Sinners: Systemic Trauma & Musical Healing

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, Hannah Espinozo, 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 3 (00:40):
Please remember that even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Happy Halloween everyone, So for our spooky episode this year,
we are talking about Sinners, a movie that came out
just this year. It is a scary movie about vampires,
but also scary because it's about racism and being black
in the thirties in the South. So today we will
be mostly focusing on the two main characters that are
played by the same actor, Michael B. Jordan, Smoke and Stack,

(01:11):
identical twins who have ties to the organized crime syndicates
of Chicago. They come back to their home in Mississippi
and they try to open a juke joint and unfortunately
it gets infiltrated by a vampire who then turns them all,
well most of them, into vampires. It also follows the

(01:32):
story of Sammy, their younger cousin, who is a very
gifted musician and in the lore of the story, but
also in true in true spiritual belief systems, he has
this idea that he is a griot griot which is
someone that can pretty much like be like a spiritual

(01:55):
conduit through music and through storytelling. And so a lot
of the movie is kind of the fight over Sammy
and his soul, if you will, as this Irish vampire
named Remick tries to take Sammy over so that he
can connect and utilize Sammy's gift to connect to the ancestors. So,

(02:18):
like I said, we'll be mostly talking about Smoking Stack.
We'll be discussing different adaptations to trauma, as all the
characters in the story, by the nature of the story,
have gone through a lot of trauma. Smoking Stacks specifically
have gone through a lot of childhood abuse. They were
soldiers in World War One, they were in, like we said,
the Chicago mob scene, which I'm sure wasn't a walk

(02:38):
in the park, and then coming back to a obviously
very racist, clan ridden time in the South. And they
also make a good point in the movie of saying
that just because they were in Chicago doesn't mean that
they were in like this magical post race city. That also,
no matter where you go as a black person, there

(02:59):
you are in terms of racism and systems of oppression.
We'll also be talking about Sammy and self actualization as
we Like I said, he is someone that gets caught
in the middle of almost everyone in the story. He's
caught between the twins between being a blues musician, between
the church and his dad, between remic and being a

(03:20):
vampire and not being a vampire. And we'll also be
talking about the character of Slim and his story of incarceration,
racism and then how he is dealing with that with alcoholism,
and as always, we'll discuss treatment and final thoughts. In
a lot of the caveats we give when we talk
about very cultural centered movies, we have to name none

(03:44):
of us are black, and so if there are points
that we don't bring up in this episode, it's probably
us just being careful that we don't misspeak on behalf
of a community that we're not a part of, because
there are a lot of themes obviously in this movie
about being culturally black, black in America, black in the South,

(04:07):
black in Christianity versus black in more African based religion
religious practices like the character of Annie. So there's a
lot that we're going to be careful about speaking on.
So if there is something we missed that you want
to point out to us, as always, we're happy to
get any feedback from people who know more than us,

(04:28):
which is a lot of people. And like I said,
we're trying to be culturally sensitive, So jumping into that,
then when we're talking about Smoke and Stack, we wanted
to start with them. They are an interesting presentation of
how you can be identical twins be raised in the

(04:49):
same environment, have the same genetics even and yet you
can be very different in terms of your temperaments, your personalities,
and the way that you de with the circumstances of
your life.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
So I think one of the things that we notice
right away is something that I feel like I noticed
right away, is that we have very much what it
feels like an older sibling and a younger sibling experience,
even though I know that they're born within minutes.

Speaker 4 (05:17):
Of each other.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
That that is what I really saw is Smoke kind
of being this really serious, super serious person who's always
looking at the bottom line of everything or like the
final outcome of something, because he's trying to figure out
what's going to happen next all of the time in
order to keep people safe, specifically Stack, because of the
way that they grew up in general, and so I

(05:40):
feel like also a lot of times when kids experience
childhood trauma, even though they're in the same household, the
trauma can be is experienced differently.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
And I think something that.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
We hear about is that Stack got a lot more,
was physically hurt more severe then Smoke was.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, the story of the family or their family is
that they their mother died in childbirth, and so because
Stack was the second of the twins born, then he officially,
if you will, killed their mom if you think of
in those terms, which is horrible, and so I don't
know if that's what has created the situation where their

(06:25):
dad is like taking it out more on Stack. If
you want to think of it that way. But they
do make it clear in the movie that Stack gets
the brunt of their dad's abuse and that as a
result of that, Smoke one day kills their dad after
he has knocked Stack unconscious, and Stack says that when

(06:46):
I came to, Smoke was already burying the body. And
so you're right, like, they do have this clear dynamic
of one brother being the caretaker, which is usually the
older sibling, and then the other brother being taken care of,
which is, yeah, typically the younger siblings. So yeah, even

(07:07):
though they're I think they're literally like three minutes apart,
we still see this dynamic which could have happened even
if the timing part was different, because I think I've
worked with people and I know people where they're not
technically the eldest, but they definitely have what they now
call like eldest daughter syndrome. I think it can also
be tied to like dispositions and things like that. But yeah,

(07:31):
they very clearly have that dynamic where Smoke takes care
of business in a lot of ways and Stack. Because
of that, Stack is able to engage in more of
an affable energy.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
That dynamic between the two of them really creates a
lot of how they figure out survival. It seems that
they each kind of adapt to a different version of
this criminal underworld that they have learned to navigate, where
Smoke really follows more of that, like you said, that

(08:09):
kind of bottom line and turns to violence quickly with
zero hesitation, and is always carrying around his battle pistol
and trench knife. He's wearing that soldier identity.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, he brings it up. He brings it up several times.
I'm a soldier, aren't I Like? He definitely, of the
two of them, he's the one that brings it up more,
he brings up at all. I don't even know if
Stack brings that up. I don't think Stack.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
Ever brings it up. I think Smoke brings it up
several times.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Right. We hear him be identified by someone else as
a soldier than he identifies himself as a soldier. Even
says to Sammy, you just gave me an order. He does,
this is what a soldier does when you give them
an order.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Even when they're like there's several moments in the movie
where he it's really upset, Like I'm thinking of specifically
during the juke night when he calls Annie and Stack
into that side room. I was gonna say they're office,
but it's not really in office. And he's like, we're
not making money. You can't keep taking this like fake

(09:16):
plantation monopoly money. And there's that messaging that he keeps
reinforcing with Stack, with Annie, with Annie again or before
when they were in her like I guess I'm gonta
say business establishment. In the beginning, this idea that like
you need to be you need to have money, money

(09:38):
equals power, and how fixated understandably so he is with
this idea of power and how he has been going
all across the world because he went to Europe for
World War One, and he says, like, the only thing
I've noticed is that you need Basically, he says, you
need to have money and you need to be violent.
He doesn't use the word violent, but that's the implication

(10:00):
and that speech too. To have power. And when you
come from an environment like the micro which is that
microsystem of his abusive household, and then the macrosystem, which
is racism in America, You're trying to feel control. You
want to feel secure, you want to feel safe, and

(10:20):
a lot of that is attached to obviously power, and
so when he's talking about money and power, he's talking
about safety if you're going to think of it in
therapeutic terms, and how a lot of people get involved
in aggression, violent organizations and things because they're trying to
feel powerful, because they're trying to feel safe.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
And we know that it makes a lot of sense
that when you grow up in a situation where survival
is something you have to get through every single day,
like it is with them when we think about what
was going on with their dad, but also what was
going on historically during the time for young black men
in general. So I feel like a part of the
res and why Stack is allowed to develop a different

(11:04):
persona in different ways is because Smoke is taking all
the room out of the air or all the air
out of the room when it comes to the business
of things and being again like quote unquote like the
man of the house. Smoke very much has that role,
and I think Stack, on the other hand, is more
is used to maybe having to smooth over the rough

(11:26):
edges of his brother and kind of be able to
get people invested and understand his brother, And so I
think that's a part of the reason why we see
his response to trauma to be somebody who's kind of silly,
someone who's a little bit just more flexible and like charming.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
And he has more manipulative of a skill set. In
addition to charm, he's using a lot of manipulation. He's
constantly working and trying to get people to bend to
their will. It's not just quite being convincing. He has

(12:06):
quite a bit of social manipulation to him, and he's.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
A wheel on dealer for sure.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yes, their skill sets are quite opposite because Smoke is
used to solving problems with violence with strength. With his
fighting skill, he's going to kick the door in and
he's a shoot first, to ask questions later guy, which
we literally see him do to shoot the dude right

(12:34):
in the ass, like no hesitation, no stopping. And Stack
on the other hand, is constantly working, constantly talking, using
his personality, using nonviolent skills as much as he can
to get stuff done, and smiling at people and charming
and just constantly being your more classic kind of roguish

(12:57):
character versus it's a more violent mobster soldier of his brother.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, and I think it is an interesting juxposition. Also
how good of an actor Michael B. Jordan is, Like,
I constantly forget that there are it's the same actor
playing both roles. And also like it says how good
the directing is in the movie that like when they're
in those scenes, like in the doorway scenes when they're

