Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to step
I never told you production of iHeart Radio. And as
you know listeners, we are big horror fans here at
Smindy One costume. I didn't mention that I saw a
(00:25):
lot at Dragon Con that is recently at freaked me out.
Was the scream, the ghost face mask and made me nervous.
And we've already been running some horror stuff because we
have so much content around that. We've already started discussing
our horror movies that we need to watch. We've got
some plans. We've got some plans listeners, for sure, I'm
(00:46):
sure no shock to you at all. But in the
spirit of that, I have been meaning to bring back
this episode. This was before your time, Samantha, but bright
before your time when I bought on Lauren from Savor,
our friend and co worker uh to do an episode
with me about the trope and horror movies of why
didn't you believe her? Because once you see it, you
(01:09):
can't un see it. I swear it's a woman who's like, hey,
I think this is a bad idea. We shouldn't do this,
and then a guy being like no, no, no, no, no no,
you're being too emotional. Whatever it is, let's go, and
then death ensues. And since we've done this episode, I
see it all the time, and in fact, I think
(01:30):
I jokingly texted you and some of my other friends
the paranormal Activity movies, which I do love. Um could
essentially be summed up as a woman being like, hey,
to to a dude in her life, I think this
is bad. We shouldn't mess with it. The dude being like, oh, no,
I think it's cool. Let's see what happens. Everyone does,
(01:52):
but not always. Sometimes everybody just dies. But it is.
It is something where I'm just like, there it is somebody.
Usually a woman may be like, no, I think this
is a bad idea. So yes, as we move into
this season, we thought we would bring back this classic episode,
so please enjoy. Hi. This is Annie and you're listening
(02:18):
to stuff mom never told you. And today we're joined
by a guest co host, Lauren vulgal Bomb. Hello. That's me, Hi, Lauren, Hi,
(02:40):
thanks for joining us. Yeah anytime, I mean maybe not
literally anytime, because I already do a lot of other things, Yes,
including a show, a little show you may have heard
of that we co host together once food Stuff. It
is now called Savor Savor Savor. Um. It just re
launched last week. We were trying or eating lots of food,
(03:01):
drinking lots of drinks, a lot of people, talking to
some amazing people, and incorporating clips from those interviews into
our stories about different foods and food cultures. So it's
pretty I think it's okay. Yeah, we're not biased. No no,
And Lauren, has you've been on the show before, have
you not? I have back up back when Kristen and
(03:23):
Caroline where where the hosts. I was on an episode
about Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I bugged them for
years about doing an episode about Buffy. Well, you succeeded.
It was a long, hard fought campaign, but it was
you got what you in the end. And that's one
of the reasons I wanted you to come on this
(03:45):
week to fill in for Bridget because, Um, you like horror.
I like horror. Oh yeah, yeah. We talked about this
all the time. We do, we do um and I
feel like real life has started to feel a little
horror movie esque only just started. Yes, Um, so we
(04:10):
originally today we were going to talk about and we
are going to talk about the trope of in horror movies,
why don't people believe women? And it turned into that,
but also so much real life stuff. Yeah. I'm guessing
that some of you have seen or heard the phrase
believe women being tossed around lately. Yeah, so there's that
(04:34):
whole trend believe women trending on Twitter in response to
the accusations of assault made against Supreme Court Justice nominee
Brett Kevinaugh and the complete dismissal of these accusations are
even like just don't like, people don't care, um in
in a lot of cases. Um, and you've probably all
heard these numbers before, but I think they're worth repeating.
(04:57):
Sexual assault is all too common, some estimates say one
in five women, and it's more common than we think
in men as well. We don't hear about that as often,
but it should be part of the conversation. Absolutely, And
only somewhere from two to eight percent of sexual assault
accusations are found to be false, But the conversations we
have around this would suggest that false accusations just happened
(05:18):
all of the time. Yeah. Um, and I've been thinking
a lot about this, and I think even outside of
sexual assault. People just don't believe women. And I can
think of so many examples in my life where I've
said something like, hey, I like this song and been
interrogated about it by a dude as if that there's
(05:39):
no way you know this song, you like this song,
you've never heard that song? Yea? What in like a
fake geek girl way, like like you were trying to
impress them by saying that yeah. And it was weird
because I'm thinking of one particular instance, and it got
to the point where another guy who I didn't know
very well stepped in the conversation and said, dude, she's
(06:00):
said she likes it. I don't. I don't know what
was going on. It wasn't even that quote manly of
a thing. In fact, I would argue that that's more
traditionally feminine type music. But whatever. Another example is how
I'm happy single people, that's impossible. You're just you don't
(06:22):
know what you're talking about, young lady. You're just miserable.
You don't know how to recognize it yet, but you'll
you'll understand um. And I found a lot of studies
researching this that show that managers are less likely to
believe women who ask for flex time as compared to men.
They think their priorities are divided with families. It couldn't be,
(06:46):
because they're they're human people. The only men are people.
