District 9: Dehumanization, Empathy, and Forced Perspective Change

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Ben Stover, individual therapist.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
We're all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists,
who practice out of Chicago. Even though we are licensed
mental health professionals, this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes
and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture and
all forms.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode of Popcorn Psychology.
Today we are going to be talking about the two
thousand and nine Oscar nominated film District Nine. This is
our first four into the found footage genre, which was
popular at the time this movie was out in District Nine.
The plot of the film is that we see this
alien population come to Earth and they are all getting

(01:11):
very sick, and the humans, as they're watching this giant
ship hover over their city, get really scared and they
don't know what to do, so they get some prejudiced
notions about what to do with this population. And when
they finally decide they're going to open the ship, because
nothing happens with it after a while, they open it
and they find an entire population of several million sick aliens,

(01:35):
and they, rather than try to help them or welcome
them in, they quarantine them in a slum called District nine,
which is what the movie is about. Throughout the course
of this film, there's an agent of a private military
corporation who's tasked with relocating these aliens to a place
even further outside of the city of Johannesburg in South Africa,

(01:58):
to a government tent facility that is we learn later
substantially worsened, to quote the main character Vickers, basically a
concentration camp. When he starts telling the truth that he's
gloriously dissociated away from the harm he is imposing on
this population through the course of his actions, comes in

(02:19):
contact with an alien fuel that starts turning him into
one of the aliens he's been working actively to corral
and oppress, and we see him have to take on
some force perspective of what it might be like to
go from oppressor to one of the oppressed. So in
today's episode, we'll be covering the psychology of oppression, empathy

(02:44):
and forced perspective change and like always, treatment and final thoughts.
So let's get rolling psychology of oppression. What do we
see in this film that directed our attention that way? Sure?

Speaker 1 (02:56):
I mean, I think immediately we see the use of dehumanization,
right immediately they talk about the use of even language
calling them prons because they quote unquote look like prons.
I don't know how much I would say they look
like prons, like that's trump right, yeah, But how that
is used soap in such a specific way in the

(03:18):
movie that I don't even want to call them prons,
Like I'm probably gonna call them aliens out of my
overempathizing with fictional characters. Even we watch Vickars, this person
who's supposed to be a professional, they're supposed to respect,
is supposed to be really on top of it, right,
even the callous, casual nature that he calls them prons

(03:40):
and the way he is not taking them seriously as
living creatures. And he's supposed to be the representative taking
care of them quote unquote.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, now just say it's the way he's representing himself
when he wants their cooperation. But it's clear you say,
he's got casual disrespect for them. Casual disdain. It does
not them as valid at all.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, the use of language, the way they talk about
how odd they are, the way he talks about their culture,
just right away. No attempt at finding what is similar,
a lot of attempts at finding what is different and
making them, Yeah, less of a thoughtful species than us.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Unless deserving, less worthy of care, less worthy of decency,
of respect of privacy, of anything that we might give
to a intelligent creature. We look at the way he
does mental gymnastics to enable himself to treat these obviously intelligent,

(04:50):
advanced creatures as less than.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
And the way that he's able to use the way
that they're different, like I said, as part of the
Deman dehumanization. Like I think a great example is that
they are a species that seems to pro create via eggs, so.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Not mammalian, I guess.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
And he shows in the very early parts of the film,
he's showing the camera people, Oh, look, we found a
nest of eggs I don't know exactly how he talks
about it, but how they build this whole contraption where
there's like a cow carcass and the cow carcass feeds
into the embryo sac or whatever, and the I'm sure

(05:35):
we're gonna use the word collus a million times in
this episode, the cowus nature in which he giggly starts
to unattach it and keeps using the word abort too,
And it's very ough akey way, the gleeful way, maybe
that's a better word, the gleeful way, in which he's
sort of showing off. What are these creature's children in

(05:59):
their mind?

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Their babies?

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, and he's like, oh, look, we found a nursery
pretty much of really vulnerable babies, alien.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Babies, Hadi haha.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Let's start detaching it so that they die, and then
the slide it on fire, and let's then have some
fun with the screaming sound that these babies make as
they die. The way I put it versus the way
he put it is an example of how we use
language to change the way that we think about something,

(06:31):
to create distance from it as part of that dehumanization. Right, Like,
at no point is he using terminology, the same lexicon
that human beings that we use to describe the same experience.
Like I said, he's not saying these are their children,
you know, these are the sounds they make when they die. Like,

(06:51):
he's not using any equivocal language that would help us
feel a connection and common ground with these beings. And
it's all very like, Look, how weird they are, isn't
it funny? Isn't it interesting? The very like scientific removal
as well.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, he alternates between a scientific disinterest and explanations of
their ways and anatomy to malice and casual disgust at
everything that's different. And why he's doing that is it's

(07:32):
part of the process that humans go through when they're
othering something, because humans are at their worst when they
see something as different from themselves. The director was talking
about in interviews he did about how he wanted to
make the aliens be like on four legs and look

(07:53):
a little more insectoid, but oh they couldn't because people
wouldn't identify with them just because of our psychology and
recognizing how potent that is that their bipedal and that
they have eyes in the front that emote like ours do.

(08:17):
Allows the audience to identify with them in ways that
Vickers is refusing to. And Vickers and everyone else is
that's wandering around casually shooting them and harming them, aborting
their children, is.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
Just terrorizing them, just terrorizing them on a regular basis.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
And forcing them to eat animal scraps and cat food,
not taking one single opportunity to welcome them into society,
to integrate them anything, nothing, just lesser than and separate.
And we see Brittany's talking about it. It's a complete

(08:59):
process of separating them out and making them different and
worse than you without making any efforts to connect to
how they're the same. And that's the same process humans
go through anytime they do anything atrocious. We see one

(09:20):
of the most classic lines of cinema ever. It puts
the lotion in the basket, or it gets the hose again,
the use of the word it it dehumanizing. Serial Killers
routinely dehumanize their victims. They don't use their names. They're
just the whore or whatever else. They aren't people. And

(09:45):
you see it over and over and over again in
this movie, where they look at the aliens and just
call them prawns and don't take any effort to care
about what makes them special. They're just looking to exploit
whatever they brought with them and get rid of them
as quickly as possible, to take a break here.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
I think what is also interesting in that it's been
like twenty some years since they landed. That's an interesting
choice on the writing of the movie because we're also
witnessing Vickers as sort of the second generation. He's like
the first generation that's grown up with the aliens. Yes,
so the full integration since a kid of these ideas

(10:25):
of how they're less than Look, there's a sign over there,
no aliens over here, only humans over here. So he's
been fully indoctrinated into this dehumanization, which also probably accounts
for his casual nature of the slur on the casual,
very unempathetic, almost antisocial energy he has about their safety,

(10:51):
their livelihood, their ability to love their children. So, I
mean that's a big part of it, right, I'm trying
not to go to bananas with how much this makes
me think of like American history, Yeah, and the indigenous
people of America, but how a big part of how
we also dehumanize people is you devalue their relationship to
their children so that they're one, so that cultural can't

(11:16):
be passed down right yep, or that they just can't
exist period.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
Because also to the.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Dehumanization part of it as well, to understand to really
let yourself feel that this person could love their children,
or this being could love their children. That's a think
of pretty universal feeling right to either love your own
child or to be loved by your parents. The connection
we have to family and how deep that is and

(11:41):
how human I guess that is, and so not letting
the aliens also have that kind of bond or not
recognizing it as such, even though they do acknowledge, like
when he threatens Christopher's child to get him to comply.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Mm hmm, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
And but they do that dehumanization there as well, where
to really recognize when you're the oppressive party, to really
recognize what you're actually doing to other living creatures, usually
other human beings. Right, it is a truth that is
almost impossible to sit with. Part of that is I
think you were saying earlier, and like also blaming the aliens,
blaming the other for their situation. Yes, so that was

(12:25):
a great example where he's like, I'll call CPS basically
and get your kid taken away, because look at this
shithole that you're raising your kid in. You don't even
care about your kid. Why are they in a shithole? Bro? Yeah,
it's not like they're like, I want to raise my
kid in this piece of garbage.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yea, this is the only place they can live.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
So also, the way that an oppressive class will convince
themselves that the situation that the oppressed are in is
somehow their faults. Absolutely, because they're too dirty, stupid, whatever
to get themselves out of it. And so what does
it matter of the livelihood of their home, their children,

(13:03):
all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Who cares? Absolutely? Absolutely?

