Starship Troopers: Adolescent Development & Propaganda

By fan request, we are diving into the 1997 cult classic, Starship Troopers! We break down how adolescent development is demonstrated with the main characters. We also explore the power of propaganda as this movie is a satirical look on facism and the propaganda that serves it. Buckle up and look out for bugs!!

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Episode Transcript

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

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

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're all licensed clinical
professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice out of Chicago.
Even though we are licensed mental health professionals, this podcast
is purely for entertainment purposes and to fulfill our love
of dissecting pop culture and all forms.

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

Speaker 1 (00:44):
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome to Popcorn Psychology. In this season eight episode, we
are going to be covering a fan request one we
have gotten many many times. I think I counted eighteen
requests for this film over the time we've been doing
this podcast, and took us a little while to get here.
But we'll be covering the nineteen ninety seven classic cult

(01:10):
film Starship Troopers. The reason we've been asked to do
this film is because it is a satire. It is
a strong satire of a militaristic fascist culture that controls
the narrative its public sees the messaging people get and
the identity formation that they have, and how that propels

(01:33):
them into their own demise, sometimes without yet having the
opportunity to be aware of what they are signing up for.
In the plot of this film, we meet a group
of kids in Buenos Aires for just the whitest of

(01:54):
the white kids.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
When that was a plot twist to me, Oh I
found out there from Bartos earras, I went sh what
it's in my notes actually with exclamation point dire from Bernos.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Eras, Yeah, they don't look remotely South American.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
No, I also don't look remotely like teenagers. So we
just have a lot of a lot of things, a
lot of a few things slide.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, like most nineties movies, you know, teenagers being twenty
five to thirty two, somewhere in that range seemed consistent,
but it's definitely present in this movie. One character looks
feasibly nineteen. Another couple teenagers look feasibly thirty five.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
I mean, Dizzy looks like she's pulling like a Josie Rosie,
like she's trying to go undercover as an adult reporter
into a high school situation.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, and Sander looks like he's an undercover recruiter. Yeah,
and maybe he was because he's a flight instructor. And
they left for the academy at the same time Carmen
and Xanders.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
We start getting into the timeline of this movie. Oh
things take all night.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, we will be, which is part of why I
think people ask us to it. There is more to
it than meets the eye. But also they was this
the best delivery of this style movie ever done? No?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
So. In Starship Troopers, as I established, we start off,
I actually start off with the flashback, right. This movie
is shot with a lot of propaganda scenes that show
us a little propaganda film snippets if we're watching through
their hollow net, as they I think they call it.
Oh okay, So there's a lot of things that are

(03:51):
showing us as if we're seeing a newscast on our
little tablets. And it starts with if a year ahead.
Oh where the rest of movie picks up where we
see a war reporter commenting on like, look, we're gonna
come kick these bugs asses and they attacked us, and
now we're gonna go get them, and that is most

(04:13):
certainly not how that goes. And they make that clear
right away, like, oh, it's fine, we're gonna come kick
there as this dude gets literally ripped in half on
live TV.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
He gets bugs apped.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
So we see a war scene at the beginning through
the Hollnett propaganda arm of the government, and then we
flash back to where our characters started in high school.
We see the characters kind of walked through the last
days of high school, kind of tying in the relevance
of what they've been through and also what they're walking into,
where we see the stark contrast between the world the

(04:45):
adults are presenting them and the world the teenagers have synthesized,
which are starkly different.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, the adolescent perception filter that's on their brain, so
that when they stimuli, it goes through that filter before
it actually hits the messaging of their brain.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yes, And we see how strong that is is these grizzled,
damaged guard amputee veterans that are teaching them or telling
them how seriously they need to take themselves and their
everything they're getting into, and they just clearly ignore that information. Blake,
Everything's gonna be awesome. By the way, are you going

(05:26):
to the dance tonight before you go to the academy
to join the military forever? Well?

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah. Like the tone that's set in the very beginning
of this movie is that everything is pretty from their perspective.
From the teenager's mind, everything is pretty low risk, high
reward is how I would put it. Yep, absolutely, which
is very teenagery. As someone who has worked with a
lot of teenagers. I was actually a therapist in an
adalyst in program for a while. Something that can be

(05:55):
very frustrating about teenagers when you're no longer a teenager
is ugh, I don't This is not going to be
a nice way to say, but like the limitations of
their perspective in how they don't think they have any
limitations on their perspective.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
So those two things conflicting with each other makes the
soup that is some of what we see in this movie.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Correct. So the movie goes to great care to establish
that right off the bat, and it explains the society
a little bit to it that in this world, the
military veterans stopped the quote social scientists and politicians from

(06:38):
running society. Into the ground, and what we have now
is a thousand years later where this militaristic society has
thrived in peace quote unquote through strength, and that they
have created this world that is one earth as one

(07:02):
federation and everybody's a citizen of it. So everyone has
just got to get on board and comply because there's
one way. That's it, the end, one way, and it works,
so deal with it. Is pretty much the introduction we get,
and then we see the kids start to follow that
and they all join up, join the military, go to

(07:23):
boot camp or to officers school for a couple of them.
One's going to be a pilot, one's going to be
military intelligence, one's gonna be boots on the ground infantry.
And we see how all of this goes from this
peacetime idea of I'm gonna see the world for two years,
I'm gonna do cool stuff.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
To that oath that they gave in the beginning was
two years to never correct or two forever I did
catch that part, or.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
So long as may be required.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, which means that the military owns your ass until
they decide that they're done with you, which is probably
your death. In how this movie goes and or losing
enough limbs that you're no longer able to carry out
the job that they've asked you to do.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
The movie lays it right out there for the characters,
but they just can't see it, which isn't done like
real life, and why we're going to do this movie.
But also looking at how this plot develops, we see
them start to find success in this new life because
as they've joined the military and bad things start to happen,

(08:33):
and they start to get exposed to how real and
dangerous real life is outside of high school sports and
talking and studying, that bad things can happen and will
happen to you and you've got to survive them. Our
main character, Johnny Rico, who in the books is a
Filipino man, and this is played by Casper Van Deen,

(08:58):
the whiteous man there's ever been a white man truly,
Johnny Rico and his girlfriend and at this start Carmen
what's her last.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Name Ibanez or something Ibanez, famously ethnic Denise Richards, Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yep, from Downers Grove, Illinois, Yes, just in the Chicago suburbs.
Denise Richards, Yes, the most whitewashed cast of main characters
with ethnic names because nineties, they start realizing that these
identities they formed as kids and the things that they

(09:39):
were thinking the world would be is not. Because as
one of Johnny's teammates get killed in a training accident
under his first command, yeah, he's punished, and then he quits,
he's going to leave, He's going to leave the military.
And then he watches on the screen as an asteroid

(10:01):
attack from this bug species that they is, the antagonist
of the film has allegedly sent to Earth kills his parents,
their home and everything and everyone that they know. So
Johnny joins back up and off we go into war,

(10:21):
and whatever identities they were going to have, whatever alternative
paths for them existed, are now closed and they're at
wartimes military citizens now, and we watch as they developed
this and kind of abandon their old identities and then
form the new identities that keep the Federation going. Interspersed

(10:43):
throughout this film are these little videos of propaganda films
that help us understand the world and see that it's
a film that's making fun of itself and of fascism.
But I don't think the reception of this film indicated
that they nailed that point, because this movie unfortunately became

(11:06):
a cult classic because it was a very expensive not
I don't know if it was full flop, but it was.
It was a critical flop. It made some money with
ticket sales because it has a lot of blood and
gore and cgi that would have been cool in ninety
seven now is a little corny, but it really captured

