Speaker 1: Hi. This is Annie and you're listening to Stuff Mom
Speaker 1: Never told you. And today we're joined by a guest
Speaker 1: co host, Lauren Volgal Bomb. Hello. That's me, Hi Lauren, Hi,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Yeah anytime, I mean maybe not
Speaker 1: literally anytime, because I already do a lot of other things, Yes,
Speaker 1: including a show, a little show you may have heard
Speaker 1: of that we co host together once, food Stuff. It
Speaker 1: is now called Savor Savor Savor, and just re launched
Speaker 1: last week. We were trawling or eating lots of food,
Speaker 1: drinking lots of drinks, a lot of people, talking to
Speaker 1: some amazing people, and incorporating clips from those interviews into
Speaker 1: our stories about different foods and food cultures. So it's
Speaker 1: pretty I think it's okay. Yeah, we're not biased. No no,
Speaker 1: And Lauren, has you've been on the show before? Have
Speaker 1: you not? I have back up back when Kristen and
Speaker 1: Caroline where where the hosts. I was on an episode
Speaker 1: about Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I bugged them for
Speaker 1: years about doing an episode about Buffy. Well, you succeeded.
Speaker 1: It was a long, hard fought campaign, but it was
Speaker 1: you got with you for his end. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I wanted you to come on this
Speaker 1: week to fill in for Bridget because, um, you like horror.
Speaker 1: I like horror. Oh yeah, yeah. We talked about this
Speaker 1: all the time. We do, we do. Um and I
Speaker 1: feel like real life has started to feel a little
Speaker 1: horror movie esque only just started. Yes, Um, so we
Speaker 1: originally today we were going to talk about and we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about the trope of in horror movies,
Speaker 1: why don't people believe women? And it turned into that,
Speaker 1: but also so much real life stuff. Yeah. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that some of you have seen or heard the phrase
Speaker 1: believe women being tossed around lately. Yeah, so there's that
Speaker 1: whole trend believe women turning on Twitter in response to
Speaker 1: the accusations of assault made against Supreme Court Justice nominee
Speaker 1: Brett Kevinaugh and the complete dismissal of these accusations are
Speaker 1: even like just don't like people don't care, um in
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases. Um, And you've probably all
Speaker 1: heard these numbers before, but I think they're worth repeating.
Speaker 1: Sexual assault is all too common. Some estimates say one
Speaker 1: in five women, and it's more common than we think
Speaker 1: in men as well. We don't hear about that as often,
Speaker 1: but it should be part of the conversation. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: only somewhere from two to eight percent of sexual assault
Speaker 1: Act stations are found to be false, But the conversations
Speaker 1: we have around this would suggest that false accusations just
Speaker 1: happened all of the time. Yeah. Um, And I've been
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about this, and I think even outside
Speaker 1: of sexual assault, people just don't believe women. And I
Speaker 1: can think of so many examples in my life where
Speaker 1: I've said something like, hey, I like this song and
Speaker 1: been interrogated about it by a dude as if that
Speaker 1: there's no way you know this song, you like this song?
Speaker 1: You've never heard that song? Ye? What? In like a
Speaker 1: fake geek girl way, like like you were trying to
Speaker 1: impress them by saying that. Yeah. And it was weird
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking of one particular instance, and it got
Speaker 1: to the point where another guy who I didn't know
Speaker 1: very well stepped in the conversation and said, Dude, she
Speaker 1: said she likes it. I don't. I don't know what
Speaker 1: was going on. It wasn't even that quote manly of
Speaker 1: a thing. In fact, I would argue that that's more
Speaker 1: tradition fominine type music. But whatever, Another example is how
Speaker 1: I'm happy single people. That's impossible. You're just you don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, young lady. You're just miserably.
Speaker 1: You don't know how to recognize it yet, but you'll
Speaker 1: you'll understand. Um. And I found a lot of studies
Speaker 1: researching this that show that managers are less likely to
Speaker 1: believe women who ask for flex time as compared to men.
Speaker 1: They think their priorities are divided with families. It couldn't be,
Speaker 1: because they're they're human people. The only men are people.
Speaker 1: Women are women. That's right, that's right. That's the heart
Speaker 1: of this whole thing. Have you ever experienced something like this? Jeez,
Speaker 1: it feels like about once a week. Uh. My favorite
Speaker 1: is along the fake geek girl thing when when guys,
Speaker 1: guys don't usually argue with me about it, but um,
Speaker 1: but I get this response from dude. Sometimes they're shocked
Speaker 1: beyond belief that I like this geeky thing that they
Speaker 1: also like. They're like, well, but I'm like well but
Speaker 1: what They're like, well be your girl, and I'm like yes,
Speaker 1: And I like Batman. I don't know why everyone likes Batman.
Speaker 1: It's it's strange. And another example and thinking about this
Speaker 1: this morning got me so mad. Um I have a
Speaker 1: bunch of intolerances to a bunch of different foods, well, peppers, onion,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, which I discovered by getting like really
Speaker 1: sick repeatedly from eating dishes that contain even just a
Speaker 1: little bit of those things, and kind of like process
Speaker 1: of elimination no pun intended, figuring out that it's those
Speaker 1: specific foods. Um and Yeah, I had a dude argue
Speaker 1: with me about how just just a little bit can't
Speaker 1: possibly hurt you. It can't possibly and al was like,
Speaker 1: what do I need to record bathroom noises and send
Speaker 1: them to you? Like I don't you probably not talk
Speaker 1: to you again. That's a long way to get to
Speaker 1: solve the problem. Yeah, this is true. Yeah, I've mentioned
Speaker 1: before on this show that, um I I often get
Speaker 1: the fake gyk girl thing all of the time, and
Speaker 1: then once you finally have proven yourself, then it's like
Speaker 1: suddenly they're super attracted to me, at least in my case.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, so your qualifications are you want someone
Speaker 1: who's fluent and and marvel and that is kind of
Speaker 1: a reflection of you. Well, that's for a different episode.