Speaker 4 (13:09):
Yeah, it's the way that they do it in this
film is just so connected to the way that people
of color have been dehumanized in the United States. And
it's really and I thought they did a really good
job of showing that and showing how insidious it is,

(13:30):
because it isn't just being a racist, It isn't just
it's also just viewing them as less than period.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
And that's how humans are, whether it's the United States
or anywhere else. Humans versus animals, humans versus other humans,
humans versus the environment, viewing it as less than and
worse creates a dissociative state that operates under its own
definitions of things that are often reinforced by whoever's in power.

(14:03):
And how did the Holocaust happen? The Jews got thoroughly othered.
If you've ever seen Hotel Rwanda, you see the genocide
happening between the two season the Hutus in that movie,
I think I believe so they start calling one the cockroaches.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
As soon as we're doing that shit, we're done.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
It makes me think of two how in America they
used to refer to black people's hair as wool as
a way to make them more animalistic in our mentality
because their hair is so different. Oh, their hair is
made of wool like an animal. It's be sheared basically.
But white people, our hair is I don't know, made

(14:42):
of silk or whatever.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
The fuck? Yeah, actual hairy much.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
I think the use of the idea of dissociation is
really interesting because to enact this kind of violence against
Sentian beings, which is what we're just happening in this movie,
that is traumatic. Well, it's like you have to chip
away a bit of your soul and a bit of
your empathy, right your humanity, every time you have to

(15:07):
enact this torture, this mistreatment onto another senseient being. I
think that dissociated nature is a good way to think
of it. You know, I have to believe that you're
less than because to fully realize that you are having
the same love and thoughts that I'm having, how do
I live with myself? How do I live with the

(15:28):
trauma I have enforced? And or I felt like I
was just falling orders that classic line that I felt
like to make sure that I was safe, I had
to enact on you. I'm watching the show Warrior right
now on Netflix, which also made me think. I was
thinking of that when I was watching this. I don't
know if you've so watched it, Ben, you freakin love Itace.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
It's Bruce lee esque. It's a movie.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
It's a show actually he thought of and then he
died before he could make it, oh or as he
was trying to make it. So it feels very bruce
ly esque that it came out just a few years ago.
It just finished I think last year, but that's about
when the Chinese immigrated to America, specifically San Francisco, California,
for the railroad and the cultural wars happening between the

(16:11):
white rich people that got there first the Irish who
feel now they feel disenfranchised because the Chinese have showed
up and.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
They're getting all the work right.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
The way that they use the same language the same
distancing themselves and I think also a great way to
do that to is language too. In this movie, there's
that language divide where you can clearly hear that the
aliens are very smart when they show the subtitles of
them speaking.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Oh yeah, they're aware of what's going on. They're capable.
They're just in a destitute situation. So they're responding to
a destitute situation as one does, as anyone or any
creature ever does, because all living creatures contain similar brain
structures at some levels, and we're all hardwired to do

(16:59):
one thing above all else, survive. It will adapt to anything,
because that is our prime directive, survive. And just because
you've manufactured a situation that requires them to be in
a constant survival state does not, in fact mean they
are not capable of thriving. And that has been a

(17:21):
problematic narrative that exists anytime there's othering an oppression going on,
and you know, we're mentioned like the horror of like
how these people can't love their children enough. Pretty sure,
just a few years ago we saw a family separation
policy of anybody arriving on the southern border in our country.

(17:42):
Oh yeah, yet again, like, well, they wouldn't have brought
their children on such a dangerous certain they can't possibly
love their children.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Enough, as if you can't make the one step mental
leap of well, if they had to bring their children
through this situation, to go through all this stuff, and
they must have been trying to save their children from something.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Horrible, right, whatever they are escaping they interpreted as worse
than the journey, so understanding how backwards and broken and
what kind of horrible things humans can do to other
living creatures that they justify and create this ability to

(18:27):
completely shut out the intelligent sentient feeling life. Animals don't
have feelings. It's okay to kill them. It's fine that
migrants are being housed in shitty conditions, left to sleep
on police station floors. It's fine that they're being busted

(18:48):
all over the place for like fifteen hours by the
governor of Texas rather than care for them. You know
that kind of stuff. And these are things that I
witnessed firsthand. Is working where I do. Seeing people showed
up and there was there just wasn't anything. It's not
that anybody was doing something particularly evil to them. Evil

(19:13):
was already done. And it doesn't make it good or right.
But this happens over and over again. Where we see refugees,
where we see genocides, where we see apartheid, living situations,
where we see segregation. All these things throughout history carry
these same notes of dehumanization.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, and unfortunately, I think what happened to this movie
would be what happens because if we have this much
trouble with people that pretty much look the same as
you and me, but their skin colors a little different, right,
imagine if an alien life form came down where they
look that much different than us. And like I said,
and then we force them into dehumanizing situations yep, like

(19:59):
living in Islam or I think what I see a
lot in Chicago, begging outside of a Trader Joe's or whatever,
and then we judge them as less human like than
us because they do shit like that, Like, but look
at them, look how they live, and it's like, well,
like I said earlier, why do they live that way?

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Exactly?

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Because but it helps the person in power. The people
in power continue the narrative of like, I'm this kind
of person, I'm this kind of living thing, and you're
that kind of living thing. And you can't really have
that much going on in your noggin because I'm here
and you're there, idiot, And.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
It's fine that I have like so much more and
you have so much less because it's like your fault.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Absolutely, I mean, if your ship didn't break, you know,
like maybe you should have built a better ship. I no,
never mind, we can't figure out interstellar travel at a
substantial rate that would allow that many people of our
population to travel. But like, and we can't make your
weapons work or any things. Like maybe you guys could
just make us able to use your weapons, you know,

(21:07):
and then maybe you'd be cool enough to join the
cool kids club. But probably not actually definitely definitely not well.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
And that's also, among many many things, one of the
great tragedies of this way of thinking, right, kind of
what we talked about the rival, how if you are
working through fear, you will view like a new entity,
a new group as a scary threat, and so then
you try to shove them right, which is absolutely do

(21:35):
in this movie obviously, instead of I don't know, working together,
being curious about their culture, their language, their technology, which
seems to kick our asses.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
If someone has come to us.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Before we've gone to them, maybe they're scientifically more advanced
than us.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Absolutely pretty simple.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
What is also, such like I said, tragedy in this movie,
but then also in real life examples, is how much
we lose culturally interculturally by not being like, Hey, what
do you guys do within your families? What do you
guys do for the holidays? What is your language? What
are your rituals? What are your knowledge? Clearly Christopher our

(22:17):
main alien with his very that also may think of
Native American oppression, like giving them these English ass names. Yeah,
having by Christopher Johnson, I was like, this feels very correct. Unfortunately,
he's obviously a genius. Yeah, I don't know if he's
maybe a regular in terms of how smart all the
aliens are.