(13:27):
both standing next to each other, I forget that. Fuck,
this must have been hard to film because they had
to do it twice and everything, but they're so good
at making these differences in their body language. And even
like you guys were saying, that smoke, he smiles once
in the whole movie when he sees Annie and their
baby and he knows he's dying, and so it is

(13:50):
that moment where he can finally he finally has.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
It.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
It's bleak to say it like this, but in death
he's finally safe enough to smile and to let his
guard down enough to smile and be vulnerable. Whereas for Stack,
his smiling and his affability and his charming and what
you were saying, Ben, that isn't necessarily vulnerable for him,

(14:16):
that is his shield, and so his smiling you could
view it as more relaxed.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
And I guess what I would counter with that.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Is when you see Mary show up at the train station, like,
he's not necessarily relaxed either, Like he gets very anxious
when he sees her.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
And I think I'm saying a bunch at once.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
But you know, also this dynamic where you have like
a sibling who has taken on more of the aggressive mantle,
the protector mantle, it does allow for someone like Stack
to be to be more like even when he says
you have no vision, you never have any vision after
he's been turned to a vampire, Like how much of
that is Smoke not having vision so much as Stack

(15:03):
maybe not recognizing I mean, if you take off the
vampire part of it, but not recognizing that the reason
why he can have vision is because he has the
room to do it, because Smoke doesn't have that room.
And also even makes me curious if you have when
you have to be so violent to survive, how much

(15:27):
you have to squash your emotional vulnerable self too, And
you see that with Smoke, where a Stack doesn't have
to do that, or he hasn't had to do that,
or he can kind of shift his emotions in a
way that works for him. He's not as flat as well,
I'll say Smoke's very flat.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
And I feel like a part of the reason why
Smoke is very flat is because he is always in
survival mode. He is always trying to be protective, so
he's always looking around, he's always scanning things. He doesn't
I think what you said about him not having room
or space, he doesn't have access to creativity or or

(16:04):
those vulnerable aspects of our personality because he is in
hyper arousal all the time.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, he's definitely hyper vigilant. He's very edgy. He's probably
burnt out to shit. And that's also why in those
moments when he is such like a hard ass with
stack about like Mary or the money or with Annie,
like he's someone who's probably been in his wits end
for as long as he can even be conscious of

(16:33):
his wits and so it's like I'm working all the time.
I'm all the tabs of my brain are open constantly
to make sure everybody's okay and that you're safe and
that you know Annie's safe and our people are safe.

Speaker 4 (16:44):
And now you're doing.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
This to me, Like that's very very like the stereotype
of like all this daughter syndrome of like I'm working
so hard over here and now you're over here taking
Wooden Nichols, like why just go fuck myself? You know
you can see, like the stress of is so intense.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
It also causes limited vision, even though he accuses others
of not having it. They frequently have to react to
his moves. They don't have space to create plans because
he's got all the plans and everybody's in his show,
and that becomes a really powerful dynamic between the two
of them and creates some of that envy and is

(17:23):
why Stack ends up sleeping with Mary. He's been jealous
of that relationship. And you see that last scene where
he's not a vampire, where he's starting to flirt with Mary.
The Smoke is standing above the rafters, watching.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Smoking a cigarette, staring at their asses. Well, of course,
and yeah, and you can tell like that's what. Yeah,
I even wrote my notes like I feel like Stack
is so he's Yeah, he's very much influenced by Smoke's.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Opinion, and he's envious of him in some ways of
some of the things he's had. And it seems like
Stack hasn't been allowed to quite enter into his own space.
And it doesn't surprise me at all that the moment
he gets a chance of Mary, he takes it, not

(18:20):
one bit of me. Was surprised that his brother was
clearly like rejecting her, and he's like, suck, I'm not
rejecting you. I will happily take care of you. Unfortunately
for him, he just wasn't recognizing that she was so
into him because she was already a vampire.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Unfortunately, she was trying to get up on him before that.
I think being a vampire just gave her the final
don't give a fuckness to not really let him say
no to her. Like she really weaponized his ego when
she was like, you can't steal this pussy, you steal
everything else. And I mean, the Mary thing is complicated

(19:05):
to by the fact that she is passing like she
looks white, like you wouldn't know she's not white to
look at her. And I think that goes back to
well the fact that I mean, like, it'd be interesting
to see the conversations between Smoke and Stack when Stack
was first with Mary when they were younger, because, like
Mary was, Mary's mom was basically their mother figure. She

(19:30):
nursed them after their mom died, and so she was
pretty much like their cousin, if you want to think
of it like that, they all grew up together. And
when you think of Smokes hypervigilants about their safety and
stack safety, the idea that Stack would get involved with
a white girl is terrifying period. But for Smoke, I

(19:55):
can't imagine. He was like, of all the girls you
could pick to be with, you're going to pick the
one girl in our area that looks that's basically white.
And all the fear and anxiety that comes with that,
which they mentioned the movie when they don't want her
to be there, and even when they're talking about should
we let these white people in.

Speaker 4 (20:16):
Because we need money?

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Is how much can go wrong with introducing that element
and how if one person looks at them wrong, or
even like the story Slim says when they're in the
car earlier in the movie, of all they mean, we
know this from like Emmett Till and shit, like all
they have to do is say that a black person
has done something to a white person and that's it.

(20:41):
And so then if you're with a white girl, that
just gives them so much ammunition to use against you.
And so it makes me curious. And my inference is
that Stack not staying with Mary is way more probably
smokes influence than what Stack wants.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
I think that that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
We can tell that Smoke definitely has an impact on
their relationship no matter what, because Stack is always looking
over his shoulder, making sure that he's not watching him,
making sure that he's not doing anything that he quote
unquote shouldn't be doing. And I think that one of
the things that we get to see in this film
is all of the different ways that white people continue

(21:25):
at that time, We're always just pointing their fingers at
black men for everything.

Speaker 4 (21:31):
So it makes a lot of sense that.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
Smoke would be so resistant to his brother being with
somebody who could pass for being white. And how really
and truly scary that is because it doesn't even have
to be at that time, and even now still, I
would say, it doesn't necessarily even have to be the
person that they're around, to the person that they're with.
It it'd be some random white person who sees them

(21:55):
together and decides that that's not okay and then accuses
him of something right off the back. It was a
relationship that never was gonna work in a way that
would feel safe. Obviously, and then I almost wonder in
this little tangent if when she says, I don't want
to be white, I want to be with you, and
how she's like a white husband and she's in a
different state. Do you think like her husband even knows

(22:17):
that she's part black because he doesn't come home with
her to her mother's funeral. Absolutely, not like it even
kind of even sounds like Stack set her up to
have like a white identity.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
He did because Jim crow Era is full of horribleness. Yeah,
and it wasn't safe. All these things that they're discussing
weren't just pictures in history books as we all learned
about things being many many years past. This was daily reality.
Lynchings and jaylings and beatings, all common things that were

(22:56):
accepted practice. And the guy they bought the building from
going like, yeah, the clan don't exist, no Warwhill he's
the grand dragon that would have been assumed at that point,
and it's very, very dangerous.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Well, even when I was doing research for this movie,
and I read a few articles and I'll maybe I'll
link some in the blurb of this episode if anyone's interested.
Is one of the authors that I read, He had
did a little research on the sawmill, and it's actually
based on the building. Let me see that's something about

(23:36):
Emmett Till, Like it is based on that, but the
inference being yeah, the building was modeled after the cotton
processing facility where the fan used to kill Emmett Till
was housed, making it a literal killing floor, and that
the insinuation in the movie is that when they're like,
this is a slaughterhouse in the beginning, when they're like,
would you clean off the floor, it's because that's where
they would kill black people. And so even in the

(24:01):
building that they're in, in the stains on the ground,
is like these reminders of great violence that's out of
their control. So why don't we take a break here
and we will be right back. One other thought that
was coming to mind as we were talking about Stack
and Mary's relationship specifically, was also the perceptions that I'm

(24:28):
gonna say, Smoke and Stack, even though I know this
is a bigger thing than the two of them, is
how they identify themselves and how something they keep repeating
about their identity is like, basically, we're not good people.
It's not good to be around us, Like sending Mary away,
even Smoke leaving Annie after their kid dies, makes me

(24:52):
curious how much of that is like I'm a cursed person?
And that is something that when I've worked with kids
and teenagers and just adult too that have gotten abused
a lot as kids and had a lot of trauma,
there can be a lot of well wanted annihilate your
self worth. That's just along and the short of it.
Because if you're being so severely mistreated by the person

(25:14):
who was to love you the most, how does how
does that not kill your idea of yourself? And then
if you're in an environment like you were saying, Hannah,
where as a black man, you're this boogeyman and you're
so dehumanized, then like a story that he tells in
the movie Smoke to Sammy is that when they were kids,

(25:35):
they did run away from their dad at one point,
and they ran away to a black owned town that
was kind of thought of as this almost like utopia
for black people, and how they were rejected from that
town as kids, like they were told, which I hate
by I assume like the elders of the town, we