Speaker 1: We also talked about this, this whole thing of not
Speaker 1: believing women in our episode on women in pain, how
Speaker 1: the medical community consistently dismisses women who who come and
Speaker 1: try to get helps for pain specifically, and it takes
Speaker 1: so much longer to get a diagnosis for traditionally women's
Speaker 1: um issues, which is really frustrating. Oh. Absolutely, And and
Speaker 1: this also ties into an intersectional issue. The medical community
Speaker 1: also doesn't believe people of color pretty frequently. Studies have
Speaker 1: shown that implicit biases lead doctors to prescribe fewer painkillers
Speaker 1: and less aggressive treatments to black patients than white patients,
Speaker 1: even when the patients present the exact same symptoms. So
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of issues there. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that we need to work on. But in
Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to try to use horror movies
Speaker 1: as a semi fun lens to tackle a very depressing
Speaker 1: and frustrating issue gay yeah um. Like we talked about
Speaker 1: in our final Girl episode, horror movies are really great
Speaker 1: reflections of the anxieties we have as a society, or
Speaker 1: or the observations are hang ups. Just in general, I
Speaker 1: think horror movies are a great way to sort of
Speaker 1: test out where we are, do a little, a little, yeah,
Speaker 1: to see to see see what's going on in the
Speaker 1: mind of the common common person. Yeah, and if if
Speaker 1: horror movies or anything to go by our horror media
Speaker 1: in general, we do not believe women or people of color, yes, both, alright,
Speaker 1: So even if we don't, Even if you don't, because
Speaker 1: Lauren and I do. Even if you don't watch a
Speaker 1: lot of horror movies, you have probably seen this before
Speaker 1: in crime procedurals and supernatural killers, anything like that. You've
Speaker 1: seen a character, most likely a female or a minority
Speaker 1: or both, say hey, I don't like this, let's go
Speaker 1: back and get ignored. And then probably they're both killed,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a bigger group all killed by a
Speaker 1: monster in the woods or a serial killer in the woods,
Speaker 1: or what have you. Or if the woman survives, the
Speaker 1: police don't believe her, then, but I will admit the
Speaker 1: monster killed my boyfriend might be a bit of a stretch,
Speaker 1: I would. I would want to conduct some further investigation. Yes,
Speaker 1: believe women find the truth. Yeah, I like that which
Speaker 1: I've seen presented as a as a useful thing in
Speaker 1: these are non horror I'm not going to say their
Speaker 1: non horror and these are regular times, and these are
Speaker 1: non movie times. Yes, those times. If it's a big
Speaker 1: conspiracy and we're all in a movie, Oh man, what
Speaker 1: a downer of a movie? It is okay. Um. So,
Speaker 1: while most horror movie troops can be seen as moralistic
Speaker 1: or cautionary tales, this one seems more just assumed. Um.
Speaker 1: Take this scene from Night of the Living Dead, partly
Speaker 1: because it illustrates the point and partly because it's in
Speaker 1: the public domain. Here's the clip. Well, you used to
Speaker 1: really be scared here, Johnny, you're still afraid. Stop it
Speaker 1: now on me. They're coming for you, Barbara, stop it.
Speaker 1: You're acting like a child. They're coming for you. That
Speaker 1: comes one of them. Now he'll hear you. Here he comes.
Speaker 1: I'm getting out. Spoiler alert. It was a zombie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Barbara was right. Barbara was right, And we were talking
Speaker 1: about this off Mike, and the troope is sort of
Speaker 1: one of necessity. If the one was like, I don't
Speaker 1: like this, let's go home, and instead of calling her
Speaker 1: a scaredy cat, the dude was like, yeah, okay, history ends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no movie then, probably, but it is
Speaker 1: interesting that a good percent of the time it is
Speaker 1: a woman or a person of color are both that
Speaker 1: is the one raising the concern and then getting ignored,
Speaker 1: totally ignored. Yeah, yeah, so much so that when it's
Speaker 1: not a woman or a person of color, it's strange,
Speaker 1: like it's a it's usually a purposeful reversal. It becomes
Speaker 1: the whole point. Like it was mind blowing in the
Speaker 1: X Files that Molder, the guy, was the one jumping
Speaker 1: to these crazy conclusions that usually turned out to be right,
Speaker 1: and Scully was the scientific skeptic, a woman who is
Speaker 1: a scientist. Weird what I um? Or when the stoner
Speaker 1: character in Capit in the Woods tells everyone that, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got a bad feeling about this, it's played for laughs,
Speaker 1: you know. The other characters tell him to man up
Speaker 1: and that the weed has a paranoid man um and
Speaker 1: of course he's right though, and the weed is what
Speaker 1: saves him. And and note also that this very frequently
Speaker 1: happens to child characters, like basically none of the Harry
Speaker 1: Potter series would have happened if the kids and the
Speaker 1: adults trusted each other enough to fill each other in.
Speaker 1: But the kids thought that they wouldn't be believed, and
Speaker 1: the adults thought that the kids couldn't handle it. The
Speaker 1: fact that this trope happens to women, people of color,
Speaker 1: and children, I think really speaks to how infantilized those
Speaker 1: two groups that are not ldren. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great point. Um. And I thought about this a lot because,
Speaker 1: as as listeners know, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's another one of those things where the
Speaker 1: books wouldn't have happened if that trust had been there,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of children's books do operate on that um.