Speaker 4 (22:37):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
He also I also wouldn't be shocked if he was
like the main engineer of the alien population.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
And I think they I think they made clear enough
that he's several notches above the average in many respects,
although we don't get a lot of or any of
his history.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
No vaginal I think is correct, because why would he
be vulnerable? Why would he share anything of value with Vickers?
We the humans have shown we will not appreciate it
at best, will weaponize it against him. We will not
hold it with tender hands. No, we will smack it

(23:15):
to the ground and stomp on it and maybe laugh
in your face. I'm curious because, especially in a then
like you've, you talk a lot about the military and
vets and stuff, and I think what this also makes
me think of is the dissociative traumatic nature of people
who get sent overseas and they have to engage in
this level of dehumanization with the people within the countries

(23:38):
they have to go in like all the Middle Eastern
stuff that we've grown up with, right, And I know
plenty of people because I grew up near an air
force base, near military where they have PTSD because they
had to shoot a mother and kill her and could
tell that it was a mom, and how they had
to do that mental gymnastics internally of life, like I

(24:00):
have to think of her as less than my mom,
because I am being put in this position where I'm
supposed to treat her like a target and not a person.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
And how that does fuck with people?

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Obviously, because it's a very famous statistic, how much people
in military of PTSD after the fact.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Well, yeah, it's an extraordinarily complicated situation to be in,
knowing you're going into someone else's land and they don't
want you there, and if they perceive you as a threat,
they're going to treat you like a threat up to
and including outright killing you immediately. And at some point
you have to make a decision whether you're going to

(24:39):
survive because here you are in someone else's space. But
how are you justifying that you're there? What's the noble purpose?
Et cetera? How true does it feel right now when
I have to pull the trigger against someone else who's
going to kill me if I don't kill them, And
all of the situation manufactured or not, depending on you know,

(25:00):
which timeframe we're looking at, who's deciding what, who are
we identifying with right why this is okay or not? Yeah,
you know, and all of that is a lot of
work for veterans to have to do in anyone, anyone
who encounters that life or death moment that at this point,
regardless of what this person's situation is, who they are,

(25:20):
what they're doing, they are going to kill me. If
I don't kill them, you can and have to shut
all that out in that second you're reacting. Gunfights aren't
very long. Movies are bullshit. I've watched a lot of
videos of very very real gunfights. They're not long. Of
my job, not for entertainment of specify here.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Right, I'm saying that because me and Hannah just made
a weird look in his direction, like what, yeah, you
do that free time, buddy?

Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah, but that makes way more sense, That makes me
more sense.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yes, yes, of course, sometimes as part of the debriefing process, right,
see videos of these things, and you realize movies dramatize
things that happen in seconds, and then people spend their
entire life learning the rest of the details that they
couldn't know in that second, or maybe did know and
had to unplug from because someone was about to kill them.

(26:14):
There's that prime directive again, that's going to win. Somebody
is going to lose that situation and your mission, no
matter who you are or who that person is across
from you is to not lose. It's very simple, but
it gets really complicated when that dissociation turns back off.
And I think seeing how that plays out in this
film is part of what makes it so powerful. And

(26:36):
God had an Oscar nomination for Best Pictures. They have
to flip in this film where Vickers goes through all this,
he's a Michael Scott type character. He's just so aloof
to anything and just like, oh, yeah, it's fine, everything's fine.
It's fine. If I do this, it's fine. If I
sexually harass everybody, it's fine. If I body shame people,
it's fine. If I do all these things that we
see Michael Scott do as a clown. But Vickers isn't

(26:58):
a clown. Vickers is a reper presentation of every system
of oppression that's ever been especially in particular those that
existed in South Africa. Seeing as this is a South
African director telling a South African story about apartheid and
District six, which is a real place where something very
similar happened.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
I think also the other thing I wanted to note about,
like the psychology of being the oppressor that I saw
in this movie was the performance of cooperation.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Well, before we do that, let's take a quick break
and we'll get into that, because I think that's a
lovely thing. But let's take a break here and go.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, so the performance of cooperation is such an interesting
thing that we will do as humans to also justify
or to make right in our heads why we're doing
what we're doing. And what I mean by that in
this movie specifically, is how their way of forcing out

(28:04):
this group of beings aliens and putting them into basically,
at best of reservation, at worst, a concentration camp, right, Yeah,
is to call it an eviction and to have them
sign eviction notices as if this is a bureaucratic situation.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Right, it's a contracted space that everybody's agreed to certain
rules and they haven't been paying. So admit, you got
to go.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah, the performance of we're going around and we're going
to have them sign this piece of paper for what.

Speaker 4 (28:44):
Yeah, it doesn't. It just doesn't make any sense. And
I think it's a way. I think it's another way
for them to show power and to be like, we
are the ones who control where you live. We're the
ones who control because it doesn't make any sense. Also
that they would be getting evicted from an outside space. Yes, well,
like that's really odd in general as well.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
It just is the way that a certain kind of
human being. I think a lot of times why people
which whatever anyone can thus different thoughts can I don't
email me will lean on structure like a dance to
legitimize things. This idea of well, we got their signature,

(29:24):
though they signed it, so they are in compliance. They
are complying with this relocation from a shanty town, a slum,
to this reservation, this concentration camp. That way that later
they can look at these papers and tell themselves a

(29:47):
story about what happened, as if these aliens weren't being
forced to sign with a literal gun to their heads
as they are fire bombing their babies, as they are
kicking down their homes and threatening their kid. He sends

(30:07):
the Christopher like Christopher, God bless him. He it does
the thing which makes sense, but not in this world, babe,
where he's like, well, you're supposed to give me to
one forever. Notice he's trying to play the game. It's interesting, Christopher.
It does seem like he's trying to assimilate little bit.
He's wearing clothes.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
He's trying to communicate to Vickers, try to like appease
his logic. Yeah, and it's heartbreaking because it doesn't fucking matter. Yeah,
what's on that piece of paper literally doesn't matter. It
is a fantasy. It is a piece of make believe
that the oppressor can look at to legitimize this situation. Sure,

(30:50):
we're all in agreement. See and then yeah, if later
the UN Court comes into call in, we can say, look,
it was something we did together. Or like one hundred
years from now, when people are reading it in a
history book, they can tell a different story like Trail
of Tears.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
Wise about how this happened.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
So it's just so interesting how I watched this with
the work we do sometimes, right, how like we systems
will want a certain level of compliant behavior from the
oppressed so that we can feel like everything makes sense
and no one's really doing anything bad because we're all
in this together while working together humanely. Because yeah, evicting

(31:28):
someone having them sign the eviction, it pretends that we're
living in a world of normalcy exactly. Yeah, it literally
doesn't make sense to do that. Other than the fact
that the oppressors in this situation, the humans, they need
that to feel okay, because we all do something to
get a need met, right, So I feel like with that,

(31:50):
it's like they psychologically need something they can look at
that tells a different story, because why not just forcebly
remove them, fucking.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
Chuck them where you're going to shut them anyway? Exactly.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
It's just and like having cameras there, it's just so
interesting how we will pretend to act humanly and then
pat ourselves on the back for the performance.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Soall framework no substance.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Right, Well, and like you brought up that moment of
just casual horror, which is how humans behave where oh
look they got a nest vigors Like, ah, yeah, that's
that's They definitely don't have a permit for this. This
is a noun sanctioned breeding facility or whatever.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
He says, Yeah, Like you're not complying. You're the one
who's not following the rules.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
So I can't. I can't. My hands are tied. My
hands are tied. Could I do exactly?

