October 9, 2020 • 51 mins
Oh she's sweet but a psycho? The 'crazy psycho bitch girl' is a trope that makes up an entire genre of horror movies. Anney and Samantha wade through the history and examples of this trope, and why it's problematic.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stephan.
I never told your protection of I Heart Radio. I'm
gonna bix things up today, all right, all right, and
I'm not going to ask a question, or I could,
but it would be a very if we would be
(00:26):
having to act, because we actually already discussed this in depth.
But um, we recently learned Samantha and I both lovers
of horror movies. We love very different types of horror movies,
so today we're talking about a specific genre. Would you say,
what is your favorite genre of horror movies? So, I
guess it is a question after so I think my
(00:48):
favorite and I've told you those. I do love haunting
movies and possession movies, so things like Insidious is up
in my likes and uh, one of my favorite ones,
I guess I like. See, I just recently watched the
Paranormal Activity. Those are newer than those are newer to me.
So I watched the trilogy and I did not realize
(01:09):
they were all interconnected because I think I watched one
of the really newer ones that aren't. Yeah there's yeah, um,
so I like those. I do like the pop scars
and I'm like, oh, things are happening. What's happening? Kind
of unknown, but it's also kind of silly to me.
So I do love like the insidious. I do like
when John wu stuff. Typically he also expands to like
(01:31):
ten thousand different movies. But I don't love slasher movies.
That's probably one of my least favorites. And I do
love the psychological thrillers like The Strangers. That stuff breaks
me out, but I do love it. What about you? Yeah,
I definitely I love super natural horror movies, and I
love I mean, my my favorite hord movie all the time.
(01:54):
It's an extorcist, which I find interesting because I'm not
religious at all, but I think those trope like we
can all connect with those things. Um. And then I
I do like found footage, and I actually have a list.
I made a list during Quarantine when people ask me
like what movies should I watch? And I have this
list I've just been sending out and there's a section
on horror and I was looking through it. And I
(02:15):
apparently also like just weird, really strange, like time travel
horror movies or UM. I like trying to figure out
the puzzle of like oh, well, oh, how did this happen?
And when did this happen? And it might not even
make sense, and I just like it. Um Yeah, I
like I like a strange like a strange time travel
(02:38):
horror movie or just something really visually interesting. But I
haven't seen, um, but what we're talking about today, Like,
I haven't seen a lot of what you have, Samantha,
when it comes to psychological thrillers or what we're talking
about today, which is a whole trope that I didn't
even know existed. I was certainly like realized it was
(02:58):
a thing, I just didn't know how to nate to it, right.
I think when I discovered the name, I sent you
a text and you're like, oh God, Like we both
were like, this is the name of the trope when
knowing that it existed, but we didn't know what the
title was, right right? Um? So yeah. To keep up
with our love of Halloween in this month of October, uh,
(03:19):
we wanted to talk about the horror movie trope of
Psycho bitch Girl. Right, Psycho bitch Girl, crazy bitch Girl,
crazy woman, like any of those, but specifically Psycho bitch
Girl and m trigger warning. This is definitely just a
look at the trope and the stereotypes, and a lot
of the conversation is gonna be around dated movies that
(03:41):
have not aged well. So we'll go ahead and put
that as a big caveat a lot of this if
you look back on your like a holy crap, what
were they thinking. Um, we will mention, but don't get
into it too much about assault, death and mental health issues.
So I know you and I actually talked about that
fact that possible you don't watch any of these because
(04:01):
it is heavily reliant on those types of tropes and
those types of stereotypes, and it can be triggering for
a lot of people, especially I know when we talked
about and we'll talk a little more about revenge films,
it has to have some kind of big traumatic beginning
in order to like push the story forward. So it
kind of does that same thing and it's yeah, it
gets it gets in there. So we're gonna talk a
(04:22):
little bit about those movies. Just a heads up, yeah,
and also just a heads up, like as the trope's
name should tell you, a lot of this is offensive
and multiple ways, right right, Um, Yeah, but we're definitely
gonna talk about that more. But I want to go
ahead and say that, right, we'll get mad at us
for the title. We're not saying we approve of it.
It's just it isn't say as I say. Um. So,
(04:47):
if we look at movies like Fatal Attraction, Gone Girl,
or The Audition, there is a perpetual idea that women,
especially x is um are crazy. Of course, and again
like we know, I know it's uh not PC to
use that word, but this is like the drope um
and yeah, so yeah, I broke up with her because
they are crazy that sort of idea, um, And yeah,
(05:12):
we we see this all the time, and it's it's
upsetting how accepted it is, Like it's okay to say that.
So today people use that today and everybody just kind
of like, really, it's two thousand twenties and stop it. Yeah,
And it is very difficult to talk about the horror
genre without talking about thriller psychological genre or erotic thriller um,
(05:35):
which does include like soccer girl, over zealous fan girls,
and even overly obsessive mothers. So yeah, just brace yourself.
