Episode 119 - The History of Doppelgängers in Horror

Text Abby and Alan

This week Abby and Alan explore the history of Doppelgängers in film and literature, focusing on horror and science fiction. 

Email [e-mail] to submit your short stories and paranormal experiences.

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Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.

Sources for today's episode:

• Self As Other; The Doppelganger by Gry Faurholt of Aahus University, the article can be found here.
• IMDB for general information on the films we are going to discuss today
• Edgar Allan Poe’s The Story of William Wilson
• An article by Terry Thompson (1998) James's the Jolly Corner, The Explicator
• A fandom.com entry on The Therered from Us (2019)
• Vox.com article by Emily St. James Jordan Peele’s Us — and its ending — explained. Sort of.
• Article by Katherine Bowers, Gothic Doubling and The Double, Gothically

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode
of the Lunatics Radio Hourpodcast.
I'm Abby Brinker, sitting herewith Alan Codan.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Or are you,

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Have you ever seen your own doppelganger?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
No.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
What would you do if you

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Did?
I would have to evaluate if hislife was better than mine, and
if so, I would have toassimilate it.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
So maybe I'm the doppel

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Ganger that's actually quite, uh, well themed
to some of the things we'regonna talk about today.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I mean, sure.
I mean, why wouldn't you wannajust like slip into a better
version of your own life?

Speaker 1 (00:51):
But can you, can you really,

Speaker 2 (00:53):
I mean, with crime, you can do anything.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
So, today is part two of our, what's turned out to be
quite an epic deep dive intoDoppel Gangers.
Today we're going to focus onDoppel Gangers in in pop
culture.
Last week we talked all aboutthe history and the mythology,
the actual belief in allegationsof Doppel gangers.
Today it's gonna be largelyfocused on horror and science

(01:16):
fiction interpretations of that.
But before we jump into that, Iposted on Instagram this week
and just asked if anybody outthere had very interesting
doppelganger experiences intheir own life.
And I was quite overwhelmed thata lot of people have also, I did
a poll on Twitter and like 80%of people who responded said

(01:37):
that they had seen their owndoppelganger or somebody else's.
And, and I know that could justbe like, oh, somebody that looks
similar.
But I think with Doppel Ganger,it's one of those things where
you're like, oh, I think that'sAlan.
And then you're like, oh no,it's, it's not Alan.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I think, uh, I can take a lot more, uh, away from
these stories for people thatlike, don't live in places like
New York City.
Mm-hmm.
, you know, we'resurrounded by, what are we up
to?
8 million, 9 million now.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Couldn't tell

Speaker 2 (01:59):
You, there's only so many faces.
Right.
And variations.
But if you are somebody thatlives way out in the woods with
no other human in sight andstanding, you know, at the edge
of your property every night attwo in the morning is someone
that looks just like you, thenyeah.
I'm gonna, I'm going to listento your story.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Seems like you're referencing us a little bit with
that one.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Oh, the movie?
Yeah.
Perhaps subconsciously.
Hmm mm But yeah, just likewalking through Times Square,
seeing thousands of people,there's a good chance you're
gonna see someone with similarfeatures,

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Similar features.
Yeah.
But there's a difference betweensomeone that looks that close

Speaker 2 (02:34):
To you.
I'm also gonna say that there isa rise in doppelganger sightings
since the pandemic.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Why?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Because we see less of people's faces.
You just see the eyes, you

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Know?
Oh, with masks on, you mean?

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Yeah, sure.
And like, you know, the braininterprets the rest of someone's
features.
It's the same reason why they,after they had the study about
whether people are moreattractive or less attractive on
wearing masks, and the answerwas more.
And it's just because people'sbrain fills in the gaps.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Well, it's just because people like a good
mystery.
They want what they don't have.
That's why people play gameswhen you're dating.
You don't text someone back,suddenly they're interesting to
you.
That's how you won me over

Speaker 2 (03:13):
.
I guess that's what it's allabout.
Romantic manipulation,.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
All right.
So let me share some of thepersonal experience doppelganger
submissions I got on Instagram,just because I think they're
fascinating.
Okay.
So one comes from our friend,also named Alan a storied native
on Instagram, who is an awesomehistorian of New York City,
especially Queens, but, but allof New York City.
So he had friends back in highschool who claimed to see them

(03:38):
in their neighborhood, and thenthey would message him and be
like, yo, I just like saw youin, you know, whatever street.
And he'd be like, what the?
Like, I'm home, you know, todayor whatever mm-hmm.
, or I'm not there,but this would happen to him all
the time.
And so this was a recurringthing until he graduated.
Then he started this new job,and one of his coworkers
currently looks like supersimilar, and he sent me a photo

(03:59):
of them together, and they dolook like they could totally be
doppel gangers.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah.
Every so often I'll encounterthese stories on Reddit.
Yeah.
Like, wow.
Yeah, you have a double thatlike either works in the area or
I just like see him lurkingaround, like, do you have like a
long lost twin?
Or do you have a brother oranything?
And the answer is no.
And then eventually they'll runinto each other and
they'll be a hundred percentidentical.
The example I'm thinking of, uh,is like a big, like ginger

(04:24):
bearded guy.
Yeah.
Um, with like a vi a lot of verydistinct features mm-hmm.
and those, theyhappen to like work in like
office buildings right.
By each other.
And they're like, so they'rewearing the same like business
casual type outfit, wearing thesame exact everything, same
haircut.
And like, that's just weird.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah.
I wonder too, if, if not thatlike, certain people are more
distinct looking than others,but like, if per se you are
somebody who's really tall, whohas red hair, that you're just
more likely because they're, youare rare in a way that people
are like, oh, that looks likethis guy.
You know?
Like if you know someone likethat than any other tall person
with red hair, you're like, oh,it's, it looks like Jimmy.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Right.
Uh, you know, if you havecertain distinctive features.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Right.
Our friend on Instagram, Nicolealso told us, so there was this
sleazy guy who kept hitting onher, like throughout I, I think
like, you know, sometime, eventhough he had a girlfriend, and
then eventually they were all atthe same party and she ran into
him, and her and his girlfriendlooked identical.
She said like even down to theirmannerisms, their weight, their

(05:27):
hair, like how they put, youknow, their clothing.
Like, everything was so, so, sosimilar that it was like very,
and I was like, whoa.
Can you imagine though, likerunning into somebody where it's
like looking at yourself in 3Dlike that, you know, like, that
just must be a reallyinteresting way to see yourself.
Sure.
Even though obviously it's notyou,

Speaker 2 (05:46):
You ever been 3D scanned?

Speaker 1 (05:49):
No.
Have you?
Of

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Course.
For what, A couple years ago Iwas working on a movie about
this guy that basically hiswhole life exists on, on the
internet.
Yeah.
So there was like all, like halfthe movie took place, quote
unquote, in the internet becauseit was like an al an allegory
for like where he spends histime.
Sure.
The whole movie was shot greenscreen, and, you know, there's

(06:10):
all these like, memes coming tolife and everything.
They had to like build like awhole CG world that this guy was
like walking through.
Right.
And so they did s they're usinga bunch of like, you know,
models and cartoons and thatsort of stuff, but they also did
3D scans of the entire crew.
Oh, cool.
And so like, we're all just inthe movie somewhere, walking
around in the background.

(06:30):
They're just like, they, theymap us to

Speaker 1 (06:32):
As like extras.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah.
Like the, it's, it's just likeour image stretched over a 3D
model, and it's like they'readding like the clothing, like
the weird hats and everything.
So it's like we're, we are abillion different extras.
Uh, just like That's cool.
You know, sprinkled throughoutthe

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Movie, I wanna see you as a billion different
extras.
That sounds cool.
Yeah.
I didn't know this movieexisted.
And then finally, so our friendHector from the Reshoot movie
podcast also told us that he hada doppelganger and from a
distance, his mom actuallycouldn't tell them apart, which
I think is funny.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Mothers usually can't

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah.
Mothers, they don't have a senseof what their kids look like.
Nope.
So in film and literature,doppel gangers function a bit
differently than they do in reallife.
And when I say in real life, I'mreferring to what we talked
about in the last episode whenit comes to mythology and belief
systems and kind of thisparanormal double in fiction
that sometimes happens.