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Just I just got to take you to the gallows.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Man.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
That's fallen orders, just fallen orders, babe. And the thing
that's so also horrible about it but real, is that
you're making the rules, babe, you know what I mean? Like,
who who said that you needed a permit? These are
alien creatures that've never been here before you decided they
needed a permit to do that, you know, and you're

(33:07):
making it up so to help you feel better, to
fulfill this cycle that you want to live in.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Correct, And it's all part of that dissociation, right, that
they have to create some kind of narrative because no
one believes they're the villain in their own story. Hang.
When I took criminal psychology and criminal sociology courses in
undergrad those are the most striking things that I learned
is that nobody thinks they're the bad guy. Yeah, nobody.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
I mean I think about I've watched documentaries where people
have gone to the South nowadays and try to get
Southern white people to acknowledge slavery basically, and they'll say
something along the lines of, well, they had a good
time here, we treated them well, right, like they there's

(33:58):
a narrative that some white people in the South have
around slavery to make that even okay.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
That a good time.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
That's I mean, like, think about the recent things that
what was it Disanta said that, like slavery was good
for black people because it taught them a skill.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
I didn't hear that, but it doesn't surprise me. Ugh,
I mean horrible, it's horrible.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
But like, yeah, it's I think it's just continuing of
this mental gymnastics of like I have to.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Give meaning to this situation.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
I have to make it better because I can't sit
in the discomfort of the fact that I treated another
sentient creature, another human being that way. I can't fathom it.
I can't deal. So I have to tell myself in
story and then I'm gonna tell my kids that story.
And then now we're wearing the Confederate flag and being like,
this is just about uh, our heritage, this has something

(34:53):
to do.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
With slavery or racism.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, you're wearing the flag
of a loser.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
So agreed, humans have done this. It's not just our country,
it's not just our people. It's everywhere in any context
where there's power dynamics and somebody's on an agenda and
needs to dissociate themselves away from the humanity or the aliveness,
the souls.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
I guess maybe would be the words we use of humanity. Yeah,
like you're less human than me.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, they justify doing whatever they want to do. People
in China who died building the Wall and were conscripted
into building the Great Wall of China were literally just
buried and made into mortar in the wall. It just
became part of it. This stuff happens across cultures. It's

(35:45):
white people have their bullshit, but so does every other
type of human. It's just everywhere. Some are worse and
we're more familiar with somemach. This movie was a look
at the evils of apartheid through the lens of aliens,
and it's It was a very real thing for South Africa,

(36:07):
and South Africa is still a kind of a rough place,
still not integrated. The people who were brought up to
think a certain way still do. There's still people in
our country who view Japanese Americans is less than There's
a fantastic song by Mike Shinoda of Lincoln Park called

(36:28):
Kenji off Him, one of his solo projects. If you'd
never listen to it, I recommend it. Its powerful to
look at the efforts of this person, to try to
engage with the performance of cooperation, to join the army,
to do all the things, to have the house, to
have the business, and still ended up in an internment
camp during World War Two because obviously all of the
Japanese who had moved here hundreds of years ago were

(36:50):
part of the invasion of Pearl Harbor. Because obviously the
mental gymnastics are serious, and the dissociations and the need
to protect the resources of one in group versus another
can really enable humans to do horrible things to each
other and always has and it's scary and it should
frighten us all if we see our leaders knowing all

(37:12):
this in modern times, using dehumanizing language, and it's really
troubling to see it so quickly adopted as normal again.
Mm hmmm, Yeah, does anybody else have anything on that? No,
all right, let's take another break here and we'll move
on to empathy and why that's important.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, empathy is important to talk about because to do
all the things we've been talking about so far, you
have to have an absence of empathy. Because to feel
empathetic for someone is to acknowledge their internal world and
their feelings and their i want to say humanity, which
I don't know if that works in this work situation

(37:55):
where they're aliens. Yeah yeah, we I guess define as
humanity to see that with than them as well, right yeah.
And to do that and to also oppress them impossible,
Yeah yeah, impossible.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, it's just why it's association, right, like, because it is.
It's impossible.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
You're absolutely right, and so we are viewing.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Obviously, Vickers be wildly unempathetic, which is why he comes
off like such a fucking asshole. It's horrible, absolutely, and
so unlikable, and they're also unlikable.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
He goes through a Banana's experience, which is where he's
literally put in the shoes of the beings that he's oppressing,
which doesn't happen typically in the real world, right right,
because you can't change your skin color, you know, unless
you're Rachel Dole.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Is all.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
He gets sort of like you kind of put it bend,
forced perspective change, forced empathy, which I guess I could
argue is that really empathy if you have to become
the other person, the other being in order to get it.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
I understand your question. Mm hmmm, I don't I think
that's one that's probably been debated in philosophy since forever.
I think I don't know that I would split the
hair in a different song. As there is an understanding
you are being empathic. What causes it to change can
be good route or a not so good route. In

(39:25):
this movie definitely explores the you're gonna walk all of
the miles in all of my shoes and then maybe
you'll get it, and they create an interesting thought experiment
that makes something that's generally, like you said, impossible possible
through the magic.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Of cinema and science fiction.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yes, it isn't usually so possible in real life to
fully take on, except maybe the show we got to
watch and all loved was seeing a very very wealthy
family lose everything, have to go into Shit's creek.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
Oh shit, Oh Shit's creek. Okay, and wow, I did
not know where you were going there. I was prepared
for anything, but not that. Yeah, absolutely absolutely where.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
I think that, at least in the Western world here
where we h habitate, I think that's the most common
example of people having everything and then having nothing that
causes a forced perspective change of oh oh things are
hard here or and I think in Sicko. Was that

(40:36):
Michael Moore's movie about like the insurance industry.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
The healthcare industry.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Healthcare, Yeah, I believe so, where you would see people
who'd been working as insurance adjusters then all of a
sudden have cancer in their family or some kind of
other chronic illness, and then having sat there and clicked no, deny, deny, deny, deny,
and then to realize how terrible it is and how

(41:01):
many barriers these gatekeeping things like my favorite friend in
the universe, Telligence, love to put in people's way, and
then have to shift and realize, oh, oh no, this
is fucked up. Like viewing people not on a case
by case basis and having an agenda of getting them
care but rather of saving money is fucked and that

(41:22):
causes a lot of pain. And oh yeah, it was
fine when they were just like case numbers. I was saying, like, oh,
got to keep my ratio click nope, to all of
a sudden it being your family that needs care and
the insurance company Daddy's saying, oh, your numbers came up. Sorry, nah,
let's make it difficult and maybe we'll just rule your

(41:43):
care experimental. Sorry, we can't pay for that. But that's
the only thing that'll save my wife's life. Too bad,
it's experimental. We can't pay for it. Sorry, it's just
not a good value.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Well, I think that is a good example of how distance,
like I was talking about, like the bureaucracy, right, yes,
will create a lack of empathy. If I don't have
to see you as an individual person with a full life.
If I view you as a number, as a statistic,
as a piece of paper coming along my desk, then

(42:16):
I don't see you as a real person. Right. We
do struggle to empathize, right, That's why we like to
use anecdotal testimonials. And how whenever it's that time again,
voting season in America or anywhere else, there's always that
running gag on snl of. I think al Gore would
show like a picture of an old lady, this is

(42:37):
ethel she can't get her prescription drugs. But it's like
the point is trying to make it human, trying to
make it something we can understand in this situation. It
is interesting how quickly this is the most total version
of the shoe going on the other foot. Yeah, and

(42:57):
that the whole movie happens over seventy four hours, because
at the very end they go seventy four hours after exposure.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
Yeah and yeah, crawling. He looks like Jeff Goldblum in
The Fly and.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
A human yes right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
And when he's laying in that medical experimental lab and
they're all standing around him talking about him as if
he's not there, him getting such a stark real world
individual experience of this is what it feels like to
be not thought of at all, That I am not
even something they feel worthy to talk to, even as

(43:36):
they're talking about me as if I'm like a piece
of a literal piece of meat, a weapon, an advantage,
and how there is no empathy here and I am
not being heard, like the way he's like crying and
he's like, can I talk to my wife? He's trying
to touch I think his father in law and like
tug on his jacket in a very human way.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
It sucks that it there's that level of.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Bananasness for him to really have empathy for the condition
he has been gleefully bringing others into.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Right, And I did not believe him. I don't know
if I'm supposed to that he didn't know that that
lab was down there and that the medical experiments and
other horrible things that were happening were happening, or if
he was just straight up lying too, he was lying,
I thought so.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, he was lying for sure.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Especially if he has a father in law that that's
high up, Like I wouldn't be shocked if he'd never
seen anything like that before.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
Like if Vickers wasn't allowed to.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Enter those spaces, sure because he didn't have clearance, the
clearance or the need to be there. Sure, but I'm
sure everybody sort of knew where people are going, and
people were getting like black bagged or whatever. Yeah, I
feel like I might have been inferring. But when he's
leading Christopher through there, I felt so bad for Christopher.
When they were in the lab and Christopher's like, what's happening?