(25:56):
know your dad, and your dad is bad, and so
because you're his children, you also must be bad and
I hate that, and that is messaging that happens all
the time. I'm sure it still happens. And that goes
like across the the racial lines. Is this idea that
people can one be born bad, which I hate, and

(26:18):
that if you're from a quote unquote bad family or
you have bad parents, whatever, that even means that you're
also bad. And so Smoke and Stack have obviously internalized
this message that something is bad about them and they're
bad people, and so they can't be with the women
that they love, for example, because if they love them,

(26:40):
why would they let them be with a bad person
which is them? And you also see that too with
their dynamic with Sammy.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
They certainly have a lot of hallmarks of shame and
guilt being an underlying component of their psychology and moral injury.
We hear from their story is their story builds on
that they have done a lot of things, a lot,
starting with killing their father, running away to the all

(27:11):
black town and realizing that even there, like you said,
they're just followed by this idea that you're no good
Without saying it, they're basically accused of being demons. It
seemed to be the kind of subtext they read between
the lines that the writer didn't want to directly say,
But I Am going to go out and go out

(27:33):
on a limb and assume that Sammy's father may have
at some point accused them of being possessed.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Or at least this idea that his brother side of
the family is, you know, yeah, you might be actually
posessed might be the right way to say it. But
how they say, like you let the demons and you
let the devil in, which is what he says in
the beginning, his dad to him, like if you keep
playing that music, the devil's going to follow you home.
This idea that there are good people and there are
bad people, and bad people do this and good people

(28:02):
do that, and that rigid, rigid messaging, which also comes
from a standpoint of trying to stay safe by being good.
But you can never be good enough when the system
doesn't care if you're good or not, or has decided
you're not good. For sure, I'm sure their dad has.
Sammy's dad has said very verbose, pre chrestue things about

(28:26):
that side of the family.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
And looking at their behavior, they seem to carry this
kind of attitude about never being able to be good,
never going to be seen as good, never going to
act good, And so they do the thing that happens
to a lot of folk that are seen that way,

(28:48):
which is they lean in. They become better at it
than you could ever track. They are steps ahead of
everyone except for the clan, which I think was a
powerful touch to this movie that they were allowed to

(29:11):
have all this, but really it was a setup that
they were going to come and be gone down in
the morning once they'd gathered enough black folk to be
of interest to the clan, but recognizing they became figureheads
to their community, not through the good deeds that they did,

(29:32):
but by providing access to sin, but things that wouldn't
have been accessible without their competence at the underworld, the
Irish beer, the Italian wine brought down from Chicago, where
they hit big, but not the way you think where

(29:54):
they had because they weren't trusted by anybody else. They
were trusted by each other, and they could play a
game within a game. They got so good at the
underworld because that is where they could thrive. And I
think that speech where they learned that we can't have anything,
started to show the impact kind of like debt moral
injury had on them for being responsible for Mom's death,

(30:18):
even though they couldn't have controlled that, but Dad blamed
them for it. So it's going to plant to Seed
that they're bad at least one of them miss and
he beat me, blamed one and beat the other.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Well, I feel like even when when Stack is dying
and Smoke says to Annie, the best part about me
is him, I'm so rotten and so terrible, and the
only good thing about me was that I had that
I had Stack, and that's it. That's the only positive

(30:51):
thing about me, which which again really lends to that self,
that sense of self just being annihilated and having to
really create this full persona of someone who has to
attack everything in order for them to survive. They had
to kill their dad because otherwise he would have killed
them quite likely.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
And I think what is so tragic about Smoke specifically
is that I wonder with Annie and then with them
having a baby, if maybe that was a turning point
for him. But this crossroads of like maybe I could
be good and being with someone like Annie who's so
calm and she's so secure, and then they have a

(31:36):
kid I could understand where if he maybe was maybe
it's possible to be different, and then that kid gets
sick and dies and nothing Annie does can save the baby.
I could see that being the final straw for Smoke too,
of like I can't keep anyone safe except for Stacks.
I'm just gonna keep Stack safe. I can't touch anything
like I am. I'm evil, like everything I touch goes

(31:59):
to shit. And then you also see that get more
pumped up once Stack has been turned into a vampire.
How agro Smoke gets hitting Sammy in the face with
the gun when he's trying to stand up for Pearline
because she doesn't want to eat that damn garlic, which
is so silly, eat the fucking garlic, Pearline. Even in

(32:20):
that moment, how shocked they all were when he did that,
when they're standing in that circle and he smacks Sammy
with the butt of the gun and how you hear
them all go who Like, Even for Smoke, that felt
far And I feel like in that moment he went
into that like deep arrival mode of his identity of
I can't let someone else die. I'm going to freak
out if I don't get Samy out of here.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
It was a reference. It was that gun that was
used to kill Emmett Till. Then that just the most
popular gun ever made. It's still the most popular gun,
but it's it was that gun of nineteen eleven cult
that was used to pistol whip and kill Emmett Till.
And the references all throughout this movie to several things

(33:04):
throughout all that era are profound, profuse. They can't be accidental.
So many references to Chicago and the link between Chicago
and the delta between seeing Pullman cars, that particular pistol, well,
that would have been the pistol of the time. Also,
revolvers were quite common and it wasn't an accident. They
used that. Sammy dressed quite a bit like Robert Johnson.

(33:29):
There's reference all over. But looking at this behavior, you
see it's definitely that overt revert to control his defaulting
to the resource he has, and he hasn't developed any
others because that one's been effective. And smoking stack operate together.

(33:54):
Always one operates with violence, the other, like you said,
often operates probably cleaning up and smoothing over. But you
see the pain in him that causes that strike. It's
not it's a protective strike even though it's a hugely
aggressive move and he probably would have lost teeth.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Something else that's kind of that I'm kind of sitting
over here thinking about right now.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
Is also.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
It's kind of it's a little bit of a tangent,
but is also a part of the reason why I
would imagine why Smoke in Stacks Dad was as maybe
violent as he was, is because the violence that he experienced.

Speaker 4 (34:31):
Right, So also that this goes back.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
When we look at intergenerational trauma and the way that
it happens, it often goes back and back and back.
Like it isn't like Smoke in Stacks Dad was born
evil either, Oh sure, he was again set in the
system where you are completely dehumanized and where violence is
the only response you know to life. Well, the yeah,

(35:00):
sometimes we'll talk about it in therapy with clients who
grow up in abusive settings, is that violence is your
first language, Like violence is the language in which you
learn to communicate. Like when I work with clients who
have their own history of violent tendencies, and how much
shame and guilt and like this is this identity stuff

(35:21):
where we're talking about carries on with them, and I'll
stay in the context of you know, like you were
taught the language of violence to regulate your feelings, to
not regulate your feelings, to communicate your needs everything, and
so until you unlearn that language, you were probably going
to have these moments where.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
You also spoke with violence.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
And that is yeah, shame, but even and also what
you were saying to made me think of I'm about
to say, like the most white person educating themselves reference.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
But Tanahasi codes book between the world and me.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
He talks about that exact thing within the black community
and how like it agression being used as a scare
tactic of love, Like you're so worried for me being
out in the streets, and I make you so scared,
Like you're so scared for me if I walk outside,
I'm not thinking. So then you smack me really harder,

(36:16):
you scream in my face because you're trying to keep
me safe because you're so scared. But the way that
you're communicating that fear to me and that care to
me is repeating this cycle of aggression.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Which we see from even research on spankings and things that.

Speaker 4 (36:32):
Oh you should hear.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
I used to have a whole spiel about whoopings back
when I used to work primarily with kids and teenagers.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Oh, I'm sure you did, because the research is clear
on it that what it ends up teaching kids is
well that what you're describing as the intent from all
cultures that do it, not just one, but like there's
specifics you know, to different cultures like you're naming. And
the thing it ends up teaching people is that you
can be violent to solve problems. You can respond to

(37:02):
people not listening to you with aggression and smoke. He
hear us calling your name, because this is pretty much
his characterization. Like he learned violence, He learned to have
power from violence. The person who was powerful against him

(37:22):
used violence to seize power, and the moment he was
strong enough to fight back and use that power against
his dad who was oppressing him with it, that is
the tool he used.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
And going back to something you said earlier, Ben, that
left my mind when we're talking about this idea of
leaning so hard on like violence to be safe and
your persona of violence is I think what I also
appreciate and what's really well acted in the scene where
they're getting the truck robbed and smoke us to come out,

(37:56):
and he shoots those two guys. Is you can see
him from like a problem solving perspective with the second
guy at least, like I should shoot him to make
a point. But he doesn't seem like someone who gets
anything out of violence in terms of he's not enjoying it,
like when you see people who are more have like
more like antisocial tendencies where they're getting something out of

(38:20):
being violent for violent sake. And I think that was.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
A good He's not an American psychotype.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah, Like that was a good moment of acting for
Michael B. Jordan of you can see that it's not
necessarily his nature if you want to think of it
like that. I don't think it's anyone's nature, but it's
definitely not his nature to like he didn't shoot that
guy because it gave him a thrill to shoot that guy,
or because the reputation of shooting that guy gave him