(07:26):
It's usually used as more of amechanic, a storytelling
mechanic.
And it, and it can be a littlebit different.
For instance, in some cases it'slike less paranormal double and
more psychological evil twin orsomething like that.
And so for this episode, I, Ikind of broke things down into
categories of doppel gangers.

(07:46):
And this is not, I'm sureincredibly scientific, but I am
kind of attempting instead of towalk through all of the examples
of doppel gangers in literatureand film chronologically to kind
of lump them into relevantcategories.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Sure.
I mean, yeah, there's a lot.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah.
So before we get into that,let's talk about today's sources
and then we'll jump into themeat of the episode.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Wikipedia,

Speaker 1 (08:08):
No Wikipedia on today's list.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
What?
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
You serious?
A lot of short stories, a lot ofarticles and films.
But no Wikipedia today,

Speaker 2 (08:18):
We've, we've never not had Wikipedia in this

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Source.
That's

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Not true.
That that's, it is true.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
, the first source is an article Self as
other the doppelganger Byre Holtof a House University.
The article can be found ondouble dialogues.com.
Im db for general informationabout the films that we're going
to discuss today.
Edgar Allen posed the story ofWilliam Wilson, an article by

(08:43):
Terry Thompson from 1988.
James is the jolly corner, theexplicator a fandom.com entry on
the tethered from us, a vox.comarticle by Emily St.
James Jordan peels us, and itsending, explained sort of an
article by Katherine Bowers,Gothic Doubling and the Double
Goth.
And I'll link the articles inthe descriptions that you guys

(09:05):
can find them easily.
In gray Fow Holtz article, theyoutline the way this mechanic
usually manifests in literature,quoting from the Double
dialogues.com article.
The doppelganger is an uncannymotif comprising two distinct
types.
One, the alter ego or identicaldouble of a protagonist who

(09:26):
seems to be either a victim ofan identity theft perpetuated by
a mimicking supernaturalpresence, or a subject to a
paranoid hallucination.
Or two, the split personality ordark half of the protagonist, an
unleashed monster that acts as aphysical manifestation of a
dissociated part of the self.
And I'm going to take those twotypes here and raise you a few

(09:49):
of categories.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, I, I don't know .
That's, I'm just having like,flashbacks to college of like
taking really fun courses, Uhhuh, and they just put
it in the most boring waypossible.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Oh, I thought that was like a, a good explanation
of the literary device, butyeah, we're gonna, yes.
You know, us we're not that.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
It's very succinct.
I'll give you that, butcome on.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
So first we're gonna start with, I think maybe what
is the most prolific categoryhere of doppelganger and that's
psychological thriller.
Sure.
So sometimes this genre is aliteral twin.
Sometimes it's an imagined twin.
Sometimes the double isn't atwin at all, but nothing
paranormal or supernatural isactually happening for the most

(10:30):
part.
The re the, the thing that'stying this category together in
my mind is that the doppelgangeris indeed psychological or the
effect of it is creating somekind of psychological distress
on the protagonist.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
What do you mean?
There's nothing supernaturalhappening though.
Hit me with a movie.
What, what's, what's a moviethat

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Black

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Swan.
Black Swan, the one movie thatwe're gonna talk about time and
time again that I have not seen.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Right.
So like in us.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Okay.
I've seen us.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
That's not psychological.
Those doppel gangers existaccording to the mytho of the
film.
They exist in flesh and blood.
Okay.
In Black Swan, they do not.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
So how is that not supernatural

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Though, in Black Swan?
Because it's psychological.
She's imagining it.
Oh.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Oh, okay.
So, gotcha.
It's just all in her head.
Right?
It's, there's nothing happeningtangibly,

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Or the, an example could be there's a movie about
twins and one of those twins isevil and one is not evil, but
it's not paranormal orsupernatural.
Two twins actually exist.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Gotcha.
Okay.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Okay.
And it's like a psychologicalthriller, not because someone's
imagining the other double, butjust because that's the, the
tone of the film.
I understand.
Okay.
So a really good example that Idon't think you've seen, but
some people might have

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Black Swan

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Is Cronenberg's film Dead Ringers from 1988.
I'll set the scene for you.
Dead Ringers tells the story oftwo identical twins.
Okay.
We talked about this a bit on anepisode with Sarah Quincy a few
months ago about Kronenberg, butthey're both played by Jeremy
Irons and it's about this likeagonizing fall from Social
Power.
They're both doctors and it'sactually based on these creepy

(12:10):
twins that lived in the UpperEast Side of Manhattan many
years ago.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
This is a real

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Story.
It's based on a real story, butthen it becomes very Kronenberg
esque.
This is one of my favoriteKronenberg films, though.
This film would be categorizedunder evil twin films for sure.
And not paranormal Doubles.
I do think it's worth mentioningbecause the film uses Doppel
gangers in like kind of aliterary mechanic sense.
So there is some foreshadowingthat comes into this film with

(12:34):
the fate of one of the twins inwhere in that, that it kind of
like finds its way to one twinand then the other.
Mm-hmm.
.
And that's something, rememberback to last episode when we
talked about the foreshadowingof like Lincoln or Katherine the
Great seeing their doppelgangerright before death.
Okay.
So it's, it's not one for one,but I'm, I'm just kind of
calling back to that idea offoreshadowing,

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Right?
This is Jeremy Irons

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Instead.
Right.
Where sometimes something willhappen to one twin and then
inevitably to the other

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Big Jeremy Iron fans, by the way.
Oh

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Really?
Yeah.
You should watch this movie.
You see him twice the

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Whole time.
I just love his voice

Speaker 1 (13:05):
From just in general or did he do like a narration of
something that you like?

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Uh, I love his voice in general, but uh, he has done
multiple audio books.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Cool.
The connection between the Twinsand Dead Ringers does seem to
sort of transcend typical humanconnection and dabble into
something more ethereal.
But again, I'm not categorizingthis film as paranormal at all.
It's psychological for sure.
Another film that I'm a huge fanof and got to rewatch for this
episode is Sisters from Brian dPalma Sisters is from 1972.

(13:36):
And it's, again, very near anddear to my heart.
Please watch Sisters, if youhaven't

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Seen it.
I have not seen Sisters.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
It's Stars, Margot Kitter and Jennifer Salt.
And this film has like a ton ofhorror t tropes, which is one of
the reasons why I really likeBrian d Palma's filmmaking.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Just, just gimme the quick pitch.
What's Sisters about?
She, you literally just rolledup your

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Sleeves, the credits roll.
No.
So the film is brilliant.
I don't wanna give away toomuch, but the general quick
pitch

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah.
Give away Nothing Please.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
Is that you have two twins, or you have, you have a
set of twins.
Mm-hmm.
, a guy startssleeping with one of them.
Okay.
It kind of turns into herbirthday and we, we get a sense
that like something

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Her birthday or their

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Birthdays, their birthday, but like we don't see
the other twin right away.
Okay.
But we start to get a sense thatthere's something's going on
with her.
Like she needs medication.
He goes out, gets her meds, andhe picks up a birthday cake for
for her.
Okay.
Brings it back.
This is not giving awayanything.
This all happens in the firstfew minutes of the

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Film.
Okay.
Birthday cake copy.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
He runs into the other twin and she kills him.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Ugh.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
But what happens is a neighbor who's like a reporter
witnesses this from a window.
It's very like rear window insome ways.
Brian Palm is like, always callson different, like Hitchcockian
sort of of themes, but then itkind of becomes this slow
unraveling of what the evil twinversus the good twin.
How it all fits together.
And again, it's like thispsychological thriller of like

(15:03):
kind of trying to understandwhat actually happened between
them and what their connectionis.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Okay.
I follow.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
So it kind of flirts with the line between evil twin
and psychological doppelganger.
And that's the

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Question.
But there's no monsters.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
No monsters.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Lame

Speaker 1 (15:18):
.
Wait, we're gonna have a wholesection on that.
Just wait.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Better hurry

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Up.
Another Brian de Palm film worthmentioning is Body Double from
1984.
Another film that I love.
Both Body Double and Sistershave clear ties to Hitchcock and
he exploits these themes in likean updated and I think like,
refreshed way for the timeperiod.
These are both, you know, fromthe seventies and eighties.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Okay.
Well do you wanna pitch this onetoo?

Speaker 1 (15:41):
I think you would actually like Body Double More
Than Sisters.
It's an erotic thriller.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Okay.
As, as erotic as the Mermaidmovie

Speaker 1 (15:49):
In a, in a way that I think you might like more.
What

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Am I, what was that movie?