(11:28):
the attention of you know, thirteen to sixteen year olds
who absolutely missed the point, kind of like you know,
Fight Club, for example.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Talked about as well we have.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
But it's become a cult classic because of how close
to some things that have started happening in our society
have repeated themselves as they have done throughout history and
any fascist societies where a singular voice starting to control
the narrative starts to change the way humans that live

(12:04):
in a society see themselves see their role in a
society and lose the ability to critically evaluate anything because
they don't have an alternative viewpoint that allows them the
opportunity to form an inner dialogue to challenge anything. So
as we talk about Starship Troopers today, we're going to

(12:27):
talk about adolescent development, the blief formation, and ecocentrism and
how Brittany kind of mentioned already that that creates a
bit of a filter. We're going to talk about propaganda
and how that controlled messaging sort of creates the blank
slates that these teenagers don't even realize that they become

(12:49):
to adopt the messaging that allows them to fit exactly
into where the powers that be want them to rather
than naturally develop identity against their experiences. And then, like usual,
we'll cover treatment and final thoughts. So before we launch
into any of that, we'll take a quick break and

(13:09):
we'll come back before we get started here on adolescent development.
Gonna go ahead and remind you guys please give us
a like and a review and check us out on
Patreon if you haven't already. And let's talk about adolescent development.
What do we see in this film that feels true
Universal Classic Eternal about seventeen year olds graduating high.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
School that they're thinking is very black and white. There's
really not any gray, which is really common for teenagers
in terms of where they are developmentally, which almost makes
the characters very too dimensional in some ways. But they
do a good job of showing the lack of awareness

(13:56):
of consequences of real life consequences.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Well they're super good at then, aren't they.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah. Yeah, that's something that they did a good job
of showing. And also that they are all you know,
they're also something else we know about teenagers is that they're,
you know, in the process of developing their identity and
they have a lot of ways to go. I mean,
our brains aren't completely done until twenty six, twenty seven,

(14:24):
twenty eight of how life is. And also having access
that's what's hard about teenagers. They don't have access to
awareness and consequences in a lot of different ways because
of where they are developmentally. Yeah. And part of that,
right is also the egocentricism of nothing bad can really

(14:45):
happen to me unless you're someone that's gone through trauma
or like lived some intense lifeest off, which I do
think is an interesting jexposition with that gratuitous shower scene later,
is that I think that the teenagers were we meet
in the beginning of the movie Johnny, Dizzy, Carl and Carmen,

(15:06):
that they seem to be like more sheltered, more able
to buy into the shininess, the shiniest version of the
messaging they get which is like, isn't this fancy and
impressive and you have to be really smart to do it,
And they're very caught up in like the hero aspect

(15:28):
of this world and the belief systems around it. Whereas,
did you see in like the shower scene, you hear
a lot more of the reasons why people join the
military in our world, which is to get access to
resources they wouldn't have otherwise. And so I thought that
was a good example of how the kids we meet

(15:48):
in the beginning, they also have the extra layer of
almost like sheltered protectiveness that makes them even less aware,
like you're saying, Hannah, of like the bigger picture of
the bigger world, and like nothing bad will happen to me,
even more than maybe even like the other people that
they joined up with, who have those stories of like

(16:10):
I couldn't go to Harvard unless you're in the military.
I don't know if I could have children unless you're
in the military. I don't know if I can have
the career I want unless you join the military. Whereas
even with like Johnny, it's just more just wanting to
do something that will look cool, make them feel impressive,

(16:32):
and give them an identity, which as much as like
an adolescent would probably like wrestle me to the ground
and like beat me to death about this, which I
would totally understand, is they're also doing that thing teenagers do,
which is like trying on different identities as well.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Absolutely, and we see them all.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
I mean they're getting sorted basically.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Of course they're getting sorted. They just don't know it. Yeah,
they are all getting sordid and ranked and put into
their skill sets. Like Carmen is clearly very good at math,
and we can just assume that physics engineering generals, you know,

(17:19):
STEM is Carmen's wheelhouse. Would they show us as she
got a ninety seven on her final, she knows she
wants to be a pilot. She wants to fly a
starship that's going to have possibly thousands of lives on
board it, and she wants to be piloting it. But

(17:39):
we also see that she has absolutely no awareness whatsoever
that the first time she's flying that chip, she brings
it within five meters of completely wiping out the space doc,
which you know, last I checked, if you put a
hole in something that has air in it in a
vac we have a big problem but you see, like

(18:03):
the lack of awareness, lack of consequences that if you
crash this ship, billions of dollars and people are going
to die. And she's just like, but I'm awesome and
everybody should see that. Like I don't have to back
the ship out of the dock all the way. If
I get this angle right, I can get it within

(18:24):
five meters and clear the thing because I've already calculated
the perfect angle. And it's a flex. It's a total flex,
which is annoying and why they you know, usually don't
let teenagers fly anything ever, But we see this over
and over again they show us in this film. It's

(18:46):
a great take, a great recognition. How many times are
these characters shown the consequences that they're really dealing with
and they see it zero percent.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Well, there are no beats in which they're staying with
what they're literally seeing and hearing. Like we talked about
like the oath that they take, they're just that goes
right over their heads in terms of like the fact
that they're swearing over the rest of their lives. Like
we already I think mentioned that right after that oath

(19:18):
they meet that guy who is the military who has
like no limbs left, maybe one hand. I don't know
if that was that a prosthetic, I can't remember, but
basically they.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Had one normal hand and one prosthetic okay, no legs okay,
and no legs.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
But it's also that thing teenagers do where they're like
that won't happen to me though, Like and which I
think I don't know. When Johnny's parents are trying to
impress upon him to not join the military and try
to bribe him to not join the military, they don't
do a great job of this, but like they're hitting
the same a similar wall, which is that like there

(19:54):
are certain there's if a teenager doesn't want to hear
what you are saying about something that they want to
be true, it's really really hard to get through that shield,
that like wall around their belief because I don't know
if it's because their identity is so fragile that they

(20:17):
will really like grab onto a really strong idea, whether
it is an ideology, whether it is a aspiration, whether
it is even like a esthetic trend, a band, you know,
a fandom of some sort, and they can be very
protective of that, yep, understandably so. And so then as

(20:40):
us as adults trying to like crack into that, they
don't want to hear it, they will just reject it.
And so it makes sense to me why they keep
encountering all this very blatant, contradictory information that should discourage them,
and they're not discouraged. They don't even hear it, just

(21:00):
getting high off their own supply and high off of
the messaging supply obviously, which I mean, how can you
not if you're being raised in a militant fascist government
where the military is so revered that they've created a
class system where people who have served the military get
to be citizens and everybody else is civilians. And the

(21:23):
idea that you can't even vote unless you've served military
time does exactly sound like a government that has come
from a total military takeover, like just the total idolization.
And so how could teenagers not gom onto that? And
I don't want to not vote. I don't want to
not vote. I don't want to be at a disadvantage.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
I don't want to be less than I don't want
my dreams to not come true because of my own choice.
Of course, I'm going to choose the thing.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yeah, And That's why the scene with Johnny's parents is
such like weak sauce in terms of their argument, Like
they barely argue with him. I wouldn't say that they
don't even don't really argue with him. They kind of
just like show like a mmmm and then try to
bribe him with vacation. And then they just kind of