(38:46):
a thrill. Like it was a true problem solving moment
where he was like, well, I do have to shoot
him because if I don't shoot him, like he's thinking
it through and not like I just enjoy violent.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
I think we see him making the decision coldly and tactically.
It's it isn't about whether or not he wants to
shoot this guy, which it seems like yes. The subtext
of the scene is he didn't want to because he
knows close and personal what kind of damage that's going

(39:23):
to do. Forty five k caliber bullet is a big,
heavy bullet. It would have been the standard round. I
wasn't like there's a bunch of different ones shooting that
guy with that. He's going to know up close and
personal from his experience with war end gangsters, what that
bullet is going to do and how much damage. He
chooses to shoot him anyway, because he can't have people

(39:48):
going around saying smoking stack don't do anything when people
try to rob them, Hey, you're fucking around, you're gonna
find out. He does pay for them to get medical
care and arranged for it. But the damage that forty
five caliber bullet might do to that shin might not
have been repairable at that point in time. That choice

(40:09):
he made knowing all that I bring up like the
weapons not to a gun nerd but to illustrate this
man is proficient. He is trained. He is absolutely deliberate
and well aware of how damaging these types of bullets
are versus other types is non accident. He is shooting

(40:33):
this dude, and he's only doing it because he's recognizing, well,
I'm weighing the options here that this is going to
end up serving me and the community more efficiently if
I shoot you. That's pretty There's a lot. There's a
lot of loaded stuff there, I was say.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
The only other thing I want to say is the
movie also does a great job of showing how they
show how affectionate they are and loving that there is
a lot of love between them. They say I love you,
They hug each other, there's a lot of like softness
with each other that I think once again illustrates that
their personas are personas that they created to survive, and

(41:12):
that actually, underneath their personas they are just like two
guys who just want to be with their ladies and
be with their community and start a club, and that
they just want to make a profit. You know, it
doesn't seem like if they wanted to make money, they
wouldn't have come back down to Mississippi to create a

(41:33):
juke joint that only black people are made are supposed
to attend. And so I think it says a lot
about the underneath of them that I guess I just
want to articulate and then we will take a break here.
So as we're talking about the way that Smoke and
Stack are the dark demon side of the spectrum, what's

(41:57):
interesting about Sammy is he is also he's held in
his own rigid extreme way, which is that he is
thought of by I think almost everyone that kind of
talks about him as this. Well, the word we put
on the board that we use to keep us on
tasks golden child, and that is a term from dysfunctional

(42:21):
family systems. I don't know, I can throw it to you,
Hannah if you want to kind of give a little
psychoetic about golden child. So essentially, what that means in
a system is that there is one there's one kid
who can kind of like do no wrong who the
system who someone in the system is always behind, always
on their side.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
Always.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Everything is done for this one person. The family system
kind of is made just to support this one, this
one part of the system completely.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
And also the golden child can be sometimes thought of
as the hero child. So they are the one that's
going to take care of us. They're the one that's
gonna get out. They're the one that not so much
that they can't do anything wrong, in that like you
can't do anything wrong in my eyes, it's more that,
like you, you are not allowed to do anything wrong.

(43:19):
There's a very puritanical thing.

Speaker 4 (43:22):
It's very specific, rigid.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Beliefs about how you have to be and how you
have to present in the family.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
It's in order to play this role.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
And Sammy is identified in the movie as that person
within his family, his extended family, but also in the community.
It seems like to a certain degree in that he
is talented. We know that through the lore of the
movie that he is actually I don't know what the

(43:55):
word I want to use, like he is powerful. Yes,
in almost like the literal sense of the word, like
he has this power being agreeat. And so there is
something about him that is very special. And there is
this repeated messaging of the movie of like smoke and
Stack and I don't know everyone that he kind of

(44:18):
talks about what she wants to be when he grows up,
even though he's already like an adult. Is this very
protective nature around him, like you should stay here, you
should stay on the like in the church you should
become a preacher too, like your dad. You can't go
to Chicago, you can't play blues music. There's this very rigidity,
there is very strict ideas around him, trying to keep

(44:40):
him pure and good, which I mean, there's its own
that in and of itself, it is its own reaction
to the systemic oppression and racism and trauma they're in,
which is being a good black person or a good
person of color or whatever. And also how I think

(45:02):
for his dad, I'm sure his dad also found refuge
in the church, like a lot of people do, and
so wanting his son to be a part of what
he has found to be safe and not to be
somewhere that is unsafe, and everyone really not wanting to
Sammy to do his own thing. Smoke even says, what,

(45:22):
I will fucking shoot you in the head. I will
show you in the head before I let you go
to Chicago. And that's part of this, like it's you
have to stay safe here, but also you are good,
and we must protect the fact that.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
You're good.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Because that good represents something that they could never be.
He is the hope that they do not have for themselves.
They abandoned that as part of their moral injury, they
do not deserve to be good. So he has to
hold that space for them because they can never have it.

(45:56):
People do that to their kids all the time when
they view themselves that bad.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
And it's also that generational identity bullshit which we already
talked about, which is like bad people have bad kids
and good people have good kids. Shit like reputation stuff
and how I mean even his nickname is Preacher Boy
because his dad's the Preacher. So even that differentiation of
like they're the second generations of these two guys that

(46:22):
already have these very all or nothing identities, the devil
and the Angel, and how they are not allowed, these
second generation cousins, they're not allowed to leave that identity,
that strict, strict identity.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
They are not They are not allowed to leave that
at all. And it becomes I think one of the
more powerful moments in the film that we see when
at the end Sammy does not drop that guitar.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
I'm sure there's gonna be people who write hold dissertations
about that choice.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
And yet again another Chicago reference, right that older Sammy
was played by Chicago Blues legend Buddy Guy.

Speaker 4 (47:13):
I mean, the story ends in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
And that it does, and Buddy Guy was a sharecropper
in Mississippi as a young man.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Perfect casting but not dropping that guitar, you know, shows
that like breaking out of all of this took not
letting that mantle of golden child be put on him,
but finding his own path and being his own man.
And he's the only one that survives save for the.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Scars, and not only survived, but thrived. You know, it
seems like, based on what we see in the epilogue
of the movie, that he made a really nice life
for himself. He was a touring musician, very beloved. He
has his own business, so he basically a business owner
of his own juke joint. And he's lived to like

(48:12):
a ripe old age where he seems pretty good, you know,
all things considered. We don't see a lot of what
his life's been like, but he's an established person who's
lived to old age, and he was able to make
a life for himself that involved this component of himself

(48:34):
being a musician that didn't like I said, going back
to challenging this rigidity, that he was able to go
into secular music and didn't poison him, it didn't curse him,
it didn't possess him. And how that challenges like these
belief systems that we do create, because, like I said,

(48:58):
a lot of rigidity just comes from want to feel safe.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
I want to feel secure.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
There's a lot of comfort in absolutes as much as
there's agony in absolutes. And so Sammy, is that challenging
not oxymoron? What's the we're looking for, like juxtaposition of that.
I can have a good life whatever that means, a

(49:23):
functioning life, and I don't have to be like uber religious,
I don't have to be a preacher. I don't have
to be good in that very strict moral way to
do that, and that does challenge a lot of these
very strict ideas we all can have. I mean, I'm
trying to be careful about what I say about Christianity

(49:44):
on this episode because I can respect how Christianity within
the Black community is very different than Christianity, how I
experienced it as a white person and as a Catholic,
which is its own different thing too, And how I mean,
one of the things I read from one of the
articles from the emancipator dot org by Halima abdullah Is.

(50:11):
The movie critiques how Christianity has been used as a
divisive tool to control and subjugate marginalize people, as in
its sometimes violent introduction to Pagan Ireland, which we see
with rmic which we're not gonna talk about that too much,
justifying the enslavement of Africans, or more subtly keeping Samy
from his birthright as a great a musical storyteller.

Speaker 4 (50:30):
And so.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
How these things that keep us face safe can also
be these things that trap us and also we sometimes
don't even understand like where they came from. Yeah, because
the only thing I was thinking about with the religious
part of it, and then I'll move on because I
don't want to step into any any ideas that I
don't belong in. But this idea also that it categorizes

(50:54):
like sin the title of the movie like what is sin?
And how like certain you know, ways of movie your
body is sinful, and how certain ways of expressing your
your emotions is sinful and being loud and being sexual,
and I mean we talked about a lot in the
Easy A episode, which is a wild comparison movie to
this topic. But just like how also these ideas he's

(51:18):
like strong moral, puritanical ideas. Also, they are controlling and
they keep us small, and how it also squashes a
lot of their ability to so joy I mean, that's
what they talk about, even in the end of the
movie when he's like when you know as buddy guy,

(51:40):
older Sammy, He's like, you know, I think that was
the happiest day of my life before everything went to shit,
and Stack's like, yeah, like we were free, like and
what he's really saying is we were We created a
space where we could be joyful. We didn't have to
like watch our mouths and be good and be good
by the parameters of white men and Christian religion and

(52:01):
all this stuff, and who are we underneath that, which
is what leads into that, like probably the coolest scene
in the movie when he calls the ancestors the passing
and future with his music and this idea there is
power there in this community there, and there's identity there
and how it gets squashed under this label of sin.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Also, I think there's a real natural experience of when
you become the age that Sammy is, of having to
make a decision of doing the thing your family wants
you to do. Or doing the thing that you really
want to do. And I think that is a very
natural place to be for many people. When I work
with my between nineteen and twenty five year old clients,

(52:44):
there is this experience of this push and pull of
my parents really want this for me, and I really
want something else?