All of that's coming. Um. And we did. Hey, I'm
holding to some of our older traditions. Want to define
what some say, psychobitic giral means and according to one
(05:56):
Urban Dictionary definition, it is a woman who's horble. It's
not a type of I'm not mispronouncing that. Apparently this
means normal for wore behaviors. Again according to Urban Dictionary,
I was like, what, um, and this is an imbalanced
troublesome upbringing or a current brain chemistry renders her irrational,
angry and prone to acts of violence. For example, this dude,
(06:17):
I'm gonna say this, dude, because the way they wrote
it was very specific in this example of like throwing
my thirty screen HDTV through the window. I don't know
why that was the example, but apparently that is the
example of psycho bitch girl. Yeah, yeah, I and I
(06:43):
when I was thinking about this, I keep thinking about
and we're going to talk about this, but like how
a lot of times these movies don't get me wrong,
the woman in them is doing things, they violent things
or whatever, but the man still has usually done something
pretty badly as well. Um, but you know it's, oh,
(07:03):
she threw my TV out the window because she found
out I actually have a wife and I've been lying
to or whatever. You know, we sort of forget that
part um and also, and I want to revisit this
maybe towards the end. I would just keep in mind
as we're talking about these, like imagine the roles are flipped,
or imagine that the like man is the stalker. I
(07:24):
feel like that has such a different vibe. It's much
more threatening in a physical way as opposed to I
feel like with a lot of these we're talking about
today with women, it's much more threatening in a sexual
she's in balanced in way. And if you actually look
at and we will look at a deeper a majority
of these uh psycho bitch tropes, the anger is pointed
(07:46):
to another woman. Yeah. Again to remember, I was trying
to remember the Beyonce wasn't Yes, and we don't talk
about that movie, but that's definitely came up as a
of an example as well. Yes, yes, Um, So I
would just keep all those things in mind and we
(08:07):
go over some of these examples. All right, So the
first movie we wanted to talk about we've mentioned above
is Fatal Attraction. I feel like this is the iconic
standard when it comes to erotic thrillers. In psycho bit Stroke,
which by the way, every single article mentions Fatal attraction
that I looked at, probably again one of the best
known movies for this. In this ven film, we have
(08:29):
main character Dan Gallagher played by Michael Douglas, who was
inseveral of these types of movies, by the way, who
has an illicit affair with Alex Forrester played by Glenn Close.
So if you're like any and haven't seen this film,
a quick rundown, they have an affair. He pretty much
drops her. She starts doing things like stalking, taking up pregnancy,
(08:49):
boiling a rabbit, kidnapping, and trying to kill the wife
because all that she wants is to have a baby
with Dan, and of course the family que Asa based
music which Annie also doesn't No, Nope, I sang this
tour not too long agos, like you never heard this movie.
I mean the song you've never heard this song that
was very sad. So after trying to kill the wife,
(09:11):
she gets shot by the wife and everything is hunky door.
Though according to reports and interviews with Glenn Close, the
original intent was to show the callousness of dance, dismissal
of his mistress, and the breakdown of Alex's life in psychopathy,
but it later was dwindled down to showing how quote
crazy and over the top Alex was and made Dan
(09:31):
more of the victim. Yeah and yeah, I haven't seen
this movie. Um, I didn't know that his wife killed
and you're right, that is a very he didn't even
take responsibility and heavy quotes yeah, even their whole time
together at the very beginning. The premise of the movie
is that he understands it as a one nice stand.
(09:54):
She obviously understands it as a one night stand, but
she refused to let it go. Oh oh, that always
annoys me when it's like, it can't be that you
miscommunicated to might change her mind, and now she wants kids.
Oh my god, I've got to get out of here.
This is a little crazy bit. I want to sleep
(10:15):
with you, would leave you? I don't understand. Yeah, throwing
around that crazy bitch as just to dismiss that a
woman could have legitimate emotions or change her mind or
want something that you don't want and maybe mis misrepresented
all that to say, I don't think Glenn clubs. I
haven't seen this movie. I'm not justifying her actions. I'm
just saying it's interesting the way that comes up a
(10:38):
lot in non murderous situations. So back to another Uh,
we have been talking about Stephen Kigg a lot like
so Misery. We're talking about Misery, which I've never seen,
but I have read the book. Um, and this is
yeah Stephen King classic. Um. Apparently Stephen King proclaimed it
(10:59):
to be one of his face he adaptions of his
books for film, and right now it's the only one
to win an oscar thanks to the incredible performance by
Kathy Bates. So for a quick rundown of this one,
we have romance author Paul Sheldon played by James Khan
and Annie Wilkes played by Kathy Bates, a seemingly kind
(11:21):
nurse who finds Paul after a car accident which he
has broken his legs and dislocated his shoulders. She brings
him to her home under the guys that she is
a good Samaritan She's going to nurse him back to health.
She then proceeds to let him know that she is
his quote number one fan and due to her kindness,
he allows her to read the newest manuscript for his
(11:43):
popular series based on his character Misery Chastain. Unfortunately, though
for him, she hates the ending and all those bad
stuff ensue. And I know I've said this before, but
I feel like every Stephen King book is about Stephen King.
One way, this is a fear that he Well, he
said that when he wrote this, he got the inspiration
(12:05):
when he fell asleep on the plane and ILike, I
think he had been met by someone about how much
they liked the book or something, and he fell asleep
on the plane and this is his dream of what
had could have happened. Wow. Well, lucky for him it
didn't because bare you know A and he incapivates his character,
um demands a new book in which he brings misery
(12:25):
back to life. This is what fan fiction is for.