Speaker 1 (15:52):
The

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Lure.
The Lure, yeah.
That was a great movie.
Because when you say eroticthriller, that's what I picture.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
This is like an eighties erotic thriller.
I I I I think it's quite erotic,

Speaker 2 (16:05):
You've made that clear.
Okay.
.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
It's,

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Uh, they, they show their shoulders

Speaker 1 (16:10):
It's sexy.
I think it's a, and it also haskind of a rear window vibe.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Okay.
So we're back

Speaker 1 (16:16):
And a, and a Vertigo vibe.
I don't, it's hard to give to,to talk about this film.
I'll, I'll say this.
Both Body Double and Vertigo theDoppelganger Act in the same
way.
And I'm just gonna say that cuzI don't wanna ruin all these
films for people.
But if you've seen one, then youunderstand the other.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Okay.
But if you had to only watchone, say someone's really
pressed for time and needs towatch a doppelganger movie

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Out of those two, or out of all doppelganger

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Movies, out of those two,

Speaker 1 (16:41):
I would say if the idea of an erotic thriller
sounds interesting to you, youshould watch Buddy Double.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Right.
Because the one is an eroticthriller and one's not.
Correct.
That's a pretty clear choicethen.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Moving on.
And

Speaker 1 (16:52):
I don't mean it's like porn, you know, but it's,

Speaker 2 (16:54):
It's sexy, right?
I mean Well, they do, they doshow their shoulders

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Vertigo from 1958, a very, very classic Alfred
Hitchcock horror filmdoppelganger.
And that really, again, issquarely in this category of
psychological because it'sultimately about like projection
versus reality and delusion.
You

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Just keep shaming me for not watching these movies,
aren't you?
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Okay.
It's cool.
Welcome to.
Welcome to the episode.
Yep.
Let's get this one out of theway because you haven't seen
this one and I'm passionateabout

Speaker 2 (17:22):
It.
I have at least seen parts ofVertigo.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
No, I'm gonna talk about Black Swan now.
What parts of Vertigo have youseen

Speaker 2 (17:28):
The Vertigo shots?
Oh sure.
It's filmmaking 1 0 1.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
They should have showed you the whole movie.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, probably.
I think I did watch the wholemovie at one point.
I just, I don't know.
Watching things in a classroomsetting is not the most
memorable.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Hmm.
It's funny, a lot of these, Iactually took a, it wasn't clear
my obsession with, with Brian dPalma, it's because I took a
class in film school just abouthim.
And those films had a, a majorimpact on me.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Well, you just wait until we get to the Godzilla
episode and I'm gonna shame youfor not watching all of those
movies.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
I've watched so many Godzilla movies with you.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Oh, have you?

Speaker 1 (18:04):
So many more than I know that you've watched all of
them.
I've watched so many more thanthe Normal

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Person is first off, I have not watched all

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Of them.
You've watched a lot of them.
Okay.
What are there like 50 somethingfilms?

Speaker 2 (18:14):
53.
But Abby, what part of GodzillaGlows right before he unleashes
his atomic breath,

Speaker 1 (18:21):
His spine.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
That's correct.
Not his eyes.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
We were playing horror trivia the other day.
I learned my lesson.
Famously Black Swan uses adoppelganger in a psychological
sense.
In 2010, Darren Aronofsky'sBlack Swan hit theaters and it
was an Instant Sensation.
The screenplay was written byMark Hyman, Andres Hines and
John Jay McLaren.

(18:44):
The film stars, Natalie Portmanand Mila Kunis, both
exceptionally talented in thismovie.
And there's so much to say aboutit in general.
, let alone just its useof Doppel gangers.
So to give you Alan and anyviewers who have not seen it,
black Swan takes the classictale of Swan Lake, which is a
ballet and it uses the actors.
So the, the characters in thefilm are putting on a production

(19:08):
of Swan Lake at like the NewYork City Ballet.
Okay.
So the stakes are high.
It's a very high pressuresituation.
Very kind of like toxic artscene.
You know, where you have thislike male, brilliant ballet
director that everybody is likebending over backwards to
impress and be chosen as theQueen Swan.
You know, that's the kind ofvibe of the movie.
But what Aronofsky also does isthrough these characters who are

(19:32):
putting on Swan Lake, they intheir own stories that we see
also act out Swan Lake, kind ofin the back end of it.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
I have not seen Black Swan.
Yep.
This is established.
Yeah.
However, I do have one BlackSwan anecdote.
Okay.
Uh, I did work on the collegehumor sketch about Black Swan
starring Darren Aronofsky.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Tell us everything.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
I actually don't remember much about it cuz this
was like over a decade agobecause, you know, college humor
was still around.
But I just remember him beingvery, very kind.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Oh, that's great.
Sometimes you meet thesedirectors and you're like, oh,
James are shattered.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Oh, actually, no.
He was very nice to me and thecamera guy.
And he was a total dick to thedirector.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
that tracks.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Now I'm thinking about that.
I was pretty amusing.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
.
So I will say this, this filmdoes flirt with the idea of
paranormal versus psychologicalversus sabotage.
The main character, Nina, a rolethat Natalie Portman won the
Oscar for.
She sees visions of a darkerversion of herself, something
that she's striving to unlock.
So Nina, Natalie Portman isplaying this very kind of timid,

(20:41):
perfectionist person.
And the whole, in this role ofthe Swan Queen, she has, has to
be both the White Swan and theBlack Swan.
So the director, the whole filmis being like, you need to
figure out how to unwind, how tounleash, how to let go of, of
like all of the perfectionismyou're carry and just like, go
wild.

(21:01):
And of course he does this inlike super problematic ways by
like forcing himself on hermultiple times.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Oh, not good.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
But she's like this technically perfect dancer.
But she lacks this likeseduction and ferocity that he's
looking for in this

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Role.
I was gonna say like, just haveher like, take like a crazy wine
and painting class, you know,

Speaker 1 (21:21):
.
But as she's obviously startingto kind of crack under all this
pressure, these visions comewhere she's seeing this dark
version of herself and they'recoupled with like these violent
outbursts as she's gaslit andshe's tortured by this director.
It's, you know, it's an intensefilm.
The Pressure Mound says theother dancers turn against her.
So I also wanna talk about MilaKunis character Lily.
Okay.

(21:41):
Who's like this new girl.
She's super cool, you know, shelike smokes cigarettes.
She doesn't give a aboutnothing.
She's

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Cold and smoked cigarettes,

Speaker 1 (21:48):
, I don't support smoking cigarettes, but
that's how the film portraysher.
She's like very in touch withher sexuality.
She has no trouble lettingloose.
Like one night she like takesNina out and like gives her
ecstasy for the first time.
You know, that's like her vibe.
She just doesn't like care.
And then we realize like partwaythrough the film that we can't
trust the version of Lilly thatwe see.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Are you giving this entire movie

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Away?
?
No, because we're seeing itthrough Nina's eyes.
So we start to under, I'm justtrying to explain why this is
psychological.
We start to understand that atleast some of the things that
we're seeing are in Nina'sbrain.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, no, I got that.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Versus, okay, great.
But overall, the film is reallylike this exploration of mental
illness, toxic environments.
And I think it, it tells areally important story.
It highlights like thedifficulties of performing at
this kind of level with likethis ambition and this audience
and the pressure.
And again, it kind of like hasthis really gross director
character who is a quote unquoteartistic genius.

(22:45):
And that's why he's allowed toget away with being an absolute
predator.
Mm-hmm.
.
But it's at its core, there'salso a lot about Nina's own
history with mental illness.
And I think that the film isactually a raw look at, at the,
at that and how all thatmanifests and the effects of
pressure and control and beinggaslit.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Is Darren Aronofski still making stuff?

Speaker 1 (23:07):
He is, yeah.
But he makes stuff kind ofslowly.
Like he puts something outevery, you know, five years or

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Something.
Look, I can't name another

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Mother with Jennifer Lawrence.
I think that might've been hislast like, big One Mother.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
That's different from Ma, right?
Yeah.
That wasn't Darren Aronofski.
No.
.
Can you name another one?
Did

Speaker 1 (23:26):
You ever see Pie?

