Episode 767: Raw (2016)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh gez, folks, it's showtime.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
People say good mighty to see this movie.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
When they go out to a theater, they want clod sodas,
hot popcorn in.

Speaker 5 (00:30):
No monsters in the projection Booth.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

Speaker 6 (00:35):
Cut it off, ud, Welcome to the Projection Booth.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again as MS.
Susan Tekla Kuruglinska.

Speaker 7 (02:14):
Hey, I'm excited to discuss the most accurate depiction of
academia on film.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Also back in the booth is MS Beth Akamando.

Speaker 8 (02:22):
Yes, and I am happy to talk about cannibalism anytime,
because anytime I see a cannabis sign, I'm always thinking
it says cannibal and then I'm disappointed.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
We continue Shocked Over twenty twenty five with a look
at Julia Decornow's twenty sixteen film Raw The film stars
Garan's Marilier as Justine, a freshman at a veterinary school.
How do you know she's a vegetarian? Wait five minutes.
She will tell you. When she's forced to eat a
rabbit kidney, or maybe when she's doused with blood, she

(02:52):
begins to feel strange cravings that lead to some interesting places.
We will be discussing that and more as we go
through things. So if you don't on anything ruin, please
turn off the show and come back after you've seen
the film. We will still be here. Susan, when was
the first time you saw raw and what did you think?

Speaker 7 (03:10):
I know I saw it right when it came out,
because I remember there was a spate of great horror
movies where were a Black Coat's Daughter?

Speaker 8 (03:15):
Like?

Speaker 9 (03:16):
There was a few things to add, like, I don't
remember if I saw it.

Speaker 7 (03:19):
I don't remember where I sat, but I know I
saw it when it came out and hadn't really watched
it since, and so it was great. I loved it
the first time, and it was I watched it twice
before this and loved it absolutely.

Speaker 9 (03:29):
I can watch it right now after the we're done talking,
I'll watch it. I could watch it again.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
I loved it, and Beth, how about yourself.

Speaker 8 (03:36):
Yeah, I saw it when it first came out. I
believe sadly I saw it on a screener instead of
in a theater for the first time, but I immediately
fell in love with it, and in fact, it inspired
me to do an entire podcast on what I called
gourmet cannibal films. So these are films in which not
just the craft of filmmaking is refined, but the actual

(04:01):
eating of human flesh is not merely done for gore
and horror effect. Yeah, I had to switch podcasts at
the last minute, and I had just seen Raw, and
I said, I'm going to talk to this friend of
mine who's a chef and who also loves cannibal films,
and he prepped food while we did the interview, so
you got to hear him chopping up stuff, and you

(04:22):
talked about food preparation and how that kind of played
into these gourmet cannibal films. So films I included Raw
on that, but also the cook, the thief, his wife
and her lover ravenous films where it was not just
like ripping into human flesh. So I thought it was fabulous.
And I do enjoy cannibal films. I think they really

(04:46):
get to an interesting level of horror.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah. I don't remember the first time I saw this.
I know I didn't see that theater. I remember probably
renting it or maybe illegally downloading it at some point
and just absolutely loved it. I haven't gone back to
it for I guess nine years in the introm but
it really made an impression and I was really glad

(05:12):
to be able to program this one this month. And
I'm glad that I have you two on here because
last week we talked about In My Skin, and both
my co hosts were dudes, and I said, you know,
there's nothing better than talking about, you know, women coming
to terms with their own bodies and gaining their power
and all of these things with three guys just hanging

(05:34):
out on microphone. So I'm glad to be in the
minority this week.

Speaker 7 (05:38):
When you think of cannibals, it almost seems goofy. I
actually think of Bugs, Bundy, like you always said that
the cartoons. It's such a cartoonish kind of thing, almost humorous,
it seemed, And like when I tell people who do
not know this movie, I mentioned to a couple of
people I was gonna be talking about this, they immediately
roll their eyes because it just sounds really corny, and
I don't know, but it's just yeah, like I I

(06:00):
really respect that you can wrestle with this topic and
make it a really beautiful movie.

Speaker 9 (06:04):
It's really really a feat to pull off well.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
It's so well shot and looks so good, and just
the story structure itself is so well put together. I mean,
I forgot all about that opening shot with the car
coming down the road and that we see that accident
happen right off the bat, and just how that plays
into later on in the film. And when you see

(06:28):
Justine being driven to school for the first time and
she's going down a road very much like that, I'm like, oh,
is this the car accident we saw earlier? And then
it just kind of puts this idea in your mind
from the very beginning, that there is danger in the
world and you don't know when that danger is going
to actually happen. It could have been in the past,
it could be in the future. We don't know exactly
what's happening. And then that she's being driven to school

(06:51):
and her room gets busted open by a guy, ironically enough,
holding a ski pole, and I think that's the guy
who's going to be her roommate pretty soon. And yeah,
just like all of these things where you get little
bits and pieces that are going to come back, Like
I think the first time you see her sister Alexia,
she's flipping her the bird, and I'm like, oh, well,

(07:13):
that finger's going to be due for some interesting things
later on in this film.

Speaker 8 (07:17):
I love films that don't tell you everything up front.
There's so many movies where you watch the first ten
minutes and you pretty much know everything that's going to happen.
And what she does is she leaves you with this ambiguity,
and it's intriguing, and it also respects our intelligence, saying

(07:39):
that we are capable of piecing things together, and also
that we're capable of not being frustrated by not knowing
everything about the characters or about what it's going to be.
She doesn't define the genre right away or who these
people are, or what this first scene we see is
all about. And I just really appreciate that in filmmaking

(08:02):
because I don't want to be talked down to, and
she never does.

Speaker 9 (08:06):
That, and because it's got those layers.

Speaker 7 (08:09):
It's really fun to rewatch it, to watch it like
twice in a row, because then you go back and
you see these little bits of dialogue detail that just
she obviously really thought to place perfectly in these perfect
little places that would lead to something else, like a
lot of little comments between the sisters where Alex is
going up, I helped you when I just shove that
kidney down your throat and she's no, you didn't, and

(08:30):
you're just like, it's such a little casual bit of dialogue,
but it's so significant, like after you've you know how
this all works out well.

Speaker 8 (08:37):
And also with the vegetarian reference, you're vegetarian too, and
she's no, I'm not. Have you not been paying attention? No?
And there's lovely visual cues, like you mentioned the flipping
off of the finger, and it's not just what happens
to that finger, but it's also that almost end image
when in the prison where you get this reflection and

(08:58):
again they're like making this joke with which is the
missing finger the one she can flip you off with the.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Look of this film is so good. I love the
veterinary school that she goes to, which just has this
brutalist architecture and is the strangest looking veterinary school ever.
Like you said, like she won't just explain something, and
she doesn't explain it to us, and she doesn't necessarily
explain it to Justine either. Justina is a great person

(09:26):
for us to be following because she is as clueless
as we are when it comes to so many of
these things, like being taken from her dorm room and
thrown out into the hall. And then you get that
cut to all of the students that are crawling up
over these mattresses and crawling through these corridors and just
this slow hand and nive crawl that they're doing, and

(09:50):
you're like, what the hell is going on? They look
like a whole bunch of cattle being taken to the slaughter.

Speaker 8 (09:55):
Yes, it totally reminds me of that. I know. I
listened to her commentary track and she was talking about it.
She wanted them to look like insects, but for me,
it was much more like cattle being put into slaughter.
And you were waiting for that the device that haaveyar
Bard deem uses no country for old men to kill them.

(10:18):
It was just such a bizarre and disorienting shot. You
really don't know where they are. It's almost like a
sci fi look to it. Also, it doesn't have a
specific timeframe or location really, but it was that was
just a fabulous way to take us into that world.

Speaker 7 (10:39):
Starts with someone crawling in that kind of Japanese harorway
that you see like and that was it the ring
that she comes out of the TV. But you kind
of see that a lot in Japanese hard this kind
of insect like crawling forward of a ghost or something.
And then she has a point where someone's licking someone's eye.
She has a lot of little Japanese touches like just
here and there, like she'll do these a lot of
great movie references, like you can't help thinking other babes

(11:00):
obviously as you're watching this, which.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Is so great too, things like well, even with the
car crash that we see later on, I was thinking
of Weekend, you know, very similar road. Of course, there's
the big Carrie reference when they're doused with blood. Even
when she's eating raw meat, I was thinking of Rosemary's Baby.
I'm like, oh, yeah, this is just steeped in film references.

Speaker 8 (11:22):
But it's steeped in film references where it's not that
like nudge, nudge, wink wink, look at what I'm doing.
You can watch the whole movie and not catch a
single one of those and it still plays fine. And again,
I just like her subtlety. She doesn't try to call
attention to some of that stuff, but.

Speaker 9 (11:42):
It's all there.

Speaker 8 (11:43):
And like you said, this is a film you can
keep rewatching and you keep finding new things in it,
and that's one of the things that's so exciting about it.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
And just those little blink and you miss at moments
like when they turn this the initiation into a big
party and and you see a guy with the girl
and he's about to make out with her, and it
looks like he takes something and puts it in her mouth,
and I'm just like, Okay, is that ecstasy or is
that like a Roofye, Like, I don't know what this is,
but she just accepts whatever it is that he puts

(12:14):
in her mouth.

Speaker 8 (12:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (12:15):
Incredible detail, like just incredible background people and incredible of course,
little punctuating actors like the guy at the gas station
and the crazy smiling demon in the hospital room when
they're when they're getting her in the hospital, her finger
after her finger incident. She just places these really interesting characters,

(12:38):
little interesting details to just put you on edge.

Speaker 9 (12:40):
And also the nurse is another great one. Obviously.

Speaker 8 (12:43):
She talked about the fact she called these her Island characters,
like they only exist in one scene, and they're kind
of like these harbingers of something that's coming, Like each
one kind of gives her a warning about something or
talks about something that's going to come up later. But yeah,
they're great characters. You could pull each one of them

(13:03):
out and make a little movie separately to each of them.

Speaker 9 (13:07):
Yeah, and anything they say has nothing to do with
the movie.

Speaker 7 (13:11):
Like the guy at the truck stop who's holding his
ear in such an eerie way. He's like making Aiden
feel very uncomfortable in a sexual way, but he's I
forget what he's talking about pigs or he has a
pig in his truck or something. And then the nurse
is they're stuck in about an old student who is overweight,
and I have a feel like that's a nod to
obviously the growing up thing and being in a female

(13:34):
growing up and how oppressive it can be. But it's
so sideways and it just what's nice is it gives you,
It takes you out.

Speaker 9 (13:41):
Of the movie for a split second.

Speaker 7 (13:43):
In a way, it makes them to be not overwhelming
because you take these little, tiny side trips every once.

Speaker 9 (13:48):
In a while.

Speaker 8 (13:49):
It does tie in because talking about the pig, and
it's like how close it is to humans and this
notion of issue losing her humanity by turning in to
a cannibal or is she just becoming more animalistic? There's
part of that. And then the nurse, it's so much
of that conversation is about growing up, about body image,

(14:12):
about how perceptions of people impact the way they behave
and the way they're perceived. So like each of those things,
and the little demon guy at the hospital, My god,
he was so good. But it's like, first he seems
totally creepy and then he seems funny and inviting and

(14:33):
almost like welcoming her in a weird sort of way,
and her reaction to it is she just doesn't seem
to know how to take him. But all those characters
were just so rich in just single scenes.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well, the thing with the guy at the truck stop,
isn't her roommate who eventually becomes her lover a is
that his name right. He talks about how like how
gross it is the way that she was eating, and
that really turns off a guy, and then she uses
that against the truck driver in order is she just

(15:12):
starts stuffing her face after a while, Like when he's
talking to them and starting to get really super creepy,
she just starts stuffing her face. And it's like, oh, yeah,
I don't want to be around this girl because she's
eating so disgustingly. Yeah, there's little things like you know,
you've mentioned pigs, there's a cow, there's horses, there's a dog,
very prominent in this whole film as well. I like though, too,

(15:34):
that when they're at that opening party, that there's a
lamb with a electrical cord around its neck, this kind
of sacrificial image.

Speaker 9 (15:43):
It's creepy. It's really creepy.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, And I don't think they talk very much about
how she's a virgin as well. I mean, not only
is she getting this first taste of meat and this
whole new life that is coming out for her, but
she's also sexually awakening. I mean, I think the two
really go hand in hand.

Speaker 8 (16:01):
It's a first for her for so many things. She's
going to college for the first time. She's in this
environment that's brand new. She's a virgin, she's going to
try human flesh for the first time. There's so much
there that.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
As you do when you're a freshman, right.

Speaker 7 (16:17):
I think a really interesting theme is she has zero
control over anything, which is very like adolescent through emerging
adult age group. It's like she is going to the
same college that her parents went to and that her
sister went to. She's forced to make out with that
guy in the closet, like she's forced to wear certain
clothes that her sister gives her.

Speaker 9 (16:37):
They'd make her wear a diaper. They're telling her what
to wear.