Speaker 1: And when I reread them as an adult, I had
Speaker 1: to step back because I kept getting so angry thinking
Speaker 1: why aren't the adults helping? Right? Oh man, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: it's it's infuriating. Um. But but yeah, like like interestingly,
Speaker 1: the way that the troope does play out, disbelieving these
Speaker 1: people is to everyone's detriment, like you know, from either
Speaker 1: just the main characters in the movie to like the
Speaker 1: whole world. People suffer and perish because they aren't believing
Speaker 1: these adult human people. Yeah, he's intelligent human beings. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like, I don't know if that's a
Speaker 1: subconscious yeah, addition or yeah, um. However, I do think
Speaker 1: that this trope of of these people being right can
Speaker 1: also play into the sexist trope of women being preternaturally
Speaker 1: or even magically intuitive. Um. This is a witch woman trope.
Speaker 1: You know, the idea that ladies are just so mysterious,
Speaker 1: who knows what's going on in our heads? Our thought
Speaker 1: processes are just so different. Um. You know the idea
Speaker 1: that men are logical or observational and women are emotional
Speaker 1: or intuitive. Yeah. I was thinking about that too, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking that it's another way, or it can
Speaker 1: be used as another way to victim blame right totally,
Speaker 1: like you should have intuited and then do and no
Speaker 1: one believes us for frustrating. Yeah. And I would say
Speaker 1: that like a high level of observational logic can look
Speaker 1: like intuition um, similar to Arthur's Clark's often quoted adage
Speaker 1: that um any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from from magic. Um.
Speaker 1: Like if you take Sherlock Holmes, his whole stick is
Speaker 1: that it seems like he's intuiting uh impossibly or even magically,
Speaker 1: until he just breaks down his very rational observations. And
Speaker 1: he's often portrayed as being fay or feminine or otherwise
Speaker 1: non masculine. Maybe because of that, maybe alongside that, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's a weird yeah. Yeah, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: come back a little bit too, this whole woman's intuition
Speaker 1: and horror movies thing. But that is, I do like
Speaker 1: that point that it can seem magical, but really you're
Speaker 1: just reasoning it a oh yeah, very high level. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, and you kind of you kind of see it.
Speaker 1: You kind of see it everywhere. You've got, you know,
Speaker 1: the fortune teller, the wise woman, the woman healer or midwife.
Speaker 1: If you add in n a dash of racism, you've
Speaker 1: got the so called gypsy or voodoo woman. Um. If
Speaker 1: you're if you're in a fictional universe that incorporates magic,
Speaker 1: then like, okay, we we can talk about those characters,
Speaker 1: you know, both both with the metaphors that are in
Speaker 1: use there and also with the actual history of those
Speaker 1: medicinal and of religious practices and the fact that women
Speaker 1: have been accused of witchery all over the place. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's so fascinating to me that even in horror
Speaker 1: set in a non magical universe where the villain is
Speaker 1: just a regular dude. You you still get this trope. Um,
Speaker 1: it'll have that moment, yeah, that we're talking about where
Speaker 1: the woman or the token Rachel minority will express that
Speaker 1: seemingly intuitive thought. This feels wrong. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not magic. They're just paying attention. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. There's a great article over at Tour written
Speaker 1: by Emily as your parent about this whole thing, and
Speaker 1: it was so helpful when researching this, and we're going
Speaker 1: to be referencing it throughout. Should you want to look
Speaker 1: it up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. It's called the Peril of
Speaker 1: Being Disbelieved, Horror and the Intuition of Women. Yes, And
Speaker 1: we have just so many examples for you. But first
Speaker 1: we're gonna stop for a quick break for word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about this. The more we thought about it, the
Speaker 1: more and more examples we came up with. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I started realizing that it's in everything. But we wanted
Speaker 1: to point out a couple, a couple of really big,
Speaker 1: strong ones. Yes, and I wanted to start with one
Speaker 1: of my favorite favorite horror movies, Scream and Scream Too
Speaker 1: which is also good. Um. And this is a great
Speaker 1: example of what we're talking about for those of you
Speaker 1: who haven't seen these movies. They follow Sidney Prescott played
Speaker 1: by Nev Campbell, who in the first one is a
Speaker 1: teenager in high schoo cool and she's tormented by the
Speaker 1: ghost face killer. Um. I'm sure you've seen those sort
Speaker 1: of grim Reaper costumes. Yeah, it looks like the Scream
Speaker 1: the painting. Oh yeah, it does look like that. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: or how I imagine that Grim Reaper would look. But
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's influenced by this or vice versa.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that's what the killer or killers
Speaker 1: wears in these movies. Oh yeah, there's there's gonna be
Speaker 1: spoilers in here. Just just just f y. I I
Speaker 1: feel like the isn't the window is past. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you're really concerned about it, yes, f y Um.
Speaker 1: As we talked about in a little bit in our
Speaker 1: final Girl episode, Scream is a hyper aware horror movie.
Speaker 1: It's a horror movie making fun of horror movies. It's
Speaker 1: playing off the tripes. It knows the tropes, it knows
Speaker 1: that you know the tropes, and it uses that to
Speaker 1: mess with you. I love the first time I saw
Speaker 1: the first one, I thought almost every character was the
Speaker 1: killer at some point. I loved it because they were
Speaker 1: so great. They knew you were looking for these, which
Speaker 1: is excellent. Um, and this trope of not being believed
Speaker 1: with a touch of gas lighting in this case is
Speaker 1: certainly played with here because it turns out Toney's boyfriend,
Speaker 1: the person who keeps telling her everything's gonna be all right,
Speaker 1: stop being so obsessed with the past. You're really overreacting,
Speaker 1: he's the serial killer. Yeah, yeah, he Um, he knew,
Speaker 1: he knew. Oh I don't know if you can say
Speaker 1: the character n the trope, but he knew that was
Speaker 1: a way to like he did, he's obsessed with horror movies.