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Oh yeah, that

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Was

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Him.
I've seen that movie.
That's a weird movie.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah.
All this is weird.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Is are there any Doppel gangers in that movie?

Speaker 1 (23:36):
The Oh, the Whale came out this year with your
favorite guy,

Speaker 2 (23:38):
The Whale.
That's true.
Yeah.
That's not my favorite guy.
Everyone's favorite guy.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Burned and Frazier.
Yeah.
And there's, it sounds like he'sin post-production of something
right now, but so yeah, he, he'sstill out there.
I went to before college beforemy parents kind of like agreed
to let me go to a film programfor school.
Uhhuh.
They sent me to this reallyamazing program in Maine for a
few weeks called the Maine MediaWorkshops.
And

Speaker 2 (24:01):
It's Did you learn how to operate a steady cam?

Speaker 1 (24:03):
There was, there's they, they do like official
steady cam courses there, I

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Am aware.
Oh,

Speaker 1 (24:08):
.
But it's really cool.
They have like programs foradult filmmakers, for college
age, for photographers, for alldifferent kinds of like,
technical processes.
And it was a very, verytransformative and important
experience for me.
It was, honestly, it was like sohelpful technically to learn
about so many different thingson a film set before I even got

(24:28):
to college.
But the point is, in thisexperience, I've met friends
that I absolutely loved and Imet this one guy that I hated.
He was just like another guy inmy program, like another kid.
And he was sounds like a jerk.
He was just so obnoxious andpretentious and all he cared
about was Darren Aronofsky.
So from that I was like, Ugh, I,this guy is like, I will never

(24:51):
watch Darren Aronofski if thisis what this guy likes.
But now I, I like him quite

Speaker 2 (24:55):
A bit.
This is, that's literally thefilm school experience.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah.
Requi for a dream.
You know, it's like those kindof movies.
It's like film school moviesthat he makes.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
You hate him because there's always that one guy that
has this massive encyclopedicknowledge.
Uh, and when you voice youropinion about something, he just
, uh, explains to you why you're

Speaker 1 (25:14):
Wrong.
It's actually why, despite allof the discussion of film that
we do, I don't like talkingabout art or film or whatever
our TV with people a lot becauseit ends up being exactly what
you're saying, that people'sopinions are fact when they
forget that it's art.
And, and everyone can interpretthat art in a different way.
And I find it very obnoxious theway that some of these

(25:37):
conversations come out whereeverybody's like, well no, this
is why this is a good movie andif you like this movie, if you
don't like this movie, you'restupid.
Or if you do like this movie,you're, you know, it's like,
it's that kind of sense.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
I can't tell you how turned off I got having those
conversations because, you know,there I was in film school and
it's like, oh, so what's yourfavorite movie?
And we're getting answers, youknow, like Buffalo 66 Citizen
Kane just like, you know, andI'm like, I like Terminator two

Speaker 1 (26:05):
,

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Which is a cinematic masterpiece.
Yeah.
I stand by it as quite possiblyone of the best movies ever
made.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
I think everybody's own lived experiences and
interests totally paints yourinterest in all of this.
And it's just obnoxious to talkto people about it who are not
open-minded.
That's all rant over.
But I do like Black Swan, I dolike Darren Aronofsky as a
director, and if you haven'tseen it, it's a very, very good
example of a psychologicaldoppel gang or film.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah.
I haven't seen it, man.
Now I'm just like reliving thetrauma of trying to defend my
opinions about movies I like.
Just because like, I didn'tresonate with Midnight Cowboy.
I would get shame

Speaker 1 (26:50):
.
Well now yeah, now we can havethis podcast to get our revenge
on all of the film school.
Listen,

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Midnight Cowboy is not a bad, it's a good movie.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
I don't think I've seen it.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's, it's fun.
But I just, I did, I missed alot of the undertones, you know?
Yeah.
And if you miss the undertones,you're a idiot.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Or maybe that director didn't, could do a good
enough job.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
No.
It's actually a great movie.
.
So you've never seen Midnight

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Cowboy?
No.
Is it a Western?

Speaker 2 (27:17):
No.
Uh, yeah.
It's, it's about a male sexworker.
Well, he just wants to become amale sex worker, so he just like
goes to the big city to do that.
Cool.
Yeah.
And there's, you know, thingswhere he just starts like
flirting with, you know, olderwomen to try to, to pick up
clients.
Uh, but the women just thinkthat they're being hit on.

(27:38):
Hmm.
You know, and like conflictensues when he asks for payment.
Right.
You know, it's a lot of societalcommentary, but it's, it's a fun
movie.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
What's his name?
Dustin Hoffman's in it.
Oh, cool.
As like a little as like alittle Weasley guy.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
That's usually his character.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah.
His character is named RatsoRizzo.
If that doesn't like quantifyhis character type.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
So more of a rat than a Weasel.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
That's the movie where Dustin Hoffman goes, Hey,
I'm walking here.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Gotcha.
Iconic.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah.
Another classic example offilmmaking, Improv line.
Actually a taxi cab ran thebarricade because they had like
a blocked off street and a taxijust like burst through and
almost hit Dustin Hoffman.
And so he just like, you know,slaps the hood and says, Hey,
I'm walking here.
You know, but that the, the carwasn't even supposed to be in
the

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Movie Parodied Excellently by Sandra Bullock
and Mis congeniality

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Another cinematic masterpiece.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Okay.
Sorry for derailing our DoppelGanger episodes.
Talking about Midnight Cowboy.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah.
No doubles in Midnight Cowboy.
I assume

Speaker 2 (28:39):
It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't
remember anything like that.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Then let's talk about science fiction doppelganger

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Films.
Okay.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
But I do wanna be clear because obviously there is
a very fine line between cloningand science fiction.
Doppel gangers.
I'm not talking about cloning.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Why I think that counts.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Well, I already put together the research in a way
that excluded it.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
.
Okay.
Well I'm going to make an strongasterisks.
Uhhuh sayingcloning counts.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Why do you think cloning counts?

Speaker 2 (29:08):
That's what I believe.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
I'm gonna say why I don't think it counts

Speaker 2 (29:11):
.
Okay.
And I'll, I'll lobby why It

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Does, because a clone is a copy of somebody versus, so
it's kind of the same personversus in a lot of cases, Doppel
gangers are like a differentversion of that person, like an
evil version or a successfulversion or whatever.
But a clone is a carbon copy.
It's just having the same personmultiple times.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Have you seen the sixth day?

Speaker 1 (29:35):
No.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Starring the world famous Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Thought you were gonna say The Rock.
No, I have not.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Fantastic film all about cloning.
So this takes place in theslightly distant future Okay.
Where human cloning is illegal,but cloning as a technology
exists.
In fact, you can go to, uh, a repet facility ah, to get your pet
renewed if you would.

(30:02):
That's cute.
Yeah.
That's how like the movie kindof opens.
Right?
Cuz he's like replacing theirfamily dog.
Aw.
But then Arnold comes back tosee his family with a man that
looks just like him.
Ooh, Woohoo.
That sounds like doppelganger,right?

Speaker 1 (30:18):
But it's a carbon copy.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yes.
But mm-hmm.
, there's a lotthat goes on with this film.
There's lots of nefarious plans,you know, uh, corporate
espionage, there's the, youknow, it's an action movie.
Yeah.
But there's a lot ofpsychological elements behind
it.
First off just the, the, thecrazy psychological head trip of
walking into your home andseeing yourself there with your

(30:42):
family.
Yeah.
That's bad.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Right.
I concede.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
So there you go.
Clone, that's a cl very much acloning movie, but
doppelgangers.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
I'm also gonna say this very vague comment that
there's a film in theaters rightnow that I love that is about
cloning, but I am not talkingabout it because I don't wanna
spoil it for anybody.
But I just know how hard it isfor me not to talk about it
because it's so timely to thisepisode.
But it's cloning notdoppelganger.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Okay.
I'm just gonna spoil it for you.
You're talking about Ant Man inthe Wasp Quantum mania.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
.
Good guess, but no, there's

Speaker 2 (31:19):
A, there's a whole sequence Uhhuh
where he just keeps me, there'sso many duplicates of himself.
Cuz due to like the timelinekeeps splitting into different
probabilities that there's justso many versions of himself.
All slight differences.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Again, I don't think that's a d or if they exist on
different timelines,