Speaker 7 (16:40):
The hazing is completely in complete control over them, how
she's sleeping.

Speaker 9 (16:44):
The professor tells her, I don't care how good you are.
I don't like you. She has what she's eating.

Speaker 7 (16:50):
She has no control over anything, and I think that's
really I think they that she hits the director hits
Julia hits that really really hard, that she has zero
control and she ends up in a trap. The intention
was that she's morally overcoming this thing that her sister
wasn't able to overcome. But still I find it very sad.

(17:10):
In the end, that she's really been trapped into this thing.

Speaker 8 (17:14):
I'm not so sure I would define it as lack
of control as much as just she's it's just being
young and being this kind of blank slate, like she
doesn't have a lot of experiences to guide her or
to even make her think about choices that she might have.
So I feel like she's this empty receptacle that's receiving

(17:36):
all this information and all this stuff, and the progress
is her finally like making some choices, even though some
of them aren't completely in her control. That also brings
up like the sins of the parents brought down on
the sins of their child. But yeah, I mean, it
seems like she just keeps having these weird experiences that

(18:01):
she has to kind of file away and do something
with and make decisions about what they all mean. And
in her particular case, she's got some very difficult complicating factors.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
The whole idea of her sister being part of this
school and being there as this hazing ritual is going on,
and it feels like, is this hazing going on for
the first full year or is it the first full week?

Speaker 8 (18:27):
I mean, how it's a week I think Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
This whole timeline is so compressed.

Speaker 8 (18:30):
Then, so one of the things I will say about,
like the whole hazing and the you talked about her
being forced to dress a certain way because they tell so.
KPBS is on the San Diego State campus and when
I used to work late at night, I used to
see all the sorority and fraternity people coming back from

(18:52):
parties or going to parties. And one of the things
that always baffled me was I would see like this
large group of women all dressed exactly the same. One
night would be short black dress day, the other night
would be short shorts in boots, the other night would
be flappers. And like, I've always been baffled by fraternities

(19:15):
and sororities because the idea of conformity is probably as
horrific as cannibalism. To me, it's just something I don't understand.
And then if I was there really late at the
end of the night, if it was like midnight or
two am or something, I would see the same procession

(19:36):
at night, which was always the women with their stiletto
heels slung over their shoulder being carried by two other
girls or a couple guys. And throwing up in places,
and it was like, I don't understand this desire to
be part of a group that asks you to conform,

(19:57):
and hazing is part of this too. It's a sense
like we are going to put you, like the elders
are going to put you through this particular ringer that
we've designed because we've been through it before, and we're
going to pass it on to you and with like
trying to teach her this obedience in this conformity that honestly,

(20:18):
that is as terrifying to me as anything else in
the film, Like the whole hazing and stuff is just scary.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
The decision is do you want to dress like it's
a party time? Basically, do you want to dress like
a slut or do you want to dress like a baby.
We can put you in a diaper or we can
put you in a short black dress, one or the other.

Speaker 7 (20:39):
You can make that a reference of women's oppression, like
you're either infantilized or you're a slug. But and I
think she definitely talks about that when you hear her
interviewed about that, she's it's very much a feminist intentionally.

Speaker 9 (20:52):
But I do think though.

Speaker 7 (20:54):
It is it is a really great choice cultural choice
of a nightmare situation. I agree, I find that idea
terrifying to be in a fraternity or to me that
is that's terrifying, and it's a really great choice to
be in this claustrophobic school. But you could see it's
in the middle of nowhere and with this again this

(21:14):
art brutalist, like this really gray background and it's depressing
and dank and concrete, and then just the extremes. You
don't know what these people are going to force you
to do, and it is it's like a Saw movie.

Speaker 9 (21:28):
It's just like it's like a realistic Saw movie. That's
really what it's like. And I also just want to point.

Speaker 7 (21:34):
Out that one of the amazing things in this movie
is that all of the animal stuff is one hundred
percent real, including the freakizoid in the jars, the little
freaky those are all real. That's totally, every single thing
in this movie is one hundred percent real, which makes
it so cool.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Though not real kidneys that they eat. Those are some
sort of jelly stuff covered by chocolate, so I was
glad that they didn't make them actually eat kidneys. Though
with it being France, I was like, well, maybe that's
a delicacy. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (22:02):
We use only the choicest, juicy chunks of fresh cornish rams, bladder.

Speaker 5 (22:06):
Empted, steamed, flavored with sesame seeds, whipped into a fondu
and garnished with larks vomited.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
You were talking about the sins of the father, the
sins of the parents being visited upon the daughters, and
this whole idea of you know, if I went through this,
so do you. It feels at times, not necessarily like
a cannibal movie, but almost like a vampire film. When
it comes to this idea of the hunger that they
have for the flesh and the way that it's been
passed down from generation to generation. It's like, how far

(22:36):
back does this go? Does this go back to medieval
times or earlier? Is this like a different race of people?
I mean, it's very fascinating to me to think about
how this came to be, and that it feels very
much like, oh, once the hunger is awakened via that kidney,
then that's it. That's all she wrote. Otherwise it was

(22:58):
strict vegetarianism. You really have to adhere to this until
you get to go to the school and then suddenly
you get that taste for human flesh.

Speaker 8 (23:07):
And also it seems like it's passed down from mother
to daughter. He is more the obviously she feeds off
of him in a certain way, the mother, And I'm
not sure that the one thing I wasn't completely sure
of is the scars, if that was from their initial
like courtship quote unquote, or if that was something that

(23:31):
has been going on over time. Does she have to
feed on him on a regular basis in order to
not go out and kill other people. It's this very
female thing that's being passed on and he's just trying
to help in the best way he can. So that
was interesting, And you mentioned vampires, but there's times when

(23:54):
it also feels like it's more of a werewolf story
because she goes through that sort of physical transformation of
the rashes and stuff and the peeling off of her
skin when she goes to the doctor, and so that
feels kind of like that werewolf transformation into something else.

(24:15):
And also were wolves tend to be to me anyway,
more of these tragic figures where they don't have control
over what they're doing, they don't necessarily want to be
werewolves vampires. While some people may be turned into vampires
against their will, there is a sense that a lot
of times you get vampires who are part of this

(24:35):
ruling class or who have been berthed into this aristocracy
of some kind. So there's a certain level where I
feel like it's almost more of a werewolf story for
me than vampire, although visually and kind of like what
she's doing feels a little more vampiric. But yeah, I

(24:57):
kept thinking about tragic werewolves.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
I can totally see that, especially you know, I don't
remember which one of you brought up the animalistic aspect
of this, And you know, there's that scene pretty early
in the movie where there's the guy talking about fucking
monkeys and getting AIDS and all this, and she really
falls on the side of the monkeys, and it's just
like she seems to identify more with the monkeys than

(25:22):
with the people, and it's like, Okay, yeah, I can
kind of see where she does have this much more
animalistic side, and yet sometimes it feels like that hunger
for her is completely uncontrollable, and I really think that
that's great. I think that the werewolf angle is much
more in tune than the vampire angle. And yeah, I've
seen that whole dichotomy of vampires and werewolves. You know,

(25:44):
I've seen all the Underworld films, so I definitely know
how all that stuff goes. Though I still think that
werewolves are really shitty bodyguards for vampires because you only
get them like once a month. Well, and also with
the werewolf thing, I mean the whole lunar cycle too,
when it comes to women and their cycles and things,
and just this whole idea of you know, is this

(26:04):
the awakening of the blood, you know, the blood being
such an important part of that ritual. When they get
all the blood dumped on her, I mean we mentioned
Carrie already, Carrie very similar, you know, she was what
seventeen virgin getting that blood dumped on her, I mean
it just really opened up her whole world.

Speaker 7 (26:25):
In both of those cases, that was real animal blood,
like in Carrie, they killed those pigs and that this
veterinary school was going to have the real thing to
pour on them. But I wanted to just get back
to the family thing again, and like the female family
thing is, I thought it was a really nice touch
that they Alex is not talking to.

Speaker 9 (26:44):
Her mother, but the mother.

Speaker 7 (26:47):
It's implied she's not talking to either parent, but it
seems like it's much more the mother. And I think
it's interesting that she maybe really resents her mother forgetting
her to be this kind of being. And then I
wonder if she teases her sister that, oh, they you're
the special one.

Speaker 9 (27:02):
They love you, You're the favorite one.

Speaker 7 (27:05):
And the mother is like when they're in that diner
as they're driving to the school and one of the
first scenes, Justine actually accidentally gets a little meat in
her potatoes, and the mother's really upset and she's just
gonna tear the head off of the whoever the cook is.

Speaker 9 (27:18):
And it's interesting that she's so protective of Justin.

Speaker 7 (27:21):
So you wonder, I wondered, were they trying to protect
Justine from this? But they sacrifice the older daughter, and
that's why the older daughter's pissed up, and that's why
the older daughters f this.

Speaker 9 (27:32):
I'm gonna make You're gonna be You're gonna have to
suffer the way I did. She's such a villain.

Speaker 7 (27:36):
There's a love hate relationship, but it's way more hate
on her end to her sister than it's a real
great villain role.

Speaker 8 (27:43):
I'm not sure I see her as a villain for
the reason I think where they're having that fight at
the end and they're both biting into each other, and
there's like this connection. Anytime you're in a family, there's
love and hate all the time. Probably, Yeah, I'm not
sure I see her as a villain. She's a victim herself.

(28:05):
She's got this curse on her that she's had to
live with and she's had to figure out a way
to do it.

Speaker 7 (28:10):
She shoved that kidney down her throat, like they seem
to be like whatever. They were like, oh, if you're
a vegetarian, but she's like, no, no, you're gonna eat
this thing. And I thought that was a all sign
of she's gonna make sure this happens. And I think
it could have been. It seemed to me maybe it
could have been prevented. I don't know, that's just it
is a matter of interpretation.

Speaker 8 (28:29):
But she also, like Justine, does not seem like one
hundred percent on board with the vegetarianism. Like when she's
at that restaurant and the mother gets upset, it's not
a big deal to her, Like she doesn't seem to
care that much. She doesn't seem to be as driven
at that point about oh it's okay, I had a

(28:51):
piece of meat in my mouth. It doesn't really matter,
don't make a big scene. But the mother does want
to make a big scene. She does when she's away
from her mind, she does try to make that statement,
I can't eat that I'm a vegetarian.

Speaker 9 (29:05):
But I don't know.

Speaker 8 (29:07):
Yeah, I just I think the film. For me, the
film feels more complex than just labeling alex as a villain.
Like I just don't see her like one hundred percent
in that role, even though she does some things that
are questionable, but maybe it's her way of doing tough love.

Speaker 9 (29:24):
They're subtle about her being a village. So I just
I see it a little differently. But yeah, it's I
think it's.

Speaker 7 (29:28):
Cool that you don't come away with that so much,
except you do see her in the end in a
trap there.

Speaker 9 (29:34):
But I don't know.

Speaker 7 (29:35):
I think again, it's just beautiful the way she portrayed
the sister thing.

Speaker 9 (29:39):
I think that was a great choice.

Speaker 7 (29:40):
She says in interviews that she originally was not going
to have a family, familial thing. It was going to
be like another woman who maybe she had a relationship with,
maybe even a romantic relationship with. But it is brilliant
to do sisters because it's so love it's so like
she She kind of comments the reason she chose it
was that they could try to kill each other and
then put their arms around each other and nobody would

(30:03):
question that, because that's the way it is with sisters.

Speaker 8 (30:05):
Yeah, the familial aspect you know about it reminds me
of that other film. I can't remember the title. We
Are What We Are. It's the American remake of the
Mexican film about the family. The family feels very kind
of Quaker or something, but they eat human flesh and

(30:26):
they have these lovely little dinner scenes where they're eating
this human flesh. But there's this very sense, this very
strong sense of family and that they have to keep
doing this and they have to stay together and this
is what they've always done. And there's a little bit
of that film that kind of reminds me of this one,

(30:49):
just in terms of kind of that family structure as
something that's strong, that tries to be strong and tight
knit and to try and keep them all safe by
keeping that group enclosed. And it's when one of that
group finds out what's going on or questions what's going

(31:09):
on that that family structure can fall apart and on
a certain level can cause danger in a certain way.
But yeah, that sense of family structure I think is great.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
I love that as Laurent Lucas playing the father because
we just talked about him last week when we talked
about in My Skin and he was the kind of
shithead boyfriend Vincennes and it's kind of nice to see
him back here and with all these big bites out
of him. I'm just like, oh, okay, it's not the
same woman that would have you know, she was much

(31:44):
more into eating herself than she was into eating him.
But we definitely talked about what would it be like
if she had decided to eat him instead, And here
we get to kind of see it. And a beautiful,
loving relationship has come forth with two beautiful girls.

Speaker 8 (31:59):
And he says, never don't have two girls. It's too
much trouble.