Women are women. That's right, that's right, that's the heart
of this whole thing. Have you ever experienced something like this? Jeez,
it feels like about once a week. Uh. My favorite
is along the fake geek girl thing when when guys.
Guys don't usually argue with me about it, but um,
(07:07):
but I get this response from dude sometimes where they
are shocked beyond belief that I like this geeky thing
that they also like. They're like, well, but I'm like, well,
but what They're like, well, be your girl, and I'm
like yes, And I like Batman. I don't know why
everyone likes Batman. It's it's strange. And another example, and
(07:31):
thinking about this this morning got me so mad. Um.
I have a bunch of intolerances to a bunch of
different foods, bell, peppers, onion, stuff like that, which I
discovered by getting like really sick repeatedly from eating dishes
that contain even just a little bit of those things,
and kind of like process of elimination, no pun intended
figuring out that it's those specific foods um and Yeah,
(07:52):
I had a dude argue with me about how just
just a little bit can't possibly hurt you. It can't possibly.
I was like, what do I need to record bathroom
noises and send them to you? Like I don't, he'd
probably never talked to you. Again, that's a long way
(08:13):
to get to solve the problem. Yeah, this is true. Yeah,
I've mentioned before on this show that, um, I I
often get the fake get girl thing all of the time,
and then once you finally have proven yourself, then it's
like suddenly they're super attracted to me, at least in
my case. And I'm like, so your qualifications are you
(08:40):
want someone who's fluent in and Marvel and that is
kind of a reflection of you. M well, that's for
a different episode. We also talked about this, this whole
thing I'm not believing women in our episode on women
in pain, how the medical community consistently dismisses women who
(09:02):
who come and try to get helps for pain specifically,
and it takes so much longer to get a diagnosis
for traditionally women's um issues, which is really frustrating. Oh, absolutely,
and this also ties into an intersectional issue. The medical
community also doesn't believe people of color pretty frequently. Studies
(09:22):
have shown that implicit biases lead doctors to prescribe fewer
pain killers and less aggressive treatments to black patients than
white patients, even when the patients present the exact same symptoms.
So there's there's a lot of issues there. There's a
lot of stuff that we need to work on. But
in this episode, we're going to try to use horror
(09:42):
movies as a semi fun ones to tackle a very
depressing and frustrating issue. Gay. Yeah. Um, Like we talked
about in our final Girl episode, horror movies are really
great reflections of the anxieties we have as a society,
or or the observ sans are hang ups. Just in general,
(10:02):
I think horror movies are a great way to sort
of test out where we are, do a little, a
little yeah, just see to see see what's going on
in the mind of the common common person. Yeah, And
if if horror movies or anything to go by our
horror media in general, we do not believe women or
people of color, yes, both, alright, So even if we don't,
(10:27):
even if you don't because Lauren and I do. Even
if you don't watch a lot of horror movies, you
have probably seen this before in crime procedurals and supernatural killers,
anything like that. You've seen a character, most likely a
female or a minority or both, say hey, I don't
like this, let's go back and get ignored. And then
(10:50):
probably they're both killed, or maybe it's a bigger group
all killed by a monster in the woods or a
CEO killer in the woods, or what have you. Or
if the woman survives, the police don't believe her then,
but I will admit the monster killed my boyfriend might
be a bit of a stretch. I would I would
(11:11):
want to conduct some further investigation. Yes, believe women find
the truth. Yeah, I like that, which I've seen presented
as a as a useful thing in these are non horror,
I'm not going to say their non horror. And these
are regular times, and these are non movie times. Yes,
those times. If it's a big conspiracy and we're all
(11:34):
in a movie, oh man, what a downer of a
movie it is? Okay. Um. So, while most horror movie
troops can be seen as moralistic or cautionary tales, this
one seems more just assumed. Um. Take this scene from
(11:55):
Night of the Living Dead, partly because it illustrates the
point and partly because it's in the public domain. Yeah,
here's the clip. Well, you used to really be scared here, Johnny,
you're still afraid. Stop it now, I mean it. They're
coming for you, Barbara. Stop it. You're acting like a child.
(12:17):
They're coming for you. Look, that comes one of them.
Now he'll hear you. Here he comes. Now I'm getting
out of here, Johnny. Spoiler alert. It was a zombie. Yeah,
Barbara was right. Barbara was right. And we were talking
about this off Mike, and the trope is sort of
(12:39):
one of necessity. If the one was like, I don't
like this, let's go home, and instead of calling her
a scaredy cat, the dude was like, yeah, okay, history ends. Yeah,
there's no there's no movie. Then probably, But it is
interesting that a good percent of the time it is
a woman or a person of color are both that
is the one raising the the concern and then getting ignored,
(13:02):
totally ignored. Yeah, yeah, so much so that when it's
not a woman or a person of color, it's strange,
like it's a it's usually a purposeful reversal, it becomes
the whole point. Like it was mind blowing in the
X Files that Molder, the guy was the one jumping
to these crazy conclusions that usually turned out to be right,
and Scully was the scientific skeptic, a woman who is
(13:25):
a scientist. Weird, what imp um or When the stoner
character and Cabin in the Woods tells everyone that, you know,
I've got a bad feeling about this, it's played for laughs,
you know. The other characters tell him to man up
and that the weed has a paranoid man um And
of course he's right though, and the weed is what
saves him. And and note also that this very frequently
(13:47):
happens to child characters, Like basically none of the Harry
Potter series would have happened if the kids and the
adults trusted each other enough to fill each other in.