(22:14):
like put their hands up. No, they cut him off them. Oh,
they do cut him off. You're right, they cut him off.
That was such a quick thing in the movie, but.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Many movies of this type, twelve more minutes of exposition
would have made a lot of points much clearer.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Or even just a bit more vim and vigor from
their parents. His parents during that scene, that dad was
like mixing a drink.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, and he was just kind of like what I mean,
But this was the satire of it. He thought his
rich status could win his kid over against the powers
of the fascist society. His dad's going like, but you're
going to Harvard and the movies are established, Donnie is
not the smartest kid.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, how to get into Harvard sports? That game place, No,
that's a legacy, probably leg Yeah, you're right, money, legacy,
Brittany money.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Even though he's a money.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Dumbass, which is why when everyone's mad about affirmative action,
you know how many people are legacies that get into
those schools. They didn't learn through merit assholes anyway.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
No, but they're the ones that set up the rule
that it's they're creating that to be the illusion that
it's fair, so that when they buy their way in
again and exclude the other people, that they can do
it with their money, then it's fair because they're the
ones telling you it was fair with using their eugenics

(23:40):
test to be the determining factor.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
But I think Johnny's parents are, which I think they
do do a lot in these kind of movies, Like
I'm thinking about Heathers even and Christian Slater's dad in
that movie, were this very like indifferent vibe that a
lot of parents can have too, Like parents in these
kind of movies, this whole thing of like we don't
really have to talk to our kids. We're just sort

(24:06):
of trying to like impress upon them our beliefs, and
then we're shocked when they don't feel connected to what
we feel connected to. Yeah, the way that adults will
just like project their viewpoint and their wisdom and their
belief system onto their children, assuming that they're following suit.
When I would bet money that Johnny's parents haven't been

(24:30):
paying that much attention to him and what he's actually
interested in, especially given how surprised they are at the
choice he makes. Yeah, because I feel like if they
were actually paying attention to him and actually talking to him,
that they would have a better sense of what he's
looking at. Yeah, and that I would hope that they
would do a better job of having conversations with him

(24:52):
earlier to make him think more critically about everything, Like
you have to teach your kids how to think critically. Yes,
there are some kids that will just be able to
think critically, the same way that some kids are just
naturally resilient and some kids aren't. But like the idea

(25:18):
that your kid will just be able to think as
critically as you as an adult, especially in this kind
of society where there is no encouragement to think there critically.
That's why I mean, I'm sure we'll talk about this
one of the propaganda, but how there's more and more
discussions about But there's very few spaces that young men
can encounter on the Internet that haven't been infiltrated by

(25:43):
really intense right wing not even right wing really just
like in Selly, toxic patriarchal, misogynistic shit, and that adults
parents aren't doing a good enough job of injecting enough
critical thing and media literacy into their kids as they're

(26:04):
consuming all this information, similar to this movie where these
kids are getting inundated obviously with propaganda because that is
the world they live in.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
And it's the way that Johnny's parents talk. It's like
they just assumed he would think more critically than he
does a boy who is famously not smart. No offense
to him, I guess.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
At least not in math. Johnny has plenty of skills,
but he's not an intellectual. Johnny has charisma, Johnny has
like physical skills. He's clearly good at art. But Johnny
is not a math person. We don't know anything. We
don't have any objective assessment other than his thirty five

(26:48):
percent score in math that Johnny is not.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
He doesn't strike me as much of a thinker because
I mean, he also does that thing that teenager. I mean,
he joins the military for a girl. Johnny's a doer,
and I would say probably dizzy kind of joins the
military for him.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
She did, There's no question she was. She was about
to be a pro athlete. I hadn't caught that comment.
I know the dialegue, but he had at the end
of the game Johnny or at the dance when she's
so thirsty for Johnny, she's asking or they're having a
little conversations. Johny's like, oh, are you gonna go and
play pro? For BA? She's a quarterback for the team

(27:29):
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
That sort doesn't make any sense. So she was.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
She's the quarterback, and she's clearly good enough to get
a pro contract, and so the expectation was that she
was going to do that. I think it was a
surprise to see her enlisting when she followed him to
the mobile infantry, And even though she's clearly a badass,
that wasn't the expected path for her. And all of

(27:57):
them are making all kinds of decisions for reasons because
they're so up their own worldviews, but that they can't
see the consequences of their actions, Like each one of
them has been given information that what you're about to
do is not what you think it is. And Carl

(28:19):
seems to think he's gonna go into research and development,
even though he's showing signs as being a psychic. And
Carmen is I think she's the only one who thinks like,
I'm just gonna be a pilot and everything's gonna be
great and it's gonna be fine, and I'm not gonna
like be in danger at all. And she's in danger
fucking immediately, absolutely and serious critical danger. And then it

(28:44):
becomes one of the characters that gets into the most danger,
barely survives with her life on the ground, not in
her spaceship. This movie has slapped each one of them
in the face with the realities that could face them,
and they just roundly reject him because they don't fit
their narrative. And that battle we see between the parents

(29:06):
and Johnny, yeah, the parents should have done a better
job of going like, this is the culture of our family,
This is the opportunities that exist to you, This is
what you can do, never mind what you hear elsewhere.
But Johnny is attaching to other things that are more
in that door mindset. He doesn't value things the same
way his parents do. He values what people like ratchact think.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
His teacher well, also, you can see that he feels
insecure about the math stuff. That's one of the beats
they do in the beginning. So I could also see
where he would feel insecure about going to Harvard because
it seems like he knows that he's not very smart
in that way, and so why would he in his mindset, like,

(29:54):
why would he embarrass himself, if you will, by going
somewhere like Harvard where he could go to the military
where he can be appreciated in all these ways that
I'm sure he's getting his ass kissed at school by
all these people, so that he wants to enlist. I mean,
that's the.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Point, right, And I said Johnny has Christma. That was
a lot. Johnny does not have chrisma.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
I mean, it's just like a good looking kid. It's
a good looking white boy.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, but he's he's pretty introverted. He's not real out
there with his personality. Ace kitten. Those guys have charisma,
they have energy. But Johnny doesn't say much. He just
kind of he's a doer. He wants to do things,
and he thinks, oh, well, infantry, they just do things

(30:42):
and this is what my teacher, they do it, and
I can do things. So when I'm giving the opportunity
to shine and told what to do. I do great,
So this is a good fit for me. But also
he's shown over and over again that oh, you joined
the mobile infantry that made me the man I am
today by a guy who has one functional limb left.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, but that's not gonna be Johnny's life.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
And never mind his teacher also has one arm.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
And then their other teacher seems like she's blind are blinded,
and she also seemed like she was a little worse
for wear.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
She's at least acid burned in the face, she had
dark glasses, eye blind. Maybe they don't specify, but you
can see she's scarred up. Yeah, And she's trying to
counter Carmen's intellectual safety of saying like, but aren't humans
the best because we created art and science and that thing.