Speaker 9 (32:04):
He says that to his younger daughter, meaning we shouldn't
have had you.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yes, what do you guys think of the there's that
sequence after she wakes up and finds that horrific rash
across her and it's almost like the dream sequence, but
we see the dream after she wakes up of the
horse that's on that treadmill running in slow motion. I
love that imagery. It looks so beautiful, but I keep

(32:29):
trying to figure out what that means in relation to her.

Speaker 7 (32:33):
The worst is kind of like it's on a treadmill,
so it's trapped and it can't horses, Like what animal
loves to run more than a horse? Like none, there's none,
that's it, Like horses love to run more than any animal.
And it's on a treadmill, so it can't go anywhere,
and then they have like harnesses around it.

Speaker 9 (32:49):
So I think it is that just being being trapped.

Speaker 8 (32:53):
Being on a treadmill also suggests no progress, like you're
not going anywhere. In addition to being trapped, it's it's
also no forward progress. And we also saw the horse
a horse earlier that was going in for an operation,
and so they take this big, powerful, huge horse and

(33:15):
sedated it collapses in this tiny little room, and again
that's another sense of being trapped in this small space.
And I read that the horse was actually going in
to be castrated, so it wasn't dead. So again like
the horse images. Each time we've seen the horse, they're
these like big, beautiful, powerful animals. But that's not how

(33:39):
they're being depicted in the film. Thank god they didn't
dissect them too.

Speaker 7 (33:45):
We see a lot of dead animals, We see dead dogs,
and they are dissecting and but it's it's this great
irony that there's meat everywhere, Like if you were if
you were a kind of person who like had craved
like animal meat, it's just meat as far as I could, like,
you just have his endless meat.

Speaker 9 (34:02):
But what they created as human meat.

Speaker 7 (34:04):
So it's this interesting contrast, like irony, ironic contrast.

Speaker 8 (34:08):
Yeah, but do you really want to eat animals that
you dissect that might be filled with what are they
fill them with? To like from aldehyde? Like I would
say that if I was like an animal, I would
sniff that and go no, no, no no.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Well they have a lot of live animals there too,
Like when she walks into a classroom and there's a cow.

Speaker 9 (34:25):
Just standing right there, pregnant cow.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yeah, Or when she goes to see her sister later
on and her sister is shoulder deep inside of a cow.
It's like, oh boy, I remember when I was in England,
the first time. The person I was staying with was
watching some sort of medical show and sure enough, they're
just reaching inside of this cow. That was the first
time I had ever seen that type of image. I

(34:47):
was like, you got to be kidding me, what the
hell is going on here? That's you know, BBC one
nine o'clock at night. I'm like, whoa.

Speaker 8 (34:54):
And also the thing is you were not sure what
she's doing at first, and it the past when I've
seen something like that, it's been to help a cow,
like birth a calf, and they're helping to pull out,
and it wasn't It was like she's pulling shit out
and removing some obstruction. So it's like the kind of grittiest, grungiest,

(35:18):
dirtiest way to be inside that cow.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
I love the two mirror scenes that we have, like
when she does get called out for not dressing you know,
nightclub or sexy, and her sister puts that dress on
her in the and she's looking at herself in the
mirror and she's got her regular clothes on with this
stress on over it. And then you get that moment
later on in the film where she's dancing in front

(35:42):
of the mirror with a different It might be.

Speaker 8 (35:45):
The same dress as the one, but she is so.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Self possessed at that moment, the way that she starts
making out with herself in the mirror and that fucking
amazing song that is playing at that time, that rap,
And I'm so glad that they translated those lyrics because
those are fucking wise.

Speaker 8 (36:02):
And the other thing about the mirrors is when she
has that conversation early on in the film about the
monkeys and they say, oh, you think monkeys deserve the
same rights as humans, And her point is they can
see themselves in a mirror, so they're self aware.

Speaker 9 (36:16):
So we have all.

Speaker 8 (36:17):
These mirror images throughout the film. I don't know if
those are the moments when she wants us to think
about how self aware is Justine, How self aware is
she about where she is in this weird evolution that
she's going through, and is she human in her self

(36:37):
awareness or has she become more like animalistic like the monkeys,
who can recognize themselves in the mirror but maybe don't
have the same self awareness that a human being has.
But yeah, I thought the fact that she brings up
those mirrors right early on makes you think about that.

Speaker 7 (36:55):
And what happens right after that mirror scene, she's wearing
her sister's dress, and now she's like really wearing her
sister's dress, and she's then they show her in there's
a sort of a party scene, and she's just got
that Kubrick stare right, she's.

Speaker 9 (37:10):
Got her head down and she's got the Kubrick stair.

Speaker 7 (37:13):
She's sitting there like an animal, Like, she really looks
like an animal there. And then the next thing that
happens is it turns out her sister tricked her, right,
and she was really really drunk, and I think it's
I think I'm saying the sequence right. That's when her
sister filmed her because she was so drunk she didn't
know what she was doing. Films her with a corpse
and is making her beg like an animal on her

(37:34):
hands and knees, beg like an animal for this corpse.
And then the sister shows this to everybody, which again
is the sister in control and humilitating her and anyway,
so again she's turning into an animal.

Speaker 9 (37:45):
For sure.

Speaker 7 (37:46):
It's just thwarted. She's still in control of her sister.
She has no control over anything. So it's very sad.

Speaker 9 (37:53):
Domesticated on a leash, all those kind of things you could.

Speaker 8 (37:57):
Say technically in the sisters defense, technically I will say
she did not film it and share it. It was
other people in the crowd. And there's even one person who,
like some guy walks away, going, this girl is too drunk.
You guys shouldn't you shouldn't be filming. And I mean
the sister's definitely at fault for doing that too.

Speaker 9 (38:18):
She's doing it.

Speaker 7 (38:18):
She's doing yeah, she's doing it. And for everybody's got phones.
Everybody knows that's gonna be fun, you know what I mean,
It's yeah, And I think it was really incredibly cruel.
Just think about her doing that to her sister. It
is just, Yeah, I thought it was. It was quite wicked.

Speaker 8 (38:34):
And in that scene you talk about when she's at
the at the party, it's also that red theme that
goes through it. She's got that Kubrick stare, but it's
also got this red wash of light and it really
the thing I kept thinking when I saw her at
that point is like she has now become the predatory animal.
She has transformed at this point.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yes, she looks like she is a dog in that scene,
and I am just so glad that this film didn't
go there. When it came to the dog and the
Brazilian wax, I really thought for sure that that was
going to happen in this movie, and I was really
glad that it didn't. But got that Brazilian wax scene.
Wouldn't you trim first before you put on the wax,

(39:19):
because she's got a lot of hair there.

Speaker 8 (39:22):
And I think it makes it harder if you trim.
I don't know what hurts is just the hair coming out,
whether it's long or short, I think. But yeah, the
dog going there though, would have been in the Japanese
anime what was it?

Speaker 9 (39:33):
Gance?

Speaker 8 (39:35):
They have a name for the.

Speaker 9 (39:35):
Dog, what is it?

Speaker 8 (39:36):
A butter dog I've got yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Though it had been a little Bobcat gold weight sleeping dogs. Lie. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (39:43):
She talks about that Brazilian wax as torture, and that's
another aspect of this of what women go through to
try to conform to certain ideas of how they should
look or how they should be. But yeah, you're gonna
put yourself through that kind of torture.

Speaker 9 (40:01):
Justine wants none of it. She even plucks, She even plucks.

Speaker 7 (40:04):
Her eyebrow, at one point, the sister's just again to me,
the sister is just constantly, constantly, just like absolutely dominating
in a way that is really aggressive. And there's even
a moment when they're playing video games. So then she
also with Adrian. I'm sorry if I said Aiden before
I met Adrian.

Speaker 9 (40:24):
They're playing she she won.

Speaker 7 (40:25):
So Justine's developing a real crush obviously on this this roommate,
this gay roommate. And but the sister can tell that,
and so she moves in on him and is playing games,
and then he leaves. They're playing games, she and her
sister in adversarial position of playing a game against each other.
And the last thing that the sister says, where it
cuts away, she goes, kill yourself, kill yourself. She's like

(40:49):
instructing her, She's instructing her how to play a game.
She's like, kill yourself, kill yourself.

Speaker 9 (40:52):
Which I think.

Speaker 7 (40:53):
Again, like there's really so much detail, Like even on
the little there's like a TV screen at one point.

Speaker 9 (40:58):
Everything, every little detail really feeds into this.

Speaker 7 (41:01):
You can look at things on the wall that kind
of feed into the whole story, and I think every
single word is really very carefully written.

Speaker 8 (41:09):
Well when you say everything, Like on the wall when
the demon guy in the hospital, the sign behind him says,
do not cross this red line. And that's kind of like, yeah,
there's these lines. Maybe it's the line of human and
dividing humanity and animals, but don't cross that line, and
they do.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
I have to say that one of the most disturbing things.
I mean, you can keep all the cannibalism. The most
disturbing thing for me is when she is throwing up
her own hair.

Speaker 9 (41:38):
That's a nightmare I have all the time. Do you
ever have that nightmare? I have that nightmare a lot
where I'm.

Speaker 7 (41:42):
Just pulling things out of my mouth. It's often hair
or some other substance like that. So I wonder if
she got that from a real dream. I imagine it's
the kind of thing a lot of people have. But yeah,
I was Boy, did that get me?

Speaker 9 (41:53):
For sure?

Speaker 8 (41:54):
I don't have that nightmare. But everybody's gotten like a
hair in their food at some point, and it's just
like uncomfortable, feeling like you just don't want it in
your mouth. So to see like a massive amount of
it is really brutal. And I think there's also people
think of hairballs they always think of cats, and that's

(42:17):
usually not something that's horrific. We think cats are funny
when they're throwing up hair of balls. I don't know,
but it also plays in that's another Japanese thing. Hair
in Japanese movies, whether it's going down drains or coming
out of people's mouths or growing and attacking people like,
hair is a really vivid and visceral kind of element.

(42:41):
But yeah, I think it's something that everybody can identify
with on a certain level. Not that amount of hair,
but definitely that feeling of oh, I got a hair
in my mouth, and then to multiply that by the
amount she had, and to keep pulling and playing and playing.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
And that you saw her chewing on her hair in
the previous when that professor's calling her out. I just
was thinking of all the time that there was a
time in elementary school where this poor girl was chewing
on her own hair and my teacher made her go
up to the front of the classroom and basically humiliated
her in front of everyone. Was just like, okay, Tracy,
if you're kind of chew your hair, chew your hair

(43:18):
right here, we all want to see it. It was
like oh my god, Like that still haunts me to
this day. I can't imagine what it did for Tracy.

Speaker 7 (43:25):
One thing I hate in all movies in the vomit scenes.
I can't watch a vomit scene, but I hadn't seen.
Mike very kindly provided us with some deleted scenes, and
I hope people can find this on YouTube. But there's
one deleted scene where she's in the classroom where they
had the pregnant cow, and it's a really great scene.
I wish they hadn't cut it actually, where the professor

(43:46):
is talking and she's beginning to go into some weird,
little kind of hypnotic state, and everything is going into
this very weird it's hard to explain how they do it,
but it's slow moey and that kind of thing, and
she ends up running out of the classroom and in
complete slow motion, and it almost it's like you just
see a little courtyard and you see these this sort
of hallway through glass, and in slimush, she throws up

(44:10):
on the glass and it's beautiful. It's the first time
I've ever seen a beautiful vomit scene. It's really worth seeing.

Speaker 9 (44:16):
It's gorgeous and it's unbelievably. The direction there is just amazing.

Speaker 8 (44:21):
So much of this film is gorgeous, even though it
shouldn't be. We shouldn't find some of this stuff to
look beautiful, but the film is really a beautifully shot
and executed movie.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Speaking of throwing up, I love after she throws up.
There's the girl in the bathroom with her who is
just like, oh, you should really use your fingers instead.

Speaker 8 (44:45):
It makes it much easier, she said, use two fingers,
and then.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
She's like combing her hair with her fingers, and she
just has this beautiful smile, like she kind of smiles
at herself and her eyes closed and she just looks
like so beatific. I'm like, what the hell, But it's
like this nice advice from one girl to another because
she probably thinks that Justine is bellemic.

Speaker 8 (45:05):
But also that's my like, that's like her testing that smiles.
I'm gonna have to go out of this bathroom into
the public space, and I need to look like I'm happy.
So this is my happy smile, because when she stops smiling,
she does not look happy at all, and she's a
little chubby, so she's probably somebody who herself has done

(45:29):
this or has been told that she needs to lose
some weight, so it feels very much. Again, this is
another commentary on like body image and the pressures to
look a certain way, and and that's her advice. It's
I've had to do this, so let me just give
you some advice. It's a whole lot easier. And then

(45:49):
at the end of the film she does use two fingers.

Speaker 7 (45:52):
When she at the hospital site. Is that what you
mean after the hospital?

Speaker 9 (45:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (45:56):
She and by the way, that hospital and speaking again
of beutiful building, Oh my god, that building is so cool.

Speaker 9 (46:02):
The hospital. You have to it's just great.