But the kids thought that they wouldn't be believed, and
the adult thought that the kids couldn't handle it. The
fact that this trope happens to women, people of color,
and children, I think really speaks to how infantilized those
(14:10):
two groups that are not children. Yeah, yeah, that's a
great point. Um And I thought about this a lot, because,
as as listeners know, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan.
And uh, it's another one of those things where the
books wouldn't have happened if that trust had been there.
Like a lot of children's books do operate on that. Um.
(14:31):
And when I reread them as an adult, I had
to step back because I kept getting so angry thinking
why aren't the adults help from right? Oh man, yeah,
there's it's it's infuriating. Um. But but yeah, like, like interestingly,
the way that the troope does play out, disbelieving these
(14:52):
people is to everyone's detriment, like you know, from either
just the main characters in the movie to like the
whole world. People suffer and perish because they aren't believing
these adult human people. Yeah it's intelligent human beings. Right.
It's like it's like, I don't know if that's a
subconscious yeah addition or yeah. Um. However, I do think
(15:19):
that this trope of of these people being right can
also play into the sexist trope of women being preternaturally
or even magically intuitive. Um, this is a witch woman trope,
you know, the idea that ladies are just so mysterious.
Who knows what's going on in our heads. Our thought
processes are just so different. Um. You know the idea
(15:41):
that men are logical or observational and women are emotional
or intuitive. Yeah, I was thinking about that too, and
I was thinking that it's another way or it can
be used as another way to victim blame totally, like
you should have intuited and then we do and no
one believes us for frustrating at Yeah. And I would
(16:04):
say that like a high level of observational logic can
look like intuition um, similar to Arthur C. Clark's often
quoted adage that UM any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from from magic. UM. Like if you take Sherlock Holmes,
his whole stick is that it seems like he's intuiting
uh impossibly or even magically until he just breaks down
(16:25):
his very rational observations. And he's often portrayed as being
fay or feminine or otherwise non masculine. Maybe because of that,
maybe alongside that, I don't know, it's a weird. Yeah. Yeah,
And we're going to come back a little bit too,
this whole woman's intuition and horror movies thing. But that
(16:45):
is I do like that point that it can seem magical,
but really you're just reasoning, oh yeah, high level. Yeah,
I mean, and you kind of you kind of see it.
You kind of see it everywhere. You've got, you know,
the fortune teller, the wise woman, the woman healer or midwife.
If you add in Nadasha racism, you've got the so
called gypsy or voodoo woman. Um. If you're if you're
(17:07):
in a fictional universe that incorporates magic, then like, okay,
we we can talk about those characters. You know, both
both with the metaphors that are in use there and
also with the actual history of those medicinal and of
religious practices and the fact that women have been accused
of witchery all over the place. Um. But it's so
fascinating to me that even in horror, set in a
(17:30):
non magical universe where the villain is just a regular dude,
you you still get this trope. Um, it'll have that moment, yeah,
that we're talking about where the woman or the token
rachel minority will express that seemingly intuitive thought this feels wrong.
I don't like it. It's not it's not magic. They're
just paying attention. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. There's a great
(17:55):
article over at Tour written by Emily as your parent
about this whole thing, and it was sol full when
researching this, and we're going to be referencing it throughout.
Should you want to look it up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah.
It's called the Peril of Being Disbelieved, Horror and the
Intuition of Women. Yes, and we have just so many
(18:15):
examples for you. But first we're gonna stop for a
quick break for word from our sponsor and we're back,
Thank you, sponsor. So I'm thinking about this. The more
we thought about it, the more and more examples we
(18:40):
came up with. Oh yeah, I started realizing that it's
in everything. But we wanted to point out a couple,
a couple like really big strong ones. Yes, and I
wanted to start with one of my favorite favorite horror movies,
Scream and Scream Too, which is also good. Um, and
this is a great example of what we're talking about.