Speaker 1: That's true that. That's an interesting thing about these movies too,
Speaker 1: is that the killers usually reference horror movies at the end,
Speaker 1: as like I took um, I was influenced by Anthony
Speaker 1: Perkins and Psycho like yeah, yeah, that's another interesting aspect
Speaker 1: about these But um, if we moved to scream to
Speaker 1: scream too gets super meta and I love it. At
Speaker 1: this point, Sydney is in college and one of her
Speaker 1: extracurricular activities is drama and oh yeah, she's being tormented
Speaker 1: again by a ghost face killer and anyway, her starring
Speaker 1: role is Cassandra from Greek mythology, and if you haven't
Speaker 1: heard or aren't familiar with Cassandra, she was the daughter
Speaker 1: of Troy's last king and Troy as in Helen of Yeah,
Speaker 1: the god Apollo was super in love with Cassandra, and
Speaker 1: he gave her the ability to see into the future
Speaker 1: and hopes that that would win her over. I didn't though.
Speaker 1: It didn't work and she she wasn't into it, so
Speaker 1: he put a curse on her that made sure no
Speaker 1: one would ever believe her prophecies. So she saw agamm
Speaker 1: Noam's death, the fall of Troy. She told people no
Speaker 1: one believed her. And if you've heard beware of Greeks
Speaker 1: bearing gifts are possibly the translation is, but where the Greeks,
Speaker 1: especially those bearing gifts? That is a quote from her
Speaker 1: in French philosopher Gastone Buccalard even named a syndrome after her,
Speaker 1: the Cassandra syndrome, to describe cases where legitimate concerns were
Speaker 1: raised and not believed. Yes, well, which brings us back
Speaker 1: to scream too. Okay, So Sydney isn't being believed. She's
Speaker 1: playing Cassandra. Yes. Um. There's a scene where they're rehearsing
Speaker 1: the play and Sydney playing Cassandra. She has sort of
Speaker 1: this Greek chorus wearing masks behind her, kind of like
Speaker 1: the stone versions of those tragedy comedy faces, and the
Speaker 1: chorus begins to do this dance attack type thing at her.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of choreography involved, um, only she's not
Speaker 1: acting anymore because she sees that one of the actors
Speaker 1: is wearing the ghost face mask under their hood. But
Speaker 1: no one believes her. And it's great because they're chanting there,
Speaker 1: like chanting behind her hill, Cassandra, no one believes you.
Speaker 1: It's wild. And the finale of the movie takes place
Speaker 1: on that stage and Sydney uses a lot of the props,
Speaker 1: the disorienting music, the lights, the heavy bags holding up
Speaker 1: the lights, the falling of styrofoam rocks and pillars, the
Speaker 1: fog machine in her battle against the killer. And to me,
Speaker 1: it's kind of saying that we haven't really gone that
Speaker 1: far from ancient mythological Greece when it comes to believing women.
Speaker 1: That it's a battle that we're still fighting. But I've
Speaker 1: been known to perhaps read too much into horror movies. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Here is a clip from the scene. Let's dramatic, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we were, we were just like we we
Speaker 1: watched We actually watched the clipping studio and h and
Speaker 1: and producer Andrew and I. Neither of us have seen
Speaker 1: this film in like about twenty years, and so it's
Speaker 1: I forgot how much I freaked out when that scene
Speaker 1: happened in the theater. It's great. Um. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: layers upon layers of um it playing on on the
Speaker 1: first one, on the whole fear of the boyfriend. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, Randy, the character who has all the horror
Speaker 1: movie rules, horror movie rules about sequels. Um, when she
Speaker 1: goes to the police, they don't believe her when she says,
Speaker 1: I think it's this Yeah. Yeah. The entire sequel is
Speaker 1: basically about her not being believed. Yeah. Wow. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty good example for what we're talking about. Yeah. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: I didn't know this that there is an Abba song
Speaker 1: about Cassandra and it's it goes like, sorry, I didn't
Speaker 1: believe you, You're right now we're all dead or some
Speaker 1: heck aba, I know, getting getting serious there. I I
Speaker 1: have I have an example, um that that I wanted
Speaker 1: to discuss that isn't about women, but going back to
Speaker 1: the intersectionality of people of color also having this happen
Speaker 1: in horror films. Um, I wanted to talk about get Out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is another film that is very reflexive about its tropes.