Speaker 7 (46:04):
So she goes outside of the hospital and yeah, she
tries to make herself throw up the finger and yeah,
there it is.

Speaker 9 (46:10):
Everything comes back around in a beautiful way.

Speaker 8 (46:12):
Yeah, and those buildings, it does remind me of like
Cronenberg's films, especially some of his early ones, like those structures.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
That are Crimes to the Future or whatever.

Speaker 8 (46:23):
Yeah, but also way back, what was that what was
the student film that he made? I forgot the name
of it. Oh, I think it maybe that was the
original Crimes of the Future, because wasn't didn't you do what?

Speaker 5 (46:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (46:33):
Yeah, yeah, so that one yeah, where it's these kind
of cold, very impressive structures, but it had a very
cronenberg Esque look to the buildings and the just the
architecture that's throughout the film.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
And I seem to remember that had a lot of
people in white coats as well, if memory serves. It's
been a long time since I've seen it. But yeah,
that's so confusing that he made two movies with the
same title, and I don't think they're related, but I
have and seeing the new.

Speaker 8 (47:01):
One, No, they're not not that. Maybe thematically you could
say they're related, but in terms of an actual narrative,
I did not find anything.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
They're Brazilian scene definitely, the whole idea of the chopping
off of the finger and rather than I mean, I
guess the preservation doesn't go as well as it should have,
what with Justine starting to eat the finger, and then
the whole idea of the sister waking up, and I just, oh, man,

(47:34):
that's like this shared secret that they have that keeps
them together. For me, the rest of the movie, it's
and then that poor fucking dog, because they're going to
put the dog down because they pinned the blame on
the dog.

Speaker 8 (47:48):
I noticed throughout the film there is no concern for dogs,
Like when she's in the car driving to school and
the dog licks her in a very friendly, affectionate way.
She just shoves that dog away, which is another reason
why I didn't believe she was vegetarian at all. You
don't treat animals, you a dog like that dog exists
only for joy, so anyway, but that is my own

(48:10):
personal prejudice on that point.

Speaker 7 (48:13):
The music in that scene it's amazing, like it really
makes that scene like spectacular. It starts with just a
nice guitar that's almost too nice for what just happened.
This is after the finger gets cut off. There's this
beautiful there's like this theme that goes with Justine and
it's just a really pretty guitar theme.

Speaker 9 (48:31):
But then it goes into what.

Speaker 7 (48:35):
Is it clavier like the organ that it's like the
classic horror movie Organs but done.

Speaker 9 (48:43):
It's such a gorgeous like they nail it so hard.

Speaker 8 (48:46):
Yeah, and we can wonder what if there had been
ice in the freezer, would this have taken a different turn?
Would she have never bitten it? I don't know. But
that scene also made me think of the other French
film inside, Like, where the hell did French get these
scissors that can cut open a stomach and just blop

(49:06):
off a finger.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Yeah, yeah, I've never had scissors that sharp in my
entire life. I've never had knives that's sharp in my life.

Speaker 7 (49:16):
In one of her interviews, she admits that she's like,
that might be a little unrealistic.

Speaker 9 (49:20):
Yeah, she does say that.

Speaker 7 (49:21):
Yeah, which, so she gotta you gotta, you gotta conventions
with movies.

Speaker 8 (49:25):
Yeah, but yeah, when you see your take out those scissors,
first you're terrified that she's gonna cut that wax off
and cut off her sister's skin. And then it turns
out that those scissors get turned on her. But yeah,
you see those scissors come out, and you're immediately like
your hair it rises going, Yeah, nothing good's gonna happen

(49:45):
from that.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Well, when she brings out the scissors, doesn't Justine say
you're going to castrate me.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
I don't know.

Speaker 8 (49:51):
She said my pussy or something like that.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Yeah, I'm glad that shot translates between American and French.
You know, I didn't realize that pussy is the same
in any language. Oh, you'll circumcise me, that's what she.

Speaker 8 (50:06):
Says not, Yeah, that's great, that's a much greater choice
of words there.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Yes, exactly because of the female circumcision. Yeah, I did
see one video essay that was talking about that opening
scene that we were discussing with the car crash at
the beginning and just positing like, well, maybe that's why
Alexia isn't there when the parents show up to school,
and that she's out causing that car crash, because then

(50:32):
you see the car crash later on in the film
when it's her in a roommate going out for takeaway
to get that kebab, and she's fascinated by that car crash,
and then after you see the third car crash, you're like, oh, Okay,
maybe each time this is happening, that's Alexia needing to feed.

Speaker 8 (50:51):
Yeah, and the timeline is just something we don't know,
Like we don't know if that car crash was months
ago or it was immediately before she got there. And
again that's like the ambiguity of the film that she
just doesn't feel like she needs to explain that, but
we're gonna eventually piece together what that car crash means
and that it happens more than once. She has to

(51:14):
feed quite often.

Speaker 9 (51:15):
I love that I did it. That's why they couldn't
reach her. Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
I also love the scene when she is staring at
you're talking about the Kuprick stare, when she's staring at
Adrian when he's playing whatever game that is, and just
the active, active camera on him that's moving all over
and then cut back to her and it's that still
camera and you just get that look on her face
and it's not lust. It's definitely something other than lust.

(51:40):
And we've had that shot earlier, just like the previous
scene in the dissection room where she's staring at the
back of his neck and I'm like, Okay, maybe that's lust.
But this thing of him playing the games and grabbing
onto his cock and stuff like, I don't know if
that's lust or if that's hunger. And it's funny that
hunger can mean both. That we talk and that's when

(52:01):
you get that famous image of her getting the nose plate.

Speaker 8 (52:05):
She's looking at that flesh and that tasty skin. It definitely,
to me, definitely reads more of a flesh hunger than
a sexual desire at that point.

Speaker 7 (52:17):
Yes, so we should probably at this point talk about
that sex scene which is pure animal, which was an
amazing performance. I think they had some stand ins because
she was only seventeen, But oh my gosh. I love
the ending of it where it really you think she's
biting into him and they do it beautifully work just
for a second you think she's biting into him and
then he realized now she's biting into.

Speaker 9 (52:37):
Her own arm. It's a great ending to that scene.

Speaker 8 (52:40):
I love that the director talked about that being she
considered the sex scene like a stunt scene, like a
fight scene that has to be choreographed that and I
think she did it where she actually was like giving
direction during the scene, telling them what to do. But yeah, yeah,

(53:00):
it's like this well choreographed action and yeah, the no,
the bite is like it is the perfect way to.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
End it, and that's the orgasm right there.

Speaker 9 (53:12):
She did so many great interviews, but like she mentioned
possession at one point the subway scene, and I think
it might have been attached to that scene, which makes
a lot of sense, like just the person just completely
losing it, just that kind of acting where you just
have to let go. So it's really quite a wild scene.

Speaker 7 (53:28):
It's really really over the top and it totally works
that it's over the top.

Speaker 8 (53:32):
Yeah, because you really see a transformation. There's a point
where it starts and you're kind of like, oh, okay, it's
a sexual awakening. She's attracted to him, and then she
has a transformation, Like you really see a point where
you start to worry for adrian safety because you feel like, oh,
that's a hunger for flesh that's waking up right now.

(53:55):
And I kind of like this guy, and I'm a
little work. He's not gonna make it through this.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
All right, Let's go ahead and take a break and
we're going to play an interview that I did with
Barbara Creed, the author of the monstrous feminine film Feminism
and Psychoanalysis, as well as quite a few other things.
Had a great time talking with her about this week's
movie as well as the previous week's movie in My Skin.
If you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend

(54:22):
you to go back and listen to that as well.
But in the meantime, let's go ahead take this break,
and we'll be back with that interview right after these
brief messages.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Hello, everyone, this is Marvin McDowell. I just want to
say that this is a request to listeners of the
Projection Booth podcast to become patrons of the show via
Patreon dot com, pat bo n dot com slash Projection Booth.

(55:02):
That's pretty simple, I need you can do that. It's
a great show and Mike he provides hours of great entertainment.
So now it's time to give back my little drovies.
Settle down and take a listen and have a sip
of the old Molocco and then you'll be ready for
a little of.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
The old in out, in out real horror show. Bye bye.
Looking for something superior to streaming a place with more
than five times the selection available on all streaming services combined.
Check out Scarecrow Videos rent by mail service. Select from
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(55:43):
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Speaker 10 (55:56):
I'd like to know a little bit more about you,
and especially how you got interested in animus studies.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
I became interested as a kid. Really, I was an
avid Hitchcock fan as a teenager. This is going back
into the late fifties, Vertigo, Psycho. I just love them all,
and so that continued on. I helped set up the
first film society at Monash University where I went, and

(56:24):
I was a secondary school teacher. I was meant to
be teaching literature, but more often than not, i'd be
teaching a film instead. I'd hire films from the State
Film Center and I got a projectionist license.

Speaker 10 (56:38):
Although I'm really.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
Interested in literature, and I didn't my honest in literature.
I didn't my masters and my PhD and so forth
in cinema here in Australia. So it's just been a
lifelong passion. Really, we want to work out exactly why
we have to go into sort of analysis of some
sorted Probably I just so I always found films so exciting,

(57:01):
and I was always very interested in surrealism from an
early age too, so I was somehow drawn to the dark,
crazy side of things. I love all cinema, but particularly
surrealer cinema and horror cinema. Noir is another favorite.

Speaker 10 (57:18):
What were some of those early surrealist films that you're watching.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
I think probably the first one I saw was on
Aushoon and Alou. When I started university, we screened it
at the Film Society. We had a little Boonwell festival,
and I got involved in the Melbourne International Film Festival,
which screened annually and it was the only place in

(57:43):
Australia where you could see films uncensored. There was no
censorship restrictions. So I used to volunteer as an usher.
I was still at high school and go across to
a place called Saint Kilda to the old Palais Theater
where we had the screenings. I saw a lot of
films there that would not be released commercially at all,

(58:06):
so that was the only chance we got. Yeah, it
would have been all shown and aloud for sure.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Then.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
Probably the first feature was Exterminating Angel, one of full
time favorites, as well as belt Azure.

Speaker 10 (58:19):
I love that so many people when they look at films,
they just think.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Here's a movie.

Speaker 10 (58:24):
What's the first time that you said, there's something else
going on here?

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Probably with Psycho. It was being screened in Melbourne and
there was a lot of pipe around it and we
were told that once we were in the cinema we
weren't allowed out the doors would all be shut, which
would clock, which of course they weren't, So that got
us all spooked, and I was just astonished because gradually

(58:53):
there was a constant stream of people who couldn't take
it anymore and were leaving the cinema. By the time
we got to the end when the mother turns around
in her chair, that was some fled the cinema. So
with Nicho, and I suppose it's because Hitchcock himself had
put the subtext so firmly in the foreground, although back

(59:17):
then we didn't even know about subtexts. Nonetheless, I picked
up that there were other things going on there around
Norman and his mother, and a repression of his sexuality
and the strange relationship he develops with the marrying Crane
figure and Vertigo too. I mean that I thought very

(59:39):
early on in the film that the real critique was
actually around the male character who was investigating her, and
so that appealed because I could feel, again, as with Psycho,
something that was going on beneath the surface. And I
think many of Hitchcock's films are much more critique of
masculinity and masculine repression, although he of course is just

(01:00:05):
placing all that onto the heroine. Often, I think Hitchcock
himself in fact identifies with the heroine. I saw that
wonderful exhibition in Paris on Hitchcock. I don't know if
you saw at the Pompidou Center Hitchcock and Art. Oh,
such a knockout that you walked in and the entire
huge gallery was blacked out, and all the exhibits that

(01:00:27):
they'd got together from the films, such as the Mother's
wig from Psycho for example, the knife, and they were
all in cases as if they were precious art objects.
That was all really dark, and it was called the
Room of Fetishes from Memory, and Patricia Hitchcock was there,
so I couldn't help myself. I introduced myself and I

(01:00:49):
said to it, do you think your mother played a
really pe role in the creation of his films? And
she said, oh, yes, she said, in fact, I'm writing
a book on that right now.

Speaker 10 (01:01:00):
I don't know if it came out.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
I'm not sure. So yes, I think with Hitchcockabe, that's
when I first became aware that these films were dealing
with unconscious desires as well as conscious, and that there
was something happening beneath the surface. Which is so much
more evident, I think in horror, obviously, in film lawrence, surrealism, right. Yeah,

(01:01:24):
and today, of course our students just accept this snow
problem in convincing them.