You can do it yourself. But anyway, we see the
overall levels she's willing to go to save her favorite character,
everything from drugging him, breaking his ankles, killing a police officer.
After complying and writing a new book, he tricks her
into a celebration where a violent struggle occurs and he
(12:47):
bashes her head in and makes an escape. Uh. This
movie does show a little struggle of the overall trauma
he has gone through with the postcene of him being
triggered UM. So that does add a bit of depth
to his care Arcter. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting.
I'm like he wanted to put this again kind of
like himself about Oh, you know, these are the traumas
(13:08):
that these people when they do this, when they go
beyond this, when they demand this, And it could be
this whole story of ownership once you give to your
the audience, who now owns this book or who now
owns this content? And that's a whole other conversation we've had.
But yes, of course this homely sweet nurse ends up
losing it and uh has to die for it in
the end. Well that's interesting too, because I was imagining
(13:31):
if if it's a female writer, a woman writer, and
a man tormentor, it just becomes it's less about breaking
gender norms, which is troubling in itself because like it's
still scary and it's still bad, but it doesn't feel
as like weird. And that's part of the reason what
our authors do this intentionally, I would imagine a lot
(13:54):
of the time is you don't suspect that an older
woman will do this kind nurse woman, which, yeah, it's
kind of troubling that I guess we've sort of held
up our hands and said, yeah, man can be aggressive
and that's not so out of the norm of reality.
But for women, they're crazy. They're crazy, bitch, and please
(14:17):
now keep saying this, but it's the whole again. Yes,
and we we are going to talk about that. And
another movie which I actually forgot about until I started researching,
This is the Hand that Rocks the Cradle Um, which
was released in n and plays on so many tropes
and had a lot of mixed reviews and one article
(14:40):
the critics stated this movie was a movie that asked
the audience quote not to think, but to react, which
the critics said was difficult even for the current time
frame in the nineties. So the plot, it all begins
with the main character, Claire Bartel, who was pregnant with
her second child, going to a new obstetrition where she's
molested by the doctor, Dr mott Um. After she reports
(15:00):
him to the police, several other women coming forward ledging
the same type of abuse. He then shoots himself rather
than getting arrested, leaving behind his wife, Mrs mott played
by Rebecca the Morning, who was pregnant at the time.
After losing everything due to the incident, Mrs Mott loses
the baby as well. She then proceeds to plan her
revenge against the main accuser, Claire bartell Um. At this
(15:24):
point she gets hired by Claire as a nanny under
a pseudonym of course. Uh. And when she then tries
to ruin Claire's family and her life of manipulating the
older daughter and turning her against her family, breastfeeding the
newborn causing it to imprint is that how they said it?
On her um, and trying to seduce a husband, which
doesn't work because you know he's a great guy, and
(15:45):
then by killing her best friend, who by the way
is Julianna Moore. Yeah. I was like, oh, they realized
she was in this movie, um because she was figuring
it out. So if you haven't already guessed it, yes,
dear Mrs Mott gets killed, um acts identally by the
wife who figures everything out, and that's the end of that,
and that's the end of the movie, and then the
(16:06):
family list happily ever after. So it just has this
like whole level like victim blaming, sexual assault, like this
whole fear of losing babies and having babies and taking families.
It's kind a lot in there and you kind of
like sit there and it's been a very long time
since I've seen it, but they have this whole like
plague of like these are the thanks you are trying
(16:27):
to be afraid of, and this is what happens to
motherhood and lots of things, and you need to be
careful what you say. It is a very weird kind
of mixed ideas, And like I said, there was a
lot of mixed reviews of like is this a good movie?
Is this a bead? What's happening? But Rebecca de Morny's
performance was actually amazing and very frightening. So she did
(16:50):
a good job on that one. Yeah, I haven't seen that,
but intriguing. Um, I haven't. Okay, we're about to talk
about what I haven't seen, but I feel like I've
seen and that is a single white feeding. Everybody feels
that way. Yes, So this one is a bit of
a flip um because it's more of an erotic thriller
with hom erotic overtones. So we have Hettie I'm gonna
(17:12):
go with Eddie played by Jennifer Jason Lee and Ali
played by Bridget Fonda. Um, and yes, there are a
lot of pop cultural references made in regards to this film,
so it's definitely worth talking about. UM. Here we see
a different take um As, where it's not just a
look at the fears women have and the herring tells
of marital transgression, but a possible cautionary tale of female
(17:35):
independence as well as sisterhood, or, as one article says,
also a story that has a lesbian phobic lair. And
I would definitely definitely agree with that, even not having
seen it. Um. I've seen clips of it, and I
remember when I was in college, I was telling Samantha, like,
I just have this really funny story where my one
(17:56):
of my best friends, um, because this was my first
year of college, right, and you're making a bunch of
new friends. And it so happened that she ended up
in a dorm where she I was best friends with
all of her roommates, and I ended up in a
dorm where she was best friend of all all my roommates.
And there was just sort of this tension. There was
(18:16):
this weird thing there because we both understood it, but
we never really talked about it. And we used to
joke about, like, don't single white female trying to replace me. Um.