(31:43):
I'm really good at math, and because I'm good at it,
like we must be the best. That's very teenagery and
very locked in her own belief system and identity formation.
I'm good at it, so therefore I can use that
to be good and that'll be good enough. Where that
teacher is saying, hey, dumbass, this species doesn't care that

(32:04):
you exist. They multiply at a rate that is vastly
like superior to ours. They have natural armor, they have
ways of killing you that you can't even possibly understand,
and they don't give a shit that you exist. They'll
kill you without thinking about it and reproduce. And they
have things that make them special too, so stop underestimating it.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, but they're doing that thing where they're trying to
like impress upon them the severe to the situation, right,
but also at the same time revering it so much. Yep,
that the reverence is drowning out the cautionary stuff, even
when the teachers are being outright with that. You should
be respecting this and you should be like scared of

(32:50):
it because they are stronger that us in some ways.
I mean, it's like kids with teenagers with fucking cars,
you know, Like adults try to impress upon them like
how danger as cars are and how unsafe the situations
can be with cars, and all teenagers think is, oh,
I got a fucking car, baby, Like I'm gonna go
drive my car around in freedom and looking cool. And one,

(33:16):
I mean the differences is like they're not spaceships and
stuff like in this movie or like bugs. But they
are doing that thing in this movie where they're trying
to I don't know that stupid thing adults to what
it's like they're trying to. Well, this is defically this
movie because the propaganda like trying to impress upon this
message to these kids, but all simultaneously they need them

(33:37):
to sign up, So how much can they actually impress
upon the scary bits? It goes against what they're asking
and needing to, but.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yet they're still doing it, which is where the satirical
component of it is, Like do you see what happened
to my arm? No, I'm not gonna talk about it,
but you're gonna clearly see that I'm missing an arm.
I'm gonna wag at you, and the whole time I'm
talking about how violence solves everything.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah. Well, also I think it's aid thing toohere. I'm
sure with these older like these professors, these teachers who
are veterans, is also that thing too where you have
to make meaning of something horrible that's happened to you.
So I'm sure they're also doing their own version of
trying to like create the meaning making within themselves of

(34:29):
like I am in this horrible position now where I
have lost limbs, I am acid burned in the face,
and I have to make myself okay with it. It's
like the pyramid scheme kind of thing, like I have
to really get like double down yeah on this situation,

(34:50):
because I can't live with the fact that like maybe
this was all for nothing or just all for like
this propaganda machine that I let this horrible thing, I
quote unquote let this horrible thing happened to me.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
But I'm a citizen now, so therefore I have to
be good enough because everything that I did is already
pre established to be worth it, and it can be
for you too. But they're slapped in the face just
over and over with these consequences. I think the last
even things I'll point out about it with is you're
seeing at boot camp. At the boot camp scenes, ZIM,

(35:24):
the sergeant tells them immediately, several of you will not
survive long enough to be mobile infantry. What are they told? Immediately?
Some of y'all are gonna die here?

Speaker 1 (35:43):
But then later that same character wants to be in
the mix of the violence so bad that he wants
to demote himself down to private so that he can
be one of those people that dies. I mean he doesn't.
He succeeds, and he can carried on the shoulders of
his comrades.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
But he's an adult, he knows.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
But I mean that's where he's also caught yep in
the machine too. I will say, though, just for a
little just to be nice or to the you know,
making fun of how they join the military because their
crushes joined the military. I mean, the amount of times
teenagers will pick what college they go to and or
not go to based on who they're dating in high school,

(36:29):
that is an unfortunate, brutal truth. And that is something
where I could definitely see in this movie kids joining
the military because they're following who they like, the same
way that kids do that now with school or not
going to school, which is horrible because and that's one
of those things that's so maddening also as an adult,

(36:51):
because you're like, oh, you can't. You cannot tell a
teenager that they're not gonna end up with the person
they're dating. They will not hear you, and they will
not believe you.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Because their parents have been telling their love story their
whole life.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
I don't even know if that part matters, does well?
I think like it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
They found their person and they were sure and they
were right and they knew and every love story they've
ever seen, every rom com, it does matter because they
can't critically see outside of it.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
I guess what I was more saying is I don't
think it matters whether your parents are divorced or not.
I feel like teenagers can get sucked into the trap
of like, my first love is my only love, no
matter what they observed with.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Their parents, because it can happen that someone's first love
is their only love because they've seen someone's story play
that out and they can't see the reasons why that
won't be mine. Dizzy is shown over and over and over,
no matter how badly she is thirsting for Johnny, Johnny

(37:52):
is just not that into her. He tells her, point blank,
over and over again. Were friends.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
She dies a quote unquote fulfilled life because she got
to fuck that dude for under twenty minutes. She's my
pick for treatment, y'all. We'll talk about her later.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
But I think it's such a powerful way this movie
has of slapping them in the face with their consequences
over and over again, and like Ace going like but sir,
it's a nuke war. How can we possibly need knives
in nuke war? And anybody that's ever encountered a drill

(38:38):
stars and sees this and goes like fuck. Well.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Also that called very teenagery in terms of like I
am gonna move the goalpost because I feel insecure in
this moment. It doesn't even it doesn't. I can't deal
with the fact that I can't throw a knife. Well,
so I'm just gonna make about something else instead of
just sitting in the discomfort of I'm not good at
this thing yet that I've shown that I look stupid

(39:01):
doing in front of my peers, and I'm just going
to move through that and get better at that.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
And I also can't see the man with the microphone
rule which you never can beat the person with the microphone.
You can't ever win against the comedian on stage. You
can never beat the drill instructor. They've been trained to
be a drill instructor. They've been doing this for years.
They have canned responses, they understand, they've dealt with you before.

(39:29):
And if you used to come in there with that
energy going look but it doesn't even move, or that
I'm not good at this core thing that I have
to be good at because all these reasons that I
made up that they're true. Put your hand on that wall,
but you can't see that there's these traps in front

(39:49):
of you, and they just walk right into them. And
teenagers will do it over and over because they can't
see because of the egocentric thinking that bad things can
happen to me.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
And we should also point out that the reason why
we're so egocentric at that time in our life is
because it helps us take risks.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
It's the naivete we do need in order to go
out into the world, try stuff, not get embarrassed as
much as we get later on, not be as scared.
I think everyone knows the feeling of trying to do
something later on in life that you do when you
were younger and be like, why am I so much
more scared of like falling down or whatever? And that's
because at that time in our life, we're not supposed

(40:28):
to be aware of those things so that we will
do those things to grow yep.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
But later in life we're supposed to recognize and learn, oh,
I am in fact not made of rubber anymore like infants.
If I fall down because I jump a fence, I'm
gonna get hurt. Bodies change, But we're seeing these people.
It's the interesting crossover where they need to stop being
so willing to take risks because real life is starting

(40:57):
now and the protecting environment they used to be a
teenagers in emerging adults struggle mightily with that in this
age range of understanding. Oh, I was told partial truths well,
and that's well, and that's why, as I'm sure we'll
talk about more propaganda.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
At this age, you should be going somewhere like college
or a trade where you're in a contained environment where
your risks are only so risky, not going into the
fucking military before you're allowed to rent a car so
that you can do these things like the fucking flight
maneuver where we talked about earlier with Zinnie Richard's character,
where there are like real life consequences for you to

(41:35):
be a dumbass, because like that version is maybe something
she would do in a very very much smaller way,
maybe even like in a car. And then you get
a carcum where hopefully no one gets that hurt is
a very different dynamic than going up in a fucking
gigantic ship where you can hit another gigantic ship.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
Do we have anything else we want to say about
kind of how teenagers form their beliefs and why they're
particularly vulnerable to this time period in life where consequences
start to matter, but yet they're ill equipped to deal
with them.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
I don't know what do you guys think about this,
because when I think about teenagers, I think a lot
about about how much they want to be trusted. Oh,
that's a great point too, And I feel like a
part of a part of where they are developmentally is
that they want to be They want to be trusted
because they're they're gonna, you know, they're moving towards adulthood.