Speaker 1: It expects you to have these certain expectations and it
Speaker 1: uses that to mess with you. Um, if you have
Speaker 1: not seen it and you like either horror films or
Speaker 1: ridiculously canny explorations of racism in liberal white America, stop
Speaker 1: this podcast right now and go watch it because A
Speaker 1: it's really good and be I'm going to spoil everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so good. So yeah, okay. So so get Out
Speaker 1: is a story about a black man's intuitive fears being
Speaker 1: valid to the extreme. Our hero, Chris, has anxiety from
Speaker 1: the get go about driving out to the country to
Speaker 1: meet his white girlfriend's family. She assures him that everything
Speaker 1: will be fine. Everything is not fine. Her family and
Speaker 1: their friends are like walking microaggressions, and the one other
Speaker 1: black dude there who is not a servant, gives Chris
Speaker 1: this panicked, cryptic warning to get out. Um. Chris is
Speaker 1: increasingly unsettled. He asked his girlfriend if they can leave,
Speaker 1: and you know what, she says, yes, She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: of course, of course we can go. She believes him immediately,
Speaker 1: and Chris is relief and like mine, watching this movie
Speaker 1: is intense and palpable, um, Like, you never expect that
Speaker 1: to happen in a scary movie, but hell is your
Speaker 1: characters being believed? Of course, this is, you know, a
Speaker 1: horror movie, so it's a trick. Of course, she's in
Speaker 1: on her family's plot to kidnap Chris and supplant his
Speaker 1: consciousness with that of one of their white friends, because
Speaker 1: Chris's body is healthy, their friends is not. In Black
Speaker 1: lives don't matter. But y'all that moment where she says
Speaker 1: that she believes him, I know, it's it kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to what you were saying earlier about how
Speaker 1: the purposeful. It seems so odd to have Skully be
Speaker 1: the skeptic and scientifically it seems purposeful that moment. I
Speaker 1: remember that to you being like, oh my gosh, it's
Speaker 1: so refreshing, right, and then it's not. It's totally a
Speaker 1: purpose um. The film also explicitly portrays black people not
Speaker 1: being believed by police. Um. On on the way to
Speaker 1: her family's house, Chris and the girlfriend hit a deer
Speaker 1: and a cop shows up, a white cop, and even
Speaker 1: though she was the one driving, the cop asks Chris
Speaker 1: for his I D and only backs off when the
Speaker 1: girlfriend insists that it's unfair and unnecessary. Um. And later
Speaker 1: when Chris contacts a black and about how weird everything
Speaker 1: is out out of the ranch, the friend calls the police,
Speaker 1: but he is also dismissed. Um. And all of that
Speaker 1: pays off with one more twist at the end that uh,
Speaker 1: what was another moment that I was just like, well
Speaker 1: in the theater, like I didn't even know what was
Speaker 1: happening to my face. Um So so you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's the end sequence. Chris is fighting the girlfriend for
Speaker 1: his life and he's winning. Yeah, but but out of
Speaker 1: the night, a police car approaches. And I've heard personally
Speaker 1: never been that scared by police showing up. And it
Speaker 1: was a profound privileged check for me. Like it was
Speaker 1: one of those moments where I was just like, oh, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: I get it. Thank you for telling me about it.
Speaker 1: I'm listening, and I'm so sorry for like not getting
Speaker 1: it previously. Um. And it turns out to be Chris's
Speaker 1: friend who's a T s A agent, And I don't
Speaker 1: care that probably they don't get cars like that because again,
Speaker 1: just like that sense of relief, like you know, if
Speaker 1: it had been cops, cops never would have believed him,
Speaker 1: our judiciary system never would have believed him. Um, And
Speaker 1: it turned out okay, which was such a relief. I
Speaker 1: read that the original ending of the film actually had
Speaker 1: cops show up and that the final scene is Chris
Speaker 1: in in jail or prison. Um, And I am so
Speaker 1: glad that Jordan Peele gave us that relief instead, even
Speaker 1: if it's probably not realistic. Yeah, I think I saw
Speaker 1: the alternate ending. I think you can see it, and
Speaker 1: it was so it was just dismal. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: quite dismal. Um. But that was another That is another
Speaker 1: great example of a a couple of things, a lot
Speaker 1: of things, but a couple of things that we're talking
Speaker 1: about of horror movies being reflective of of society and um,
Speaker 1: fears that we have in society, and also just a
Speaker 1: movie that knows its tropes and messes with you because
Speaker 1: it knows that you know them too. Ah. Yeah, so smart. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: well to lighten things up a little bit, it was
Speaker 1: so sillier. Examples like out of Yeah drive home, how calmon,
Speaker 1: this trope is hocus pocus. Yeah, so I watched last night.
Speaker 1: Oh it's a good movie, stayed very late, or it's
Speaker 1: a silly movie. It's it's a movie I enjoy watching.
Speaker 1: That's probably the best way to describe it. I watched
Speaker 1: it so much as a kid. It was banned from
Speaker 1: my household. I'm not allowed to watch it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I didn't watch it from about the age of eight
Speaker 1: until about the age of four because my parents Nope,
Speaker 1: never again. So funny. Um, When Danny, who's a little sister,
Speaker 1: tells her brother Max not to light the black flame candle,
Speaker 1: he goes right ahead and does it. She says she's scared.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want to do it. It's a dumb idea.
Speaker 1: He's trying to impress. Yeah, a lady friend. But she
Speaker 1: doesn't want him to do it either. Yeah, she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm scared, don't do that. Also, it's like a museum. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we my friends and I played a drinking him to
Speaker 1: it last night, and every time they said, Hollywood, you
Speaker 1: had to take a drink. Um community in community, um Britta,
Speaker 1: that's sort of a bit about the steps to writing
Speaker 1: horror movies. And one of the episodes, and she tells
Speaker 1: the story of a man and woman making out in
Speaker 1: a car and the woman keeps hearing something and the
Speaker 1: dude only agrees to check it out if she promises
Speaker 1: to give him sex when he returns, so he doesn't yeah,
Speaker 1: believe her. Yeah, but he'll use it, but he'll use
Speaker 1: it to get sex. Yeah. Great. Um thriller the music video,
Speaker 1: which I've never seen before. I'd seen the like short one,
Speaker 1: but there's a long thirteen minutes. Yeah, it's beautiful. Well,
Speaker 1: the whole plot thread is essentially this whole thing with
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson telling his date, I don't be afraid because
Speaker 1: it's only a movie. But the next then, of course,
Speaker 1: it turns out that it's not just a movie and
Speaker 1: she is follow by zombies. So that's encapsulated right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it out, I enjoyed it quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Oh and it just like like yeah, like
Speaker 1: once we started thinking about it, it's hard not to
Speaker 1: pile up the the the examples of it. Um. I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting that in some of these stories it's
Speaker 1: it's not just other people disbelieving women, it's women doubting themselves.
Speaker 1: Stuff like the Boba Duke, the Ring, Rosemary's Baby, Hunting
Speaker 1: of Hillhouse, Hereditary, the Shining Joy, Spuyers, and Stranger Things.