But okay, back to the movie. Here we see a
very traumatized woman, Hetty, who's twin sister drowned at the
age of nine, um, coming into Ali's life, who, after
finding out her fiance had cheated on her and then
(18:38):
um being professionally and sexually taken advantage of by a
rich man, needed to find a new roommate. Single white
female enter Hetty, who slowly changes her physical appearance to
mimic Alley's as well as impersoning her at different locations
and overall trying to become her. We quickly see things
unravel and Hetty is trying to control and manipulate Ali
(19:02):
by hiding things from her as well as impersonating her,
which eventually leads to Hetty killing at several people and
trying to get Ali to take her own life as well. Um.
The boyfriend's death scene includes a stiletto. Yeah. This is
kind of I remember because it became an iconic thing
where people were like, oh my god, how do you
kill some more with that? Yeah, she uses stiletto to
(19:22):
kill the boyfriend. Of course. Um, if you're gonna wear stilettos,
we always make it a weapon. Um. After the death
of Hetty, we see a little more depth with Alie
sympathizing with Hetty and stating that part of Hetty, whose
real name we find out is Ellen, of her issues
that she had survivor's scale from death of a twin
(19:44):
which caused that type of trauma. And the more we talked,
like the more I researched it, the more I looked
at it, Yeah, there was this whole overall. This is
why this movie is very problematic. They love Cayman, but
really we're afraid of lesbians and here are these things
and is As have this whole thing, and we're gonna
talk about that a little deeper, the sexualization within these movies.
But it's interesting to get really into, like, yeah, what
(20:07):
I'm just wrong with people? Yeah, during this time period,
I feel like there was a lot and it still happens,
for sure, but I feel like there was a glut
of like lesbian phobic, biphobic messaging or I mean it's
still phobic, but like I can turn her like this
like chasing Amy type of thing, but definitely. And it
(20:27):
was a comedy as well as horror, So it's one
or the other that has made fun of or being
straight of and we're gonna talk about that a little more.
But it is interesting to know this is one of
those movies that they talk about. Um. And then another
movie which I don't think I've ever actually watched. I
just remember hearing a lot of it. You've actually seen
this one, huh, which is a Gone Girl. It's not
(20:49):
necessarily a horror, but it is a psychological thriller and
trying to like piece together what's happening. Um. But again,
I didn't want to mention it because this also reversed
the trope a little bit from wife being the victim
to wife being the mastermind and being a psycho bitch
character instead of the innocent that's just walking and watching
it or being victimized by the psycho bitch. For the plot,
(21:10):
we see the picture of perfect couple which comes crumbling
down as Amy played by Roseman Pike uh Pierce missing
and a case is open due to her disappearance and
possible death. All the while, Nick played by Ben Affleck,
is trying to prove his innocence as evidence starts to
mount against him and he's suspected of foul play. Here,
we see things unravel from flashbacks of the relationship to
(21:32):
his eventual cheating of course. Uh. And then we are
included in as Nick tries to get answers that Amy
has been plotting against him in order to punish him
for his misdis including framing him for her own murder
and accusing him of assault and abuse. It eventually falls
apart and she returns home, blaming an X for all
of the events. Also, they remained together as she is
(21:53):
artificially inseminated herself with nick sperm and is now pregnant
with his baby, and they remained together unhappily ever after.
Oh it is interesting because she yeah, she goes from
all she's the victim and we're trying to figure out
this mystery to know she did it because he was
(22:14):
a terrible husband essentially um. But it does show. It's
one of the few examples on here, I think where
it's like, you don't ever they're both almost equally guilty.
I know some people would be mad at me for
saying that, because clearly she did kill Um, but but
I mean that in terms of how we are the
viewer is like, it's not like they're like, look, Nick
(22:36):
is so perfect, and she's clearly crisy um. And then
in the end he's sort of complicit like that. It's
it's hard to describe, I guess, but um. This also
this movie is one of the funniest meetings I've ever
had in my life. Was when this just came out
and we were talking about um, because you know that
(23:01):
it was like you can see Ben Affleck's penis if
you positive at the right spot. And we were talking
about this and one of our coworkers, Matt, who some
of you might know from other podcasts we do but
is like the sweetest, literal, sweetest person I know. Um,
he was looking around at as kind of confusedly and
then he said, wait, are we talking about his dog
(23:21):
right now? Yep? Oh, it was so funny. And then
we had somebody on the phone and he like it
was like everybody shut up, and he was like, hey, hey,
Tyler on the phone, they're talking about Ben Affleck's dog. Yeah. Sorry.
But anyway, So here in this example we see the
(23:43):
Psycho Bitch Show being used as a payback revenge con
that makes the adulter pay not by the jilted lover
but by the angry wife. Um. There is a lot
of debate of whether or not. This character is another
stereotype of an angry bitch who lies about being assaulted
and manipulate lative and the poor husband is the victim.
Once again, this this also comes up. This was one
(24:05):
of the first times I heard cool girl because she
has a whole monologue about being the cool girl. Um,
it does seem to be portrayed differently in the book.
I read the book, but I can't recall um that anyway,
which you see the male character being a lot more
misogynistic than in the movie. I do think I did
like him better in the movie. But anyway, but her
(24:27):
overall callousness and evil does seem to ask her sympathy
um for the poor fool fore dope partrayed by bid Afflet.
