Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t

That’s so funny I forgot to laugh!

On this week’s episode, Emily and Tracie welcome Mallory Henson to talk about her reverence for the TV show Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Mallory introduces the sisters to the path Paul Reubens took to develop the character of Pee-wee Herman and how the show recreated the joyful chaos of a child’s mind while also teaching intentional lessons on acceptance and intercultural curiosity. While not everything ha...

Party Time! Excellent! [Extended guitar solo]

On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily revisits the most important cultural touchstone of the late 20th century: Wayne’s World. In addition to introducing an entire generation to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, this film presented a surprisingly complex characterization of Tia Carrere’s Cassandra and taught us that Milwaukee is the only major American city to have three Socialist mayo...

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an unreasonable hatred for Hackensack, New Jersey!

This week, Tracie brings her Deep Thoughts about the 1978 film Superman: The Movie. From the way this film helped legitimize comic books and superheroes as a valid art form to the huge influence Christopher Reeve’s Superman still has on our culture, this pillar of the Guy Girls’ childhood offers a lot to appreciate on a second look. But, not everythin...

REDRUM! REDRUM!

On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily breaks down the horror masterpiece, The Shining. The sisters walk through the ways in which Shelley Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy Torrance is an unexpected feminist icon, how Kubrick created an intentionally incoherent film while abusing his actors (except for 6-year-old Danny Lloyd), and just what is up with the theory that the film is a critique of the genocide of Native...

HEY YOU GUY(Girl)S!

On this week’s Deep Thoughts, Tracie revisits a classic of GenX childhood: The Electric Company. This children’s sketch comedy program with an all-star cast (Morgan Freeman! Rita Moreno! Bill Cosby?) showcased the wonderful ways that informal education can be intentional, subversive, funny, and validating. While not everything from The Electric Company has aged well (the Spell Binder relied on racist stereotypes ...

“This face right here is my over the moon face.”

This week, Tracie and Emily welcome Joanna Church to share her Deep Thoughts about the television show Veronica Mars. Between trying to recap the telenovela-sounding plot to Tracie (coma babies! children switched at birth! a school bus that drives off a cliff and explodes!), Joanna explains how this hilarious teenage noir teaches us that there is no justice, people cannot reinvent the...

Looking good, Tracie! Feeling good, Emily!

On this week’s Deep Thoughts, Emily analyzes Trading Places, the film that taught her what a short sale is, how a bookie works, and that she is most definitely a money nerd. While the film offers a pointed critique of capitalism and racism, it undercuts its own message with the truly weird train/costume party scene and the random bikini-clad women on the beach at the end. Tracie and Emily a...

It smells like the funk of 40,000 years in here!

In today’s episode,Tracie shares her deep thoughts about the iconic and groundbreaking 1983 music video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. From the way the mini film subverts expectations to the meaning behind the horror tropes it relies on to how to contextualize Jackson’s immense talent with the troubled and abusive life he led, the Guy girls explore what it means that a novelty song f...

It mu5t be found…it being a realistic portrayal of women

For this episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily dives into the valiant, vulnerable, and very very sexist portrayal of “perfection” in the 1997 Luc Besson film The Fifth Element. Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo is the poster child for the trope of Born Sexy Yesterday, wherein a childlike but fully adult woman who is both profoundly wise and unutterably naive needs the protection and guidance ...

Good night and good luck and you stay classy, San Diego!

On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie and Emily welcome media studies professor (retired) Jon Shorr to talk about how pop culture has conditioned us to think about journalism, reporters, and “the news.” From Lois Lane to Woodward and Bernstein to Mary Tyler Moore, we discuss the ways comics, movies, and television have introduced us to a profession few of us have dir...

We are the sisters who say Ni! Bring us…a shrubbery.

On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie and Emily dig into a source of both sisters’ understanding of what is funny, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After 49 years, this film remains super funny, because it subverts our expectations.

With minimal plot, despite the purported quest for the titular grail, it’s basically just a vehicle for a slew of the Pythons’ favorit...

Great Scott!! A time traveling oedipal complex masquerading as family entertainment?

This special patrons-only bonus episode of Deep Thoughts takes a closer look at the film that ensured the DeLorean’s ongoing cultural relevance: Back to the Future. From the erasure of Black culture and ambition to some truly weird sexual politics (Marty was gonna do what in that parked car? And Lorraine was happy for her would-be rapist to come to ...

Ooh, my little pretty one…who was really going to be somebody by age 23

On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t, Tracie revisits the film of Generation X: Reality Bites. Despite passing the Bechdel test with flying colors, the story of documentary filmmaker Lelaina (played by Winona Ryder) not only seems to present the audience with a choice between selling out and suffering (while being insulted by Ethan Hawke), ...

Let’s do the time warp agaaaaaain! (Except with ongoing enthusiastic consent this time, mkay?)

This week, Emily and Tracie talk aboutthe beloved 1975 film Rocky Horror Picture Show. From its influence on culture, fashion, music, and film to its catchy AF songs, there’s a lot to love in this genre-bending gender-bending mashup of B horror/sci fi, musical theater, drag culture, and comedy. But despite Rocky Horror’s important strides ...

Don’t you…forget about misogyny…Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t!

On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie takes another look at the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. Though this classic Gen X teen movie passes the Bechdel test and explicitly names the prude-or-slut trap of female sexuality, it also treats Claire and Allison like prizes for the boys in the film and assures the audience that we’re not so different from each other–b...

AS IF!

This week on Deep Thoughts, Emily re-examines her favorite movie from high school: Clueless. Not only did this film kickstart Emily’s Paul Rudd appreciation, but it also provided her with some lovely examples of teen girl friendship, healthy father/daughter relationship dynamics, and how to apologize. 

But it’s not all sunshine in this adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. Tracie and I also discuss how the film normalizes disorder...

That [imperialist, whip-wielding archeologist] belongs in a museum!

On today’s Deep Thoughts, Tracie takes on a pillar of her and Emily’s childhood: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. The sisters talk about what’s great (the soundtrack, the cinematography, Marion Ravenwood’s badassery), what’s not so great (the imperialism, the toxic masculinity, the lack of any women other than Marion), and what’s seriously inaccurate (...

Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination…and capitalism

This week, Emily shares her deep thoughts about the 1971 classic film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She loves Gene Wilder’s funny and menacing portrayal of Wonka that still manages an undercurrent of sweetness, and the cinematography is a masterclass in how to make unwrapping a candy bar an edge-of-your-seat scene. But Roald Dahl’s hierarchical attitud...

It takes a special person to impress a dragon.

In this bonus episode, Tracie shares deep thoughts about the science fiction and fantasy novel series the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. From her early exhilaration of discovering fantasy novels with female protagonists to her current discomfort upon realizing the essentialist nature of dragon/rider pairings, Tracie shares with Emily how McCaffrey’s world made her a reader…and ...