Speaker 10 (01:01:33):
Monster's Feminine was the book. It was incritical and inspired
that article.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
Firstly, I was very involved in women's liberation and gay
liberation in the seventies and eighties, and a friend and
I taught a course at the Council of Adult Education,
which we call pre patriarchal religions. I'm not religious, but
I became fascinated with what seemed to me to be

(01:02:02):
the complete censorship or oppression or whatever of what had
happened prior to Christianity, and that there were, in fact,
I mean, I was taught these were pagan cults when
I went to Sunday School. But I was fascinated by
the very powerful female figures that existed in pre Christian

(01:02:25):
mythology and so forth. My interest then in those kind
of figures Demeter and Isis and so on, became stronger
with feminism. And then I was teaching a course on
the horror film in the seventies, and for some reason
I must have consciously or unconsciously selected a lot of

(01:02:48):
horror films with characters I carry, for example, and The Brood,
where the monster was female. Yet I was reading in
the articles I was setting there were no apart from
the Witch, there were no female monsters of horror because
woman was made the perfect victim. Gerard Ani, the French critic,

(01:03:09):
was the strongest on this, and I thought, this, just
this is ridiculous. I started in my course to look
at the female monster, and my students got very excited
about this. In fact, a group of them formed a
little group which they called Savage Sisters. They bought themselves
T shirts and I said, okay, why did we meet

(01:03:29):
every month?

Speaker 10 (01:03:30):
And what you have to do is you go to
your local video shop. We don't really have any more left.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
And all bring along with a horror video be grade,
probably with the character's female, the monster's female. They found
so many and I had to bring one too, so
we'd screen them all day. We'd have fantastic looking at
these and movies that was important. In fact, the other day,
I can't believe it. I was at an auction and

(01:04:00):
of the house which obviously belonged to some kind of
film producer, be because it was all kind of dark
and posters everywhere, and it was being auctioned, and suddenly,
from across the other side of the room, just before
we went into the auction, there were two middle aged
women there. I could see them looking at me, and
then one of them yelled at the top of her
voice the monstrous feminine. And sure enough they said, look,

(01:04:23):
we're still teaching what you taught us. And they were
very excited, and so was I. I mean I remembered them, actually,
so I I was teaching it. And then I had
the screen asked me would I like to write an
article for them on horror. And at the same time
I'm being in Sydney and there was a very important

(01:04:46):
Sydney academic, Liz Gross. I don't know if you know
her name. She's a philosopher, and she was giving a
lecture on Julia Christova's theory of objection. And I was
absolutely fascinated. And although Christava herself at that time anyway,
certainly as far as I know, I didn't really talk
about film. In fact, I think she had a kind
of classic highbrow attitude or French attitude, which she liked

(01:05:10):
Kitchkock and directors who were acceptable to art house French cinema,
but by and large not so much popular film, so
she didn't really write about film. All her discussions at
abjection relate to literature, but I thought seems to me
that in fact, if anything, they make just as much sense.
Her theory of the abject applied to film as to literature.

(01:05:35):
So that's what I did in the article. So you
could say it was this early course on classical mythology
and female mythological figures, combined with my teaching the horror
film and discovering so many films with female monsters, combined
with Christava's theory of objection, which was very much centered

(01:05:57):
on the monstrous female body, and just tied imperfectly with
films like Perry and Her Menstruation and The Brood with
the pregnancy and so on. And my students, of course,
who were quite inspirational in all of this, and all
of that just powered this together in the eighties, and
so the original article came out in Screening eighty seven.

Speaker 10 (01:06:21):
I think it was.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
What happened was I got a letter from Tony Bennett
who read the screen article. He's an academic, and said, look,
we'd love it if you could just put this into
book form and we can publish it in our series
on popular culture. So I was doing my PhD at
the time, so, and in fact, The Monstrous Feminine is

(01:06:44):
my PhD. So I said, yes I can, but you
just have to wait a bit, because I said, in fact,
I'm writing it up now actually, but as a PhD.
So I can't actually give it to you as a
book until that goes through all the processes.

Speaker 10 (01:06:57):
Obviously, you talk a lot about the abject, and I've
talked a little bit about that in our discussions of
these films. But I was curious, what is your definition
or how do you use objection when it comes to
looking at films.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
When I wrote The Monstrous Feminine, I was using it
very much as Christova does. So the object, it's not
an object, it's a state of being. It's a feeling,
and it occurs when boundaries are crossed, borders are breached,
and in general, you could argue that she might use

(01:07:35):
the word patriarchal societies that I did, although she talks
about them like a lot of French feminists and other
writers that don't like to be tied to feminism or
seen as feminists that don't want the label. Even Douconno,
who's directed raw and to take courses, has also said this.

(01:07:56):
And christovers so I thought, if we apply objects as
she does to patriarchal societies, we can see everything on
the other side of this imaginary border. The animal, for example,
nature in certain religious societies it would be so pagan
religions if you like and woman and on the other

(01:08:16):
side or are relegated to the other side of this border.
So society allows contact with the object, which might be
through ritual or the carnivalesque and so forth. And I
argue through film, the film puts us in direct contact,
from the safety of our cinema sets, of course, with

(01:08:38):
those things that threaten to destroy us. The most abject
thing of all, Christova argues is the corpse. Now, the
corpse in a mortuary is not abject. The corpses are
not in the mortuary. Is an object, and it's been
cleaned and dressed and made to look as if not dead,
so that relatives can view the body, et cetera, et cetera.

(01:09:01):
This is not abject. What is abject is the corpse
that's rotting away. Let's say, in Holland's film spore where
the older woman goes out and starts murdering the hunters
who are killing animals. They've killed her dogs, so she's
the villagers think she's a witch, so she's abject. She's

(01:09:22):
on the other side of this border, and an actual fact.
They're right to be spared of it, because she murders
these hunters one after the other in all sorts of
gruesome ways. But in a few scenes we see rotting bodies,
so they're abject because they've lost their borders. The body

(01:09:43):
in the mortuary hasn't still dressed and cleaned, but the
rotting body is where the flesh is decaying. The animals
have been added, it's been ripped apart. The borders are gone,
so it's completely abject. And this kind of abject body
has to be the threat to civilized society, which considers

(01:10:06):
anything that's lost its borders, borders defined by patriarchal ideology
in many cultures still threatens us. But cinema enables us
to come into contact with the object, particularly and surreal
as cinema and horror and noir. So these three genres,
if you like, I think can be best understood in

(01:10:28):
terms of the objects so the object what it is
really is, I think in the end, it creates an
ontological crisis or crisis of meaning. So when we confront
the object, we're asked to think again about what does
it mean to be human? That's the most profound question

(01:10:49):
I suppose that comes out of this because the object
collapses boundaries between human and animal, particularly in the Cannibal film,
between human and nature, which some people don't find at
all object. But historically we've built all sorts of boundaries
to protect us from the horrors of nature, which we're
busily destroying at the moment, of course, at ourselves with it.

Speaker 10 (01:11:13):
When you talk about a border, I'm curious if you
could apply that to the body as far as a
film like In My Skin, where she is violating that
border by digging in and cutting open and taking pieces
of that. And you mentioned cannibalism as the self cannibalism
that she's doing the skin.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
When you think about it, it's a very fragile covering,
but it holds everything in all our insides, if you like.

Speaker 8 (01:11:43):
So.

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
I think that's why in horror films there are so
many scenes with knives, because the knife threatens to cut
the skin open, at which point everything falls from the
inside to the outside. So the abjective is all very
much about the inside falling to the outside. And in
terms of the human body, it's the skin that protects

(01:12:05):
us in a way from the abject. And yes, the
cannibal film is about tearing open the skin, not just
revealing what's inside, and breaching the border so that the
insides as they fall out, become abject in a way.
And it's not so much the insides of the body
as objects, but the abject comes about by the terrible nauseer,

(01:12:31):
if you like, and the sense of uncanniness, even difference
of queerness that threatens to engulf us. It's more to
do with that feeling. Really, the film is so good
at engendering. But yes, that's probably all horror films. It's

(01:12:53):
the cannibal film really, if we see Seeds of cannibalism,
the fat as you say, really focuses on objection. But
that's why people love it as well. It's such a
popular or it certainly was with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and
The Hills Have Eyes and those classic cannibal films. These

(01:13:14):
were the darling of the horror genre. In a way
because they went to such extremes with New French extremism,
the whole movement in France the turn of the twenty
first century. These films play with the object in all
sorts of shocking and gruesome ways. But the thing is
we want to be shocked, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):
I remember going to the cinema a lot with my
good friend who sadly died not long ago, Leslie Stern,
and she wrote, she written a lot on the cinema
and a group of us we go every Friday to
see horror movies, and she say, barbe, look, I just
can't watch, so tell me when it's over. So these

(01:13:55):
should be with their head between hernes, missing all the objects,
but she's still see the horror movies. So I thought,
that's another look that the horror film has created. That's
looking away. Laura Mulby ruts her fantastic article on how
cinema compels the look and the gaze and the male gaze,

(01:14:18):
and there's a lot now on the female gays, but
there's also when we can't gaze at all. It's just
too shocking, which horror explores.

Speaker 10 (01:14:28):
You give that moment also in my skin where you
can't trust the main character's own gaze when she looks
down at her arm on a table and it's not
connected to her body at all anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
I thought that was beautifully surreal. I kept thinking of
the Boonewell Film's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, where the
first is the exterminating Angel, where they all come to
meet for dinner and they can't leave the room, and
then there's discreete Charm where they're all trying to make
an arrangement to have dinner but they can't actually get together.

(01:15:00):
They're very surreal sort of scenes around the dinner table,
and I thought she was playing there with surrealism as well,
with her seena and what she's imagining the arm's doing
and how she's grabbing it and trying to stop it.
It's a bit Doctor Strangelove too.

Speaker 10 (01:15:20):
Imagine Nunsha in Andalou and there's that scene of the
hand on the street or the disembodied hand and discreet
Charm that's trying to choke the woman.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
That's right, that's right. I love that scene. It's fantastic years.
I'm sure that's part of what she's doing. I think
that's the only scene that moves around the surreal. But
it's important that she's put it there. I think because
she's once she's telling us that she wants us to
relate to the film. It's both real and surreal that

(01:15:52):
we're dealing with the unconscious as well as the conscious.
It's such a strange film and whole idea of self cannibalism.
It's not really about that practice of self mutilation in
a way, because as she begins to eat parts of
her body, some of those scenes are very intimate and

(01:16:16):
abject at the same time, which is an unusual conversation.
I think you asked me earlier what I use the object,
and I forgot to mention it. In The Monstrous Feminine,
I mainly looked at horror films where the women female
characters are represented as abject in terms of their reproductive

(01:16:37):
sexual bodies. Harry becomes develops telekinesis powers when she's menstruating
in the Brood, the mother gives birth to creatures in
a sack outside her body, so that these are scenes
of female reproductive life which are abject in a horror

(01:16:58):
and Chris Davitt talks about the way the symbolic male
paternal symbolic order constructs women's paternal body as abject, consciously
or otherwise, so that woman is put cast outside when
she's pregnant, when she's menstruating the bounds of society, she's
a taboo figure in lots of societies when had to

(01:17:21):
go into the menstrual huts when they're menstruated. Even today,
in many societies men I'm not meant to have sex
with a menstruating woman, strict Jewish societies still, and women
too giving birth go to the birth in huts that
they're separated ut. But what I did so I looked
at William's bodies as sources of horror, even though they

(01:17:44):
rebel Like Carrie in the recent book Return of the
Monstrous Feminine, I argue that here in these films, many
made by women, but not all. I think male directors
too can present feminist arguments. In these films, such as Teeth,
which is about a young girl who's actually got a

(01:18:04):
vejared in Tatar, that the heroine deliberately actually goes on
into a journey into objection to confront either her own
reproductive self, but in many of these films to confront
the male who threatens to it, particularly the violent male
or the rapist.

Speaker 10 (01:18:24):
So I talk.

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):
About the journey into objection, where I talk about radical objection.
So it's quite a change from the way I used
objection in the first book. And I think this has
happened because most of the films I talk about are
actually directed by women who say, okay, so our what
is are abject? All right, let's what does this mean.

(01:18:47):
Let's open it all up for discussion, as do Quno
does in Rauw and I think Marina.

Speaker 9 (01:18:57):
Does in My Skin.

Speaker 3 (01:19:00):
So it's a sort of completely interesting change of emphasis.
So you get and I argue this happens pretty much
in the beginning. Starts at the beginnings of the New Century,
as women are becoming a lot more vocal about themselves
and their rights. You get hashtag me too, which actually

(01:19:21):
begins earlier, around two thousand and eight, but it really
comes to the fall a decade later with the Harvey One,
same case and so forth. But I think what we
get around the New Century is what happened in sixty eight.
In sixty eight, you get all those revolutions. You get

(01:19:43):
the feminist revolution, you get Black power, you get the
Green movement, you get the anti war movement and so forth.
And I think what's happening now is there's a new feminism,
there's a new not so much it's a green movement,
but it's a kind of global warming and save the

(01:20:03):
Earth movement. Then we've got the new black politics that
have occurred in America, particularly with the Black Lives Matter movement.
So there's a whole radicalization I think happening in this
new century, which is reflected in so many films, particularly
these films directed by women, So it's fascinating. And of

(01:20:25):
course there's the whole queer movement and all sorts of
inflections of that around different kinds of sexuality as well.
And on top of that, we also now have a
fascinating movement which begins I think with the human animal,
with animal liberation, which becomes the kind of new movement

(01:20:45):
into human animal studies and now has moved more into
human non human theorists looking at films and saying, there
are so many films now that are about our relationship
also to the non human, not just in terms of animal,
but in terms of ecosystems, in terms of the earth,

(01:21:08):
in terms of objects sci fi, the humanoid, the robotic,
and so forth, and so in fact, I'm just coaging
a book with a colleague which is called Non Human Cinema.
So we've got a whole lot of fantastic ess acts
where the authors are writing not just about human and

(01:21:29):
an animal, but human. And you know, there's an essay
on mountains in film, for example, that kind of thing.
Because and all this has happened with this smooth called
the Non Human Turn, which begins in the last decade
or so. Donn and Harroway says, we have never been human.
The humans are construct which the horror film knows perfectly well.