I mean, he does seem to have that clueless face.
I do remember seeing the scenes and he just has
a clueless face the entirety of the movie. So that's
(24:50):
pretty much this whole role in that is just looking
confused and like realizing he's screwed. Um and yes, are
so any other examples, especially in the nineties. Maybe that's
why I know so much about them. This is my era,
and because it's just such a big theme at that point,
which includes Basic Instinct, which has that big seduction scene
(25:11):
we know of with Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas, and
of course the icicles. So I don't know if you've
bet well that's how she murdered people. It was an
ice pick. I think it was an ice pick. I
think I got that one. Okay. I was like, Icycle
would have been so much smarter. It just melts away
trying to remember that. Right y'all, listeners tell me, I'm
not gonna look this up up rather that you tell
(25:31):
me if you actually saw this movie. I can't quite remember.
There's the ice pick or an icicle. Um. And then
The Crush, which is a movie about a teenage crush
going wrong with Alicia Silverstone and Carrie Always Uh. Someone
had actually written a whole article about it and how
much they loved her character, just because they were talking
about how as a fourteen year old, how much do
(25:52):
you have to love and how much confidence do you
have in in yourself that you would just go after
people like that? And I was like, okay, okay, but
a kind of a turn um um. And man, just
seems women are wanting sex makes them crazy. That seems
like that's the theme here. If women want sex or
if women have sex, it makes them crazy according to
(26:15):
all these movies, and and of course we wanna talk
a little more about that. But yeah, definitely is this
theme that goes throughout and speaking of themes, we are
not done with this, oh no. But first we have
a quick break for a word from our sponsor and
(26:40):
we're back, Thank you sponsor. So yeah, well, we were researching.
Um we did find a few honorable mentions I guess
not uh necessarily the main characters who were seen as
the psychopathic girl or girlfriend. Um, so we wanted to
go over a handful of those, right, um, And honestly
this one talk to me and I wanted to talk
(27:01):
about it with you a little bit. But in Harry
Potter they actually they actually named Belitrick's Uh yeah, yes,
you could consider definitely a psychopath at evil. But because
it's fantasy, you know, like children's fantasy. On top of that,
I didn't see that as much is not what you
typically think. Um. Also, she wasn't anybody's partner necessarily, like
she was a doting like servant more than anything else.
(27:22):
What do you what do you think? Well, I'm assuming
that this all comes from the Cursed Child. What it
is spoiler alerts anybody who doesn't want to know. Yeah,
she is with Baltimore and Cursed Child, and she's like
so desperate to be with him and to serve him
(27:43):
and um give him whatever he wants. That she sires
his child, um, so that he can have an air
even though he was like, but doesn't he think he's
never gonna die? Um? I thought he was dead? He
is he there's flashbacks, there's like a whole time traffic
thing and most okay, all right, Yeah, so that would
make a lot more sense because I was like, what
(28:03):
she's not They did such a great job in the
movies and the books before. Yes, I'm very sad about
talking about this a little, you know, at tricks on
this one. Yes, this has been tainted for me, But
that to put them in such a not like it's
not sexual, Yeah that I didn't think of it that way,
I guess. Yeah. I mean there's certainly, and I might
(28:26):
be ruined by all of my reading a fan fiction,
but if all of my reading a fan fiction is correct,
and you all know I don't look for romance. A
lot of people did interpret her relationship as borderline, at
least borderline. I guess it's almost like worshiping someone so
much that if he had said we're together, she would
have been like, okay, you know what I mean. Anybody
(28:48):
would have said that, like anybody who serves them. They
would never said no if it was a man woman,
but she would have been proud of it. She would
have been honored. That's fair. She doesn't want to be
chosen by him and does stick to him. Um. And
I do remember the scene where you know, Molly calls
him calls her a bit so fair enough. Um. And
then another mention is a wedding crashers Amy Sich's character,
(29:10):
who is more the comedic take and to me seems
a little fit like fit into the pixie man a girl,
but definitely does fit the whole. What is that guy
getting in trouble genre movies where they have to have
that one girl who's stalking them, you know, and oh
my god, look at this crazy girl. So yeah, she
definitely was one of the big mentions. Well, that's an
(29:32):
interesting aspect of it too, is when you talk about
something like that which is more comedic, um, the idea
that there's almost an air of I am so attractive
or I'm so worth having and of course they have
almost groupies that you've got to have one following you around.
(29:53):
And it's funny like it's a marker of I don't know,
being a virile, attractive man. The women can't resist you, right, Um,
and then there's a girl interrupted Angelina Jolie. Oh. I
read that book, but it was a long time ago. Um.
I did a project on it in high school. Yeah,
(30:14):
and this whole thing and we're gonna come back and
talk about this a little bit more, I know, but um,
you can debate it was trivializing or romanticizing mental health needs,
and I think that's one of the reasons I chose it.
Like when you're in that sort of melancholy poetic art.
I'm not going to say everyone goes through the stage,
but a lot of people do. When you're in high
(30:35):
school and you're kind of being all sad and that
this I thought was like, oh, look how beautiful sadness
can be. Which I know it was very problematic and
I've I've grown listeners. Yeah, but that's the thing is
still get what it's what gets fed to us, and
believe what this is right right, Um, but yes, definitely
(30:59):
Angelie to Jolie's character, I could see fitting that trope.