Speaker 4 (52:52):
What do I do about that? How do I communicate that?

Speaker 2 (52:55):
And also some of that is also helping them find
the language and the assertiveness to be able to have
those kinds of conversations with their parents. And so I
think sammy also is just in this natural place and
that religion just happens.

Speaker 4 (53:08):
To be a part of that.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Which is which is usually a big part of the
young people that I work with, is a big part
of their experience too, because religion is, for lack of
a better way to say it, fallen out of favor
with certain generations of people, and so I think that
is a lot I talk a lot with people in
our religion.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Well, and also too, I think regardless of religion, you
can put it under the framework of that's the time
in our life when we are deciding do I vibe
with my family's belief system? Yeah, absolute, whether that's religious, political, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (53:46):
Worldview of any kind.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
You know, do I want to you know, go closer
to or farther away or and or just like be
in this like middle area where I'm figuring it out.
And is my family even allowing me the space.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
To figure it out this conversation, to even be able
to sit in a place where you can consider other
other opportunities besides the you know kind of strict ones
that your parents and family hold. Yeah, and like I said, too,
in this specific situation, I'm sure there's parts of it
we can't name the full extent of because of the

(54:22):
time period and the oppressive dynamics of the time period.
Because also too, like I don't know, do Sammy's dad
view preaching as a way to not be a sharecropper?
You know, it's a way to get out of the
fucking field and stop picking cotton. And so also it
is a way to a different way of life sort

(54:43):
of even though you're still there on the plantation.

Speaker 4 (54:47):
But so too.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
But but I think when we think about it in
terms of getting you out of harm's way, right like
not being directly working where you can be injured or
hurt or punished in some kind of way, and pulling
you into a space where you have some sense of
protection because you are a you play a role in
the community in a different way, and so you're put

(55:10):
you're not in harm's way as much. And I was
thinking the same thing, like, I feel like a part
of the reason why his dad wants him to be
a preacher is because it feels safer than anything else,
which I think we continue to find it as we've
been talking about this whole film, that everybody is just
trying to find a safe, a calm, comfortable place that

(55:30):
they can be in. And when you are in a
system like they are in and we are currently in,
it is really really hard to be able to do that.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
I mean specifically set up to be impossible to escape from. Yeah,
there was no interest in giving the black community an
opportunity to get an actual leg up after the war,
after the Civil War, meaning that the war just like

(56:02):
the war for emancipation. Yeah yes, yeah, after d one
war we've had, Yeah, after emancipation. There was no interest
in that, and it created a very difficult situation that
the way to be safe was to basically continue being
a slave and be free and kind of name only.

(56:24):
And I feel like the meta narrative of this movie
is showing the horror that that was.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Oh sure, I'm sure this movie educated a lot of
people that look like me and from my background. That
like even the fact that you know what even looks
like to actually be a sharecropper and the fact that
you're pretty much doing the same exact thing. I didn't
even realize that there was plantation money until I watch
this movie. And how that keeps you in these in

(56:54):
these systems in which you cannot progress out. If you
can't literally make currency and make money to progress forward
and progress out of these systems, of course you're going
to and it's a way to I mean, that's just
continuing enslavement. You're enslaving them to the economy that uses
wooden nickels.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
That's what the carpet bagging movement was. People just pagged
up all their shit literally in their carpet, put handles
on it, made a bag, and moved up to the
south side and left the sharecropping because it was so untenable.
Wooden nickels. Yeah, sure they buy food, but how much

(57:37):
have to sleep on a wooden floor, on a maybe
on a straw palette in overalls in Mississippi summer.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Well, and also a system that's totally unregulated, so they
could just decide that a can of food is three
times as many whatever their currency is it was before,
and just keep you oppressed. Is there anything else you
want to say about with Sammy before we take another

(58:05):
break and talk about Slim.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
Sammy being agreed, I feel like is a very very
powerful component of this film. The Delta Blues is a
real specific sound which the actor they had playing Sammy
was excellent at portraying, and that Delta Blues worked its
way up into Chicago and it morphed into Chicago Blues,

(58:31):
which is its own thing. But Delta Blues has retained
its separate identity, often using those Doughbro guitars to resonate
in a real specific way because that body is metal,
that metal disc often is referred to as a resonator
guitar or Doughbro, and that specific sound with that slide
to get diseines, it's easy to create kind of those

(58:53):
blue notes is a powerful, powerful way of conveying emotion
that connects to the store of the people of those
Deltas and loses undeniably a black music. It is a
black art form. It was created by that community to

(59:13):
help deal with the sadness and the grief and inescapable
oppression that was around them at all times. And they
use their voices, their songs, their musical talent to convey
the joy that they had with their life even still,
despite that in a way that could not be contained,

(59:36):
could not be crushed, could not be preached out. It
created a way to communicate and tell the stories of
their people and also convey a hope that there is
still ways to be happy despite all that is stacked
against us. And this movie I think showed the powerful

(59:57):
connection music has in sharing ancient culture, an ancient wisdom
with people. And the Devil May follow You Home was
an unfortunate side effect of that. Unfortunately in this one
that Dad was actually right about that that the music
would attract another band of wandering troubadors. But as our
resident musician here, I think of us abandoning that are

(01:00:21):
not not a banding, but us neglecting to talk about that.
I think that being such a huge, huge focus and
probably what will produce some degree of Oscar winning material
from this movie. I don't know what the Academy will
decide with this, but I swear to God, if they
decide the white actor gets like the Oscar out of

(01:00:42):
this movie, was like for how well he did the
Irish Vampire because he was awesome, but I swear if
he's the one that gets like a supporting actor out
of this movie, I'm to scream. But the scene of
even the battling music of showing that the Irish did
the same with their music but different and using that

(01:01:05):
as kind of like a juxtaposition battle of their music,
and they did it also excellent job of going like, Wow,
these guys are talented, but also this music is boring
as fuck compared to the Blues, like could you guys
be any whiter? Please God? But the music of both

(01:01:28):
cultures was used for the same reasons. The Irish were
so oppressed by the English and all that they went
through right around this period of time, using that as
a way of showing these like ancient cultures coming out
and like you're seeing the dance and all the ancestors
and then even the I don't know what the word
for forward future ancestors would be, but seeing DJs and

(01:01:54):
modern musicians and everything like just kind of like transported
into time through the music. I think as a nod
to the powerful emotion that gets communicated in music that
cannot be expressed in any other way. Is a really
really powerful important part of this story.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
And I think also, you know, when he says, like
one day the Devil we follow you home, it makes
me think of too with listening to you talk Ben
about how you know, sometimes when you are very special,
you attract a lot of attention, and when you are,
you know, a disenfranchised, marginalized community, attention is usually bad.

(01:02:42):
You know, you don't want attention, You want as little
attention as you can. And so it is that sad
thing where it's not that it's not that he attracted
the devil, it's just that he just attracted attention. And unfortunately,
when you attract a lot of attention, some of those
people are not going to be well intentioned people. And

(01:03:03):
this idea that putting it under this like I said,
rigid umbrella of like badness is such a shame, but
an understanding, an understandable way of thinking. But yeah, too,
like going back to also, I think what I like
about this and you know, bingo square this is more
final thoughts. Is I also like how and I'm sure

(01:03:25):
this is a very conscious choice on Ryan Kugler's part
of that the things that he showed, like twerking, like
the very specific dances people were doing, like the future dancing,
and things like that too, is he wasn't He was
showing a lot of art forms that white people have
identified as lower class, to put it very mildly, And

(01:03:46):
I like that he was connecting that that isn't what
that means within their culture, that is how it's been identified,
and that these things that we have decided are sinful,
are they really sinful? Or is that the way that
these cultures outside of us have reframed what is beautiful
and powerful about us? Like another quote from the one

(01:04:09):
of the things I read by Anthony Browder is like
the European religious framework that separates us from nature, from
each other, from our power, And he put like this
is the real vampire. And he was kind of quoting
even the speech that Remic gives about how like long
ago the manas told my father's land forced those words
upon me the Lord's prayer, and that like it lies

(01:04:32):
of dominion of man over beast and earth, like we
are earth and beast.

Speaker 4 (01:04:35):
In God, we are man and woman.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
We are connected, you and I to everything, and how
like that is what we're talking about. How there's there
is beauty and that connectiveness, but there also is less
control in that connectedness. And also it's a way to
control is by letting people think that the ways that
they can view this power and community and energy is sinful.