(19:02):
For those of you who haven't seen these movies. They
follow Sidney Prescott played by Nev Campbell, who in the
first one is a teenager in high school and she's
tormented by the ghost face killer. Um. I'm sure you've
seen those sort of Grim Reaper costumes. Yeah, it looks
like the Scream the painting. Oh yeah, it does look
(19:25):
like that. Um or how I imagine that Grim Reaper
would look. But I don't know if that's influenced by
this or vice versa. I don't know. But that's what
the killer or killers wears in these movies. Oh yeah,
there's there's gonna be spoilers in here. Just just just
f y I. I feel like the isn't the window
is past. Yeah, but if you're really concerned about it, yes,
(19:48):
f y Um. As we talked about in a little
bit in our final Girl episode, Scream is a hyper
aware horror movie. It's a horror movie making fun of
horror movies. Is playing off the tripes. It knows the tropes,
It knows that you know the tropes, and it uses
that to mess with you. I love the first time
(20:08):
I saw the first one, I thought almost every character
was the killer at some point. I loved it because
they were so great. They knew you were looking for
the which is excellent. Um. And this trope of not
being believed with a touch of gas lighting in this case,
is certainly played with here because it turns out Toiney's boyfriend,
(20:32):
the person who keeps telling her everything's going to be
all right. Stop being so obsessed with the past. You're
really overreacting. He's the serial killer. Yeah he um, he knew,
he knew. Oh I don't know if you can say
the character n the trope, but he knew that was
a way to like he did. He's obsessed with horror movies.
(20:53):
That's true. That That's an interesting thing about these movies too,
is that the killers usually reference horror movies at the
end as Yeah, I took um, I was influenced by
Anthony Perkins and Psycho like yeah, yeah, that's another interesting
aspect about these But um, if we moved to Scream
(21:14):
to Scream too gets super meta and I love it.
At this point, Sydney is in college and one of
her extracurricular activities is drama and oh yeah, she's being
tormented again by a ghost face killer and anyway, her
starring role is Cassandra from Greek mythology and if you
(21:36):
haven't heard or aren't familiar with Cassandra, she was the
daughter of Troy's last king and Troy as in Helen
of Yeah, the god Apollo was super in love with Cassandra,
and he gave her the ability to see into the
future and hopes that that would win her over. I
(21:57):
didn't though, I didn't work, and she she wasn't into it,
so he put a curse on her that made sure
no one would ever believe her prophecies. So she saw
agamem Noam's death, the fall of Troy. She told people
no one believed her. And if you've heard beware of
Greeks bearing gifts are possibly the translation is where the Greeks,
(22:20):
especially those bearing gifts. That is a quote from her in.
French philosopher Gaston Buccalard even named a syndrome after her,
the Cassandra syndrome, to describe cases where legitimate concerns were
raised and not believe yes, which brings us back to
scream too. Okay, so Sydney isn't being believed. She's playing Cassandra. Yes. Um.
(22:47):
There's a scene where they're rehearsing the play and Sydney
playing Cassandra. She has sort of this Greek chorus wearing
masks behind her, kind of like the stone versions of
those tragedy comedy faces, and the chorus begins to do
this dance attack type thing at her. There's a lot
of choreography involved. Um, only she's not acting anymore because
(23:09):
she sees that one of the actors is wearing the
ghost face mask under their hood. But no one believes her.
And it's great because they're chanting there, like chanting behind
her hill, Cassandra, no one believes you. It's wild. And
the finale of the movie takes place on that stage
(23:29):
and Sydney uses a lot of the props, the disorienting music,
the lights, the heavy bags holding up the lights, the
falling of styrofoam rocks and pillars, the fog machine in
her battle against the killer. And to me, it's kind
of saying that we haven't really gotten that far from
ancient mythological Greece when it comes to believing women that
(23:50):
it's a battle that we're still fighting. But I've been
known to perhaps read too much into horror movies. Anyway,
Here is a clip from this scene, so dramatic, right, Oh, yeah,
(24:23):
we were, we were just like we we watched we
actually watched the clipping studio and uh and and producer
Andrew and I. Neither of us have seen this film
in like about twenty years and so it's I forgot
how much I freaked out when that scene happened in
the theater. It's great. Um yeah, there are layers upon
layers of um it playing on on the first one,
(24:46):
on the whole fear of the boyfriend. Now, of course Randy,
the character who has all the horror movie rules, horror
movie rules about sequels. Um, when she goes to the police,
they don't believe her when she says, I think it's
this Yeah. Yeah. The entire sequel is basically about her
not being believed. Yeah. Wow. It's a pretty good example
(25:08):
for what we're talking about. Yeah. Also, I didn't know
this that there is an ABBA song about Cassandra and
it's it goes like, sorry, I didn't believe you, You're
right now we're all dead or some I know, getting
(25:29):
getting serious there, I I have I have an example,
um that that I wanted to discuss that isn't about women,
but going back to the intersectionality of people of color
also having this happen in horror films. Um. I wanted
to talk about get Out. Yeah, this is another film
that is very reflexive about its tropes. It expects you
(25:51):
to have these certain expectations and it uses that to
mess with you. Um, if you have not seen it
and you like either horror films or ridiculous, sleep canny
explorations of racism in liberal white America, stop this podcast
right now and go watch it because A it's really
good and be I'm going to spoil everything. Yeah, it's
so good. Yeah, okay. So so get Out is a
(26:13):
story about a black man's intuitive fears being valid to
the extreme. Our hero Chris, has anxiety from the get
go about driving out to the country to meet his
white girlfriend's family. She assures him that everything will be fine.