And then Friday, um, which spoiler alert, Uh, the mom
is actually the serial killer in this one. And I
knew this before I even saw firteenth because it's the
question that trips up Drew Barrymore and Scream when the
(31:19):
the serial killer was asking her like, who's the killer
and she got the answer wrong because everyone assumes it's
Jason because the rest of the series it is, But
it's actually Jason's mom who wants revenge for these camp
counselors who were having sex and not watching her child,
and he drowned in crystallick Um, which by the way
(31:41):
is a portal to Hill and the FBI comes in
and sends Jason to space because obviously, uh, what I've
seen all of these now and about it. But anyway, Um,
this is also kind of a play on the always
blame the mother trope because um, she turned out to
(32:05):
be the serial killer. Usually you're blaming the mother for
this male sero killer's accents, but in this case, she
actually was the serial killer. And actually in Scream too,
the spoiler alert, the killer in that one. Billy Loomis's
mom from the first one. Billy Loomis from the first one.
Um she I'm pretty sure they purposefully cast one who
(32:25):
looks like the mother in Friday kind of pay homage
to that. Yeah, Scream definitely likes to do tongue in
cheek homages to other horror movies, which is fair. Which,
by the way, I watched Urban Legend talk about homages,
and the main guy who plays Freddie is in it too,
teaches Urban Legends and I forgot that. I'm like, oh
(32:45):
my god, I haven't seen Urban Legends and it's bad.
It's really bad. But I watched it again last night,
but I was just like, what is this? Um? Anyway,
Another comedy version of the Psycho Bits trope is My
Super Ex Girlfriend, which is not really a popular movie,
but I just remember thinking, what is this uh? And
here we have Uma Thurman being a superhero who is
(33:08):
heartbroken and becomes vengeful and, as it stays in one article,
becomes more neurotic as her relationship with Luke Wilson's character ends. Um.
And this one is supposed to be a comedy again,
like I said, and does have a flip at the
end where the women are the heroes making a difference
and you know, stopping crime while the male partners are
you know, sitting back holding their persons, waiting for them
(33:29):
to come back. So it does have that little flip
and then it's definitely tongue in cheek, but it starts
with what if your ex girlfriend who you see is
crazy and cleany, which is what they describe her as,
UM has superpowers, you know, And then it goes into
this so it's like, take take what you know is
already a bad trope and add a lot more power
(33:50):
and danger because she is so strong now, which could
be said like, yeah, that's what happens when we talk
about men having too much power and being a lot
more stronger than you. Maybe that's what it looks like.
I don't know, uh. And then we we did want
to mention carry, which we already talked about in her
episode on why are period so terrifying? UM? But I
(34:12):
want to add here both the mother and daughter we're
on the list for. We had kind of two different quotes,
two different types of quote. Psycho you got religious and tortured.
And I suppose while we're at it, we can mention
psycho m the mom and psycho who also well, I
guess she's not the serial she's not the serial killer.
He has a dual personality because of the abuse that
(34:33):
he'd suffered. But it's not right, that's right, it's not
about that. But if you want to talk about the
fear of women in sex, the main female character is
running away, I could believe because of an affair, and
so she kind of has to pay in the end
for her sexuality and guilt. And then one less one
we wanted to mention and we spoke about a little
(34:54):
bit earlier, is the audition, And oh my god, this
one haunts me. And I blame Annie and I for
not telling me what kind of movie this was. But yes,
it would play on the traumatized and victimized with unresolved
mental health issues that turns someone violent, interrrational, And yeah,
I was not expecting this, and it is a Japanese film.
(35:15):
It's a lot about torture, and I didn't he this
um and even the trauma was like, oh my god,
why So I wasn't ready because I don't love slasher films,
so I figure I already mentioned that I don't like
torture films. I hate it. I've never seen any of
the saw I don't I've never seen Hostile. I don't
like it. I think it's disgusting. And nothing about this
like yes people love like the horror aspect of being like,
(35:37):
oh my god, what this happens to you? I don't
need to see it. So I wasn't expecting it. So
when I came across, I was like, I think the
first question. When I hadn't met any couple of years ago,
I was like, hey, what are your favorite horror films?
Because you know she's a horror movie buff, of course
I I need to know, and she put this at
the top of her list. I was like, cool, cool, Cool,
I'll watch it. She's like, yeah, yeah, you should watch it.
(35:58):
And I watched it. I think I started text and
you're like, what the hell is wrong with you? What
have you done to me? Well, okay, to be fair
to me, I don't think I brought it up. I
think your partner brought it up. And I was like,
that's a really good movie. But I hadn't seen it
so long and I totally forgot about what it's all about,
and I rewatched it. After you're horrified text. I was like, oh, yeah,
(36:19):
that's pretty messed up. And for me, for me watching
horror movies like this, I have to finish it or
it lingers with me, like something about not finishing it
just causes more nightmares for me. So I had to
finish it, and I was so unhappy. Yeah, and you know,
like this movie is probably one of the ultimate examples
of what we're talking about because it's it's gotten the
(36:42):
like she's an ex she's got this abuse, and then
there's torture um and again he kind of he played her.
He totally the main male character totally played her and
used her. She she got heard some mne for sure.