(45:03):
What is his place? The way he was kind of
trying to like bullshit with him. Yeah, even though I
know he'd been there before. That felt like to me,
him knowing him having known how bad this is, but
him acting like it's no different than experimenting I don't
know on rats, you know.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Until it hit him, Like he had several moments of
force perspective change throughout this film, like him pulling the
trigger himself.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yes, that is also a way that people will remove
themselves empathetically. Right, is I'm not the one doing it,
that person's doing it. So that's a great point you're making,
Ben correct.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Even in executions in a firing squad, let's say there's
just typically seven rifles, only four of them are loaded
with real bullets. All of them have blanks. But it
creates some plausible deniability for the shooters that mine was
the blank.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
They can all go home telling themselves they weren't the one.
Holy fuck, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yeah, that's why they do it in front of a
squad of people, so that no one knows who's the
actual one that killed the person.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
So it's a psychological game that they play to live
through it mentally.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, and they're with electric chairs. There are other such
things that are often three switches and only one was live.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
It's such an interesting observation of human nature that we
know it's fucked. We always know it's fucked what we're doing,
that we have to create these like mental fails. Like
these mental fail saves loopholes so that we can live
with ourselves. It's that existential I don't know if that's

(46:45):
the right word for it, but well, maybe cognitive dissonance.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
This is cognitive dissonance.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Liminal space mentally of like we almost as fucked, right,
but we're not gonna stop doing it. We're just gonna
play a little game on ourselves, yeah, so that we
can tell ourselves a story. And like true empathy gets
in the way of all this stuff. I think one
of the moments in the movie where you see him

(47:10):
gain awareness in real time is when they put the
alien in front of him to shoot.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yep, and they make him shoot. It's not they're literally
cattle prodding him, yeah, to make his muscles convulse because
he's refusing to engage, engage and pull the trigger and
test these alien weapons. That since now he has alien
DNA and his arm is turned into an alien arm
that he can now operate because now he's valuable. Now

(47:40):
he can do that. So as he's going from like, oh,
look it's this this thing, Oh Thomas, Thomas, just put
your gun on him, they're definitely criminals. This jolly dissociation
from it to you're killing a living thing right now, yeah,

(48:00):
is a immediate shift where you can see him display
the concern for another life that has always been there.
It's the most critical thing to understand about dissociation that
people don't. If you dissociate something, it doesn't go away.
It's not gone. It's just frozen in a pocket reality somewhere.

(48:25):
But the part of you that always knows the fucking
truth knows it's there and actively defends it. And that's
why we have these mental gymnastics things that we do,
because we're actively walling off something painful, and sometimes to
survive you have to do painful things, or sometimes you're
caught in a system where we're all doing bad things.
So it's okay, right, No, No, it's not okay.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
Yeah, Because when he was.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
All like, oh, I mean, don't put him in front
of me, when he was like protesting, and I was like,
what's different between this guy in front of you, this
alien guy in front of you, and the bajillion others
that you just gleefully let get shot when you were
doing your evicting.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Right, what one point five million or something that they
made several points to a reference, it's over a million
lives that he knows he's putting into a concentration camp
because those are words, he says, Yeah, all of a
sudden he knows that truth, that barrier has been kicked
down by reality. They're like, guess what, bitch, you knew

(49:27):
what you were doing. And that's part of why this
forced perspective change and recognizing that we can always find empathy,
sometimes we have to actively choose to It's always there.
We always know that something else is alive, Like Brittany,
you mentioned, like some universal existential truths, there is nothing

(49:50):
that is alive that wants to die that's going to
voluntarily do so outside of the feeling they have no
other choice to get out of pain. But there is
nothing that is alive that isn't afraid of being not alive. Period.
There is no parent that doesn't want to be with
their child. It's just simple, like sure, it can get
more complicated from there, but on some level it's there.

(50:12):
But understanding the importance of having empathy and connecting to
other living creatures and understanding the ability to connect to
their experience and understand that from their point of view,
how they understand the world is always going to be
valid for them, regardless of what you think about it
or how you're taught to think different it's always going

(50:32):
to be real for them, and their feelings and pain
will always be real and we can never ever not
know that.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
So I think for someone like Vickers, when you don't
have this extreme circumstance that causes this force perspective change, right,
that what you have to do instead more of like
the real war version of this is being willing to
sit in the discomfort of the truth, be willing to
sit in the discomfort of the decision you've made, how

(51:01):
you've prioritized the in group or yourself specifically, how you
have reaped the benefits of your privilege, even sitting in
the discomfort of acknowledging you have privilege. Even if you're
not a billionaire, you can still have privilege that has
helped you through your life. So for someone like Vickars

(51:23):
in real life, to gain that empathy, you have to
sit in a lot of discomfort, which for some people
they would define as impossible. I don't think it's ever
impossible to do that work. If you feel motivated to
do that work. It is really hard work. Especially when
you are used to being the privileged class, you don't

(51:43):
experience a lot of discomfort. That is the part of
the privilege is you get to be pretty comfortable most
of the time, and so there can be less tolerance
for hard truths, for uncomfortable situations, and so for someone
like Vicker's, there isn't always the motivation, yeah, to push

(52:06):
the discomfort to gain the empathy, unless something extreme happens,
like the situation where all of a sudden you're amongst
the people. I think an interesting scene in the movie
that felt like very much real life.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
A lot of these things do.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
But when he's standing in the line for food with
the other aliens and he doesn't quite know how to
ask for what he wants, He's like asking for freaking.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Like what like a Hamburger Schwarmer.

Speaker 4 (52:35):
Yeah, like something that makes absolutely knows on whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
It's like, you got a hot dog over here? Yeah,
what the fuck do you think you are?

Speaker 4 (52:41):
Bro?

Speaker 1 (52:42):
That's such an example of I was shitting on you
guys and dehumanizing you, but now I want to just
lean into your culture because I have to, but still
not quite demonstrating the empathy, because I will say with him,
I'm gonna sure what you guys think. He still is
looking out for number one till the last ten minutes

(53:02):
of the movie. So even though he's had this forced
perspective change, he's still pretty unempathetic.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
For most of the movie. He's willing to sell out
the other aliens. He fucks up their whole shit.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
He almost like fucks everything up for like Christopher and
the ship and how he's like saving that fuel for
twenty years, all because he wants to be part of
the privileged class again, and that feels so important that
that is continuously conflicting with his empathy during the movie.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Yeah, that last moment where he confronts Christopher right after
they get out of the lab, where Christopher has realized
the depth of horrors well as the slum wasn't enough,
absolutely just shows. I mean, we see Christopher associated a lot.
He has to leave his son behind in the ship
and comply because he realizes he's gonna get shot right
now if he doesn't get into this atv right now.