Everything is not fine. Her family and their friends are
like walking microaggressions, and the one other black dude there
(26:34):
who is not a servant, gives Chris this panicked, cryptic
warning to get out. Um. Chris is increasingly unsettled. He
asked his girlfriend if they can leave, and you know what,
she says. Yes, She's like, oh, of course, of course
we can go. She believes him immediately, and Chris is
(26:55):
relief and like mine, watching this movie is intense and palpable. Um, Like,
you never expect that to happen in a scary movie,
but hell, is your characters being believed. Of course, this is,
you know, a horror movie, so it's a trick. Of course,
she's in on her family's plot to kidnap Chris and
supplant his consciousness with that of one of their white friends,
(27:16):
because Chris's body is healthy, their friends is not. In
Black lives don't matter. But y'all that moment where she
says that she believes him, I know, it's it kind
of goes back to what you were saying earlier about
how the purposeful. It seems so odd to have Skully
be the skeptic and scientifically it seems purposeful that moment.
(27:38):
I remember that too, being like, oh my gosh, it's
so refreshing, right, and then it's not. It's totally a
purpose um. The film also explicitly portrays black people not
being believed by police. Um On on the way to
her family's house, Chris and the girlfriend hit a deer
and a cop shows up, a white cop, and even
(27:59):
though she was the one driving, the cop asks Chris
for his I D and only backs off when the
girlfriend insists that it's unfair and unnecessary. Um. And later
when Chris contacts a black friend about how weird everything
is out out of the ranch. The friend calls the police,
but he is also dismissed. Um. And all of that
(28:19):
pays off with one more twist at the end that uh,
what was another moment that I was just like, well
in the theater, like I didn't even know what was
happening to my face. Um, so so you know, it's
it's the end sequence. Chris is fighting the girlfriend for
his life and he's winning. Yeah. But but out of
the night, a police car approaches. And I've heard personally
(28:41):
never been that scared by police showing up. And it
was a profound privilege check for me, Like it was
one of those moments where I was just like, oh, oh, oh,
I get it. Thank you for telling me about it.
I'm listening, and I'm so sorry for like not getting
it previously. Um. And it turns out to be Chris's
friend who's a T S A agent, And I don't
care the probably they don't get cars like that because again,
(29:02):
just like that sense of relief, like you know, if
it had been cops, cops never would have believed him,
our judiciary system never would have believed him. Um. And
it turned out okay, which was such a relief. I
read that the original ending of the film actually had
cops show up and that the final scene is Chris
in in jail or prison, um, and I am so
(29:25):
glad that Jordan Peele gave us that relief instead, even
if it's probably not realistic. Yeah, I think I saw
the alternate ending. I think you can see it, and
it was so it was just dismal. Yeah, it was
quite dismal. Um. But that was another That is another
great example of a a couple of things, a lot
(29:49):
of things, but a couple of things that we're talking
about of horror movies being reflective of of society and um,
fears that we have in society, and also just a
movie that knows it's true, hopes and messes with you
because it knows that you know them too. Great. Ah yeah,
so smart. Yeah, well, well to lighten things up a
(30:15):
little bit, he was some sillier examples. I thought of, Yeah,
drive home, how calmon, this trope is hocus pocus. Yeah,
so I watched last night. Oh it's a good movie.
Stayed up very late, or it's a silly movie. It's
it's a movie I enjoy watching. That's probably the best
way to describe it. I watched it so much as
a kid. It was banned from my household. I'm not
(30:36):
allowed to watch it. In fact, I didn't watch it
from about the age of eight until about the age
of four because my parents Nope, never again. So funny. Um.
When Danny, who's a little sister, tells her brother Max
not to light the black flame candle, he goes right
ahead and does it. She says she's scared. She doesn't
(30:58):
want to do it. It's a dumb idea. H He's
trying to impress, Yeah, a lady friend. But she doesn't
want him to do it either. Yeah, She's like, I'm scared,
don't do that. Also, it's like a museum. Yeah. Anyway,
we my friends and I played a drinking game to
it last night, and every time they said, Hollywood, you
(31:23):
had to take a drink. Um community in community, um britta.
That's sort of a bit about the steps to writing
horror movies. And one of the episodes, and she tells
the story of a man and woman making out in
a car and the woman keeps hearing something and the
dude only agrees to check it out if she promises
(31:45):
to give him sex when he returns, so he doesn't
yeah believe her. Yeah, but he'll use it, but he'll
use it to get sex. Yeah, great thriller. The music
video which I've never seen before, or i'd seen the
like short one, but there's a long thirteen minutes. Yeah,
it's beautiful. Well, the whole plot thread is essentially this
(32:08):
whole thing with Michael Jackson telling his date don't be
afraid because it's only a movie. But the next then,
of course, it turns out that it's not just a
movie and she is followed by zombies. So that's encapsulated
right there. Yeah, if you haven't seen it, check it out.