(01:21:52):
We construct ourselves as civilized and it's completely different from
the animal.

Speaker 10 (01:21:58):
But we're not.

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
We are an animal, and civilization is a veneer in
a lot of cases, which Horror of course explores as
the veneer falls away. Which is why the monstrous figure
the monsters Frankenstein onwards is so fascinating and in most
horror films, the figure we identify with as Doucono says
that she finds the monster fascinating because the monster is rebelling,

(01:22:24):
and Robin Wood said this before Ducono. The monster is
empathetic and sympathetic because the monster is the one that's
rebelling against social norms, hierarchies, ideologies, cruelty, the dominant order
which represses the other, whether it's woman or queer or black,

(01:22:46):
and so on. These incredible changes taking place right now.
And of course you've got an even greater challenge happening
now in the States with the threat that's happening to
the First Amendment, for example, And I think that could
well le to a new social movement to try and
protect the First Amendment. It's unusual, isn't it. Who would

(01:23:07):
have ever thought. I've been watching with interest the Jimmy
Kimmel Show. It's been going on around that. It's interesting
how a figure from popular culture as Girlvin are such support.
But I think popular culture is the most radical form
of culture myself.

Speaker 10 (01:23:25):
Your new book sounds fascinating. I've been hoping to read
some very low written essays around things like Megan and
Companyon or even x Mark, and just this whole idea
of this sexualization of the false female and how false
is that female versus a real woman.

Speaker 3 (01:23:47):
Yes, ex Mecanner is really interesting. Although I know I've
been criticized some people argue there is a sort of
threat of racism running through it in terms of the
other robotic women. But it poses some fabulous questions. The
one I just love is under the Skin the Scarlet Johansson.

(01:24:08):
It's just amazing. He took ten years to make that film.
It's perfect in every way I think. I think it's
really powerful, and it's also looking at the real woman,
the alien woman, and once the alien decides to become
a human woman, of course she's doomed. It reminds me

(01:24:29):
of Eyes without a Face, the Frontou movie, where the
alien separates out from her fake human self and holds
her face to her face.

Speaker 10 (01:24:44):
I thought that was amazing. It reminded me a little
bit of Annihilation with the again that double of Navy
Portman towards the NDADA.

Speaker 3 (01:24:54):
Gosh, that's an interesting film. Look, I think too, the
interesting thing because I'm so interested perssical figures. I think
that shimmer relates to the ancient I know it's pronounced
him that you could pronounce it a shimmer of that
ancient creature that's made up of all sorts of different animals,
I think, And that's also an interesting The shimmer is

(01:25:17):
now used as a term a part of the DNA
our DNA, which figures strongly in that film too. I
think it's I think it's origins go right back. I
suppose that's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, no, science fiction,
horror is and of course the alien quartets are just wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
Have you watched Alien Earth?

Speaker 10 (01:25:39):
Oh no, I haven't.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
I highly recommend it. It's very interesting.

Speaker 10 (01:25:43):
Yeah, okay, that's had very good reviews, hasn't it. I think, yeah,
I enjoyed it. There were a couple little plot things
whereas like I'm not sure if I buy that, but
overall and again a real idea of what is it
to be human? They break down things into three different
type of non human entities right at the beginning and
play with that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:03):
Through the rest of us.

Speaker 10 (01:26:03):
That's right in my alley at there you Go, There
you Go. Great. I wanted to ask a little bit
more about switching from him in my skin to Raw
and just the difference with that one. Whereas within my
skin she's taking in herself and eating herself, whereas with
Raw it is much more of the outside and being

(01:26:25):
kind of separated out, not just as a young woman,
but also as it's like her family is a different
creature altogether that have to end imbibe human flesh.

Speaker 3 (01:26:37):
I've got a particular theory about that, and I don't
know how conscious this is with Juliet du Kuno, but
she's kind of educated and she herself is very interested
in mythology. Of course, Detaine is based very much on
the Titans and the whole all the mythology around them.
So what you get in Raw, the difference between Raw

(01:27:00):
and in Mass Raw is more of a conventional cannibal
film in that she's eating the other and this becomes
abject because she's collapsing the boundaries between self and other,
tearing away the skin, opening up the body. Cannibalism, of course,
is a taboo, so she's immediately this is abject. But

(01:27:21):
there you get a cannibal family, which in itself is
not unusual. But what's unusual about it is that it's
not the father who's the original cannibal, it's the mother.

Speaker 8 (01:27:33):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:27:34):
Freud's theory of cannibalism, which I always take as a
kind of symbolic allegorical story, but he argues that in
primitive early times, society or culture is instigated or comes
about very gradually because of the institution of three taboos
that force people to become so called civilized. And there's

(01:27:58):
a taboo on cannibalism, the taboo on murder, and the
taboo on incest, interestingly, all central in the horror film,
and the taboo on cannibal emerges because he argues, in
very ancient times, the father was the center and the
power of the klan or the group, and the father

(01:28:19):
kept the women to himself. Eventually, the sons rose up
against the father because he'd become such a despotic figure
and murdered him. You probably know the story. It's in
Totem and taboo and murder the father. But then they're
so overcome with guilty. What they do is they engage

(01:28:40):
in what was used to be known as the totem meal,
where people and we still do today through communion, actually
would eat part of the totem animal, the sacred animal
in a festival to honor the animal, and you could
only eat that animal on that festival day. And it
was usually the animal that they actually was central to

(01:29:02):
their lives.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
Equalds.

Speaker 3 (01:29:03):
So in some areas it was the wolf would be
the total animal, for example, or certain or a bird
or whatever. So they eat part of the father in
a sort of meal of honor, and then as a
totemic meal, and then they say, never again will this happen.
And this is when they bring a taboo on cannibalism,

(01:29:27):
or that's instituted around the eating of the father. The
taboo on murders also instituted around the eating of the father,
and the taboo on insists also because around this time
exogamy is brought in as a practice, and that means
that the men of a certain group or tribe could
not marry or have sex with any of the women

(01:29:50):
in their group. There was too much infarting over the
women and it was destroying the clans. So women had
to marry out someone from a different So these three
taboos on exogamy, incests, and cannibalism were still we're still
with it something. They're all still taboo, even though they're
all violated all the time. So what Raw does is

(01:30:16):
it's not the sons who rise up and eat the father.
It's the wife, the mother who's the cannibal, and the
father the husband is letting her eat him slowly, not
enough to kill him. But in the end, in the
final scene, which has to be the film, ends as
he opens his shirt and shows his chest, which is

(01:30:37):
a bit like Esther's body. It's wounds and healing and
more wounds and so forth where she's been living off him.
But by agreement, he's agreed to let her do this.
So that's an argument that society and culture now in
these changing times, is all about originates with the mother

(01:31:02):
of the feast. It's the mother who makes the feast,
who creates, who gives birth, who is the origin, the
point of origin, and the male accepts this and agrees
to become part of this in an agreement. Rather in
the earlier Freudian story, women play no right at all,

(01:31:22):
and this has passed down through the daughters, not the sons.
Rawa is a kind of reworking of the Freudian story
of the origins of cannibalism, the taboo on cannibalism, and
the beginnings of sociality or society or civilization. I think
she's actually challenging all the all cannibal movies, which always

(01:31:46):
make until the original cannibal movie Trouble every Day the
clear to he. I think that's the first cannibal film
with a female cannibal, a really strong female cannibal There
are suggestions of female cannibals in the nineteen seventies attaining
cannibal movies that John so.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
I think she's.

Speaker 3 (01:32:10):
Challenging the myth that cannibalism. The taboo on cannibalism begins
with the father and the sons in the male and
it's now a matter of complete change whether taboo on
canadidism and society in culture are established via the mother
and the sisters and with the agreement of the father.

(01:32:33):
It's certainly playing with the original Broadian story. That's for
yours to be giving a more feminist interpretation of this taboo.
I only really treked about the cannibal meal and so forth.
But I think it's also presents such an interesting critique,
as Dude Corno does, of the male, the sort of

(01:32:55):
very metro aggressive male culture at the veterinary school with
all the hazing rituals, for example. I think it's also
a critique of the treatment of the animals all throughout
those quite surreal nightmarish images we get. Suddenly you're in
a room and you realize it's full of either dead

(01:33:17):
animals or animals preserved, and it's an area that's hard
he discussed, except there's that long discussion in the film
about the guy who talks about raping raping a pig,
Is it.

Speaker 10 (01:33:35):
A monkey or any it's right, which I think is
playing on that whole aids comes from monkeys myth.

Speaker 3 (01:33:45):
It is because her gay friend. I think he points
that out to him as well. She says, I'm sure
you know the monkey has feelings. And she also says
that the monkeys can recognize themselves in mirrors, which is
a red reference to Lekhan's theory the mirror phase, which
I thought, there goes Couno again.

Speaker 10 (01:34:06):
She slips all of his things.

Speaker 3 (01:34:08):
In the other interesting thing, I discovered the actor Laurent
luke Pan plays in both films, and he's the actor
who plays the very intolerant boyfriend in My Skin, and
he's the father in raw So that must be deliberate.

(01:34:30):
He's come to terms now with the female book, which
wasn't happening in In My Skin.

Speaker 10 (01:34:37):
I was horrified, are you still working these days?

Speaker 3 (01:34:40):
Retired in twenty sixteen, I've.

Speaker 10 (01:34:43):
Never been busier. I bet that's what it sounds like
with your book projects.

Speaker 3 (01:34:49):
I did return back. Rawledge got in touch and said, look,
do you think you could write another fifteen thousand words
for The Monstrous Feminine and bring it up to date.
I was, yeah, sure, the pandemic had just started. What
am I going to do? I said yes, But then
I started looking at all the films that horror films

(01:35:11):
of the last two decades. I was just knocked out.
I couldn't believe the number of women directing horror movies.
And so I got back and said, look, I just
can't possibly cover the changes that have happened in fifteen
thousand words. I can give you a new book, but
I can't give you a small section, even though it's

(01:35:31):
side the contract for them. So they yes, go ahead return.
I was a bit exhausted after and I thought, oh gosh,
thank goodness, that's finished. And then about two or three
months later, I get an email, so, when can we
expect the expanded section of the original book?

Speaker 10 (01:35:51):
That's what do you mean? They still wanted it. So
I did it.

Speaker 3 (01:35:57):
But I got thirty thousand words out of them, and
I added a new section called The Monstrous Feminine as
non Human because I've become interested in the non human.
But that was just amazing. It was such a shock.
When can we expect section there, but there's just there

(01:36:18):
was too much to ignore.

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:36:20):
I was contacted recently by two women who were doing
a special edition of a journal on women and horror
to write an afterward, which I said sure, and then
they dropped back to me the other day and they said,
oh my goodness. They said, we put out a call
for papers, we've had over two hundred and fifty. We
can't believe it. And now they're doing a companion a book.

(01:36:45):
I can't remember that they're doing it with Oxford or Cambridge.
I can't remember which one they got. They couldn't believe
the response. When we my colleague and I put out
the call for papers on film and a non human globally
through Sensus of Cinema, we thought maybe we'd get about
thirty responses. We got over one hundred and fifty and

(01:37:06):
we can only publish fifteen, which we did and that
went really well. And then I got contacted by the
editor from Exeter Press, Becky, and she said, would you
be interested in doing a book on this topic? And
we thought, why not. We've got all this fantastic already.
We don't even have to put out another gulp of papers.

(01:37:28):
So that's clearly an interesting new area that's developing in film.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
Is there a deep for that?

Speaker 3 (01:37:35):
One manuscript goes in this week completed. I think they're
hoping to bring it out this time next year.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
Thank you so much for your time. This has been
so very time with you.

Speaker 10 (01:37:46):
I lovely. Yeah, anytime you have an open invitation, anytime
you have anything you want to talk about, I'm here
for you. All right, fantastic.