(42:31):
They want to be respected as adults. They want to
be respected. But then also they're not quite ready for
the potential consequences of some of the things they want
to be trusted for. They want to be trusted because
they know that they're going to have to start making
decisions on their own. Yeah, and so they want to
be trusted by the most important people in their life

(42:53):
so that they can can continue to make good decisions
quote unquote goodness vis.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
And be shown to those people that have been teaching
them that they are good enough. Yeah, and they're ready,
But the person teaching them knows, like we're sitting here
thinking about the dumb shit we did. Oh absolutely, the
second we drove far enough away from our parents to

(43:21):
be able to see how fucking loud we just turned
to music up, how fast we were driving, all the
things that we were totally not gonna do. I'm not
gonna have a bunch of friends in the car and
we're going to be distracted making jokes and listening to
music loud and doing dumb shit. What is the first
fucking thing you do when you get your license? All

(43:41):
those things, all of those things together at once one
thousand percent. Are we at all respecting that we're in
a death machine that is responsible for either the first
or second most deaths that are preventable.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Absolutely not, nop. We can take a break here.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
So the prop ganda that is the central mcguffin of
this film, right, that the presentation format of this film
is as a propaganda film, which is where the satire
really starts to come in. They tie these little info
videos of showing children joining the military, like I'm doing

(44:22):
my part, I can be a citizen, I can do it,
and then they show a kid and all the time
we're going I'm doing my.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Bar or like the kids wrestling over the future version
of like an ak Oh it's the battle rifle. Yeah yeah, yeah,
I want to shoot first.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Just handing out bullets like candy, like yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
The propaganda of those parts of the movie were very
like over like over, like super satirical, like really making
a point. Yeah, But like the things like the public execution,
I was like, oh, reality TV.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Well, they're also pointing out that if you don't follow
the rules, will not only punish you and kill you.
We'll do it on TV.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Six pm, right after the news.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
All channels, all times, or whatever they said. But basically
making like this is going to be the thing which
is critical for a fascist societies to instill the fear
that you will be punished if you fail.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, well, simultaneously doing a lot of desensitization around violence. Yeah,
I mean having public executions, attending public executions, being around
so much violence and like even being a round switch weaponry.
It also creates perfect little soldiers because they aren't put

(45:45):
off by this aggression and this violence. No, it's just
something else, like I think, then that's what they do
a lot in this movie, where I'm thinking of the
one specific scene where this happens a few times in
the movie, so I might be getting this confused. But
there's a lot of scenes where they're like fighting the bugs.
There's like a horrible action scene where all people die

(46:07):
and everyone's covered in like different colors, UK, right. I
think Casper van Diem's character Johnny like kills the one
bug and then he gets promoted and then he brings
Desion as his like second and they all hug him,
and I think ace and that was. There's so many
scenes like that where there's like this horrific violence where

(46:29):
people that they care about supposedly have died in front
of them. They're literally covered in viscera and blood and
guts and stuff, and then they very casually jump into
like hey, it's like this scene, the volleyball scene and
top gun. It's like they're just high fiving as if

(46:50):
there isn't like horrible a horrible landscape around them. They
like move really quickly to no big deal energy, which
I assume is because of how to sensitize. To sensitize,
They've been raised around like intense gore and violence and
just like horrificness.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Which I'm sure their world would argue is the reality,
which there is some argument for. But the way that
it's done in societies like this is exactly to your
point to create that desensitization that there is.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
No there's a trauma in this world.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Nope. I mean they show the cow getting ripped apart
by the bug of like, look how dangerous the bugs are.
But by the way, come join the military.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Just you know, you could be this cow if you
want it enough. Yeah, that's not what they say, but
that's like but that's like the translation of like how
you could interpret that because cow.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
But because of that filter, they can't see that. They
go like, wow, it sucks to be the cow. But
I could never be the cow because I'm going to
be in the mobile infantry doing my.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
Part and I'm not life stock.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Right. That's why they asked us to do this movie
because of those little juxtapositions of going like you are, sir,
in fact cattle to the machine and they will throw
you to the meat grinder just like this, and where
it gets super fucked up. You're sort of mixing a

(48:21):
couple points because when Johnny gets promoted to lieutenant is
after Ratshak dies, but Dizzey dies in the same scene.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
I'm not thinking about when Dizzy dies. I'm thinking about
when he gets promoted and he brings her on as
his second because she gets really like because she's so
in love with him.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Oh get when he gets promoted to the.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yeah, he's covered, he's covered in like green He's covered
in like green gunk, and she's covered a red gunk
and she's covered in green gunk. They're both covered in gunk.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. So there's one attack.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Right where there's a few scenes like that.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yeah, that's the one where he got his leg leg.
That's the first scene, the first battle, and we start
with where they take down that one big tanker bug.
He gets promoted to corporal after taking down on and
brings Dizzy on, right, and then they kind of squat
up her and Ace and uh Kitten, all four of them,

(49:17):
the four they went to boot camp together, have formed
their new bond, their new family, right Ace Kitten or
is he dead already? But Ace, Dizzy and h Johnny
Kitten dies in the first battle.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, And that's what I mean, Like they just like,
move right past it.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yep, they do. But then later Johnny gets promoted after
Ratchak dies and then Dizzy dies in the same scene.
But who promotes Johnny to Ratchak spot is Carl. Oh

(49:55):
it's when they go to that that Mormon out post,
which I thought was fucking hillar.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Oh, you need to watch it if you watched the Expanse. No,
the Expanse also has a Mormon at hearts to it
where they're also trying to it's.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Right, well, this is this is one where it went poorly.
But what happened was after they just watched their teacher
and they have to execute him because he got hurt again,
and they're like, you know what to do?

Speaker 1 (50:20):
Oh yeah he shot him in the face. Yeah that's
hard or whatever.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
And then so that would be huge trauma for Johnny
and Dizzy, and then Dizzy dies and does the whole
thing you're talking about. But Carl their other childhood friend
at that moment, in full on Nazi looking SS regalia.
I mean, it was not an accident. They chose with
those military uniforms. None of this is an accident. Yeah,

(50:46):
but when they land, it's their childhood friend telling them
after they know he's military intelligence or games and theory.
But as they land, he's the one telling them. We
knew this was a trap. We knew you landing here
was gonna go bad. We knew this officer that sent

(51:08):
that distress call was compromised, but we needed to prove
the existence of the big special brain bug that's to
our interests. And you guys were disposable. And Carl, who
had been seen as kind of a sensitive, emotionally competent kid,
is now here clearly being shown to have to disregard
his identity to take on his new one. And Johnny

(51:30):
has to let go of his attachment to his idol
like Lieutenant Ratjagg and now become him. But it's his
friend that has to go. I knew you guys were
probably going to die. That sucks to be you, But
this is for the greater good. That's fucked.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, I mean it's part of the whole bigger thing,
right of just like dehumanizing, desensitizing, like someone in Carl's position,
I'm sure is encouraged to think of people in Johnny's
position as like little game pieces on a board, like
he's playing risk, and that he can't see them all

(52:13):
as like unique individuals with full lives and full minds
and full family systems, that he knows he was shit
about them, that he knows.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yeah, but we see over and over how like you
said earlier, these they're being kind of sordid, right, And
they make it clear like, hey, you know what, Johnny
is special so long as Johnny can do, But once
Johnny can't do, he's not that special. Carmen is much
more special as long as she can fly. But Carl,

(52:46):
if you think you're psychic, maybe you are. They made
it quite clear that through those propaganda films, and Carl's
trying those same experiments on Johnny and telling his ferret
to go bug mom, I can't control humans yet. Yeah,
it was creepy, but you could see it in him,

(53:07):
and that that propaganda machine is reinforcing that in him,
that hey, you might be more special than everybody else.
And if you're that special, you fit into the specialist
kids club where you get to be better than everybody else.
And if you're that special, other people aren't really like

(53:29):
you anyway, so they don't really matter. And what does
Karl do with that identity? What does he become a Nazi?
He becomes detached.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
M Oh yeah, absolutely, he definitely shows he definitely has
a different way about him in that outfit. I feel
like he jumped into that identity.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
He sure did. And now that home's gone on, Yeah,
where's home?