(01:05:00):
All right, we'll take a break here and be right back.
So another person we wanted to make sure to talk
about is Slim because his I mean, everyone sees this
movie are very powerful. I don't want to diminish that
at all. And I think he has one of the
show stopping to me scenes in the movie when they're

(01:05:21):
in the car driving and he is telling that story
about him and his Was it his friend, Yeah, it
was his friend. Him and his friend, and how once
again like they were incarcerated, they like got their way
out of incarceration by being good musicians and becoming like
a traveling prison band, I guess. And then his friend

(01:05:45):
they got all that money from that, and then his
friend got accused of hurting a white woman, raping a
white woman well and killing her husband or and was hung.
But it was really just an excuse to get his
money from him.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
That's such a powerful moment, yes, in the film, and
how it was such a watching him I think shift
from this is what happened to the true awfulness of
it and leaning into music as a way to manage
the feelings that he had about that experience.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Yeah, and the beautiful connectedness where he phases into singing,
like his moaning becomes singing or humming, and how Stack
recognizes that and he looks back at Sammy and he's like, well,
you got a guitar, don't you like, let's get into it.

(01:06:40):
And how in that moment at least Stack recognized that
this is what Slim needed to process how he was feeling.
And how like beautiful of a moment that is where
there wasn't lego, what is he doing? It was a
really this recognition of you know that music is a

(01:07:03):
very powerful way to feel our feelings and to emote
our feelings. But also I would imagine in their situation,
it might be one of the few ways where you
can safely emote your feelings publicly and you know what
you're doing, and maybe even like the people within your
community know what you're doing, but the people outside of

(01:07:25):
your community, like white people might just assume, like you're
singing a good song.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
Blues is not just like that music is a powerful thing.
It's that music in particular is a powerful, powerful art
form and it's exactly what it's for. And all of
the recording artists that started getting rock and blues through

(01:07:51):
the airwaves came from this Delta blues. And that's what
they were singing about Howland Wolf, Bo Diddley all came
from this area, my rainy Georgia, but that all of
these people who are responsible for black recording making its
way and rock and blues and then rock all forming

(01:08:14):
all comes from this Delta blues and this powerful, powerful
emotional experience of sharing the pain and having a way
to do it but also processing.

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):
Yeah, And I think that is something like as a
white person I have heard about and understand intellectually and academically.
So I really appreciated this movie having this scene because
it really shows you of what it's like in real time,
of how it's not this thing where like I'm having
deep pens, I'm going to deep pain, so I'm going
to go write a song about it and then perform

(01:08:49):
that song like it's such a beautiful moment where you
see the transition between like I'm having a really difficult
feeling and I am dealing with it in this way,
and how everyone, all the two people around him at
least Stack recognizes what's happening and allows it to happen too,
which is such like a beautiful thing. And it made

(01:09:14):
me think a lot too about how people can be
told like just you have to feel your feelings, and
people get really frustrated by that idea, and how there
is like music therapy that helps people feel their feelings
in this way. But also how like, especially if we
weren't taught how to identify our feelings and talk about
our feelings or if it didn't feel safe to do that,

(01:09:36):
that we can get creative as therapists in terms of
how we meet people where they're at with their emotional expression.
And so sometimes it can be music or other forms
of storytelling, like we talked about with never Aning story recently,
like using narrative therapy, bibliotherapy, and so music is such

(01:09:57):
another beautiful way to do that, which is, you know,
maybe you can't articulate in like a talk therapy way
how you're feeling, but could you maybe not sing for
your therapist, because I think that would be really vulnerable,
but maybe more just like, is there a song that
you connect to? Is there you know what resonates for

(01:10:18):
you that you see or you hear yourself in, what
helps you feel comfort, which helps you feel expressive, and
you know, it speaks a lot to how resourceful, like
we were talking about, like the black community had to
be in our country, that they created such beautiful music

(01:10:39):
because of the need to express their feelings and process
their trauma and just emote, and how we do need
to do that and either we are able to do
it transparently or we figure out a way to do
it creatively, and that we do need ways to do that,
and we will find ways to do it as humans.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
And I feel like something that's really beautiful about that scene,
not only what we've been talking about, but also getting
the history of slim saying this is music, this is
our music.

Speaker 4 (01:11:15):
Yeah, we brought this, we brought this from home. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
And in that scene, I think the next things out
of his mouth like highlight exactly like all those recording
artists that I mentioned, they were not people who were
being recruited by black owned businesses. They were being recruited
by white owned businesses who were exploiting the music. And

(01:11:44):
even as we were watching it and me being the
Chicago meathead around here that I am being the only
one of us that's from here. Black music was absolutely
co opted and exploited by white musicians, by white record executives.
And the fact that they kind of have Slim cover

(01:12:06):
this is a really important component of this. Like that
Devil That May Follow You Home had many meanings because
as good as Sammy is, as much as he is
throwing down and he has that exquisite, soulful voice making
profoundly emotional music that's connecting to the souls of ancestors

(01:12:29):
and descendants, it's so powerful. He's telling the stories of
the people. Slim kind of being there. Who's someone who
perhaps we can infer may have once been close to
that good almost.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Yeah, there's like theories and like all the stuff I've
consumed online more like TikTok and YouTube videos I've watched
about this movie, Like a lot of speculation about was
Slim himself maybe like Griot when he was you know,
maybe he was in his way of dealing with it
and of dealing with his life is like alcoholism and

(01:13:03):
the influence of that, and then also was remic like agree.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
On definitely agree with yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
And then when he experienced his own colonization and then
being made into a vampire two like this obvious the
obvious metaphor of this movie of like vampirism as like colonialism,
culture vulture, you know, shit, where I overtake you, I
take your soul from you.

Speaker 4 (01:13:30):
Literally.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
Then I'm like, why do I feel empty? Why does
everything feel soulless? And instead of being more introspective about
that and how your actions cause that, you're like, maybe
I just need to keep doing this going forward, and
just I need to culture vulture somebody else. But then
that feels hollow because it's not actually attached to your soul.
You're trying to feed off of someone else's soul, and

(01:13:54):
that I never got to work.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
I suspect that, based on my interpretation, is slim he
was not great, but that he had been around them slim.
I think I think if he were great, we would
have worked that into the story. I think he is not.
I think he is an incredibly talented musician, capable of
speaking the musical language, having respect for the music, speaking
the music. But griots are yet a tier above that

(01:14:17):
that are rare and special. If we think about so
many artists that we've encountered, there's a lot out there
that like, you listen to and you go like okay.
But the ones who connect that tell the real story,
that really crack the emotional code. Their music lives forever
and tells the story of timeless things.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
And also something that was very like sweet and beautiful
when I was reading these articles for today, is like
how a few of them even identify like Ryan Coogler
as a great So many of his movies are so
you know, connected to his culture and for the culture
and educating people like about parts of the culture that

(01:15:02):
I never knew before. So let's take a break here
and come back with treatment. So what are we thinking
about with treatment? Is there anything specific? I think this
feels like a hard movie to do specific treatments because
of the nature of the environment the movie takes place in.
But I know, Ben, you wanted to touch upon emdr

(01:15:25):
as a helpful treatment.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
I do before I do that. I think we mentioned
music therapy and I just want to echo that as well.
That's not something that I do as a musician. I'm,
you know, a little bit more like Slim of I
can play and I can do things, but agree at
I am not. The music doesn't exude from my soul

(01:15:48):
like it does from his, but like from Sammy's. But
the power of music therapy, like we see with Slim,
is that the therapist has such a robust, complex knowledge
of how to tell emotional stories with music and an

(01:16:08):
understanding of the keys and modes and how they interact.
And as the client is telling the story, the therapist will start,
you know, kind of altering the music to follow the
client's story. And if they're telling a happier story, they'll
switch to happier keys, and if they're telling a sadder story,
they'll switch to sadder keys to kind of facilitate the

(01:16:29):
release of these trapped emotions. And Sammy probably has been
doing this his whole career. But as he's the only
survivor besides you know, to stack the vampire and marry
the vampire, I think music therapy would be something that
Sammy would probably light up through. He may not even

(01:16:50):
necessarily realize he's accessing that, but it would be a
language that he would speak and tapping into how profound
connected to the storytelling through music he is. I think
that would probably be something that if he were open
to it, I would encourage because it's his first language, really,

(01:17:13):
it's his and if it's not his first, it's his
most fluent language. And I think speaking to people and
letting them speak in the language they are most comfortable
in is the highest form of cultural competency that can exist.
And words are not the only form of language. There
are dance therapies and theater based therapies and music therapies

(01:17:39):
that are all powerful, powerful ways of accessing feelings for
people that speak them and people that don't. An art
therapy who work with several art therapists, and you know
one of your guys best friends is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Yeah, Rachel who if you're interested, she's in our Barbie episode,
our Gone Girl episode, and our Fried Green Tomatoes episode.