Speaker 7 (01:38:28):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
We were back and we were talking about raw and
I want to talk about that sheet scene. We get
a little bit. There's a moment between her looking at
Andrea and playing the game that we're talking about, and
that other moment where she's dancing in front of the mirror.
You cut back to a room and there's a sheet
over a shape, and then the sheet blows away and

(01:38:51):
it's that dog that was being dissected. And then later
on after the dance scene where she's kissing them and everything,
then you see her under this and actually, sorry, I
take it back, after that the video game scene to
kill yourself, Kill yourself moment her under the sheet. At
one point I thought I heard the director talk about

(01:39:13):
how that was like a withdrawal scene. And that they
called on the moment from Trainspotting to kind of show
that because it does look like she's in withdrawals, but
at the same time, it feels like there's people outside
of that sheet and she can hear things as well, right,
And at first I was thinking that she was going
to be beaten through the sheet, like this was another

(01:39:35):
stupid hazing thing, but it just it's such a strange
but beautiful scene, and especially that blue that comes through
the sheet, that light blue, that that permeates everything, because
we're gonna get that blue later on when she gets
doused with paint, which again, of course reminds me of
Parallel Fu. But I love that whole thing of her
in the blue and the guy with the yellow and

(01:39:57):
they go make yourselves green.

Speaker 8 (01:40:00):
A lot of stuff in this film which tends to
move between real and surreal, and just like sliding back
and forth between them that your initial response is, oh
my god, it's another one of these stupid hazing things.
And then when she throws the sheet off and wakes up,
I felt like that was her sort of nightmare of

(01:40:22):
how she was physically feeling and whether it was withdrawal.
I feel like what it should really be is it's
her hunger rising up because she hasn't fed, and so
she's going through all this really painful bodily discomfort because
her body's craving something that she's not giving it. And

(01:40:44):
so I felt like it was a visual manifestation of
how she was feeling, but with the distraction or with
the misdirection of making us think, oh no, this is
like one of those hazing things. And it's like from
Full Metal Jacket where the guy gets hit with the
soap all he's held down in bed because he behaved improperly.

(01:41:06):
So like that was the first thing that came to
my mind when I had seen it, was it's like
that scene in Full Metal Jacket and it's horrible. And
then I was like, oh wait, I think this is
just a reflection of how she feels.

Speaker 7 (01:41:20):
My thought was it was a dream, but I think
it is a withdrawal, and it is like a hallucination
from the withdrawal dream hallucination withdrawal because also I don't
know if you noticed, but there's a couple of times
when the rash comes back on her and when she's
at one point using her sister's medats medicine cabinet. She
notices that her sister has the same cream, and so
that has to be like when they're in withdrawal, that rash,

(01:41:41):
you know that. I think that's again a very subtle
thing that you have to notice throughout and I have
a feeling, yeah, it was withdrawal.

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
I love the echo to of her with all that
blue paint and when she's washing herself off, and we're
going to get kind of the mirror image of that,
almost the negative image of that with her sister later
on when after she kills Adrian spoilers after she kills
Adrian and she's covered in blood, and Justine's kind of
last real act that we see with their sister before

(01:42:11):
she's in jail is cleaning her off, getting all the
blood off of her, as opposed to hear with Justine
with all the blue paint and finding that little chunk
in her cheek and eating that and just finally like
getting a little bit of satisfaction from the hunger that
she has. I mean, that poor guy in the yellow
paint doesn't know what hits him, and the red of

(01:42:35):
the bitten through lip or the missing lip makes it
even more stark against that yellow paint.

Speaker 8 (01:42:41):
And again she goes to something that people can identify with,
and this hays like the hair is something that that
gross feeling of having hair in your mouth, but also
if you accidentally bite your lip, or if your lips
are too dry and they crack open like you can.
You have a visceral connection to both of those images

(01:43:03):
that is very strong, whereas something less familiar might not
have hit as hard, even though you could have gone
with something more spectacular, like she could have ripped off
a big.

Speaker 9 (01:43:17):
Chunk of bit.

Speaker 8 (01:43:18):
I feel like she keeps it at a level where
we can identify with it easily, and that in many
ways makes it a stronger thing because we do go,
oh wow, I know what, that's disgusting, that hurts.

Speaker 1 (01:43:35):
I really appreciate too that it is the end of
this whole hazing time when the discovery of Adrian's body happens,
that we hear those little honks from the horn, and
you get those beautiful shots of the campus again going
back to that brutalist architecture, and you get some war

(01:43:56):
shots now off some of the students kind of coming out.
It's almost like, you know, a brand new day kind
of thing, and then you know, cut to her in
bed with him, and it's like, okay, well they've had
this passionate night together and you already know that she
might have moments where she doesn't remember things. She woke
up pretty messed up earlier. Here she wakes up and

(01:44:18):
she's got that big fucking gash on her face from
her sister biting her, and it's just this really lovely
scene of this guy in bed with her and ends
up being I wrote in my notes, it's like The
Godfather when she discovers Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:44:32):
It totally, it totally is that's really that's a really
great reference.

Speaker 9 (01:44:36):
Totally.

Speaker 8 (01:44:37):
Yeah, especially the way she feels the blood, because I
think in The Godfather that's how he realizes. It's feeling
the wetness that makes him realize there's something wrong. But
that scene was incredibly well done, and you wasn't there
also blood on her face. I don't even know if
she sampled some of his flesh or or not.

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
I don't think she does. She's got blood on her face,
but it's from the bite from her sister.

Speaker 8 (01:45:07):
From just from the bite.

Speaker 9 (01:45:09):
The way she discovered it was she was reaching under
the cover. She was like caressing his body, and then
she suddenly pulds her hand out and her hands covered
in blood, and then she starts She actually embraces him
and says she's sorry because she thought she did it.
So she then starts messing with the body, and that's
how she gets blood on herself.

Speaker 8 (01:45:26):
I thought, there, you see something earlier, but I I
don't know. But the sense of also like having these
blackouts or not knowing exactly what she've done again kind
of takes me back to were wolves because it's that
sense of you transform, you do something horrific, and then
you transform back, and then whether it's like a defense

(01:45:49):
mechanism that you can't remember, or that it's actually part
of that whole werewolf mythology that you can't remember. Like
that also made me think that this was more of
a go were wolfy kind of tail.

Speaker 1 (01:46:03):
Well, yeah, after she finds all that blood, she has
it all over her body now and she looks what
does she do? She looks at herself in the mirror
and starts looking at her mouth and pulling down on
her mouth, like what have I done? And she blames herself.
And I think that might be one of the last
mirror shots until the I would call it a mirror

(01:46:24):
shot with her and her sister in prison. What an
amazing shot of those two faces kind of merged together
before they break apart, and it's like, now one person
has their trip that they're taking, the other person has
their road that they have to go down. And I
just find that wonderful, the way that they kind of
break apart at that moment. And I don't know what

(01:46:47):
the hell's going to happen to Alexia in prison. I mean,
she's going to have to figure out something when it
comes to how to feed herself.

Speaker 8 (01:46:57):
We have seen in prison fight scenes people biting each
other's ear off, so I'm sure she could probably find
a way, not that she wouldn't be punished, but I
think there would be opportunity to attack your fellow prisoners.
But also in that scene, the way Justine presses her
chewed off cheek up against the glass like she doesn't

(01:47:20):
You've seen a lot of scenes where people will kiss
each other through the glass and press their lips, but
she presses the section of her cheek that Alexia has
bitten off up to her as the.

Speaker 7 (01:47:32):
Flipoff that's right after Alexia there's a flipoff and she's
showing her bitten off finger like you did this to me,
And that actually reminds me of going back again to
the Adrian's death scene, the sister Alexis is sitting in
the exact same spot where I believe that's the exact
same spot where she was eating her finger. It's kind

(01:47:53):
of like, all right, you ain't mi, you sat there
in that spot eating my finger.

Speaker 9 (01:47:56):
I'm sitting here. I just killed your love the person
you have a crush Sean, which is I don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:48:01):
To me, that's sort of like what's going on because
it's I think it's the exact same spot. And then,
like you said, yeah, in the scene again it's that competition.
But here's my finger that you bit off, here's my
cheek that So it's cool all the way that gues
back and forth in a really sisterly way.

Speaker 1 (01:48:19):
Well, we've talked about so many times that the movie
kind of pulls the rug out from under us. So
we are now convinced with Justine that she's the one
that killed Adrian and has eaten his leg. And then
we find the ski pole which we saw earlier, and
then we find Alexia there in that position. I think
you're totally right. I think that is exactly where that

(01:48:41):
finger eating took place. But we find out at the
same time that Justine finds out that no, it might
not have been her, it might have been or probably
was her sister, and her sister just having all the
blood all the way down, just that she looks very
Angelina Jolie to me, in that final moment where she's
looking up at her and she's kind of got those

(01:49:02):
same eyes and just like you realize that she's a monster,
but like to your point, Beth, she's such a pitiable
monster and such a sympathetic monster where it's just like,
I don't think she could have helped.

Speaker 8 (01:49:15):
Herself, and again that's the werewolf, I think.

Speaker 9 (01:49:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:49:18):
To me, the way she has the blood all over
her face is like a little kid who just ate
ice cream. Like to me, it's more like she really
enjoyed that meal, you know what I mean.

Speaker 9 (01:49:27):
Felt that way to me.

Speaker 8 (01:49:28):
The father talks about Alexia as like she was the
one who was wild, Like maybe that's the difference between
the two of them, in the sense like the mom
thought maybe she could control Justine's hunger because she didn't
display that innate wildness to begin with, but they make
reference to the fact like Alexia did whatever she wanted,

(01:49:50):
like we couldn't control her as a child, And yes,
so that reference to her like being the kid with
all the jam on her face or something after she's
gotten into the jar of something. But yeah, I don't
think she can control herself. I think Alexia had gotten
to a point of managing her hunger, but I don't

(01:50:14):
know if it was the fact that the sister was
turning as well or just the level of the hunger increasing.
But I think she loses control at the end. I
think that that feeding that she does on her roommate
is something that she couldn't hide in the same way
she could hide those car crashes. So I don't know

(01:50:36):
if it was that that was uncontrollable or you keep
bringing up like the sister rivalry thing, like it's like
you took my boyfriend, I'll take your boyfriend kind of thing.
Was she doing it just to hurt her or was
it just my hunger's uncontrollable right now and this guy
is right here and I'm going to.

Speaker 1 (01:50:54):
Feast, and it feels like there's just a momentary fourth
wall break at the end when she's talking with her
father and she looks up and I think it's supposed
to be her looking at her father, looking him in
his eyes, but the way that she raises her eyes,
she kind of looks more at us. And then it's
funny that the father really gets the last word and

(01:51:16):
is the last image with those massive scars all over
his chest. Like if there's one moment that reminds me
of like a martyr's or something, it's that with the
just the old wounds that we get to see, and
it's just him saying, I'm sure you'll find a solution, honey,
and then boom cut too Raw with that music pounding again.

(01:51:37):
It's like, holy shit, It's like you just took us
on this ride, and I am so thankful for it.
I mean, I tried to watch Titane and I just
had a hard time getting into it.

Speaker 9 (01:51:52):
Oh I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:53):
Oh okay, please tell me what you enjoyed about that one,
because I just had a hard time with it.

Speaker 8 (01:51:58):
It was just weirder like the Love It, but it
was still like dealing with this sense of family. So
part of what I like about Raw also is that
it's really not about cannibalism. It's like zombie films. Zombie
films aren't really about zombies a lot of times, or
the best ones aren't there about something else. The zombies
are this blank slate. So to me, the cannibalism in

(01:52:21):
this was a mechanism to explore this sense of family ties,
because what the father's telling her is is I love
your mother, and we've come to this arrangement that we
can manage what's going on, and I hope you figure
out something similar. I don't know if he's saying, find
a guy who will let you feed on him now

(01:52:43):
and again, but and again I tried. I watched it again,
and I tried looking at the scars to see were
some fresher than others or were they all old, because
that's the one thing I couldn't figure out. Has the
mom stopped feeding? Has she gone vegetarian because she's been
able to control her personal hunger and those scars are

(01:53:04):
all from the past. I wasn't sure. And I was
trying to look like if there was one fresh wound,
one that looked a little raw at that point. So
that's something I don't know and I can't figure out.
But again, what I like about her film is she
doesn't she could have had him said like, oh yeah,
mom fed off would be last night. No, like she

(01:53:26):
just plays it out and lets us think about what
some of these options could be in which one of
them might be happening. But yeah, that was the one
thing I was I was trying to look very carefully
to see or any of those new.

Speaker 9 (01:53:41):
My interpretation was that this is what they do. He
probably has them.

Speaker 7 (01:53:44):
He's covered head to toe wherever his clothing can cover him.

Speaker 9 (01:53:49):
Yeah, that was the impression I got, And this is
how we managed.

Speaker 7 (01:53:52):
She just apparently you don't need that much meat, and
they were just nibbling on the dead passengers in the
the sister was just nibbling on the brainers.

Speaker 9 (01:54:00):
It does seem like they just need a little bit
they don't need to have.

Speaker 7 (01:54:03):
Obviously, even with the leg at the end, Adran's leg
is just it's.

Speaker 9 (01:54:10):
Not like she she went to town completely on him.