I guess you could include the American version of the
grudge to write because she was sort of a that's
(37:06):
kind when we were talking about the mother or even
like the supernatural level of what's going on of who's
blaming what and what comes out right, And this is
kind of what we're talking about. You like the pre
no I like the pre hauntings, and you like the aftermath.
So these are the things that would have happened, but
the beginning part is awful, like seeing them how they
got murdered, how they got stocked, how they got that
(37:27):
and then but instead, So it's definitely I think that's
how we kind of put the line or the metric,
I guess, but yeah, but for sure, this is definitely
one of those movies that plays on every single one
of this trope. Not only do you play on the
innocent sweet girl who he has to have because she
seems so innocent in pera but then turns out she's
(37:49):
not so innocent in pera and she breaks havoc. Yes, yes, okay,
so we've covered a lot of ground, but we did
want to talk about some some themes in these movies.
But before we do that, we're gonna fall use for
one more quick break for a word from my sponsor,
(38:17):
and we're back. Thank you, sponsor. So one of the
big themes in these movies is revenge, and almost every
single one we talked about, in fact, we see this
theme of revenge. Um. And we've talked about women before
women in revenge films, and we've talked about the ins
and outs of revenge films and how women are portrayed
(38:37):
in these films. Um. I know I've talked about before.
I generally don't like revenge movies, even though it seems
that I play a lot of revenge video games and
when I write, I write a lot of revenge, So
I don't know what that's all about. But I didn't.
I watched a lot of them for this research, and
I have to say, like two or three of them
(38:58):
haunt me, um, and not a bad way. Necessarily, they're
the ones written directed by women. UM. And I think
that's why it's it felt more true and in that
way more like painful, like my heart hurts, um, because
when you're talking about like rape and revenge is just
this awful traumatic thing and look at the outcome of it. Um.
(39:19):
But uh, I mean, as is the case in a
lot of these things, the revenge doesn't often match the
ensuing actions these women take. Um. One article said that
if Scorner mistreated quote, she then ends up trying to
exact revenge, becoming obsessed, sometimes even murderous. No matter what
(39:40):
direction of film takes, it is clear the woman is
meant to be seen as in quotes crazy. The use
of this trope has been heavily critiqued, not only because
of its portrayal of women, how it connects to stereotypes
about mental health. It invalidates women's behavior and real mental
health struggles by simply reducing the person to being crazy.
When a woman is deemed crazy, she is dismissable and irrelevant.
(40:05):
And yeah, that is a really big discussion within these
movies like the Very Trope, It's right there. Why does
over dramatizing and stereotyping and mental health make the plot
of these films and continue to cause damage an open
conversation of these mental health issues. And I actually think
this is a problem in horror at large because a
lot of times the twist is somebody has a mental
(40:27):
health issue or that's why they're doing whatever it is
that they're doing, whatever nefarious thing they're doing, which is problematic. Yeah,
and we're gonna talk a little more in depth about
it later at the end of this because it's definitely
something we need to cover and have a continued conversation
because as much as we enjoy being scared, as much
as we see this plot as something that brings along
(40:48):
the movie, it's problematic and we have to be able
to confront that. But on top of that, we also
wanted to talk about motherhood um as a theme. If
you couldn't tell many of the films and characters have
some type of credit sism of either being a mother,
not being a mother, or wanting to be a mother.
Uh Specific to the movie Fatal Attraction. One article written
by a man in the Hess. She writes, when Glenn
(41:10):
closest thirty six year old book editor has a one
night fleeing with Michael Douglas is happily married attorney Dan Gallagher.
Dan expects the cool girl which we talked about with
Gone Girl um independent Alex to remain discreet. Instead, her
biological call it goes berserk and she cuts her Risks
incessantly calls his home and now since she's pregnant, throws
acid on his car, boils his kids. Perfect Bunny abducts
(41:32):
his perfect child and attempts to stablish perfect housewife, and
at the film's end, the perfect wife shoots the psycho
butch in the heart by killing Alex and in the
seas her just dating fetus. The film restores the safety
of the perfect family, or, as Susan Valley wrote of
the message in her book Backlash, the best single woman
is a dead one. So we see over and over again,
(41:54):
whether we look at the protective mothers like comedies and
Monster in Law, which is the Jenner Lopez Jane Fonda movie,
or grieving mothers like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
or Friday the Thirteenth, or even manipulum mothers. We see
the same theme over and over again about how this
causes them to be or the lack of or any
of these is why they're psycho as they say, right,
(42:15):
and existing outside of being independent and not needing a man,
and then that making you quote crazy, Um, yeah, because
it's threatening the patriarchal system we all live in. We
also wanted to talk about sex and sexiness, which is
a very broad theme that yeah, we can talk about
pretty much in anything. We talked about media, um, but
(42:39):
we couldn't ignore the obvious trip of film fatals and
their use of sex and sexiness to gain injury to
someone's life, into someone's life, or just as a way
of meeting um. In fact, a majority of films with
psychopathic women seem to fall under the exotic thriller genre
as well, um, which allows for the movie to talk
about the horror of where in having or enjoying sex
(43:02):
without giving too much credit or sexual identity for women.