Speaker 3 (01:17:58):
I think those would be that I would want to
discuss with him where I seeing him. And because I
am not a music therapist, that is, it's a whole profession,
it's a whole field of study. And just saying that
I could do it because I'm a musician and be
wildly inaccurate and offensive to those that are music therapists,

(01:18:18):
and to make sure I'm acknowledging that that expressive therapies
are research validated. They're very real, they're very powerful, and
they can access things we just can't with words, and
I would want to bring that up. He may or
may not want to do it to that is that's
his profession. Sometimes people that are professionals don't necessarily want
to access that because it feels like work or.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
They want to keep something that they love separate from therapy.

Speaker 4 (01:18:45):
I've had people tell me that before too, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:18:49):
But I think the types of things that they went
through specific to this night where one night changed the
entire course of his entire life, where so much horror
and loss and explicitly visual and sensory experiences were endured,

(01:19:13):
as are in many traumas. But the sounds in particular
strike me. Usually EMDR operates on vision in the colloquial
understanding of but MDR works on any sensory memories, and
I suspect that the sounds would be something that would
haunt a musician like Sammy, as he understands the world

(01:19:35):
more through sound than he does through sight. Not that
there's anything wrong with his sight, but that the sound
would be there. And I think all those sounds of
people's bloods being poured out of their body and having
their souls drained in the way their voices would change
when they became vampire, all of it the singing from outside.

(01:19:56):
I suspect that would be what he hears in his
nightmares rather than what he and I think doing MDR
work I movement desensitization and reprocessing. I've explained that a
lot in other episodes, so I'm not going to use
a lot of time to explain that here. But it's
a therapy that works to access how sensory information gets

(01:20:18):
stored and stuck in the body, along with emotions and
a interpretation and negative cognition, so all three get kind
of bound up together, and MDR works to disrupt association
that can pull people back into those moments when they're
facing those horrible triggers and get them a concrete reminder

(01:20:42):
through flashing light or tapping or alternating sounds that they
are in another moment, and it separates the traumatic experience
and the things needed to survive that from the concrete
reminder that you are somewhere else else now, and it's
very very powerful at helping people face those sensory triggers

(01:21:07):
that continue to play behind their eyes or in their
ears or in their body and make them separate from
who they are now. And I think with Sammy, he
is a prime candidate for that, with that being despite
all of the complex trauma he go through, Sarah cropping,
single incident trauma from this one singular night that no
one's ever going to believe him ever happened. He's gonna

(01:21:29):
be like Sarah Connor. He's never gonna be able to
tell this story. So I think that would be what
I would want.

Speaker 4 (01:21:34):
To do, since everybody dies.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
Something that me and Brittany wanted to something that I
wanted to talk about is the cultural competency of being
a therapist and some of the things that I wanted
to talk about. The two first things is you're always learning.
You have to remember that you're always learning and that
there's always more to learn when you're there when you're

(01:22:01):
a therapist, Because if you ever feel like you have
all the answers and that you already know everything that
you need to know, you are definitely not being open
or curious about the things that you that there are
things out there that we don't that we don't know
enough about, and we can always learn more about.

Speaker 4 (01:22:22):
And so.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Some of the topics that I thought of in terms
of what cultural competency can look like is you have
to be aware of the oppressive symptoms that our clients
live through on a regular basis, have thoughtful interventions that
acknowledge the discrepancy of access to most things in terms

(01:22:46):
of money, in terms of time, in terms of comfort,
in terms of safety. Right, we have to have interventions
that people can actually have access to in the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
And also even the fact that it's hard to find
a therapist that looks like you if you're not white.

Speaker 4 (01:23:02):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
Also, and something else about the oppressive systems is that
if we can systems is, if we can't acknowledge the
oppressive symptoms, how can we really understand what it's like
for our clients. You have to be able to have
awareness of that. You have to come I've been seeing
a lot online recently about the mental health industrial complex basically.

Speaker 4 (01:23:27):
And how.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
As therapists are we trying to help people who are
in oppressive systems in order to again, in order to
give them things that are really fucking helpful and actually
make fucking sense when it comes to an experience that
a young man of color is going to have with
the police or.

Speaker 4 (01:23:46):
Has already had.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
Those are thoughtful conversations that you have to be aware
of what that experience might be like for that client.
The last thing that I wanted to bring up as
another place, just another just another topic in terms of
things that you have to be aware of is also
assimilation trauma and how often that is an experience that
people are having, especially when you live most of the

(01:24:10):
clients that I work with are children of immigrants, or
most of the people I work with because I'm very
lucky that I have a big group of people who
are people of color that they can work with me.
Is that I have to be able to be flexible
and to understand where they're coming from, and that we
can't just assume that we understand everything, and that if

(01:24:34):
you want to be a competent therapist, you have to
be aware of the real truths of the society that
we're living in.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
Can you say a bit more specifics about like when
you say assimilation trauma, can you give like an example
of that for people who might not know that term.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
Yeah, Assimilation trauma is the idea basically that when you
come into the United States, you have to suppress a
part of yourself in order to fit in the way
that white people want you to fit in. You have
their certain rules or certain things that you do, certain
things that you don't do, and a part of having

(01:25:17):
to let go of some of those things that is
a traumatic experience. Having to forego the entire understanding of
life that you've had for this new story that's being
told to you in front of your face, is that
is traumatic. A lot of people also can also be
coming from places where they've already had to suppress a

(01:25:38):
part of their experience and so coming back into a
place that's supposed to be all the bullshit that they
say about the United States, that people still are still
coming into a place where they have to pretend to be.

Speaker 4 (01:25:53):
To act white.

Speaker 3 (01:25:54):
Think about some of the experiences people that have even
on Ellis Island, where they'd be coming into emigrate, or
it's even people who were brought in as slaves, like
your name is can't pronounce that, so your new name.

Speaker 4 (01:26:08):
Is John Smith?

Speaker 3 (01:26:10):
John Smith. Yeah, the identity stripped immediately.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
When I'm talking to clients, most of the simulation trauma
they have had is within the first couple of years
that they've came to live in the United States. And
that's pretty common for anybody that I've worked with who
has who's an immigrant.

Speaker 3 (01:26:28):
Oh my father in law talks about that, even as
coming as an Italian that speaking Italian, they get picked
on and bully And I was in nineteen fifty. Things
have been a lot less welcoming and accepting in this

(01:26:48):
melting pot of a country than it is rumored to be.
So much much like the same story that they're being
told about Chicago. The people in Mississippi and the Delta
here are telling about Chicago and then smoking Stack who
go up there like, yeah, not so much. It's not
the not the same, It's not what you think. It's

(01:27:11):
still the same shit. And because it is immediate people
who come here they realize like, yeah, you want to
be successful here, be like here, And.

Speaker 4 (01:27:21):
Everybody's like, but and that's the only answer.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
Right, What is here mean? And especially at this time,
would mean whatever the white man says that means. It's
a powerful stripping of individual identity in seeing that happen
to people and knowing the depths of damage that can
cause is heartbreaking.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Yeah, I don't really have anything to add. I think
the only thing, well, I guess I do as something mad.
The only thing I would add as well, kind of
jumping off of what you're saying, Hannah too, is that
when we work with people that are dealing with oppressive
systems around them, that we have to be consciousness therapists

(01:28:09):
about what.

Speaker 4 (01:28:09):
We are encouraging, what we are bringing up.

Speaker 1 (01:28:13):
Like I used to work with kids who were from
scrappier parts of Dayton, Ohio, where they were already getting
involved in gang violence and getting arrested and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (01:28:28):
As young as like nine, ten eleven years old.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
And so if I came in and I was like,
we just need to work on deep breathing, and we
just need to work you know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (01:28:37):
Like that is me.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
Being very ignorant of the level I'm basically shoving those
kids into the narrative I know about life and about
being a kid, and I'm making a lot of assumptions
about their control over their mental wellness that is deeply
in fair to them, and then it can create its

(01:29:01):
own narrative.

Speaker 4 (01:29:03):
Well can go one of two directions.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
One is they can just be like, oh, therapist isn't
for me because therapists don't get it, and then just
you know, throw the talent on therapy period, which I
would totally understand even though that would you know, I'd
feel sad for them about it. And then two, it
can also create this discouraging narrative of like you should

(01:29:25):
be able to just do these things I'm teaching you
to do and get your shit together. And something I
would always tell adults when I would work with the
families of these kids is you cannot ask me to
ask a child to be better behaved, more mature, more
in control, more regulated than the adults in their life.
So if they're still in an environment that is unsafe,

(01:29:47):
if there's still in an environment where there is like
violence is a language at home.

Speaker 4 (01:29:53):
As I said.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):
Earlier, I can't ask kids to rise above that. And
I can't. It's just like such an unfair thing to do.
And I'm not treating the problem like we are parts
of community. We are part of systems, like you were saying, Hannah.
And to do this work well and competently and compassionately,

(01:30:14):
you have to be aware of the systemic influence of
everything and that it's not just this whole like bootstraps
shit of like you just got to pick yourself up
and you just have to be good, and you have
to do all your breathing.

