is it the movies, is it the media, is it the content, or is it something else that these these movies are just allowing for more creativity or more you know, a smoke screen to like have people do more crimes and have more violent behavior. Like that line I think really reveals the ultimate anxiety that I think Scream is really commenting on.
Yes, and I think like every movie has some version of that where it ends with oh, I'm going to blame the movies and it allows them to.
Yeah.
I mean essentially they've found that they can do this. They believe they can get away with it through this, But it's so many other things like it is. I think a lot of this also boils down to you we can't just give one reason. There's not just one thing, Like maybe you did get on Reddit and it didn't go well for you, but that can't be like the only thing like for that, Reddit has to have existed in the first place, And you also have a character
like Randy, who is so into horror movies. He's the one that lays out the rules and he is not a killer at all, Like he has consumed all of this stuff, maybe even more, and he isn't a killer. So I think it's interesting that they also have sort of a foil for all of these like killers, who are the movies made me?
Did it?
And then you see Randy and these not at all. But also it is funny that they always have this laying out of the rules scene, and in the most recent one they were like, oh, no, we're in a franchise. Like that's how big it's gotten. It's a sequel, it's a trilogy, and now it's oh, franchised, that's hilarious. Yeah, but it has endured to the point that, yeah, it's a franchise.
And I think ultimately, like that's my point is that violence is such a complex issue, Like we've been handwringing about how we curb and combat violence for so long that these tidy explanations reddit violent movies, violent media, watching the O. J. Simpson trial on the news, whatever, this don't work. And I think that ultimately, like that is what the film is trying to show that interpersonal violence is always more complicated than that, always more complex than that.
So if somebody is trying to sell you like this is this is the reason that person is is perhaps not bringing the nuance to the conversation that it deserves.
I think that maybe like that is what Scream is ultimately trying to tell us.
I agree.
I absolutely agree, because again, every every movie has this like moment, like almost montage where you believe it's every person at once, right, like oh it's you, Oh it's you, because there are all these complex reasons or why people might do it, and yeah, just the like simple Oh they watched a lot of horror movies. It just it doesn't work. And that's never how it is. I've seen these movies a lot.
That's not how it goes.
Scholar in Residence Annie Reese, Yeah, oh what a day.
You've brightened my day.
It's just so fun to talk about horror movies.
Like everybody in my life knows that, Like if you let me go off on, Like, my my favorite piece of horror growing up and still today is Tales from the Crypt. I've seen every episode when I was a kid I used to do. I do an impression of the crypt Keeper that like my brother who would like die of laughter in person in the Cryptkeeper. It's just so fun to talk about horror, and like, I don't know, we should get more than one month a year to do it.
You are welcome back anytime to talk about horror. I feel bad.
I feel like I just went on and on, but I have you know, I could keep going, but then none of us would get of here.
Should we do? We should do a part two on Scream two.
Yes, I think this is like third episode for us on a stream.
Fourth But there's so good to say about every one of them. Though, second one's blame the Mother, third one's Harvey one, dude, The fourth one is true crime and women, and then the fifth one is fandom. The sixth one is trauma.
That's going to be the seventh one Trump. I think.
I think the seventh one is gonna be Oh, because I think.
Sidney Prescott wasn't in the most recent one because of contract they didn't want to pay.
Oh.
I think she's gonna be in the next one, So I think it's gonna be some kind of like, Oh, she is gonna be the next one. There, it sounds like it. They haven't finalized.
They got a lot of backlash for not having her on.
Yeah, maybe the next screen will be that the real killer will be predatory contracts, lock you.
In for years.
Oh my god, I would love it. I would find some way to talk about it all the show.
Like, uh, honestly, we haven't done a second of the New New War franchise.
Oh I do have a lot of thoughts about that one. That one has a lot of bait and switches that I have a lot of thoughts about, Like, oh, I know the killer.
Oh okay, I don't.
I mean, we could do an emergency episode the three of us, the three of us watch one of the other screams and go to tall.
I'm here for that.
We'll see you next week.
Yes, if you make it. Who's gonna be the final girl?
Yeah, don't say, don't say the line. You know what it is, don't do it anyway.
I'll be right back.
Y'all are racist, So.
I feel like the prediction would be Annie, but you know whatever, Oh wow, I feel like i'd be the first one to go for some reason, like Asian women are seeing as like really trashy Asian fetishists love right. So unless it's an Asian horror movie, then I'm the one that's killing.
And maybe you've got like one streak in your hair, like, oh, there's a she's got a red streak in her hair.
That's how you know she's a bad.
If it's not all yeah, if it's not all pink, then it's death or purple. Then I'm definitely at the one streak, and I'm definitely become possessive with everyone. If it's we're doing an agent level a horror.
Movie, oh man, I'm so into this. I'm into it however it works out.
I definitely want to hear your thoughts one way or another, Bridget, when you watch the rest of them, because for.
The rest of perhaps obviously.
I have a lot of thoughts. I'm gonna watch watch them from now the next Wednesday.
Yes, I'm like legitimately excited. Oh wow, Yeah, this was so delightful. So thank you as always, Bridget for coming on. We love having you.
Where can the good listeners find you?
You can find me on my pod there are no girls on the internet. On iHeartRadio. You can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in DC. You can find me on TikTok at Bridget makes pods.
Yes and definitely looking forward to the next time you come, whether it's screen based or not. And you can find us listeners. You can email us Stephania mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts, or on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff.
We'll Never Told You.
We have a tea public store, and we do have a book where there's a lot of stuff about screaming there that you can get now wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to our super produced Christina or executive producer Maya and our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening Stuff I Never Told You his prediction of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart Radio, you can check out the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.