Speaker 1: I also think it's really interesting that all those characters
Speaker 1: are mothers. Yes, and I'm not sure what exactly that says.
Speaker 1: I think that's another episode about about motherhood and horror movies.
Speaker 1: But oh yeah yeah, um, of course all of these
Speaker 1: women finally do like own the fact that something we're
Speaker 1: just happening and reach out for help and they're disbelieved.
Speaker 1: But yeah uh and speaking of stranger things, oh okay,
Speaker 1: I keep getting excited. Uh. I do love that the
Speaker 1: two young women, um eleven and Nancy are a lot
Speaker 1: more confident, Like they don't doubt themselves. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're also dismissed, but but at least, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like it's it's better sweet like they
Speaker 1: I think the point is that they haven't had that
Speaker 1: confidence in their own senses ground out of them yet.
Speaker 1: That is more bitter than sweet, perhaps, But um I
Speaker 1: I do enjoy that as well. Here's hoping that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these fictional characters keep fighting the good fight absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: Right before we started podcasting, producer Andrew reminded us of
Speaker 1: Aliens not Alien too. It is the second one that
Speaker 1: is aliens with an S and not alien singular. But
Speaker 1: the I just watched this recently as well, because I
Speaker 1: do like a whole two month horror movie thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And in the beginning, there's this committee of business people
Speaker 1: and lawyers questioning replace the corney Weaver's character about her
Speaker 1: experience on lv TO for six or whatever it is
Speaker 1: um with the alien, and no one believes her. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She keeps saying, like, it destroyed my crew, destroyed my ship.
Speaker 1: The only way I could get out was to jettison
Speaker 1: it and escape on this whole on the little pod.
Speaker 1: And they're all like, I acid comes out of its rains.
Speaker 1: They're like, lady, that's patently silly. Jo. Do you know
Speaker 1: how much money we lost? Yeah? Yeah, they keep bringing
Speaker 1: that up, the whole money thing. Um. And then when
Speaker 1: she she's talking to the sort of marine, the alien marines,
Speaker 1: the space marines, Alien Marines marines, um, and she's trying
Speaker 1: to share a story and to me is obviously like
Speaker 1: having difficulty. It's clear she has this experience. They sort
Speaker 1: of or just like okay, yeah, sure whatever, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just not that scary. Yeah sure, it's not that bad.
Speaker 1: Um pretty much. And every episode of Supernatural the TV
Speaker 1: series starts with this some version of this. Sure, a
Speaker 1: lot of episodes of Buffy too, Yeah yeah, and and
Speaker 1: frequently it's one of the it's one of the actual
Speaker 1: Scoopy gang. Like, the number of times that Buffy herself
Speaker 1: is disbelieved by everyone around here is truly remarkable because
Speaker 1: it's just like, y'all, we did this last week and
Speaker 1: the week before that, Um, paranormal activity to where it's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting dynamic and um, if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen this, you probably know the gist of it. But
Speaker 1: basically it's this couple and her boyfriend. It's weird because
Speaker 1: it's like he believes her because he wants to. He
Speaker 1: believes that there's paranormal activity. He wants to capture it.
Speaker 1: But he does believe her when she's telling him how
Speaker 1: serious and dangerous it is, so it's kind of a strange,
Speaker 1: like he's excited by it. He keeps inviting it in
Speaker 1: and she's saying no, like this is a scary thing
Speaker 1: we need to bring to mess with it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think we should go do this and try to
Speaker 1: fix it. And he keeps saying I can fix it,
Speaker 1: it's not that bad. He doesn't believe her when she's
Speaker 1: saying she's telling him the consequences and the severity, the
Speaker 1: seriousness of it, which is an interesting kind of take
Speaker 1: on the whole thing. Um and we when we're talking
Speaker 1: about this, you might wonder why is this troupe so common?
Speaker 1: Probably you have a good idea, but talked about it anyway. Emily,
Speaker 1: as your parent in that article that we reverenced at
Speaker 1: the top, wrote, every woman knows what this feels like.
Speaker 1: They know what it means, They know how hard the
Speaker 1: world works not to believe them. And this particular narrative
Speaker 1: device always feels like a pointed jab, a great big
Speaker 1: spotlight on that precise problem. It doesn't even matter if
Speaker 1: it's intentional. In fact, the idea that it might be
Speaker 1: unintentional makes it all the more poignant. Filmmakers and script
Speaker 1: writers accidentally pointing out how women's fears are never taken
Speaker 1: seriously again and again, and why would she have that
Speaker 1: sense when no one else was bothered. Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: probably women's intuition. But intuition is not a magical power
Speaker 1: granted to half the population by sheer random happenstance. It's
Speaker 1: not the consolation prize you drew because the world calls
Speaker 1: you a woman. Intuition is an ability built up over time,
Speaker 1: powered partly by animal instinct and partly by learning and
Speaker 1: partly by experience. Any human being can tap into intuition,
Speaker 1: but women are constantly pegged as the humans who own
Speaker 1: this preternatural ability. Why because women are supposed to be
Speaker 1: on their guard every second of the day, Because our
Speaker 1: very existence in the right skirt or pair of high
Speaker 1: heels is antation to untold abuses. Because we're not supposed
Speaker 1: to trust anyone, but we're supposed to be unfailingly sweet
Speaker 1: to everyone. Women are intuitive because tapping that intuition is
Speaker 1: something that we are encouraged towards from the day we
Speaker 1: were born, for the sake of our safety and our lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, women and people of color have to pay attention.