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Well, it's your unit, it's your department, that is your home.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
And even we saw this foreshadowed when Carmen asks him
they're shipping off to their respective military training bases that
oh did you talk to Carl? Yeah, I did this morning,
but he couldn't tell me where he was going. He
didn't leave when everybody else left. But we see this
identity building being built into the messaging, and it's just

(54:32):
implied through the way we're seeing it that everyone is
being shown these things in the same way. Why is
that dangerous? Why does that become such a problem? Why
does that red pill people?

Speaker 1 (54:45):
What part of what you're asking.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
That singular viewpoint of bandwagoning information as if it's the
only correct way to see things. Why is that so dangerous?

Speaker 1 (54:59):
I mean, it's just it's dangerous because it creates a
rigidity in thinking that is not healthy, because you get
stuck in that identity as well. And then if that
identity is stripped from you, is jeopardized in some way.

(55:20):
You feel panicked. You're like a rat in a corner,
like you don't know how to be anyone else. You
don't think you can be anyone else in really extreme situations.
Like I would say, like in more in cell version
of this is that this is a This is an
avenue in which I can be accepted and I can
maybe feel love in a way that I don't think

(55:43):
I can or deserve to feel love and these other
parts of my life. So I need this. And so
this is the double downing that happens as well, because
you don't know that you can think differently and then
experience things differently, so you just get really wrapped up
in the ideology that you are buying into. And also

(56:06):
because a lot of like the red pill shit too,
and I'm sure the military and especially in this movie,
I mean, cults do this. They will continue to reinforce
what's bad about you quote unquote while also giving you
a lot of praise and accolades, so like you're really
really smart. No one else will appreciate you, but me, see,

(56:29):
we are your friends here. It's the way that like
in the insull community, if a guy will actually find
success with a woman, instead of the other men in
that group being like, oh man, you finally crack the code,
Like help us, brother, how do you get that thing
that we also desperately want and that literally defines us
as Instead, they will usually ostracize and reject the member

(56:55):
of the in cell community that is finding the success
that they quote unquote all want.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
And telling them they should be mean to himen and
whoever was nice to whoever chose to have a second.
Let's say it's a woman in this case, Well, he
he was nice to women, so he's bending the knees
a little bitch, and we shouldn't follow him, and like,
you should be mean to women. So they like, you
don't be like him, he's whipped now.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah, Or they'll even like viewd as a betrayal. Well
will like you've you've turned your back on our community,
where now we are over identifying with our celibacy, with
our rejection from women, and so it becomes this thing
where then you keep perpetuating that identity because it's all

(57:41):
that you have, or it's all you think you have
because of that rigidity. And like in this situation where
even though they barely touch upon it. All their families
and loved ones were born to fucking bits, so they
don't have anyone besides what they're currently doing. So like
where it's different than like a lot. I mean some

(58:02):
people that are been like quote unquote red pilled, they're
very isolated, and that similar to this movie in that way.
And I think where a lot of people get confused
about the red Pill in cul situation is that because
a lot of those people actually do have a world
around them that they are not necessarily choosing not to

(58:23):
engage in, but thinking that they can't. They don't have
the in choice to engage in, right, And this movie
is more literal in this way we're talking about, it's more.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Metaphorical, correct, And what I thought would have been a
better choice is at that moment where they start showing
the hollownot thing that just goes like war, right, They're
mobilizing everyone now of like, oh well see now all
that thing we told you would happen would happen, so
you have to do the violence thing now. So we
need everybody to be on board. But here's the singular viewpoint.

(58:54):
So look at it and understand that this is totally
what happened. Never mind it is feasibly an accident that
are one of our ships knocked that asteroid off course
or even.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Just yeah, just jumping to that conclusion period. Like I
really thought, as I was telling you guys before I
started recording, I really thought there was gonna be a
twist in this movie where they figure out that, like
the military government is actually the one doing all this
stuff and that the bugs are just uh patsy like
maybe even constructed by the government. Like I really thought
Neil Patrick Carson was gonna like have a twist where

(59:29):
he was like, actually, now that I know I'm in
games and theory, we've been making the bugs and they're
all robots.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Well, that may have been a better movie.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Do you think would played into the satire in the
propaganda of at all?

Speaker 2 (59:46):
No, and it wouldn't have held to the book where
bugs were definitely the bad guy like period. But book
is a different thing. We'll talk about that later. But
looking at that scene with war, did you guys catch
what they worked in there in that particularly since they
showed other places that got attacked by the bugs, did
you guys catch where one of them was that were

(01:00:08):
all destroyed. Remind me where was it that Johnny's parents
are trying to take him on vacation? Oh, the beach
to Segama Beach on Saturn, Right, what was destroyed? Segama Beach.
Had Johnny been there, no matter what he did, he
would have been dead. Whether he is in Buenos Aires

(01:00:29):
or Zegama Beach. Any choice he made other than the
mobile infantry would have been dead. Johnny, what do you
think that does to his identity formation? With this his
lock in to that viewpoint? Is he coming back?

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
I mean yeah. What comes to mind for me is
just like hopelessness, which I also think can be very
similar in the red pill community and cell community. Is
like a hopelessness about the future, kind of like an
acceptance that things will never get better, and the kind
of you're dead already.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
There it is, that's the last thing Johnny says. That's
the last line of dialogue he has, which is it's
what Ratchek was echoing. That was actually a real military
commander that said that. But that's the last thing Johnny says.
Come on, you apes, you want to live forever? Yeah,
And then we cut to the propaganda and they'll fight

(01:01:29):
and they'll win.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Yeah, And there's no discussion within both of this metaphorical
community we're talking about, well, this fictional community we're talking
about in the real community we're talking about that there
isn't enough space talking about like how also trauma and
other mental health stuff also leads to that hopeful hopelessness

(01:01:51):
and just encourages this idea that like the future is
not real or a positive future is not real. But
that part obviously is not touched upon in the movie.
Nor is it something I think I don't know. I
don't know if it's something that's becoming more of a conversation.
I think people are trying to have this conversation about
the in cell community, but they have to want to
hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
And what movie was it that starkly issued that exact
warning about that community and how dangerous they can become
when they rally around a particular leader or cause, because
it was the critical turning point plot in a movie
we did an episode on in The Batman, who was

(01:02:33):
Riddler rallying on the internet in cels sure was mm hmmm,
and exactly the ways you're talking about. They created a community,
a singular messaging extracted from their supports, isolated from their
supports and given support only from the singular viewpoint of
their community, because that's the only one that tells the

(01:02:55):
truth reflective of their experience. Now, this movie doesn't white
cover that angle. This covers two thousand years down the
road when that viewpoint has conquered, and it's bigger than that.
It's the rush limbaws, it's the abolition of the fairness doctrine.
And what happens, that's why people are partially asked us

(01:03:18):
to do this is looking at how does this parallel
our world? As a warning that if we allow this
to continue to exist, people's choices will start being taken
from them as they're thrust into a machine that operates
at levels they can't possibly understand until it's too late.
That's the social site of the propaganda of looking at

(01:03:40):
like the dangers of single side of meshing. How many
people grow up in the eighties believing Russians or the
bad guys everybody? How many people would have questioned that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
Nobody, nobody, why because this was the only story you
were given.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
How many Russians would have been given the opposite story
that the Americans are the.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
All of them? I mean, I think we're I think
in some ways we are gaining more awareness of that is,
you know, trying to have more awareness of how these
rigid messaging then perpetuates the problem, like what we would
consider the problem, which is that if you identify a
group of people as evil, then obviously they're going to

(01:04:24):
have a matching response, and then they will maybe potentially
become the version of that kind of person or that
kind of culture or that kind of community that then
matches the propaganda that we're selling. It's like we go