I enjoyed it quite a bit. Oh and it just
(32:30):
like like yeah, like once we started thinking about it,
it's hard not to pile up the the the examples
of it. Um. I think it's interesting that in some
of these stories it's it's not just other people disbelieving women,
it's women doubting themselves, stuff like the Boba Duke, The Ring,
Rosemary's Baby, Hunting of Hillhouse, Hereditary, the Shining Joy, Spuyers,
(32:52):
and Stranger Things. I also think it's really interesting that
all those characters are mothers. Yes, and I'm not sure
what exactly that says. I think that's another episode about
about motherhood and horror movies. But oh yeah yeah, um,
of course all of these women finally do like own
the fact that something we're just happening and reach out
for help and they're disbelieved. But yeah uh and speaking
(33:15):
of stranger things, oh okay, I keep getting excited. Uh.
I do love that the two young women, um eleven
and Nancy are a lot more confident, like they don't
doubt themselves. Um, I mean they're they're also dismissed, but
but at least, you know, I don't know, like it's
it's better sweet like they I think the point is
that they haven't had that confidence in their own senses
ground out of them yet. That is more bitter than
(33:39):
sweet perhaps, but um, I I do enjoy that as well.
Here's hoping that. Yeah, these fictional characters keep fighting the
good fight. Absolutely. Um. Right before we started podcasting, producer
Andrew reminded us of Aliens alien to it's the second
(34:00):
one that is aliens with an S and not alien singular.
But the I just watched this recently as well, because
I do like a whole two month horror movie thing um.
And in the beginning, there's this committee of business people
and lawyers questioning replace the corney Weaver's character about her
(34:24):
experience on LV too for six or whatever it is
um with the alien, and no one believes her. Yeah.
She keeps saying, like, it destroyed my career, destroyed my ship.
The only way I could get out was to jettison
it and escape on this whole on the little pod.
And they're all like, acid comes out on his rains.
(34:50):
They're like, lady, that's patently silly, that's just jo. Do
you know how much money we lost? Yeah? Yeah, they
keep bringing that up, the whole money thing um. And
then when she she's talking to the sort of marine
the alien marines, the space marines, Alien marines, marines, um,
(35:12):
and she's trying to share a story, and to me
is obviously like having dividculty. It's clear she has this experience.
They sort of are just like, okay, yeah, sure whatever, Yeah,
it's just not that scary. Yeah, sure, it's not that bad. Um.
Pretty much, And every episode of Supernatural, the TV series,
starts with this some version of this. Sure. A lot
(35:36):
of episodes of Buffy Too yeah, yeah, yeah, and and
frequently it's one of the it's one of the actual
Scoopy Gang. Like the number of times that Buffy herself
is disbelieved by everyone around here is truly remarkable because
it's just like, y'all, we did this last week and
the week before that, um, paranormal activity to where it's
(35:57):
kind of an interesting dynamic and um, if you haven't
seen this, you probably know the gist of it. But
basically it's this couple and her boyfriend. It's weird because
it's like he believes her because he wants to. He
believes that there's paranormal activity. He wants to capture it,
(36:17):
but he doesn't believe her when she's telling him how
serious and dangerous it is. So it's kind of a strange,
like he's excited by it. He keeps inviting it in
and she's saying no, like this is a scary thing
we need to bring to mess with it. In fact,
I think we should go do this and try to
fix it, and he keeps saying, I can fix it,
it's not that bad. He doesn't believe her when she's
(36:39):
saying she's telling him the consequences and the severity the
seriousness of it, which is an interesting kind of take
on the whole thing. Um and we when we're talking
about this, you might wonder why is this troupe so common?
(37:02):
Probably you have a good idea, but talked about it anyway. Emily,
as your parent, in that article that we reverence at
the top, wrote, every woman knows what this feels like.
They know what it means, They know how hard the
world works not to believe them. And this particular narrative
device always feels like a pointed jab, a great big
(37:23):
spotlight on that precise problem. It doesn't even matter if
it's intentional. In fact, the idea that it might be
unintentional makes it all the more poignant. Filmmakers and script
writers accidentally pointing out how women's fears are never taken
seriously again and again. And why would she have that
sense when no one else was bothered? Oh, you know,
probably women's intuition. But intuition is not a magical power
(37:47):
granted to half the population by sheer random happenstance. It's
not the consolation prize you drew because the world calls
you a woman. Intuition is an ability built up over time,
powered partly by animal instinct and partly by learning and
partly by experience. Any human being can tap into intuition,
but women are constantly pegged as the humans who own
(38:07):
this preternatural ability. Why because women are supposed to be
on their guard every second of the day. Because our
very existence in the right skirt or pair of high
heels is an invitation to untold abuses. Because we're not
supposed to trust anyone, but we're supposed to be unfailingly
sweet to everyone. Women are intuitive because tapping that intuition
(38:28):
is something that we are encouraged towards from the day
we were born, for the sake of our safety and
our lives. Yeah, you know, women and people of color
have to pay attention. We have to control how we
move through the world more carefully. You know. We we
make note of our surroundings. We pick up on nonverbal cues.