Speaker 2 (31:37):
They're all in the same room.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Okay.
Well I haven't seen that movie.
That's not the movie I wastalking about.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
One even works for Baskin Robbins, that's like a, I
don't know, they, they paid alot for branding

Speaker 1 (31:47):
.
Okay.
So one film that I'm not gonnatalk about, but just as an
example, invasion of the BodySnatchers, which has a ton of
different versions.
It's been retold before.
It often appears on doppelgangerfilm list when you look up, you
know, best doppelganger films.
But it would fall under thecategory of cloning, I believe.
But a, an example of a sciencefiction film, I think, and I'm

(32:09):
curious what your thoughts arethat is strictly about Doppel
Gangers is Jordan peels us from2019.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
I have seen this movie.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
We just watched

Speaker 2 (32:18):
It.
Yes.
We rented the DVD from thelibrary.
It's almost impossible to talkabout this movie without
spoiling things.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah.
So skip ahead like five minutesif you haven't seen it and you
want

Speaker 2 (32:29):
To maybe 10 just to be safe, who knows how long
we're

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Talking.
Just go pause and watch it andcome back.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Beyond being my preferred mix of Horn comedy,
which I love us explores thisdeep psychological question with
the use of doubles or in thiscase the tethered, which is what
the double gangers are called.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Hold the phone.
Yes.
You found this movie funny.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah.
Are you kidding me?
The whole Elizabeth Moss.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Who's Elizabeth Moss?

Speaker 1 (32:53):
The white family with Ophelia and Play Call the Police
and the Place The Pol.
I think it's, I think it's very

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Funny.
Oh yes.
That was a humorous sequence.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah, there's, there's, I think the whole dad
is funny.
You know, there's like a vibe toit.
A funny vibe.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
When I think of horror comedy, I think of like
scary movie.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm not thinking of horror parody, I'm thinking of
horror comedy

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Or you know, like Evil Dead three, right.
Where it's mostly a comedy withsome horrific elements.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
You and I have different definitions

Speaker 2 (33:23):
That we do.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
So quoting from fandom.com here, just to help us
define the role of DoppelGangers in this movie, quote,
the tethered are an antagonisticrace of Doppel gangers in Jordan
Peel's 2019 horror film.
Us the tethered were made byhumans and were originally meant
to control their surfacecounterparts.
However, it failed and thetethered were abandoned for

(33:46):
generations.
The tethered copied theirsurface counterparts.
Whatever they did, they did aswell.
Except in a more horrific andstrange way.
There's this scene at the end,the final scene where Lupita is,
is with herself.
Right.
With her double mm-hmm.
.
It's at that point that shereveals kind of the impetus of,

(34:06):
of the tethered and how theycame to be and that they were
this government experiment as away to control the, the living
people like as puppets.
Uh, they would manipulate themon the, on the underground side
and control their actions on theabove ground side.
And that the experiment failed.
But now all of these, thesegenerations of people were
abandoned.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
It almost sounded like using clones with a weird
relationship with quantumentanglement.
Right.
Where with whatever one does,the other does as well.
Right.
It seemed though that it was,maybe that's why it was a failed
experiment.
It was just kind of the otherway around where whatever they
did upstairs, whatever the, thereal people did, the, the Doppel

(34:50):
Gangers had to do instead.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Right.
Yeah.
Which is, there's like, what thescene where they're all meeting
for the first time and they'retalking about like giving birth
and having C-sections and you'relike, that's, that's heavy.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
That's, that was terrifying.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
I'm going to quote from the vox.com article by
Emily St.
James cuz I think she reallyexplains the nature of the film
in a great way.
Okay.
Quote, it's central metaphor ofmeeting a literal twin of
yourself certainly can be readas a commentary on race, but
it's also a pretty brilliantcommentary on class, on

(35:22):
capitalism, on gender, and onthe lasting effects of trauma or
mental illness.
You can probably add your ownpossibilities to this list.
All of these concepts keepinforming one another.
If you wanna read What Happensto Red and Adelaide as a
commentary on how differentlytraumatic incidents weigh on
Children of Means versuschildren who grew up with little
money.
Doing so can support both aninterpretation of the film as

(35:45):
being about mental illness andone where it's about class.
What's more us doesn't seem towant to be read as social
commentary in the way Get Outwas the middle hour is so fun.
Precisely because it neverreally bothers to stop and make
you think about the movie'sdeeper themes.
It's too busy killing offtethers by chewing them up in a
boat's motor end

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Quote.
I did appreciate what you saidwhile we were watching the
movie.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
What did I

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Say that the only real racial commentary in the
film was how Fast the WhiteFamily dies.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yeah.
I mean obviously there's more,but to me that was just so funny
that the, the white family isimmediately killed by their
doppel gangers.
They, they really had no fairfight in them.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
They had none.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
They were so stupid.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
, I gotta, I gotta pull in the reins
here cuz we're not, I'm nottrying to just like give a movie
review in terms of the Doppelgangers.
I really loved the, the mythos.
I wish they explained the worlda little bit more.
I kind of wanna like see theprequel movie now.
Sure.
Uh, of like the, the, thefounding of the tethered also,
how the hell did they survivedon there for so long?
Do

Speaker 1 (36:47):
They Eating rabbits?

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Eating rabbits

Speaker 1 (36:50):
And the rabbits obviously multiply.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Got it.
Yeah.
How they feed the rabbits though

Speaker 1 (36:53):
That, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
It can't be a sealed ecosystem.
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Maybe the rabbits eat the dead bodies of the tethered
when they die.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
That's amazing.
U h, okay.
I mean, yeah, all thesequestions are just because I
found the world so, sointeresting.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
I hope, I hope someday you get a prequel to
this movie

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Or a sequel.
I'm fine with.
I'm fine with either.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
I hope we get an expanded view into the world.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
The, the tether verse .

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah.
There you go.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Or just start combining the movies where we
start seeing tethered versionsof the Aliens from Nope,.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
There you

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Go.
There'd be nuts.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Another example of a science fiction doppelganger
film is the film Doppelgangerfrom 1993.
Oh, here

Speaker 2 (37:34):
We go.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Starring Drew Barrymore Doppelganger is a
fairly poorly rated movie, butit certainly, I would say it's
fun to watch with a group.
Drew's murderous doppelgangermakes us think that she's
psychological for a largeportion of the film, but the
ending reveals what the doubleactually is and it's totally
bizarre and unique to thismovie.
I don't think any of the otherdoppelganger films that we've

(37:55):
seen are like this at all.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Something about it was familiar of like a version
of yourself literally rippingapart from yourself to go do
mysterious, like mischievousthings.
But

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Do you remember what was like inside the doppelganger

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Bones?

Speaker 1 (38:11):
No.
It was like, it was like a, amonster kind of

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
It was like literally fleshwould rip out of Drew Barrymore
Yeah.
Form into a person.
Go do bad and come back.
Yeah.
I've I've, I've seen this tropesomewhere else and I cannot
remember where.
Hmm.
Where Yeah.
That's just like the little evilpart of you that goes and does
bad things.
Did it ever explain where itcame from or why she can do

Speaker 1 (38:35):
That?
I don't think so.
Hmm.
And like, technically is itparanoid?
Like I'm putting it in sciencefiction because it's, it's not a
haunting, it's, it's, it'sactually a thing that is
happening in the world of thismovie.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Uh, I'd put that, I mean, it takes the ending where
she like we actually see thatall happen takes place in a
church.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
I think it's, I think it's her old house.
It's not a

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Church.
Oh really?