(01:04:45):
into the Middle East, for example, right, and we bomb
the shit out of them, and we decimate their communities
in a lot of way out of quote unquote, bringing
them democracy lull, and then they grow up, like kid
in that community grow up to see us as the villain,
understandably so because it was our bomb that blew up

(01:05:05):
their house. Yeah, and so then they you know, it's
that idea of like calling something the resistance versus the rebellion.
You know, that just depends on what side of the
fence you're on.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
Yep. Propaganda controls so much of what the public thinks.
This power of social psychology, it's so important that there
is discourse that people are taught to be able to
critically evaluate information, consider the source that it is from,
the validity of that source, the agenda of that source,

(01:05:40):
and whether or not that information should be taken as fact,
because details can be manipulated to prove a point and
go like, oh, well, look, this person that came from
another country is part of a gang, so that can happen,
so we should grid all of them. No, that's not

(01:06:03):
the way logic works. But yet even in our country,
we've been through that. Oh well, the Japanese attacked us,
so any Japanese citizens we should, you know, probably intern
them in our country. By the way, have you noticed
these super cool posters we did about what you could
do to join the military to go make sure Hitler

(01:06:23):
isn't putting people into camps.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Well, yeah, it's the idea that everyone thinks they're like
the hero of their story, and that we do to
do a better job of the nuanced thinking, the critical
thinking of what is the other perspective of what we're
doing and why we're doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
And that's about all I have on that. It's important
to consider because we even when we think about it,
how visceral of images do we have in the Holocaust?

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Pretty fucking in tense because.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
It was it was horrible. Yeah, how many visceral images
can you recall of Japanese citizens being interned in the
United States during the same time period.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
None. I mean, I didn't know about the Japanese in
tournament until I was in grad school.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
How that history was presented becomes propaganda in and of itself.
How many of our parents grew up watching John Wayne Westerns,
who is the bad guy the Native Americans? But in reality, oh,
the bad.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Guy was us white people. There's actually really good miniseries
I finished literally today called The English and it is
more of the flip perspective. It's a Western with Emily
Blunt and I think his name is Chase and I
can't think of his last name, unfortunately, but he's like

(01:07:52):
the other lead and he's an Indigenous American. And it
is more of that like full throated story right where
the English are considered the actually discusses the bad guys.
It's very good, but it's a very hard watch, y'all.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
I'm sure, and it should be because we should be
able to learn the truth as the truth. But to
Ratchet's point, the person who writes history is the one
who won the battles.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Yeah, which is why we have to be promoting This
is my treatment. We have to promoting media literacy now
more than ever correct about like what messages are we getting?
Why is it only one in which this group of
people look good, which is what we're talking about, the
Japanese versus Japanese tournament camps versus Holocaust concentration camps versus

(01:08:47):
even like the way we talk about slavery in this country,
which is one of those things makes America look good
as the good guys. And that's why we learn the
fuck out of that more than like centuries of before
we were like enslaving people.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Where we run into problems as human societies is the
more we dehumanize, the more we create a singular viewpoint
without critical evaluation, without listening to the viewpoints of other
sides of things, we start dehumanizing without critical evaluation, and
that enables bad things invariably throughout history, and we need

(01:09:28):
to not do that. We'll take a break there.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
Treatment, I would say, treatment. This isn't a character movie,
No it's not. So it's hard to treatment. If I
was going to pick someone to treatment with it would
be Dizzy. As I said earlier, because the amount of
times I thought to myself watching this movie and wrote
once in my notes stand up girl, stand up? Okay,

(01:09:55):
why are you letting yourself be dogged by him? So
what I would do with someone like Izzy or Dizzy, sorry,
someone like Dizzy is what we've been talking about, actually,
which is like build up her identity, build up what
she likes about herself, what she feels is good about herself,
and be more introspective about why Johnny or I don't know,

(01:10:18):
whatever Johnny means to her is so important to her.
And I do think a lot of teenagers, like teenagers
are capable of having those conversations. I have plenty of
teenage clients that I am really impressed by and that
we can have talks about, like can you can we
explore why that person's validation means so much to you?

(01:10:40):
Can we explore why you might not have like a
boundary internally in terms of like how much you'll put
up with by this one person? And so a lot
of times when I do this work specifically with like women,
like with female identifying like young girls, but it could
be with anyone is what is it that you're outsourcing

(01:11:03):
which changes do a lot, which is like what about
yourself or you trying to outsource? What are you trying
to compensate for? Why does this feel so important to win?
Whatever this is with this person? And I wonder with
her because she I don't know, I'd be very curious
to kind of explore with her. Does she feel insecure
about being an athlete? About being so good an athlete?
Like something that is historically maybe not in this movie,

(01:11:25):
but like considered more masculine, even though I was observing
how gender roles aren't as rigid in some ways in
this movie, and.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
I don't think beyond formal dress they really exist.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
Yeah, because of the way that there's a lot of
women in command as much as there are men. And
it still feels interesting because all the relationships are still
so heteronormative that it does make me curious, like why
Dizzy goes this way instead of going into something she
could be very successful in, that's a sport. Is there

(01:11:57):
something about that that is an appealing to her? Like
I think she would be really interesting to have more
conversations with and like I said, to be able to grow.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
So that's when I have these conversations with young people,
it's like the first time that they're realizing that they
can have a standard, that they can have like a
tipping point in which they will no longer put up
with something. And so it is possible if you come
out with curiosity and come at it more from like

(01:12:28):
self respect, because that's what bums me out about her,
is that for someone that's so successful in so many ways,
that she doesn't seem to be making choices as if
she cares about herself, and that even in her dying
fucking breath, she's like, I don't care if I die

(01:12:49):
because we got to smash once for less than twenty minutes,
and I know he's probably not good at it, agreed.
And so I think there's just so much there in
terms of how little she thinks of herself and how
little worth she thinks she has, which also is a
part of what we've been talking about, right, which is
also what maybe this propaganda gave to her more meaning

(01:13:10):
where maybe there wasn't any. So I think she'd be
really interesting to explore more with and I would do more, yeah,
like introspective talk therapy with her. So you had to
get a sense of Yeah, like internal world, and like
we were talking about, half her practice more flexible thinking,
have her maybe think about things that no one's ever
encouraged her to think about, which likes things like saying no,

(01:13:34):
which I wonder in their culture if they are encouraged
to say.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
No that much, I can't imagine so.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
And then how that can trickle down into these kind
of relationships where you let your self be treat like shit, Yeah,
you can.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):
Say no, but you'd be a citizen, a civilian, you mean, yeah,
you'd be a civilian and not a citizen. So you
can say no, but you know, if citizens are still
going to decide for you anyway, you can say no
if you want, but you won't matter.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
Yeah, So that's what I would want to do for treatment.
Pretty short and sweet, because like I said, no one's that,
you know, on purpose very deep in this movie, absolutely,
and so I'm also mind will also be brief, which
I'm sure no one is surprised about. I just wanted
to talk a little bit about the rigidity that we

(01:14:18):
see Johnny's parents have when they have those discussions about
him going to Harvard and expectations that his parents have
about him. Something that I wanted to share is when
you have a young person, when you have a teenager
who is trying to make a decision about something. I

(01:14:41):
don't know where I'm going with this. What did I
start off with? Supposed to be talking about the parents
and the rigidity of.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
The teens through their skull of their identity they formed
ten minutes ago, that is their whole life.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Yes, exactly, Yes, exactly? Is that I think parents a
lot of times come at a teenager with rigidity in
terms of only thinking of their expectations they have for
their child, instead of the possibility of your child having
different kinds of expectations. And so what I wish would
have happened, I wish that they would have been curious.