It's a learned skill. Yeah. Um, And I was thinking,
(38:52):
I haven't seen this horror movie in a while, but
I was thinking about the silence of the lambs Buffalo Bill.
He says something along the lines of wouldn't believe how
many people like even though they're scared, are too afraid
to be rude. Oh yeah, right, I remember that part. Yeah,
like they'll put their safety at risk. And I feel
(39:14):
that all the time, where I do think that, Um,
women are socialized to be so polite and so nice
and so friendly. Also watch out and watch out. It's
your fault if anything happens, I mean, if it really
did happen. Yeah, yeah, um. We we do have some
(39:35):
more history and science science about why women, UM and
people of color are less likely to be believed. But
first we're going to pause for one more quick break
for word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So,
(39:59):
as we've said before on this show and in this
very episode, harmonies are a great mirror the hold up
to society. And this is no exception on a large
societal scale. We don't trust women. They're over dramatic, they overreact,
people of color to their unreliable narrators, all of us UM.
And this goes back forever UM in the case of women,
(40:21):
in the case of people of color, that the modern
concepts of race are relatively recent constructs UM created and
perpetuated during globalization and the and the slave trade to
dehumanize and discredit enslaved people's and since then popular culture
has largely drawn people of color as unintelligent brutes. This
pervaded in the United States via minstrel shows basically right
(40:43):
up until the Civil rights movement in the middle of
the twentieth century. Um. But you know, although most people
know that like black face is bad now, um, those
biases are absolutely still part of our culture. Yeah. For women, Um,
there's ane Pirus from It's the oldest known medical text
(41:05):
that actually describes depressive symptoms, and it blames women's mental
health problems on their uteruses moving around their bodies making trouble.
Yeah yeah, yeah, um yeah. Hop over to ancient Greece.
A few centuries later you get physicians talking about uterine melancholy. Um.
Hippocrates gave us the first written mention of hysteria around
(41:28):
five b C. Hysteria being described as an anxiety and
other symptoms in women caused by a bad and again
wandering uterus. I don't know why they thought it detached?
Is it like a ghostly uterus? I don't know. No,
I think it was physical, because they would they would
give you like they would like put like good smelling
(41:48):
things by your nose, and like bad smelling things by
your by your badge if if they wanted it to
move higher up in your body, and they would reverse that.
It's very sensitive to smell if they wanted it to
move back down again. I know. That's why they didn't
let women wide trains for a while, because they thought that,
like any suns stop heck, although that could have just
(42:13):
been they didn't want women writing tricks. I don't know,
I don't know for sure. Uh yeah. In the case
of ancient Greece, the cure for this was generally having
sex with men. Oh, of course, because men were believed
to be superior um and uh so later those those
(42:33):
those beliefs were codified into religion. You know, Eve was
physically mentally weaker than Adam, so she's the one who
fell for the serpent's trick. Yeah and yeah. The belief
in women being irrational due to problems with their sex
organs lasted into the century. That's why it's why vibrators
were invented. People were like, ladies, you you really need
(42:56):
to You can't be coming into the doctor's office this
been to get have a vibrator to have orgasms. We
need to give you a take home method. Of solving
this problem. They didn't call it orgasms then, but yeah,
well one, that's one good thing I suppose. Oh and
I do want to put in here that, of course,
(43:16):
it is completely possible for hormones to affect your mental health.
But like dudes have hormones too, breaking news. I'm sorry
you had to learn it here, but learn it you did. Yeah,
if we if we bring all of this back to
(43:37):
the whole hashtag believer and Brett kavanaw thing um. When
it comes to sexual assault, there has been some science
looking into why we don't believe women, and it has
to do with how the brain handles trauma. Survivors don't
outwardly act how folks think they should. Instead of a
(43:58):
sobbing mess, they might see kind of cold, and that's
because a lot of survivors experience disassociation from their body. Also,
a lot of times their memories might seem flimsy, which
causes people to doubt them. But again, this is your
brain shutting down all other functions that don't have to
do with pure survival during a traumatic, potentially life threatening event.
(44:20):
And in some cases it's not that you can't remember,
it's just you have difficulty retrieving it and describing it.
Another thing the brain does that plays into this has
to do with how it handles and often rejects new
information that challenges accepted patterns are perceptions. If you find
out a friend of yours, someone you've known for a
long time, is accused of sexual assault, this challenge is
(44:44):
something you've long held to be true, and your brain
is like, Nope, no, can't be obviously not. Yeah. You
can be presented with all these facts and your brain
is just um. But it is interesting to point out
once a man gets involved, the story kind of changes.