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah.
It's like the house that shelived in in la

Speaker 2 (38:59):
It's a beautiful

Speaker 1 (39:00):
House.
Well, yeah, it was like a gothicmanner.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
It, it, it, I don't know the, the closest
approximation of that is likewhen you see like little
Voldemort living in the back ofQuar quarrels head or whatever
his name is, where it's justlike a little thing that can
like come out and do bad things.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
There's also another film that does that.
I was, well spoiler malignant byJames won has

Speaker 2 (39:21):
That thing.
Yes.
That's the movie.
Yeah, that's the movie I'mthinking of.
Oh, okay.
Malignant.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
That's the movie I'm trying tothink of,

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Which I also purposely didn't include because

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Why?
That's perfect.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
That was a conjoined twin that it was like a, a cyst
then, you know, it was that kindof a thing.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
We, we are splitting hairs here.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
I know, I know.
But if you don't then this worldof this episode would be like 45
hours long.
There's so much to talk

Speaker 2 (39:44):
About.
Of course.
It's, yeah.
It's like

Speaker 1 (39:46):
We need some barriers to

Speaker 2 (39:48):
This.
I refuse No malignant is the, isthe example that I was thinking
of.
Okay.
It it is the perfect example oflike the evil version of
yourself.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
You know, cuz like yeah.
They were literally identicaltwins and one was evil and one
was not.
One also had superpowers

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Talking about evil versions of yourself.
Of course.
Spanning both cinema andliterature are our dear old
friends Dr.
Jelan, Mr.
Hyde, this

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Is a doppelganger.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
If you think all of the other, you just went on a
rant about how big this world ofdoppelganger should be.
But this is outside yourboundary.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yes.
Because they don't look likeeach other,

Speaker 1 (40:25):
But they are the same person.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
The visual likeness is a key component of the
doppelganger verse.
They

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Look somewhat like each other.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Only in that movie with, uh, what's his name?

Speaker 1 (40:39):
John Malkovich.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
With John Malkovich.
Yeah.
Where it's literally JohnMalkovich with a different wig
on and they're like, wow, thoseguys look nothing alike.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
.
Okay.
Well we, we extensively coveredJekyll and Hyde in October of
last year.
We did a whole series onJacqueline Hde.
So you can listen to that there.
I think if we're talking aboutthings so broadly, it's worth
mentioning because it's, and thereason why I put it in science
fiction is because it's a serumthat forces the, the change to

(41:08):
happen.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
In my mind, the quintessential version of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, as we discussed, is from aLeague of Extraordinary
gentlemen.
And they look in, it's basicallyjust like the Hulk.
Would you say that Bruce Bannerand the Hulk have a doppelganger
relationship?

Speaker 1 (41:26):
No.
Split personality.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Split personality.
I would like to argue thatJekyll and Hyde are the same.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Okay.
I, I concede again.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
One double that is based in science fiction but has
psychological implications.
And I think you're gonna takeissue with this as well.
Oh, here we go.
Is Frankenstein's monster,

Speaker 2 (41:44):
What

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Not clearly a doppelganger perhaps, but a
literary device that MaryShelley was using to hold up a
mirror to force our charactersto reflect upon their own lives,
which is kind of the samefunction of a doppelganger in
literature.
I'm gonna quote here fromKatherine Bowers

Speaker 2 (42:01):
Quote, I'm giving you a real skeptical look.
For all those who can't see

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Quote punter uses the examples of Robert Lewis
Stevenson's, the strange case ofDr.
Jelan, Mr.
Hyde and Oscar Wildes thepicture of Dorian Gray to
showcase the double type in bothcases, the double figures, the
violent monstrous hide enddorian's decaying aging
self-portrait reveal, thehorrors apparent when the self
is physically divided, Jekyll'sgoodness is offset by hyde's

(42:28):
murderous tendencies just asdorian's external beauty with
the internal decay anddegeneration represented in his
portrait end quote.
It's, it's, to me it's, I Iunderstand that it's one person,
but it also is kind of the sameidea of an evil twin.
You have one that's the evilversion and one that's the good
version and together they makeup a hole.

(42:50):
So whether those two things arephysically split or not, it's
similar in that way.
You have someone who's reallyevil, someone who's really good,
someone who's really this,someone who's really that
together.
They're balanced being,

Speaker 2 (43:02):
I'm getting flashbacks to high school this
time when being forced to writean essay on like, tell us why
the author intended this.
And I'm like, I don't see it.
I don't see it at all.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
You don't see that.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
I mean, I understand what you're saying.
I just don't see anyrelationship to doppel gangers
outside of the rela the dounless we're talking simply a
duality of a split person.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well, I'm just talking about taking a step
back, Uhhuh

Speaker 2 (43:29):
,

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Why Doppel gangers are used in film and in
literature what the purpose is.
I see.
And the purpose is usuallysimilar to what we see with
these examples,

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Right?
It's this, it's the personusually without the same
filters.
Right.
And just by adjusting thefilters, it makes it completely
different.
Usually evil person.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
It's all comes back to human nature at the end of
the

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Day.
Doesn't it?
Always.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
The final example of doppelganger in science fiction
is annihilation

Speaker 2 (44:01):
The final

Speaker 1 (44:02):
That I'm gonna talk about.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
The film came out in 2018 based on a novel from 2014
written by Jeff VanderMeer.
Again, it's hard to talk aboutthese things without spoiling
them, but I, I will just saythat the use of doppel gangers
here mimics us in a lot of ways

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Okay.
Mimics us as society or mimicsthe film, us the film.
Okay.
The 2019 movie.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah.
Which caused a lot of chaos atthe library when I was trying to
explain that I needed the DVD ofUS

Speaker 2 (44:29):
.
Yeah, no, I can see that.
Well, you brought up a reallygood point of you gotta draw the
line somewhere.
So cuz one very doppel gangeetrope that I don't want to touch
on simply because it belongs ina different episode, is when you
start doing time travelshenanigans.
And so it was literally you fromeither the past or the future

(44:53):
and you're trying to stopyourself from doing something or
trying to make something happenand it's just causing all sorts
of chaos or like any kind oflike crime thriller that
involves time travel.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Well, we have a time travel series coming up very,
very shortly.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
We do.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
So yeah, I'm not, I won't go toodeep into this,

Speaker 1 (45:11):
But, but that's different because that's your
literal self.
That's like back to the future.
It's not a different version ofyou, it is you

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Yes.
But like now we getphilosophical of like, what
makes you, you, that person hashad slightly different
experiences.
That person has slightlydifferent memories or

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Just slightly more or less memories.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Right.
But also what version of timetravel are we talking about?
You know, is it like we're withone continuous timeline?
Is it that this per this personis not going to only exists in
this timeline?
Are you actually that person?
You know, like where do you drawthe line?
So, uh, it it, it gets doppelgangy because again, you're

(45:53):
having like the, the, the weirdthing of seeing yourself do
things or having to stopyourself from doing things.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
We'll get to it all very soon.
Yep.
Good teaser there.
Interestingly, I found a lot ofthe literary uses of Doppel
gangers that I wanna highlightat least fall under the
paranormal category.
Less so films, but more so a lotof like Victorian era ghost
stories, for instance, useddoppelganger mm-hmm.

(46:20):
in a paranormalstrictly paranormal way.
Sure.
Which is more kind of in linewith the way we talked about
them in the last episode versusa lot of the film adaptations
are, you know, psychologicalscience fiction, all the things
that we've talked about so far.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (46:34):


Speaker 1 (46:35):
The Jolly Corner by Henry James, the namesake of our
cat was first published inDecember of 1908 and it appeared
in the English Review.
It is indeed a ghost story.
The jolly double tells the storyof a protagonist who returns to
his now empty childhood home andbegins to frequent it at night

(46:55):
in the hopes of running into hisown ghostly.
Double quoting from the articleby Terry Thompson quote, the
idea of characters encounteringtheir doppel gangers identical
or nearly identical versions ofthemselves is probably as old as
storytelling itself from Artemisto her shadowy other hackee to
Dr.
Jekyll in his alter ego.
Mr.

(47:15):
Hyde breeders have long beenintrigued by the prospect of a
man or a woman meeting a ghostlydouble, especially if that
strange other self is somehowevil, supernatural, or at least
a bit sinister in the JollyCorner.
One of the last stories thatHenry James wrote, the author
created an elegant broodingdoppelganger tale.
Certainly one of the mostcompelling in all of American

(47:36):
literature.
End quote.
One exciting adaptation of thisbecause I think it is less
known.
Hmm.
But for anyone who has seen theseries, the Haunting of Blind
Manor, which I did watch.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
Did

Speaker 1 (47:48):
I watch that?
No, I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
What did I watch?