Speaker 8 (01:54:13):
She ate a lot of that leg, a lot of that.

Speaker 9 (01:54:15):
Seemly they don't need. They don't need a ton of
ton of human flesh.

Speaker 8 (01:54:20):
But also if that's like the most she ate of
human flesh, that kind of explains kind of her like
weird state where it's like when you eat too much
food and your stomach's too full and you just can't move.
Like maybe those other times she fed, she was trying
to be careful and not if you devour the body
too much, the hospital people or the emergency crew is

(01:54:44):
going to notice, like, wait, that doesn't look like an
injury you would have gotten in a car crash. That
looks like human bites all over. So I don't know
if she was controlling herself more when she was feeding
in that way, and this was a time when she
was just like, I'm just gonna go ahead and eat
as much as I want. And then she goes into
that food coma and what do you like?

Speaker 1 (01:55:06):
But we were talking about Titane and I was curious, why
you enjoyed that one.

Speaker 8 (01:55:10):
I have not seen it in a while. I think
one of the things I really liked. I love films
where you can't tell where they're going. I like films
that surprise you along the way. And again, this film
really felt to be about family. This was a father
and a daughter in this case, and I just like

(01:55:31):
the way it played with everything and the visuals of
the music, and that was also amazing. It was both
genre and gender bending, both at the same time, and
I just appreciated how it pushed the envelope, like it
wasn't like anything else that I was seeing. And I
love the fact that it was a woman directing it

(01:55:53):
and taking it to extreme places. I also liked films
that go to extremes like that really takes something, take
an idea, and just go for it with no limits,
and I felt like she did that with that. I
don't think I fully understood it, Like when I got
to the end, I'm not one hundred percent sure of
maybe what I should take away, but I felt like

(01:56:15):
the cinematic experience of it was so enthralling. Like for me,
if films are dark, or their themes are hard, if
the filmmaking is intoxicating, I walk away from those films
just with this kind of joyous feeling, despite the fact
that the content might not make you feel that way,

(01:56:36):
but I get so excited by like the filmmaking. And
that's what I felt with Titan, Like I felt excited
by the filmmaking and by where she was going and
that she wasn't playing it safe or I'm going to
tone it down now I'm going to try to be
a little more mainstream or a little more commercial. She
was like, nope, I'm going to go even further that way.

Speaker 7 (01:56:58):
The story structure is really aw like it's it's unlike,
it's very not a normal story structure. It's there's no
it's you know, it's an unfamiliar kind of story structure,
which kind of makes it really cool.

Speaker 9 (01:57:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:09):
Yeah, and I'm glad that a great thing. On that
audio commentary where Westwood was asking her, you know, oh,
you're gonna, you know, change genres, you know, is it
always gonna be body horror? And she's like, you might
as well just ask me if I'm gonna start speaking
Japanese in a week, you know, Like, no, it's this
is what I do, this is what I like. And
I'm like, okay, great. You know, to hear that her

(01:57:32):
new film, thank you Susan for turning me on to Alpha.
I'm curious to see that one too. Also body Horror,
and I'm like, yeah, great, yeah, make this your thing
because even her early film Junior very body horror as well,
and same actresses raw very much like you know, talking
about peeling the skin back and stuff. It's very much
a metamorphosis that happens in that one as well, where

(01:57:54):
like she grows overnight and becomes a woman, like being
born from a cocoon. Almost.

Speaker 7 (01:58:00):
Yeah, and it's super cool that Justine named Justine pops
into Titan Te. It's the same actor, same name, and
she even uses the name Alexia.

Speaker 3 (01:58:08):
Again.

Speaker 7 (01:58:09):
I like that too, when directors play with their I'm
sure she'll be doing that movie to movie kind of
playing with the characters visiting each movie.

Speaker 9 (01:58:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:58:17):
Yeah, I didn't look to see if there's a Justine
and Alpha's, but I would not be surprised. And Zari
keeps saying Alpha's like the TV show with David Strathairn,
which was canceled way too soon.

Speaker 7 (01:58:28):
Just one thing I want to bring up, which I
couldn't stop thinking of, of this movie that I had
seen that's a documentary.

Speaker 9 (01:58:35):
So this Vivie.

Speaker 7 (01:58:37):
It's this fiterary school that is this hazing week. It's
so evil and wicked. There's something really ominous about it.
And I happen to go to the New York Academy
of Medicine because I love science stuff. They sometimes show
like weird science documentaries and there's this one. It came
out in twenty twenty two called De Humani Corpus Fabrica.

Speaker 9 (01:58:59):
It reminds me so much.

Speaker 7 (01:59:01):
It evokes so much in this movie because it's so
visceral still, it's like almost a fred It's like a
Frederick Wiseman film where they're it's a slow burned slow
just taking in everything in this French hospital, and it's
it's not a high class hospital.

Speaker 9 (01:59:15):
It's like a probably a relatively low sees hospital.

Speaker 7 (01:59:18):
But they're filming a caesarean section and you are just
watching every minute of this. They're showing someone being prepped
for brain surgery while they're awake and their brain is
like split open, their heads, their skull is split open.
They're showing the psych word and following the patients and
listening to them. They're even just like sitting at the
nurse's desk and listening. There's like a prostate operation.

Speaker 9 (01:59:40):
It's and it's the way they film it.

Speaker 7 (01:59:43):
Is beautiful, but it's grotesque and it's like that kind
of thing. But it has a surprise ending, which I'm
gonna say, and if anybody wants to see it, just
fast forward a minute or two.

Speaker 9 (01:59:51):
But the surprise ending is they end up in.

Speaker 7 (01:59:54):
This attic where the doctors hang out, and on the
wall is this huge mural of the doctor, like past
doctors and present doctors in this bacchanalia. They're like pans,
they're like drinking and they're having sex and it's crazy.
It's like you realized that this hospital has a tradition
of the doctors just being like, I don't know. It

(02:00:15):
just shows this sort of this really strange side of
these doctors who are perfectly comfortable with having their portrait
on this mural that's clearly a tradition that's just about
decadence and sex and.

Speaker 9 (02:00:27):
It's so weird.

Speaker 7 (02:00:28):
I can't explain to you how weird this movie is,
but it really evoke the same feeling of this weird
hospital where all these creepy things are going on.

Speaker 9 (02:00:37):
So I highly recommend it. It's really hard to get through.

Speaker 7 (02:00:40):
And people were walking out of that film too because
it was so hard, so hard to watch. Yeah, so
that's my recommendation for pair these two movies together for
your friends.

Speaker 9 (02:00:50):
It's great pairing for pairing.

Speaker 8 (02:00:52):
I would say, also check out I Believe She's French.
Also Corley Fargier, who did the substance and Revenge. I
also feel like those are body horror films that have
a very feminist sland different tone than what I think
Julia does, but I think they pair well. And also

(02:01:13):
it gives you, i think, a little sense of this
kind of extreme French horror from a feminine side.

Speaker 1 (02:01:19):
I just found her earlier film Reality Plus, which I
look forward to seeing. I haven't seen Revenge, but I
did finally just watch the Substance. I'm still not sure
what I think about it, because it's just it's such
a strange film, you know, about the objectification of women,
that really objectifies to women throughout the entire thing. I'm like,
I really never thought of Margaret Qually as being just

(02:01:43):
this incredibly hot, but there's I'm feeling the vapors as
I'm watching this.

Speaker 8 (02:01:49):
You know, I just looked that it kept upping the ante,
like you think you've come to the end, like Okay,
it's not going to go any further than this, and
then it does, and then okay, it can't find another
level to go to, and then it does, and then
all right, we're and it does. And so I appreciated that.

Speaker 1 (02:02:07):
All right, we're going to take another break and play
preview for next week's show. Right after these brief messages.

Speaker 5 (02:02:15):
Sinan Bargo is a district son in la A Bijapur,
Alim Koda Pierre manifest. But I say si la apia
for terlibian asta.

Speaker 11 (02:02:25):
Geno joys to the end and pass amintain sana.

Speaker 5 (02:03:02):
It was mean saying I don't kill a hum una
faster you'n. The format is clabby too.

Speaker 1 (02:03:06):
You can be the wrong.

Speaker 5 (02:03:08):
Last carday as there are superstition's you go. The lament said,
so you number the same here the iman went through
Frentian go kimber misterms of my worth. There are Alito

(02:03:39):
the man dad into the list. I said, they see
no sentence. It's a solo. Probably say now they look
you stayed by a man held them on you.

Speaker 12 (02:03:51):
I'll look gard God, the Father commands, thee got the
Sun commands, see God, the Holy galst command Stee con
Claudio Brook, David Silva, Dina Rome, Susanna Kamini, Ariana Roe,

(02:04:22):
Dina French Ada Dirihita for Juan Lopez Motsuma.

Speaker 1 (02:04:54):
That's why we'll be back next week when they look
at al Yukarda. Until then, I want to thank my
co host Susan and Beth. So Beth, what is the
latest with you, ma'am?

Speaker 8 (02:05:03):
As usual, I'm working with film Geek San Diego and
we are doing our programming at Digital Gym Cinema, so
we are rounding out the end of our year of
international horror and neo noir, so that's pretty exciting for us.
We also do Bonkers half assed Midnights where we show
some bonkers films, not quite at midnight, but we get
you out by midnight and we'll be looking for what

(02:05:25):
our theme will be for twenty twenty six for films there.
And we've just wrapped our annual Secret Morgue last month,
so that was Secret Morgue six or as we like
to call it, Secret Morgue sixty six six, Satanic Panic
or the Devil made us do that?

Speaker 1 (02:05:43):
And Susan, what's happening with you?

Speaker 7 (02:05:44):
I'm still writing somewhat. I just fort a piece on
statistics and comics. So I'm a little bit different, a
little bit in different world lately. I'm in academia.

Speaker 9 (02:05:52):
I'm going I went back at a very very very
late age to.

Speaker 7 (02:05:55):
Get a PhD in developmental psych I'm in my second
year and I highly recommend Millie which people do it.

Speaker 8 (02:06:01):
Just do it.

Speaker 9 (02:06:01):
It's a good time to do it.

Speaker 7 (02:06:03):
And so anyway, I wrote a piece for It's called
Nightingale and it's the publication of the Data Visual Society
something like that, and it's a cool little piece with
Andrew Gelman about statistics and comics, which is fun film.

Speaker 9 (02:06:17):
People like comics too. That's what I'm doing, like helping kids,
like learning about kids in digital culture. So it's really fascinating.

Speaker 1 (02:06:23):
I'm just glad you survived the hazing.

Speaker 7 (02:06:26):
It was very gory and it did not have to
do with rabbits kidneys, but it had to do with
things that I'm not going to talk about.

Speaker 1 (02:06:33):
Well, thank you again ladies for being on the show,
and thanks to everybody for listening. Want to support physical
media and get great movies in the mail, head over
to scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Video is incredible
rent by mail service. You'll find films there entirely unavailable elsewhere.
Get what you want when you want it without the scrolling,
and of course they have raw available. If you want

(02:06:53):
to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check
out some of the other shows that I work on.
They are all available at wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially
to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
visit patreon dot com. Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we
get help some Projection booth take over the world.

Speaker 4 (02:07:34):
Soon said if so, yes, Sa'm okay, Yes, lacky, that's
the time you said, I say that, soon show me,
I said, think.

Speaker 8 (02:07:46):
I feel I'm better.

Speaker 4 (02:07:48):
No, it's like cat stop.

Speaker 3 (02:07:51):
To the foot.

Speaker 4 (02:07:58):
By slip bred as they do.

Speaker 9 (02:08:01):
That's appeli, I feel just spot. Surely cats want to.

Speaker 4 (02:08:05):
Be sex up playing I'm gonna have to pay back.

Speaker 9 (02:08:12):
Just wants to be sex.

Speaker 4 (02:08:13):
I played pem sex, I'm playing over.

Speaker 7 (02:08:18):
Wants to be sex.

Speaker 4 (02:08:19):
I played that mom seem sex.

Speaker 5 (02:08:20):
I'm playing mom.

Speaker 13 (02:08:21):
Don't made him bash?

Speaker 5 (02:08:23):
You shoot and can call him?

Speaker 13 (02:08:25):
Almost said initial ship girl, he could a person to
make easter.

Speaker 4 (02:08:29):
They post and see this, surely says I don't.

Speaker 5 (02:08:32):
Go to shore, don't more limke and what's that?

Speaker 11 (02:08:34):
Say?

Speaker 8 (02:08:34):
Oh?

Speaker 13 (02:08:35):
Show just playing and well love me? I sail you
pun on my own person. I think I got me.
You don't given because your Dutch posne he's don't don't
yoab he's a donam me can you by all I'm
listening to, will send your dad that you mont that
that you're Tory? Does the mossy sid I mean the check?
Is this pious?

Speaker 8 (02:08:57):
This this?

Speaker 13 (02:08:58):
Oh, it's not, it's not. I tuk no Ebervation's this
subservations

Speaker 10 (02:09:13):
Boh ooh

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