Speaker 4 (01:30:26):
You can debreathe until the fucking cows come home.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
If that's if you still feel unsafe in your home,
if everyone around you is dysregulated or the system is disregulated,
it doesn't matter how many good skills you have, especially
if you are a child. So I think that's just
also part of that if you're gonna work with kids
and teenagers, is being very aware of, honestly, like the

(01:30:51):
limitations a lot of times of a kid's progress if
you can't get the system around them and check either
by working with their family or by getting them resources,
or by yeah, supporting the community. A lot of times
the community is to be supported. It's not as simple
as like we just need counselors to get in there
and just mix it up. So that's all I want

(01:31:11):
to say in terms of treatment. So we will take
our last break here and be back with final thoughts.
You go first, Ben, since this was your first watch
of this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:31:21):
This was my first watch of this movie, and I
feel like I'm really glad that I watched it. I
wanted to watch it the second I saw the trailer,
I was like, I'm in I just, you know, have
small children and getting to watch things in a reasonable
time frame is sometimes challenging for me. But I'm glad
that we did it because I think this movie has

(01:31:44):
told a fantastic story of a story of a story.
I think it just is such a complex visual and
sonic feast that it communicates multiple layers in ways of
the experience of an entire group of people in a
way that is both beautiful and heartbreaking altogether. And I

(01:32:08):
think the way they used music and imagery to kind
of tie in that this isn't a new story and
it's not an old story. It's an ongoing war with
cultural appropriation of misunderstanding, a war of oppression, and people

(01:32:30):
struggling to find a way against it. And it happens
to multiple cultures. Despite this being like obviously a black story,
black director, black cast which important that it is and
important that that now has a much cleaner accepted path
to success and widestream distribution than ever before. And I

(01:32:54):
love that, But I also love that they managed to
work in it is not just that culture that this
happens all over the place. It's a human condition and
it's damaging. I love this movie. I think it was exquisite.
I hope that it wins some Academy Awards. I think

(01:33:15):
it probably will. And I also loved all the Chicago
references that they just kept working into it. Chicago's just
all over this Mississippi film, which makes sense. You got
Pullman cars, you got Sammy looking like Robert Johnson. It
just reference after reference to Chicago. Clearly there's some love
to that connection, which was, of course so historically important.

(01:33:39):
So I think this is a phenomenal film and people
should watch it over and over again.

Speaker 4 (01:33:44):
I've seen this movie a lot of times. I've probably
seen this movie maybe like.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
Maybe like ten times at least, and every time I
watch it, I feel like I get something a little
bit different out of it, and so I really enjoy
this movie. I think this is a really important film.
I think the more that I learned about Ryan Coogler
and why he wanted to make this film, A part
of it is was his relationship with his cousins. A

(01:34:10):
part of it is the relationship with his uncle, who
was a world War two VET. This has such rich
history in it any way that you look at it,
and I think it is that it shows a lot
of really meaningful moments that I don't think we get
to see in cinema in lots of different ways with
an all black cast. It's just the joy, the sensuality,

(01:34:33):
the connection, all of these different aspects that we don't
get to see in films because they're not Black people
are not represented in our society in that way very often,
and so I think, no matter what, you should see
this film just to kind of have the experience, even
just to see the two scenes that we talked about,
which is the one with Slim in the car and

(01:34:54):
the one with Sammy when he is tapped into his
great storytelling and brings in all of these different ancestors
and even future descendants. That scene is worth is worth
watching the film.

Speaker 4 (01:35:10):
So yeah, So I really love this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
My girlfriend has the DVD and has all this extra
information on it that I'm really excited to watch and
find out. There's a lot of other really fun and
really beautiful scenes she said, that were cut from the film.

Speaker 4 (01:35:29):
So yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
Also, I'm recognizing the irony of a white person yelling
give it to me to Hannah about these movie apologies.
I'm working on guys, I'm working on it. I miss DVD.

Speaker 3 (01:35:45):
I missed you Were the worst thing since Elvis.

Speaker 1 (01:35:47):
I miss a DVD commentary so bad, y'all. I used
to be up in them DVD commentaries when I was
in high school and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:35:56):
To the surprise of no, when.

Speaker 1 (01:35:58):
I missed the DVD commentary, I got an audio selection
on streaming.

Speaker 4 (01:36:03):
If that's how we have to live now.

Speaker 3 (01:36:05):
They are on there for okay, several of them. They're
in the extras. It still exists. You can watch it,
I promise.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
So my final thoughts, I'm repeating what has already been spoken.
I saw this twice in theaters. I probably would have
sault a white of view. If theaters weren't so fucking
expensive to see a movie in a theater, I probably
would asault once a week. I have watched it probably, yeah,
I've probably seen it a total of ten times in
terms of like watching it at home or watching even

(01:36:31):
like watching people react to the movie on YouTube because
I'm one of those dorks.

Speaker 4 (01:36:36):
But also in preparation for.

Speaker 1 (01:36:39):
This recording today, I watch some of those and watching
also like the discourse that came out of it. It
was really interesting to observe the conversations that black people
are having on like TikTok about how religion is shown
in this movie. And I think that's something I appreciated
because it could have been a very cut and dry
thing to just have of Sammy in the end of

(01:37:02):
the movie, just like choose the Church. And so I
really appreciate that this that Ryan Coogler is challenging, these
ideas of rigidity of all or nothing, or this idea
that the church will save you.

Speaker 4 (01:37:16):
And it's really made a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
People bristle, actually, and I love art that challenges us
to think in that way. Also, one thing I want
to say that no one has said yet is how
fucking horny this movie is. I love how sexy this
movie is. Yes, I am a rom com book reader.
I'm like, I have a T shirt that I was
wearing like two days ago that was a girl reading

(01:37:38):
a book that said smut on it. Okay, So when
I saw this movie and it was so horny, I
was like, thank you, this movie is for me. And
so I appreciate how horny this movie is and how
sensual the movie is I would say, more horny, but sensual,
and like you were saying, Hannah, that it's a movie
with mostly a black cast being very sexy. The actress

(01:38:03):
whose name I can't think of right now, who plays Michael,
who plays I was gonna say Michael George's love interest.

Speaker 4 (01:38:07):
There's two of him in this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
Smoke's love interest is the most beautiful person on planet
fucking Earth. I know she's one of your crushes, Hannah,
and has been since like Lovecraft Country, which is you know,
unfortunately that showed us have Jonathan Major's in it. So
but anyway, and so I love this movie, and I
love what Ryan Cooler has said about how he made
this movie horny because he wanted to challenge this idea

(01:38:31):
that our grandparents and great grandparents try to sell us,
which is that they were all like little good girls
and boys back in the day. And he was like, no,
I wanted to show that they were also horny little
freaks dancing and spitting each other's mouths and fucking and
all this other stuff, and that they're not as like
you know this all this like self righteous stuff that
they try to impose upon the younger generations, like we

(01:38:54):
are the same we've always been. And so I really
like that sentiment. And like I said, but I really
like what this movie taught someone like me. I grew
up in southern Ohio, where I got a very general
education about the black experience. If I even said, probably
you know, during Black History Month, I learned a thing

(01:39:14):
or two, but that's about it. So I really appreciate
movies like this in that they expand my mind as
like a white person, like I said, learning about like plantation, money,
getting a better idea of like sharecropping, even just this
idea of like being connected to the ancestors and stuff
like that, and like the root work that you see
ani Ani do and how that's connected to like one

(01:39:38):
of the articles quotes the religious consultant that they use
for that. And so I really appreciate how full the
world is of this movie and how beautiful it is.
And the music's fucking beautiful, and this minotography is beautiful,
the way he keeps changing the ratio on the screen,
and then how when they're talking about more like I guess, mystical,

(01:39:59):
spiritual a and sexual stuff, they the screen will get
kind of fuzzy around their faces, like out of focus,
Like it's a very creative movie if nothing else, and
I hope it wins a shit ton. It better be
nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and Best Screenplay
and I want Michael Bijorn to be nominated twice. Thank you,
that is for your consideration the Academy. Well, on that note,

(01:40:23):
we will wrap up here. I hope everyone can have
a safe Halloween during these times. And you know, if
you would like to message us and let us know
what you're dressing up as for Halloween, I would love it.
I'm very curious how many people are gonna dress up
as characters in this movie. When we were at Fan
Expo this year, we did see people dressed up as
I think Mary and Remick because they were white people.

(01:40:44):
So like, what's one of the few coustume options from
this movie? And yeah, So if you want to reach
out to us, you can find us on every social
media platform at Popcorn Psychology. You can always email us
at popcorn Psychology, gmail dot com. If you have any
disposable income and you're feeling generous, you can be a
Patreon patron. If you are a fifty dollars or more patron,

(01:41:06):
you can pick the subject of an episode, and if
you would like to sponsor us free of cost, you
can always leave us a rating and review where we
listen to podcasts. It is the best and freest way
for people to find us, and we really appreciate it
and we read all reviews. So stay safe out there
and have a good happy Halloween.

Speaker 3 (01:41:26):
It's fuddy

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