Speaker 1: We have to control how we move through the world
Speaker 1: more carefully. You know. We we make note of our surroundings,
Speaker 1: We pick up on nonverbal cues. It's a learned skill. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, I haven't seen this horror movie
Speaker 1: in a while, but I was thinking about the silence
Speaker 1: of the lambs Buffalo Bill. He says something along the
Speaker 1: lines of you wouldn't believe how many people like, even
Speaker 1: though they're scared, are too afraid to be rude. Oh
Speaker 1: yeah right, I remember that part. Yeah, like they'll put
Speaker 1: their safety at risk. And I feel that all the time.
Speaker 1: Where I do think that, um, women in our socialized
Speaker 1: to be so polite and so nice and so friendly.
Speaker 1: Also watch out and watch out. It's your fault if
Speaker 1: anything happens, I mean, if it really did happen. Yeah. Yeah, um.
Speaker 1: We we do have some more history and science science
Speaker 1: about why women, um and people of color are less
Speaker 1: likely to be believed. But first we're going to pause
Speaker 1: for one more quick break for word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So, as we've said
Speaker 1: before on this show and in this very episode, harmonies
Speaker 1: are a great mirror the hold up to society, and
Speaker 1: this is no exception on a large societal scale. We
Speaker 1: don't trust women. They're over dramatic, they overreact, people of
Speaker 1: color to their unreliable narrators all of us. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and this goes back forever um in the case of women,
Speaker 1: in the case of people of color, that the modern
Speaker 1: concepts of race are relatively recent constructs um, created and
Speaker 1: perpetuated during globalization and the and the slave trade to
Speaker 1: dehumanize and discredit enslaved people's and since then, popular culture
Speaker 1: has largely drawn people of color as unintelligent brutes. This
Speaker 1: pervaded in the United States via minstrel shows basically right
Speaker 1: up until the Civil rights movement in the middle of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Um. But you know, although most people
Speaker 1: know that like black face is bad now, um, those
Speaker 1: biases are absolutely still part of our culture. Yeah. For women, Um,
Speaker 1: there's an Egyptian pirus from six BC. It's the oldest
Speaker 1: known medical text that actually describes depressive symptoms, and it
Speaker 1: blames women's mental health problems on their uteruses moving around
Speaker 1: their bodies making trouble. Yeah yeah, yeah, um yeah. Hop
Speaker 1: over to ancient Greece A few centuries later you get
Speaker 1: physicians talking about uterine melancholy. Um. Hippocrates gave us the
Speaker 1: first written mention of hysteria around five b C. Hysteria
Speaker 1: being described as an anxiety and other symptoms in women
Speaker 1: caused by a bad and again wandering uterus. I don't
Speaker 1: know why they thought it detached. Is it like a
Speaker 1: ghostly uter I don't know. No, I think it was physical,
Speaker 1: because they would they would give you like they would
Speaker 1: like put like good smelling things by your nose and
Speaker 1: like bad smelling things by your by your badge if
Speaker 1: if they wanted it to move higher up in your body,
Speaker 1: and they would reverse that. It's very sensitive to smell
Speaker 1: if they wanted it to move back down again. I
Speaker 1: know that's why they didn't let women wide trains for
Speaker 1: a while. Oh yes, because they thought that like any
Speaker 1: sudden stop. Heck, although that could have just been they
Speaker 1: didn't want women writing traps. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know for sure or uh yeah. In the case of
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, the cure for this was generally having sex
Speaker 1: with men, of course, because men were believed to be
Speaker 1: superior um and uh so later those those uh those
Speaker 1: beliefs were codified into religion. You know, Eve was physically
Speaker 1: mentally weaker than Adam, so she's the one who fell
Speaker 1: for the serpent's trick. Yea, and yeah, The belief in
Speaker 1: women being irrational due to problems with their sex organs
Speaker 1: lasted into the twenty century. That's why it's why vibrators
Speaker 1: were invented. People were like, ladies, you you really need
Speaker 1: to You can't be coming into the doctor's office this
Speaker 1: often to get have a vibrator to have orgasms. We
Speaker 1: need to give you a take home method of solving
Speaker 1: this problem. They didn't call it orgasms then, but yeah,
Speaker 1: well one, that's one good thing I suppose. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: and I do want to put in here that that,
Speaker 1: of course it is completely possible hormones to affect your
Speaker 1: mental health, but like dudes have hormones too, breaking news.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you had to learn it here, but learn
Speaker 1: it you did. Yeah. If we if we bring all
Speaker 1: of this back to the whole hashtag believer and Brett
Speaker 1: cobanaw thing um when it comes to sexual assault, there
Speaker 1: has been some science looking into why we don't believe women,
Speaker 1: and it has to do with how the brain handles trauma.
Speaker 1: Survivors don't outwardly act how folks think they should. Instead
Speaker 1: of a sobbing mess, they might seem kind of cold.
Speaker 1: And that's because a lot of survivors experience disassociation from
Speaker 1: their body. Also, a lot of times their memories might
Speaker 1: seem flimsy, which causes people to doubt them. But again,
Speaker 1: this is your brain shutting down all other functions that
Speaker 1: don't have to do with pure survival. Wearing a traumatic,
Speaker 1: potentially life threatening event, and in some cases it's not
Speaker 1: that you can't remember, it's just you have difficulty retrieving
Speaker 1: it and describing it. Another thing the brain does that
Speaker 1: plays into this has to do with how it handles
Speaker 1: and often rejects new information that challenges accepted patterns are perceptions.