(01:15:19):
I wish that these parents would have been curious and
would have said, Wow, I've never heard you talk about
the military before. Tell me more about what makes you
feel connected to that, Open ended questions, open ended questions,
being curious and not and really trying to keep the

(01:15:39):
judgment that you feel out of your mouth because it
is not helpful. No, and you don't know what the
fuck you're talking about, And you don't and you might
make the things feel sexier that you're pushing against exactly exactly.
So that's something that I wish even and the teenagers

(01:16:02):
that I work with, that's something that I wish that
their families had more of, just curiosity about what where
they're coming from. Yeah, because something we want to help
our teenagers understand and things that will be helpful is
them making mistakes before they're eighteen. Well, and also asking
open ended questions helps kids think critically, Yes, because you're

(01:16:25):
asking them to think about themselves and their viewpoint and
to articulate it and be curious about it. So by
being curious with them, you're phoning curiosity within themselves, which
lets them think more critically. Absolutely. That's all I have
for treatment and lecturing is for the parents. Yeah, stop

(01:16:46):
lecturing because they're not listening. They've tuned you out and
they don't give a fly and fuck as soon as
you start into it because guess what, they know the
exact tone that you have when you're lecturing, and they
will zone out automatically. Sure will so be thoughtful and
ask open ended questions.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
So I'm gonna pick Johnny. I think Johnny is a
person who is likely in need of a great deal
of help. Maybe Johnny and Carmen are kind of equal
in that, because yeah, not changed my mind. I'm gonna
pick Carmen.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
Okay, all right?

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
In looking at people who most likely have to reframe
and reform their identities, Carmen was the least challenged throughout
most of the film. But she's the flying bird who
had her wings clipped and then her second boyfriend, Xander,
gets his skull smashed in.

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
His brain brain sucked out in front of her.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Which is probably what contributed this getting a hard r.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
Yeah. On all the boobies, yeah, also true, a lot
of boobies.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Those are PG. Thirteen boobies, but.

Speaker 1 (01:18:01):
Many pairs of boobs, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
I don't know what the boob line is for.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
Think you can see one pair of boobs for PG. Thirteen,
but once you're seeing like Baker's dozen.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
Yeah. Perhaps, But you know, I think it's you know,
the violence that tipped it, because the booby scene is
just this is one booby scene, maybe two, but that's it.
The violence is gratuitous. But looking at I actually think
Carmon is going to need it the most because Carmen's
exposure to trauma is different than Johnny's. Most of what

(01:18:33):
Johnny encounters he is learning to reckon with because this
is his survival. This is what he signed up to do.
This is his world. This is is getting physical with
things and directly dealing with it is his wheelhouse. This
is not hers. And the amount of things that she
encounters that would have caught her at a moment of
relative weakness and lack of power. And while she never

(01:18:59):
shows the single sign of being a pretty delicate flower,
she is a combat operative. She knows weapons, she is
ready to fight, and she does. She's not like, oh no,
come rescue me, that's not her jam. But she definitely
is exposed to lots of experiences that would have caught
her off guard, out of position, forced to improvise, forced

(01:19:23):
to dissociate and find skills that she's improvising through, rather
than well honed combat experience that Johnny, who has been
field promoted to an officer, would have and has formed
some comfort with. I know a lot of our listeners
probably don't understand military rank structure. Like looking at where
Johnny's journey goes. He goes from an enlisted private, which

(01:19:44):
is the bottom bottom bottom rank of the military to corporal,
which is a squad leader. You're in charge of five guys,
like that's it. To lieutenant you're in charge of forty guys,
or in this case, you know forty soldiers, maybe more.
But Johnny is then moving his way up and he's

(01:20:04):
having a rapid ascent finding success. Carmen's starting as an officer,
but she's a pilot. She stays in the ship, she
stays in the comfy corners. She's kind of doing this
thing away from stuff, like all bad stuff happens, but
we fly them there, we get them. She's like a
Navy ship fly or pilot, like she's not getting into
the direct shit most of the time. Then she does

(01:20:27):
and she watches something horrific happen. I think she's gonna
be the one that needs it, So I think her
having some space to process that trauma would be what
I'd want to target, because she's going to be expected
to get right back into that ship and keep flying.
But at some point the nightmares are going to start.
She's going to see that and hear that sound of

(01:20:51):
his skull being penetrated by that thing every time, and
it's gonna be bad, and she's gonna need help the process,
and there's to be very limited support. Should can be
told to rub dirt on it like, but that's service
and that's not how humans work. All right, let's take
a last quick break here. I'll come back for final thoughts.

(01:21:14):
Who's going first? Well?

Speaker 1 (01:21:16):
Do we want to end on a?

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
What note?

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Do we want to end on? Should you go? Last?

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
Man? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
Sure? And anywe first?

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
Hated it. I'll never see it again. I'll never watch
it again. I don't like any of their faces, I
don't like their acting. I think that this movie was
a fucking mess. The bugs. I don't like anything about
this movie. I found it difficult to understand if I

(01:21:47):
have to read a bunch of shit after the movie.
That makes me feel like you didn't do a good
enough job with the movie. So that's what I think
about it, you know. Paybacking on that, I also hated
this movie. I will never watch it again, mostly because
this movie is ugly. And what I mean by that
is every stylistic choice this movie makes is assaulting to

(01:22:11):
my eyes. How I came to this realization was when
I watched that weird game that they play the two
school colors aggressively ugly, Like the font is ugly. It's
like everyone's being filmed under fluluescent lighting the whole time.
It's like the film version of like a Kmart. So

(01:22:31):
I will never watch this movie again. Too many bug fights,
I got like, That's where I was a hard time
keep a track of things, and I would lose my
interest because once again we're finding bugs once again. I'm
watching this ship cly with this ship. Too much action that, yeah,
I just bored and ugly.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
Then, So for this Oscar nominated film ew for what effects?
Oh but didn't win You guys can rest easy. Good
But they were invited to the ceremony. Not good for them, Yeah,
but I mean they worked hard. It looks different now

(01:23:13):
than it did then. But I still have an affinity
for this film. I recognize its limitations and that you
know why it didn't crack into the mainstream I totally get.
But the cult status of it absolutely hit me and
all my friends. Everybody was a thirteen year old boy
when this came out. There's a special place in our

(01:23:34):
hearts for this. And as we discussed off Mike, there
some of those scenes with people being mobies out might
have had something to do with it. But also, you know,
in the nineties, the awesomeness of like, look at all
these fights, look at all these battle scenes. Well, we
would have all been victims of all the same propaganda, now,

(01:23:56):
wouldn't we that this movie was trying to point out
and we couldn't see it, didn't know. And I think
for that reason, I've appreciated this film from a different
angle than I did then, and the attachment I had
to it then is different than what I appreciate it
for now. But I also get that anybody that didn't

(01:24:17):
watch it then, or wouldn't have had as much exposure
to the military family life that I have, you know,
would have a totally different view. And that's cool. But
I enjoyed it, and I appreciate why people are asking
us for as because there's enough going on now of
singly viewpoint forming fascism and what it looks like at

(01:24:38):
late stage that it's scaring people, and so they wanted this,
so hopefully we delivered, and thank you all for listening.
So as always, guys, please like, share, subscribe, go ahead
and share a review of us. That is the single
best thing that you guys can do for us. Is

(01:25:00):
a positive review. If you don't like us, forget how
to do.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
I don't want to hear about it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
But if you do like us, please go ahead and
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Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
As always. You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and
threads a pop from Psychology. You can email us Atopropsychology
gmail dot com. That is the best way to get
hold of us if you would like a response, and
you know everybody likes stay out of trouble, and you know,
let's try to find them. Bugs Go bugs, You

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
Just a bugs