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Hillhouse?
Yes.
Which is similar, but in BlindManor there is an episode called
the Jolly Corner Uhhuh, which the
director's actually based on theplot of this, which I would've
totally had no sense of, of theinspiration behind it until I
saw this.
I see.
So if anyone's seen that, theymight have some sense of, of
this short story.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Got it.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
There's also a story called The Poor Claire by
Elizabeth Gaskill in 1856Gaskell's the Poor Claire was
first released as a serial.
Interestingly, it was actuallypublished in a magazine that
Charles Dickens ran calledHousehold Words.
Hmm.
The Poor Claire is anotherVictorian ghost story that
brings us into the world of ayoung woman who is being cursed

(48:32):
by her grandmother.
And I know these examples again,are, are things that we're less
familiar with.
So the reason I wanted tohighlight these is because I
wanted to show the way that thisstoppel ganger motif seems to
function in this literature fromthis era versus the way it kind
of functions in a lot of themare modern films.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Makes

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Sense.
But I, I don't expect us all tobe super familiar with these
stories, but they're allaccessible public domain short
stories that you can go findonline and read for

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Free.
Maybe we'll have one of those inour, uh, lunatics library
episode.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
We actually have very modern doppelganger stories for
our lunatics library for this,which I'm very, very excited
about.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
So you might say we're giving you the, the
cutting edge of fiction.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
There you go.
So there's this final kind ofwishy-washy abbey category that
I wanna leave you with.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Women's studies.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
, some may argue that some of these are
paranormal or psychological innature, but for some reason they
feel different than theimplementations that we've
already discussed.
So I'm calling this just so likesomeone who just meets someone
who looks like them.
You know, there's no grandexplanation or twist ending.

(49:38):
We can assume the author ismaking a point a metaphor, but
there's no clear indication thatthe double is ghostly or
hallucinated or anything else.
It's just simply part of thestory.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
That's sounds boring.
Well

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Buckle up and, and I will acknowledge that some of
these, it might just be the casethat I don't know the story
intimately enough to categorizeit properly, but let's just give
me the benefit of the doubthere.
Okay.
Quoting again from Gray FowerHoltz article mm-hmm.
, the centralpremise of the doppelganger
motif poses the paradox ofencountering oneself as another.

(50:11):
The logically impossible notionthat I and the not I are somehow
identical originating in theGerman shower Oman in the
British Gothic novel, thedoppelganger like the vampire,
was a product of early 19thcentury fascination with
folklore derived from thesuperstitious belief that seeing
one's double is an Oman ofdeath.

(50:31):
The doppelganger motif fusessupernatural horror with a
psychological inquiry concerningpersonal identity and a
psychological investigation intothe hidden depths of the human
psyche.
And William Wilson by EdgarAllen Poe was first released in
1839, and then again a yearlater within his short story
collection, the Grotesque andthe arabesque.

(50:52):
This is a great example of ajust so doppelganger because it
highlights this motif that wesee often work.
It's like getting advice fromyourself.
It's kind of like what you saidat the beginning.
Like, what was that like, tryingto make a better version of
yourself?
Or if like, if you encounter adoppelganger that has like a
better version of your life.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah.
In the sixth, the day there is aamazing scene where someone's
all like up Right.
And goes through a last minutecloning process so that he
doesn't die.
Okay.
Because the way the cloningthing works is there's like a
little light flashy thing thatlike, you know, does a quick
download of your consciousness.

(51:32):
Uh, and then they just put itinto a blank, uh, and then the
blank and instantly matures, youknow, not instantly, but very
quickly.
Then the, the new guy wakes upand the old guy is like, wait,
you're not even gonna wait untilI'm dead?
And he says, would you?
And then goes on.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Yeah.
Because I mean, that'sinteresting because it's
highlighting that the double hasits own, it's not just a copy.
Right.
It has its own motivations and

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Well, actually it's,

Speaker 1 (51:57):
I know that's saying, would you, whatever you would
do, I would do.
But it's also saying that likeI'm, you know, I'm not gonna
respect you and fall in line.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Right.
Because like, I'm not you.
I'm right.
I'm the new version.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
It's like robots rebelling.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Sure.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
.
So I'm gonna quote from WilliamWilson itself here.
So Ed Garen pose words, quote, Ihave already spoken of how he
seemed to think he was betterand wiser than I.
He would try to guide me.
He would often try to stop mefrom doing things I had planned.
He would tell me what I shouldand should not do.
And he would do this not openly,but in a word or two in which I

(52:33):
had to look for the meaning.
As I grew older, I wanted lessand less to listen to him as it
was.
I could not be happy under hiseyes.
That always watched me everyday.
I showed more and more openlythat I did not want to listen to
anything he told me.
I have said that in the firstyears when we were in school
together, my feelings mighteasily have been turned into

(52:53):
friendship, but in the latermonths, although he talked to me
less often, then I almost hatedhim.
End quote.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
Yeah.
No one likes a know-it-all.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
.
One of the earliest examples ofdoppelganger in film history, if
not the earliest, is a film from1913 called The Student of
Prague.
This film is somewhat based onthe story that we just discussed
by Edgar apoe, William Wilson.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
When was Poe From

Speaker 1 (53:19):
18 hundreds.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
18 hundreds.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
That story was from 1839, I think.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Gotcha.
I know, I'd, his stuff feels somuch more contemporary.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
You can actually watch this film in its entirety
on its Wikipedia page.
It's like totally embeddedwithin it.
So if anyone wants to, it's asilent film.
It's not super easy

Speaker 2 (53:38):
To watch.
She don't even need headphones.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
But it's considered the first German art film and
was this really essential filmto history because to history in
that region, because it elevatedfilm locally Sure.
And kind of turned film intosomething different in Germany.
So it, it's often kind ofreferenced in a lot of things.
One thing I also wanna highlightin this section is that there is
a type of gothic horror tropespecific to Doppel gangers

(54:05):
called the Gothic Double.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Interesting Go on.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
A lot of the short stories and novels that we've
referenced so far, were actuallyfrom an era of gothic
literature, which would maketheir doubles, gothic doubles.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Makes sense.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
The first instance of this is from a novel called Syk
or Seven Cheese by Johann PaulRichter, published in 1796,

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Seko

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Seko.
The novel tells the story of aman who seeks guidance from a
friend who turns out to be hisdoppelganger and advises him to
fake his own death.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
This was brought to my attention as the first
example of do of doppelgangerand literature.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Steven.
Steven cost, how do you say it?

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Semen Kos

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Se cost.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Who brought this to your attention?

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Avi Dobkin from the Alpha to Zed podcast,

Speaker 1 (54:57):
, that

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Tracks.
I actually tracked down a copyof this book, um, but with lots
of classic literature, I preferto do it on audiobook.
Yeah.
Uh, just so I don't have to dealwith the

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Old timey language.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
It, it just makes it more accessible.
Yeah.
But I could only find the Germanversion in recorded format.
Oh.
Uh, so I, I have it in hard copynow.
Oh, you do?
Um, but I totally forgot aboutit because I picked it up
whenever we decided to do thistopic, which was a while ago.
And here we are just remindedabout semen cost or whatever it

(55:32):
is.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
We'll convince Avi to translate it and record an
audiobook version for us.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Hang on.
I wanna, the, there's a, thefull title of this is
ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Yeah.
I, I absolutely couldn'tpronounce it, so I didn't try.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Okay.
So the full title of seko, Imean, there's a long bit of
German that I'm not gonna read.
So SEKO itself means sevencheese.
Yep.
But that's a proper noun, uh,within the title.
And the full title is FlourFruit in Thorn Pieces, or The
Married Life, death and Weddingof the Public Defender.

(56:08):
F Saint Seko in Rick Richler.
Mark Flockin Coen.
Sch Snapple.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
There you

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Go.
Sorry for my German, everybody.
Uh, but yeah, I mean, it soundslike a real page.
Turner, one last note onSebe Kos.
That's where we get the worddoppelganger.
So on the Wikipedia trivia pageand that, that's

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Wikipedia trivia.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah.
The Wikipedia trivia page.
This is where I get all theinformation.
.
Okay.
Uh, SEBE Kos is the first novelin which a lookalike is
described as a doppelganger,which is obviously a very German
word.
Yep.
It is a word of Jean Paul's owninvention slightly spelled
differently originally.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Got it.
There you go.
And then again, which we talkedabout in last episode, Katherine
Crowe took that word from thisnovel and a, and applied it to
this paranormal and thisparanormal book that she wrote,
which kind of put it into thezeitgeist as this paranormal
term.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Yeah.
So I guess Sean Paul, who's theauthor of seko, is the, the
father of the Doppelganger.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
There you go.
It's kind of an interestinghistory because it's, it's like
our terminology for it came fromfiction, but it ca it adapted
itself to describe somethingthat's existed for thousands of
years.
It's kind of interesting the wayit all came about here.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yeah.
But also just like, leave it tothe Germans to give a very, very
specific word to something.
Sure.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
Other examples of gothic doubles can be found in
the strange case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson.
You

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Don't say,

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Along with Charlotte Bronte's.
Jane Nair, one of my favoriteauthors of all time, and Reid
Ette.
If you haven't,

Speaker 2 (57:48):
You won't even let me read it.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
What do you mean sitting on my shelf for five
years?