Speaker 1: If you find out a friend of yours, someone you've
Speaker 1: known for a long time, is accused of sexual assault,
Speaker 1: this challenge is something you've long held to be true,
Speaker 1: and your brain is like, Nope, no, can't be obviously not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can be presented with all these facts and your
Speaker 1: brain is just um. But it is interesting to point
Speaker 1: out that once a man gets involved, the story kind
Speaker 1: of changes. Six women had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault,
Speaker 1: and Tina Fey referenced these accusations twice, once on a
Speaker 1: Weekend to update another time on thirty Rock, But it
Speaker 1: was when the comedian Hannibal Burris called Bill Cosby a rapist,
Speaker 1: and one of his bits that people started to think,
Speaker 1: oh oh no, maybe we should look into this. It
Speaker 1: took a man to legitimize the conversation and lead to
Speaker 1: actual action, and just to drive his point home. In
Speaker 1: some countries around the world, rape allegations have to be
Speaker 1: corroborated by one or more men, and that used to
Speaker 1: be the case in some some states in the US
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. Another way to look at this whole
Speaker 1: thing is how in our society we elevate the desires
Speaker 1: of men at the expense of women. Like in this
Speaker 1: whole conversation about Brett Kavanaugh, the accusers are destroying his
Speaker 1: life and his future, but never mind the lives and
Speaker 1: futures and just general well being of the women involved. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: and in the nineties, the Philadelphia Police sex crimes unit
Speaker 1: called themselves the Lion Bitches Unit. Yeah so sweet. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: With the article I read, they didn't seem too upset
Speaker 1: about getting found out either. Yeah uh um I read.
Speaker 1: I read an excellent essay by Stephanie Merritt in The
Speaker 1: Guardian called the cult of the unreliable female narrator must
Speaker 1: be stopped um, in which she argues that society's disbelief
Speaker 1: of women is exactly what makes horror movies like the
Speaker 1: ones that we've talked about today so effectively frightening. Um.
Speaker 1: She She says that because men are less vulnerable in
Speaker 1: our society, those creative works wouldn't have quote the same
Speaker 1: atmosphere of claustrophobic menace if the main characters were male. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like we could keep talking about this forever
Speaker 1: and keep bringing up examples forever. But that kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of The Witch. Oh yeah, um. Which what
Speaker 1: I found so frightening about that movie was, Um, it
Speaker 1: did such a great job of driving home to me
Speaker 1: why Um. We we read about the Salem witch trials
Speaker 1: all the time and it feels kind of at least
Speaker 1: in my case, it's always felt kind of distant. But
Speaker 1: that just brought home to me how there's no way
Speaker 1: to prove you aren't a wish. No one believed the
Speaker 1: main character thomasin um, Yeah, you can't prove that you're
Speaker 1: not possessed by the demon, and it was terrifying. Um,
Speaker 1: No one believed her, And I think that's what made
Speaker 1: it so relatable is even if we're not exactly trying
Speaker 1: to ward off accusations of witchcraft, although I mean you
Speaker 1: can see parallels certainly in some things. That idea of
Speaker 1: not being believed is scary and absolutely yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that really as a society, we don't want to
Speaker 1: believe women because we don't want to have to deal
Speaker 1: with it. We don't want to have to deal with
Speaker 1: what it means and with having to do the work
Speaker 1: too to fix it, to combat what these women, all
Speaker 1: these women are saying is happening. Yeah. I think it's
Speaker 1: the same reason that there's such pushback against Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: because people are like, well, you know, like that that
Speaker 1: intrinsic response that all lives matter thing is essentially saying like,
Speaker 1: there's no problem, right, Like, why are you saying that
Speaker 1: there's a problem. Stop saying that there's a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you admit that, then you have to admit
Speaker 1: that you have to work on it, exactly right, that
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot of work, and and it is frightening.
Speaker 1: It's frightening. Um yea balloons balloons Uh oh, I just
Speaker 1: watched it recently. No balloons. So this brings us to
Speaker 1: the end of this episode, which I I foolishly when
Speaker 1: I pitched it to you, Lauren, thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be a much more fearful thing. I don't know
Speaker 1: what I was thinking. I was like, we can relate
Speaker 1: this to current events, which are great, so much fun.
Speaker 1: Don't know what I was thinking, but it was really
Speaker 1: enlightening to do. As someone like I said, we both
Speaker 1: watch a lot of horror movies, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: guess that for a lot of you, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to unsee this now. Uh, it's really
Speaker 1: everywhere it is. It is, and I don't know, and
Speaker 1: I do think that it's it's it's an interesting and
Speaker 1: like culturally useful trope, especially in discussions like this, you know,
Speaker 1: like once you're aware of it, then yeah, hopefully you
Speaker 1: can do stuff to help change it, one would hope.
Speaker 1: And we're all about change again, growing for the better here. UM,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on the show. Um,
Speaker 1: hopefully you'll you'll come back. We can talk some more
Speaker 1: horror movies one of other things. I won't ye cash
Speaker 1: to you whatever you want to talk about. Yes, no,
Speaker 1: I thank you so much for having me. This has
Speaker 1: been This has been a lot of fun. Yeah and um,
Speaker 1: you can always find the both of us on saver.
Speaker 1: We would love for you to come check that out.
Speaker 1: UM And I think I've mentioned before I love fan
Speaker 1: fiction and uh we we're trying to get a little
Speaker 1: maybe a mini series or on and off against series
Speaker 1: of reading stuff that you, you listeners have written. So
Speaker 1: if you have any fiction, nonfiction, anything fan fiction that
Speaker 1: you've created that you are cool with us reading on
Speaker 1: the air, please send it in UM. We might even
Speaker 1: get some voices and some production some production work into it. Um.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I would love for any of you
Speaker 1: all to send some stuff like that in UM. Also,
Speaker 1: just um. Another mini series we're thinking about doing is
Speaker 1: What's something your Mom Never told you? Because you know
Speaker 1: this show we'll get back to our roots a little bit.
Speaker 1: So if you have anything like that, we would love
Speaker 1: to hear it. You can email us at mom Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on Instagram at
Speaker 1: stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you for listening.