(53:56):
The colonel will shoot you in the head now and
you have no chance of getting your son. So he
has to leave behind his lear worry about whether his
son survived the crash caused by Vickers. Before all that,
when Vickers finds out that Christopher's like, hey, I can't
fix you now. It's going to take three years to
fix you. I can't. I just can't. I can't fix

(54:18):
you now. I have to save my people. I can't
let my people be medical experiments as horrible things happen,
which makes sense, and Vickers is like me, but me,
that breaks the deal we made. I got you into
the lab, I got you all this stuff you were
supposed to fix me definitely all about number one. And
when that becomes untrue, what does he do? He attacks Christopher,

(54:40):
lies to his son. Christopher gets captured because of this,
locked out of the ship, and then has to watch
as the SAM site the surface to air missile blows
up the only known chance to get back on his
ship that he's been working for for twenty years, because

(55:01):
Vickers was butt hurt and couldn't accept reality. So yes,
I think understanding that that force perspective thing. Just because
it's happened doesn't mean it's been accepted.

Speaker 4 (55:12):
He really feels like a character somebody who would have
this experience if he wasn't turning literally into an alien.
Of course, I really don't feel like he'd be a
person who would stay in that empathetic space like I
think he would very much just go right back to
being a.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Part of the privileged class.

Speaker 4 (55:31):
I'd be really surprised if, let's say, if they cut
his arm off and then he just didn't have an arm,
but he was still a human.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
He really doesn't get it. That's what it kind of
feels like.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
I know that the point of the film is that
he then finally, at the last fucking second, he waited
until the last moment where he could show any empathy whatsoever,
he finally does that. But I think in the real world,
I think this guy goes back to being an assa
the next day.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Well, if there's one thing that the oppressive class loves
to do, it's vacation, Yes, in the experience of the oppressed,
and then make that their whole personality mm hmm for
a hot minute, and not understanding that their ability to
vacation in it, to go in and out of that

(56:21):
experience is privilege. Yep, this is going to be such
the silliest example, but it's the first one I thought of, which,
so stupid Tyra Branks put on that fat suit for
the Tyra Branks so so you can see what it
was like to be a fat person. For a day
and cry about it, but then she can take that
suit off yep and be a supermodel.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Right, how is that for you?

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Or like when Bruce Wayne goes into that developing country
prison and then once he's got all his lessons from
Batman begins, once he's learned everything he needs to learn,
he calls his daddy Butler and he's like, hey, get
the PJ and come pick me up.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
I'm done with slumming it.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Yeah, yep.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
That's also another example of are you really having empathy
if you're not acknowledging the ease at which you can
go back and forth out of that experience in which
the people that are actually in that experience they cannot
do that.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
I didn't see Bruce Wayne picking up any disenfranchised people
who are wrongly in prison and picking them on the
PJ with him, exactly, did we? No?

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Nope, we see you know all of that, but understanding
like how powerful it is to have empathy versus vacation
in it and then not stay. I just would love
to see what the fallow up statistics of Undercover Boss are.
How many of those people that have gone on that show?
Yeah right, actually like started giving a shit about their

(57:50):
employees beyond like the five minutes where they vacationed in
their lives.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Have you heard of poor people?

Speaker 2 (57:56):
I just met some?

Speaker 4 (57:57):
Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
You should get that.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
Girl a raise.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
Yeah, but just her though not like everybody else. It's
like literally exactly the same as her. Just her, because
now I feel bad for her and her situation.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
She has a life, she has internal world, she has
that she loves what she has.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
She has to work another job because this one doesn't
pay her enough. Yeah, motherfucker.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right, Hannah. And also to
like jump off of that as well, I think that's
also part of the mental gymnastics, where when he's in
that situation, why does he want to become a human again?
Other than I'm sure that horrific pain he's in physically, is.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
That he knows it's bad.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
He knows being an alien in this world sucks ass
that you get hurt and you get tortured, and you
have to eat cat food and you're treated like shit.
So he knows that it's not good to be one,
and yet he can't translate that all the way to
like we should stop doing this, to them. He just
knows he doesn't want to be a part of that.

(59:00):
It's like, what is her name? That old white lady
who does the racism work, who's been on like Oprah Windfree,
she's famous. She is white hair do, Yeah, sure hair do,
and she loves to turn a white person out with
her like I guess what we call DEI ask things
that she's been doing. She's been doing since the eighties,
the way that she likes to fuck up a crowd

(59:23):
of white people. And I think she did this on
the Oprah Winfrey Show in like nineteen ninety two. Is
raise your hand, white people if you would like to
trade places with the black person today, And none of
them raise their hand, and she was like, yeah, because
you know what it's actually like.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
But at the same time, you're.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Gonna say it's not that bad, Well, then raise your
hand if it's not that bad, if it's no different.
So yeah, I think that's also the part of the
empathy discomfort shift that someone like Vickers would have to
acknowledge in those moments. Right is right now, I am
acknowledging that I don't want to be an alien.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
I don't want to be part of this class because
it's bad.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Yeah, But at the same time I want to be
like it's not that bad, or like it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Right, it's not that big of a deal.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
And if they told him, no, we can get this
arm off you. You can have your wife and your life back,
but you got to go back to your job. Which
Charlie problem do you think he picks?

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
Oh, he would.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Be doing such a level of dissociative ned Flanders esque
sweater vest wearing attitude having this. Yeah, he might adopt
a dissociated personality. The part of him that experienced this
will get locked in a box in the back of
his brain so that he could keep doing the work

(01:00:39):
in front of him and act like it's fine. Like
I could see him even going harder with the weird
persona he showed in the beginning of the movie. Oh yeah, absolutely,
locally docally, nothing to see here, folks, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Right, So I think we've covered all that pretty well.
Is there anything else? Anybody wants to say? No, No,
let's take another break here and we'll go into treatment.
Who wants to go first?

Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
Well, which one of us is going to try treat Vickers?
I mean, this is kind of a pickle, Right, who
do we pick to treat?

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Yeah, humanity, Vickers the alien making his little heart craft
in the piles of garbage.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Yeah, leaving him at his wife's doorstep.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Yeah, to humanity, and you just can't help but feel
for him. They did it on purpose, They made you
connect to his humanity, but not till halfway through the
film where they showed him starting to get sick and like,
go to that party where you can connect to like, oh,
man on the cake.

Speaker 4 (01:01:39):
It's so interesting how fast that all of that happens
in that scene. That scene is so wild. They're trying
to do something. He comes in and they're like, let's
do the cake. It happens so fast, and I'm just like,
he is gonna I knew he was gonna vomit on something.
He looked like he was gonna shit his pants, Like, yeah,
do you come with diarrhea coming into the house where
they're like, I can't die.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Don't look at me like.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
This, yes, please don't look at me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Coming out like hot lover. Yeah, like shitting in a
garbage can in front of everybody who's having a surprise
party for you kind of energy. Yeah, but it's horrible.

Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
Thank God, but it also was like a party to
celebrate them starting getting to get rid of the aliens
into the other spot, right, isn't what the.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Party of promotion is? Promotion promotion, promotion party.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
Okay, you know they're all company.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
The father in law is the you know, big dig
daddy here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Is there an individual in this movie to treat Christopher?

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
I mean I don't feel it. Does he need it
because he got the hell out of there?

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Oh, he's going to need it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
I mean he's definitely gonna need it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:43):
He's going to need it, and who knows what version
of what he would need because who knows what it's
like on his home planet.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
We did talk about how they have like medical machines.
What if they have one for your brain and like
whatever brain damage happens from trauma it can help with.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
That'd be dope, that'd be pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
I mean that'd be great.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
I think the first step to treating someone like Christopher
is they have to be in a safe place.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Yeah, correct, And then shame must be addressed because there's
going to be several things going on for him when
he's returned to safety. He had to do everything that
he did the exact way he did it, or he
died yep, and everything stayed the same. He failed his people,

(01:03:30):
and his son died, and he had to do all
that he had to do while accepting my son may
already be dead, which, as we've covered before, no parent
wants that, of course, but at some point you're still alive.
And prime directive one like.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
Where's Christopher's mama, Christopher Junior?