Speaker 2 (57:52):
I have every time I asked to borrow it.
You do, you hit me

Speaker 1 (57:55):
.
The Double by Dostoyevsky wasfirst published in 1846.
The plot of the double issomewhat similar in some ways to
the film we started talkingabout today.
Ted

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Ringers the sixth today,

Speaker 1 (58:06):
No, Ted Ringers.
It doesn't deal with twins, butit's a story of one man who
meets his double.
And there's kind of this powerstruggle between them that
emerges.
One has all the charm, the otheris Les Social.
You, you get it.
Quoting again from KatherineBowers quote and Dostoyevsky's
text, the double appears after ametaphorical death.
This progression is a mere imageof a common 19th century

(58:30):
spiritualist belief about doppelgangers.
That the double's appearance isan ill Oman that often
prefigures death.
The reasoning behind it takenfrom folklore is that the spirit
world in the living worldcoexist always hidden from each
other, but before death, thebarrier between them opens.
For example, in PrometheusUnbound from 1820, Percy Bis

(58:52):
Shelley describes the priest zAstor encountering his own
double an apparition from theshadow world, visible only to
him.
The double is a mirroredreflection of the living
individual in the land of thedead.
It appears to the other half inlife just before death comes,
which we talked about.
Remember, we, we quoted fromPercy's Percy's, Percy Death

(59:14):
from Shelly's.
Yeah.
From Shelly's Palm in the lastepisode, because I really like
his version, which again, arebased on his own.
He had experiences with, youknow, claimed experiences with
the do game.
Oh, Christy Shelley.
Yeah.
But he

Speaker 2 (59:27):
The less famous Shelley

Speaker 1 (59:28):
.
But he painted this picture inhis I Prometheus Unbound about
like, very similar to us in away, like this shadow world
post-death and this livingworld.
And then right before death, itopens up and you meet your other
half.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Wait, Percy Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound.
Yeah.
I You've read some of it, right?

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Parts of it.
We both, we all did lastepisode.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Right.
That's when we talked aboutthis.
I, I don't know.
I really wanna read it.
I just, I can't stand like it.
I love the content.
It just sounds so cool.
It just, I it's gonna be so uninaccessible.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Have Avi read it

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
For you.
Okay.
So for the Lunatics Libraryepisode, we're just gonna have
Avi read all of PrometheusUnbound to us.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
.
There you go.
So we're talking about theDouble by Dostoyevsky.
Right.
There's actually a 2013 filmversion super accessible.
Sure.
But it stars Jesse Eisenberg,who I know

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Don't like, ah, come on.
Hate that guy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
And there's also a famous movie, the Machinist from
2004, starring Christian Bale.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
I've seen this

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
That is also inspired by this movie.
Really?
By this novel.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
There's a double in that movie.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
It might not be one for one, but it's, it's somehow
I haven't seen The Machinist,but

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
I mean, it's been a while.
I just remember him being sofreaking skinny.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Well, that's why it's famous, because he went from
that to Batman and it was likethe biggest weight change for
consecutive film roles ever.
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens was first
published in 1859 set in bothLondon and Paris.
This famous novel tells thestory of a man released from
prison to care for his child.
Full disclosure, I have not readthis novel, but it's a very
important historical novel thatmany, many people really love.
So calling that out here,

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
It was the best of novels.
It was the worst of novels.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
on the film side.
The final thing, I'm gonna talkabout Possession from 1981.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
A fantastic film,

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Funny timing, because we actually have just made a
short film, art film version ofit that will be up on YouTube
very soon.
Ours doesn't have anydoppelganger, but Possession is
a bit polarizing because itexplores intense and somewhat
graphic themes.
So some people really love it,so people really hate

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
It.
I'm in the latter.
No, it's the only thing I'mgonna say about Possession is
that it's a really weird movie.
Yeah.
And we've watched a lot ofreally weird movies.
Yeah.
And this is, this is up there.
Up

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
There.
Yeah.
When it comes to doubles, thisfilm is an example of the same
actor playing multiple roleswithin the film as a way to
illustrate vastly differentpersonalities.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
It's just like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
I, I, it's nothing like that.
But that's another example of anactor playing multiple roles
within a film,

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Or in Eddie Murphy in the Nutty Professor two, the
Clumps

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
.
That's really what it's called.
Yes.
Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
It's classified as a comedy of romance.
That movie only has 27% ofRotten tomatoes.
That's a classic.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
But anyway, subscribe to our YouTube channel so that
you'll be the first to know.
In our version of PossessionComes out soon.
A few other films.
I'm gonna just list that wedidn't talk about.
Perfect.
Blue from 1997, lost Highway,also from 97 Enemy from 2013.
The Broken From 2008 Moon from2009.

(01:02:50):
Duh.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
I know that movie,

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
The Similars from 2015 Look away from 2018 and The
Hole in the Ground from 2019.
You

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Prepped me before this episode being like, you're
gonna have to talk about Moon,cuz I haven't seen

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
It.
What do you have to say aboutMoon?

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
It absolutely has Doppel gangers,

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
Clones.
Where would you, where would youclassify it?
Which category?

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Uh, clones.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Okay.
So off topic,

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
.
No, no, I'm sorry.
You can't talk about Moonwithout giving the whole thing

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Away.
Okay.
That's the really, that's thestruggle of this whole episode
that I found is like, yeah, Ifeel like the whole time I was
like, oh, here's this graymovie.
I don't wanna tell you exactlywhat happens, but go watch it.
You know?
But you live in, you learn.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
I'm not gonna say that Moon is an incredible
movie, but it's interesting andI remember it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
I love Sam Rockwell, so

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Yeah.
He does a great job in thismovie.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Support him no matter what I, I've seen Moon, to be
fair, but I don't remember adoppelganger moment.
I don't remember much about

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
It.
It's worth, it's worth a watch.
Yeah.
It's a fun movie.
It's a little, I mean, I justlove space movies.
Yeah.
Like literally anything thattakes place in space, I'll watch

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Contact,

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Contact.
Very little of it takes place inspace.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
But some

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Of it does.
Some of it does.
But you put the whole movie inspace,

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Then you have a whole different

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Movie then.
Sure.
But like that, then I'm on board.
very classic sci-fi.
Yeah.
Not enough is on, not enough isin space.
Yeah.
Too much is like on the weirdplanets.
Not about the weird planets.
I'm about, I'm all about beingin space.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Okay.
We have different thoughts.
I guess that's canon.
Yes.
We are in fact not clones ofeach other.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
That is correct.
And be really weird.
It wasn't

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
In conclusion, if it wasn't abundantly clear already,
there are so many differentreasons doubles are used in
literature and film, but thisquote from Katherine Bowers
really seems to sum up themajority of these examples.
We're gonna let her take us homehere.
Quote.
The double's appearance isusually terrifying because it's
the manifestation of the socialencounter feared most, one in

(01:04:54):
which the authentic self isrevealed, suddenly faced with
your own mere image.
Dark secrets are no longerburied, but potentially on
display.
If you can observe them, so canothers.
The terror lies in your doublerevealing, your own hidden true
self.
Perhaps even worse, a selfhidden even to you end quote.
And at the end of the day, likewe said, it's all about human

(01:05:18):
nature.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Yeah.
So I don't know about you, butI'm, I'm pretty inspired to go
do a quick, uh, revisit to bothSEKO and the sixth

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
Day.
There you go.
and, uh, midnightCowboy.
Sure.
Yeah.
Just throw that in there too.
Why not?
Why not?
Thank you guys as always so muchfor being here.
I know this was kind of asprawling weird one, even though
I feel like I say this everyepisode.
Join us next time for a lunaticslibrary featuring three
incredible modern versions ofdoppelganger horror.

(01:05:48):
I'm so, so, so excited for nextepisode.
And as always, stay spooky andstay safe and we'll talk to you
soon.
Bye

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Bye.