(45:04):
Six women had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, and
Tina Fey referenced these accusations twice, once on a weekend
to update another time on thirty Rock. But it was
when the comedian Hannibal Burris called Bill Cosby a rapist
and one of his bits that people started to think, oh,
oh no, maybe we should look into this. It took
(45:24):
a man to legitimize the conversation and lead to actual action,
and just to drive this point home, in some countries
around the world, rape allegations have to be corroborated by
one or more men, and that used to be the
case in some some states in the US as well. Yeah.
Another way to look at this whole thing is how
(45:47):
in our society we elevate the desires of men at
the expense of women. Like in this whole conversation about
Brett Kavanaugh, the accusers are destroying his life and his future,
but never mind the lives and future, just general well
being of the women involved. Yeah. Oh, and in the nineties,
the Philadelphia Police sex crimes unit called themselves the Lion
(46:10):
Bitches Unit. Uh yeah, so sweet. Yeah the article I read,
they didn't seem too upset about getting found out either.
Yeah uh um I read. I read an excellent essay
by Stephanie Merritt in The Guardian called the Cult of
(46:33):
the Unreliable Female Narrator Must be Stopped um, in which
she argues that society's disbelief of women is exactly what
makes horror movies like the ones that we've talked about
today so effectively frightening. Um. She She says that because
men are less vulnerable in our society, those creative works
wouldn't have quote the same atmosphere of claustrophobic menace if
(46:56):
the main characters were male. Yeah. Um, I feel like
we could keep talking about this forever and keep bring
up examples forever. But that kind of reminds me of
the Witch. Oh yeah. Um, Which what I found so
frightening about that movie was, um, it did such a
great job of driving home to me why um we
(47:19):
we read about the Salem witch trials all the time
and it feels kind of at least in my case,
it's always felt kind of distant. But that just brought
home to me how there's no way to prove you
aren't a wish. No one believed the main character thomasin um, yeah,
you can't prove that you're not possessed by the demon,
(47:41):
And it was terrifying. Um, no one believed her. And
I think that's what made it so relatable, is even
if we're not exactly trying to ward off accusations of witchcraft,
although I mean you can see parallels certainly and in
some things, that idea of not being believed is scary
(48:04):
and absolutely yeah, And I think that really as a society,
we don't want to believe women because we don't want
to have to deal with it. We don't want to
have to deal with what it means and with having
to do the work too, to fix it, to combat
what these women, all these women are saying is happening. Yeah.
(48:27):
I think it's the same reason that there's such pushback
against Black Lives Matter, because people are like, well, you know,
like that that intrinsic response that all lives matter thing
is essentially saying like, there's no problem, right, Like, why
are you saying that there's a problem. Stop saying that
there's a problem. Yeah, because if you admit that, then
you have to admit that you have to work on it,
(48:48):
exactly right, that it's it's a lot of work, and
and it is frightening. It's frightening. Um balloons, balloons. Uh oh,
I just watched it recently. No balloons. So this brings
(49:11):
us to the end of this episode, which I I
foolishly when I pitched it to you, Lauren, thought it
was going to be a much more cheerful thing. I
don't know what I was thinking. I was like, we
can relate this to current events, which are great, so
much fun know what I was thinking. But it was
really enlightening to do. As someone like I said, we
(49:35):
both watch a lot of hard movies, and I'm going
to guess that for a lot of you. You're not
going to be able to unsee this now. Uh, it's
really everywhere it is. It is, And I don't know,
and I do think that it's it's It's an interesting
and like culturally useful trope, especially in discussions like this,
you know, like once you're aware of it, then yeah,
(49:57):
hopefully you can do stuff to help change it, one
would hope. And we're all about change again, growing for
the better here. Um, thank you so much for being
on the show. Um, hopefully you'll you'll come back. We
can talk some more horror movies one other things. I
won't type cast you whatever you want to talk about. Yes, no,
(50:20):
I thank you so much for having me. This has
been This has been a lot of fun. Yeah, and um,
you can always find the both of us on Saver.
We would love for you to come check that out. Um,
and I think I've mentioned before I love fan fiction,
and uh, we we're trying to get a little maybe
(50:41):
a mini series or on and off against series of
reading stuff that you you listeners have written. So if
you have any fiction, nonfiction, anything fan fiction that you've
created that you are cool with us reading on the air,
please send it in UM we might even get some
voices and some production some production work into it. UM.
(51:05):
And so yeah, I would love for any of y'all
to send some stuff like that in UM. Also just UM.
Another mini series we're thinking about doing is What's something
your Mom Never told you? Because you know the show,
we'll get back to our roots a little bit. So
if you have anything like that, we would love to
hear it. You can email us at mom Stuff at
(51:26):
how stuff works dot com. You can find us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on Instagram at stuff
I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to our producer
Andrew Howard, and thanks to you for listening.