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
I mean so like also the grief of if they
have partners.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Yeah, and create children right the way that we do.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Right, where is it? How is it? There's so much
he would need to work through and it would take
a long time. Were he human, of course, because presuming
we understand their DNA, it would be a.

Speaker 4 (01:04:06):
I know, I feel like I keep trying to come
at this from like we could do this, or we
could do that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
And a really big part of this is.

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):
He should be seeing an alien for therapy, do you
know what I mean? Like he shouldn't be seeing a
human for therapy, he should be seeing an alien.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Facts Yeah, so like so I don't know were.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
He human and were his brain to function as humans do,
at least the way those of us sitting here with
degrees discussing this like we know anything about aliens, would
conceptualize it, right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Well, we know something about refugees, Yeah, of course. And yeah,
I think there's survivor's guilt, I think is what you're
talking about to a certain extent, the shame of being
one of the ones that made it out of a
horrible situation.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
That too, I hadn't even thought of that angle, But yes,
no disagreement there. His case would be extraordinarily complex. This
would be ACPTSD case. He had twenty years of terror,
oppression that was ever present, and all the cascading stacking
effects of that would be extremely difficult to work through.

(01:05:10):
The shame of having to lower himself to the levels
he did when he's clearly so capable of so many things,
and being powerless against the situation, unable to help in
the way he wanted to, would be a lot. But
also working through the attachment he would have formed to
Vickers because Vickers saved his life in the end, but
also Vickers is part of the whole reason why your

(01:05:31):
life needed saving, and it's really fucked. Yeah, there's going
to be some part of him that wants to go
back and hold to his promise and be better than
what happened to him. In another part that's going to
be like what nonsense are you even saying right now?
Why would you ever go back there? And yet another
part that's going to be like, exterminate the planet of

(01:05:53):
humans and take their fucking resources because they're goddamn monsters. Yep,
And that will be a war in side of his
head if he's, you know, remotely right, got similar biology
does the layers and layers of complication that come with
CPTSD would make him an interesting case. And I don't
think anybody else remotely would interest me to treat figures.

(01:06:17):
His wife is going through her own batch of dissociation
right now.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
Well, and she's being her dad. Is that fucking monster? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Who was willing to treat her husband, who he knows
like cattle. We see the dehumanization process that he does
very quickly. Well, you know, he was always an idiot,
yeah so, and he was wesh so babe. He literally
tells his wife, you're gonna have to let him go,
like that's crazy, Like it's a dog they had to
put down.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
He had no hesitation that they were going to vivisect him.
Cut his heart out of his chest and maybe gass
him so he doesn't feel pain, but the objective is
to get the heart. Yeah, he gonna die either way,
it doesn't matter, is fine. Dead men tell no tales, right, Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
Yeah, So I think, yeah, Christopher and his son is
the only people that I really gave a shit about
by the end, and I.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
Think you're right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
I think a real world version of him would be
someone who has fleed somewhere horrible where a lot of
their family and cultural group are still exists, having to
make sure that they're safe before they can even do
that work. Right, You can't really do that work while
you're in the midst of it exactly, kind of going
back to the hierarchy and needs idea, like, until you

(01:07:32):
have your basic needs met and safety, you can't really
do higher work because your branch is trying to survive.
I think with him in a therapy way as well,
especially because he's so smart and so capable, I think
there would also be the debate internally that you would
have to maybe help him through with therapy from a

(01:07:53):
place of meaning and purpose. Do I have to go
back and say the people that I can am I
too scared to go back, and I just want to
stay here and try to make a life home with
my child.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
Do I leave my child and go back. Our job
would probably be just to try to talk through with.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
Him what he feels like he needs to do, yeah,
and what's possible and why, and help create meaning and
make sure that's coming from a place of like you
were talking about, and like not just shame.

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
I have to go back there from in more like emotional.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Place, yeah, versus I have the means and the ability
to go back there, and it fits my values to
go back there. And when I am sound enough physically, mentally, whatever,
I will go back there and I will help them.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
And if that's what he chooses to do, that's from
an empowered state, which that's fine, that's free will. Even
if you may sit and look at it you want
to go save the dude who threatened to just take
your child.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
Viguers will probably.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Just be swept up in the masses of aliens if
they got rescued.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
I mean, it was just like but specifically you know
that there would likely have been a trauma bond that
would make him feel response to do so because he
said he would, and people get those kinds of things
stuck all the time in their heads, even if it's
a ridiculous notion for them to do.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
So I think for treatment, I'm going to go a
different route because, as we said, there's not really anyone
to treat this movie besides Christopher. Because this is a
lot of this is a social issue, it is a
systemic issue. So I recently set up a training for
the practice I work out about decolonizing mental health. And

(01:09:32):
actually the person that we had trained us is named
Aaron Matthews, and her.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
Practice is called living in Empathy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Oddly for just coincidentally from what we've been talking about,
she had us do a cultural genograham And I think
that was very interesting for me as a white therapist
to be mindful of the cultural biases, that cultural identities
that impacts me and the thoughts that I have and
what I bring to the work I do as a

(01:10:01):
therapist who works with all different kinds of people. So
I would say from a treatment perspective, as a working therapist,
I think it's always very good, especially if you are
a part of a historically oppressive class like I'm a
white Christian technically not practicing, but you know, yeah, I
got you, and I'm like straight, and you know cisgendered

(01:10:23):
that you have to be aware of your own biases,
and like, like I was saying earlier, you have to
work on being uncomfortable and work on recognizing what you
don't know and reading shit that you would normally read.
I wasn't no offense to my family, I guess, but
maybe a fense. I wasn't really exposed to any sort
of DEI thoughtful. I was raised in like white as White, Ohio.

(01:10:48):
So like, I just recently read Between the World and
Me by Tanahasecoast, which I know everybody talks about, but
I think that's a great book to read as a
clinician in terms of really getting into the mindset of
being part of the oppressed class of people and how
that trickles down into what we've been talking about, the
culture and violence, and how people who are used to

(01:11:11):
being oppressed will integrate violence into the way they parent
their children, to the way that they police their own
community to a certain extent as a way to survive
the oppressive class. Don't walk out there with that attitude
because you'll get hurt. So I'm gonna whoop you so
that you can stay in line and how we will
use violence to contain mm hmm, even within our own

(01:11:33):
groups from the bigger right that we're more scared of.
And so, yeah, I think if you're a therapist and
you we all have our own echo chamber, that it's
part of I think being a good ethical therapist is
you have to read things and expose yourself and make
yourself uncomfortable and ask yourself questions about like why do
I think that's true? Why do I think that way
of being is messy or classless or off putting? Is

(01:11:57):
that because I've been made to believe that was that
part of a do humanization from my grandparents' generation that's
still trickle down to me that I'm holding on to
not even being aware of. And then don't get caught
up in your white tears by being like, oh I'm
sad and I feel bad that I have those internal thoughts.
Get over it, just recognize it, commit to doing it

(01:12:18):
differently than your four fathers, and move through it. So
that's kind of where I would say to take this
stuff we've talked about and put it into treatment as
your continue education as a therapist.

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I don't know
that I have anything else to say about treatment. I
don't really know that there's Like we said, there isn't
anything that I see here that particularly is connected to
families and couples, just like in terms of the only
family that we see is these two characters that we
don't really know that much more about besides that they're

(01:12:52):
father and son, and also their relationship looks very loving
and as loving as it can be in a war
torn life.

Speaker 1 (01:12:59):
That you're Yeah, I think the only thing that would
be interesting maybe from like a family therapy perspective, but
I don't think you have to go into this go
into this is Christopher Junior. I'm calling him having to
go back to a culture that he was never raised in.
I wonder how much that would mirror the immigrant experience.
I feel like the first gen experience that kind of thing,

(01:13:21):
and how he's so eager to go home because his
dad's been telling him what home's like. But I wonder
what that'll be like for him to actually be there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
Yeah, that would be powerful. I think I would also
want to know how they work through coming back together
from this experience, they probably would need to be debriefed
and have sessions together about now they're a unit outside
of their own culture, like those two because of what
they went through, they'll be the only ones, yeah, return

(01:13:51):
that survived. Yeah, because it's just them and that chip's
not like they tractor beamed everybody. Just those two and
there's still two million left beat behind. That'd be a lot. Yeah,
And we don't know how old. Is this a grogu
situation where he's right right, he.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
Looks like like he's eight. Yeah, that's what my brain thinks.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
But I know what you mean, ben, Right, We don't
know how what their you know, life cycle is their biology, right,
we'll covered that. But the when people go through and
experience together as a father and son and then they're
going to have to kind of change their relationship to
whatever is expected of them within the culture they're returning to,
and how that's going to be so much different. That's

(01:14:33):
going to be a lot of opportunity for family therapy there,
I think.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
Yeah, Yeah, I definitely could see that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:38):
I mean that definitely would be something if you have
two survivors of something and that they survived it together
and having them together and being able to talk about
their different experiences.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
In session together would be really important.

Speaker 4 (01:14:52):
For them to have empathy for each other, but also
just to get a better sense of what actually happened
out there in different ways. So yeah, well, even though
it's like even like a processing benefit to it, right, Yeah, exactly,
like almost like doing your individual trauma processing in front
of someone else, Yes, so that you well, so it's

(01:15:12):
being witnessed, yeah, which is also really important when we
talk about trauma survivors in general. Be really important to
have some witnessing happen to what to what you went
through as validation.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
I would also imagine too, with the two of them,
that Christopher's story of the trauma is going to be
very different than his son's, Yeah, because the different generation
Christopher Junior was born in this situation, just how cognizant
they are of it. And so I think maybe family
Therapy EVE would be helpful if I was thinking of this,

(01:15:46):
like regular regular humans, to make sure that Christopher isn't
projecting his trauma experience onto Christopher Junior, Yeah, especially since
he's so young. Yeah, adults, we do that all the time,
and so make sure I'd be like, well, Christopher. We
have to make sure that you're letting Christopher Junior's experience
be his m and that you're not making assumptions in

(01:16:07):
any direction onto him.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Yeah, that's not for him.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
It's not gonna help him feel better if you're barfing
your trauma experience onto him or to reverse which is
it's not that bad.

Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
Shut up.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Like sometimes that witnessing is helpful so that everyone can
tolerate everyone else's experience of the trauma. Yeah, I mean
of like we can talk about it and it does
not have to be a secret.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Yeah, which is important. It's so important, all right, So
I think that covers treatment pretty well recognize the opportunities
for CPTSD and a great number of folks, even if
based on our feelings from the movie, we would not
necessarily see Vicker's family as Oh, these people would be
the ideal person That stands out to me is treatment.
Please know. What doesn't mean we don't think they need

(01:16:47):
and deserve treatment, just recognizing who would be the most
interesting case to us individually. Is the thought experiment here? Yes,
So the next section we're going to move into here
is final Thoughts. Let's take our last break here before.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
Final thought, so I'd go first.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
I saw this movie when it first came out because
it was such a hot movie. Everybody was talking about it,
and you know, one thing about me is something's trending,
I want to get my eyeballs on it. So I
saw when it first came out. I really really liked it.
It was one of those movies that as soon as
I saw it, I was like, I can't wait to
watch that again, and then I think I forgot.

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
About it for fifteen years. I enjoyed watching it again.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
It was interesting how much this movie made me feel
sick now versus when I was younger and more sheltered,
And I think I had more empathetic separation when I
watched it when I was younger, and now watching it
after being a therapist for twelve years and trying to
be a better white person and all this stuff and

(01:17:46):
having all the current stuff that goes on in the
world and being more exposed to that, it made me
feel nauseous at parts of this movie heartbreaking. So I
don't know if I'll ever revisit it because it's not
a fun watch, but it's a very good movie. I
think it makes its points very well. It's hard hitting
in the way that it should be a hard hitting
because the disgusting stuff we've seen this movie is all

(01:18:07):
stuff that happens in real life to real people. So yeah,
I think it's an important movie. I'm glad it exists.
I'm glad it was made. I don't know if I'll
ever revisit it unless I'm maybe showing it to someone
who's ever seen it. But I like talking about it
today for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
So I like this.

Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
Movie, but it's not fun to watch. I've never heard
of this movie. I had no idea what it was. Really,
not even a clue even heard of it. Never even
heard of it. Oh no, fall asleep in the middle
of it. So this is what I'm gonna say. I
will watch it again because I think I need to.

(01:18:42):
And that's about it. I don't really have any other
final thoughts today. It's a good movie. I think it
has good information in it, blah blah blah. But I
don't know. I just didn't feel that connected to it.
I don't really know why. It's just kind of weird
for me a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):
Yeah. So yeah, so it was, so I'll definitely watch
it again. And it was fun to talk about.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
So this movie is definitely one I haven't know that
I've watched it. I own it, so you know, I
must have watched it before when it came out, But
I think watching it now was a drastically different experience
than watching it when it first came out. I would
have been in grad school at the time when I
watched it, and I know I went with my mom

(01:19:25):
to see it. Probably saw it because Peter Jackson produced it,
and it was trending and it was you know that
the viral marketing campaign for this was tremendously successful.

Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
Mm hmm, I remember that too.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
It was great. The found footage thing was just so big.
At this point in time too, they're really trying to
push that this movie is really powerful. It really is
hard hitting, and it shows truths of the world and
the rawness of the combat, the quick cuts, the way
the violence is gratuitous and realistic is important, and the

(01:19:57):
callousness as we discussed about the dehumanization and of how
you take out prawn and replace it with any other
slur about any other people that's ever been used throughout history,
and it becomes really clear what the point of this
film is. There are very, very few things separating any
of us from being marginalized into Yes, some people have

(01:20:17):
more privilege and armor that it makes it less likely,
but that could happen to anybody and happens throughout history,
and it's really important to watch for the signs of
it and be aware when it's happening or if you're participating,
and to not because it's dangerous. It's dangerous in a
way that sweeps like in City is Virus. It's a
really strong blight on humanity, and I think this movie
did such a beautiful job of highlighting the evils of

(01:20:38):
it and how fucked up it is that we only
see it when it's happening to us. Film is important.
I think it's really good, but it is a rough
watch and I probably won't just pop it in my
player and.

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
Like a cozy Sunday be like I'm gonna watch District
nine right and get some hot chocolate going.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
No, but I'm glad it exists for when it needs
to be part of the conversation because it's very powerful
film and it really did stand out at its time
and it still does well.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
Thanks for joining us. As always, you can find us
on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok at popcorn Psychology. You can
also find us on threads at popcorn Psychology. If you
would like to email us, you can email us at
Popwornpsychology at gmail dot com. If you like to support
us monetarily, we always appreciate that. As we are a
DIY podcast, you can become a Patreon patron. If you

(01:21:23):
are a ten dollars or more patron, you get free
early unedited access to our episodes. If you are fifty
dollars or more, you get to pick the episode that
we talk about. If you would like to support us
for free skis, you can always do so by leaving
a review wherever you listen to podcasts. The best way
for people that have never heard of us to hear
of us, And we really appreciate and we.

Speaker 3 (01:21:43):
Read your reviews. So stay safe out there, everybody,

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