Movies like basic instinct and though we didn't talk about
it earlier, swim fan Jennifer's Body, which is a really
wonderful movie. I actually really like that one. Um continue
to exploit female bodies and the idea of their usefulness
and for the world of film fatals abbender rights. In
the world of erotic thrillers, sex as a tool and
(43:24):
revenge is always an option, right and many articles have
been written about the biphobic and overall lesbian phobic representations
of the characters within this this trope in genre, again
using basic instinct as the example, the relationship between character
Catherine and Roxy. We see the relationship through the male
gaze and is often portrayed as merely objects to quote
(43:45):
arouse the male viewer. As an article from the bitch
Flick states, uh, the author continues and rights though many directors,
specifically male male directors don't necessarily mean to objectify their
characters quote their female characters are shown to have some
charming quality, but in the in the end that I
promiss you was and manipulative and never to be trusted. Yes,
(44:06):
and this reminded me of something I totally forgotten about.
But um so there was this thing I at work
back when Kristin past host and creator Kristen, when I
did the videos, she did one a parody of this
thing called the Crazy Hot Matrix UM, which many of
you probably have heard of from I believe it was
on How I Met Your Mother, but that this was
(44:28):
a video that a man like a man made and
legitimately believed that the more beautiful woman is, the hotter
she is, the more crazy she is, and he had
this graph and um, when we made the parody of it,
this was the one that got me duckt um people.
They were so mad about it and I was like,
(44:48):
it were clearly we're joking, but also this video is
a real thing that exists. Um. But the fact that
that was the one that got me docks, I think
is very telling when it comes to this trope and
how we do view women still as like, yeah, you
can have sex with this crazy hot woman, but she
don't forget she's crazy and you don't want to marry
(45:09):
her because that was the point, Like you wanted to
marry a five and have sex with the ten um
and all of this is offensive. I don't agree with
any of it. I hope that's clear, But oh yeah,
this is definitely like pickup artist's charts to they they
really saw the character Barney as being an icon for them.
So I could absolutely see you being raped over the
(45:29):
coals by them. For sure. It was wild. We had
to get security guards. Um. Yeah. So we we did
want to talk about this stigma with mental health and women. UM.
So we've given some examples. There are so many, but
we've given some of the psycho bitch chope in the
horror thriller genre and how it has slowly been changing
throughout the years, but not necessarily as fact as you
(45:52):
as fast as you might expect with the growing fairness
movements and just discussions around mental health. However, we did
want to talk about, though we're all ablest idea behind
the genre and usage of the term crazy and psycho bitch. Um.
And though we won't go into the history of the
language because we have done that before. Um, we did
want to look at the continued stigma tropes like these
(46:14):
perpetuate and the damage they cause. As one article said, quote,
the trope of the psycho bitch is something that oppresses
women and people with mental illnesses simultaneously. In it, writer
Joe and Show talks about the dangers of how these
tropes not only maintain the negative stereotypes, but continue to
negate the legitimacy of violence against women with disabilities. She writes,
(46:36):
when they experience violence because they are seen as crazier,
because they are not able to understand or communicate what
happened to them, their attackers are rarely brought to justice.
And this is a big conversation for us, as we
are recently discussed in our Violence against Women episode on
how vulnerable we make people in the disabled community feel
when we allow such ablest representation to be mainstream, right,
(47:01):
And I think it was legitimately calling out the fact
that when we have these things saying it's their fault
that people no longer believe them. So they have all
of these hurdles already just being able to say whether
they're not able to communicate with people, or whether they're
not able to prove something, all of these things, but
(47:21):
to have this other part of yeah, but but what
did you do? But you're you're crazy. You can't even
talk about it because whatever what not? She haven't. She
even gave an example of a client she had who
stated that she did not want to report rape because
she would have to name all the medications she has
and the side effects, and that alone could discredit her.
(47:41):
So you have all of these things already happening, and
then you have movies like this that perpetuate and literally
uses their trauma as a blurb and then blame them
for all the things. And don't get me wrong, all
these things are bad, but it's also unrealistic little violence
that these men supposedly portray. But at the same time,
(48:02):
how that term crazy psycho bitch uses that connotation, that's
what lingers over them about a person. So no matter what,
this crazy maybe, and it's not okay to say that
at all, but it just reference to the worst idea
of the psycho bitch trope. Yeah, but yeah, and beyond that,
we look at the other side of that coin. You're
welcome UM as that it portrays people diagnosed with mental
(48:25):
health issues as violent and unhinged and dangerous, which again
places a mistrust and an ugly shameful stereotype for those
diagnosed UM, which is as another article from bitch Flake
talks about which films continue to use as shocked factor
portions of this fictional entertainment that again leads to misconceived
stereotypes and again silences people who have these issues and
(48:49):
who are living with this and are able to maintain.
These are things that are being completely dismissed. And and
again it's kind of that same level when we talk
about mass shootings, when we talk about the dangers that
have happened and people who have where we have had
incidents and just being saying it's a mental health thing
and just categorizing it like that, And it's so dangerous
because that's not what pushed them right to that volatile state.
(49:14):
Just because they have a diagnosis does not mean they're
going to do this. And to label it like that
and to put a headline like that once again leads
to this awful stereotype and an awful misconception which is
being popularized by a lot of films like this. Yeah,
and that's it's really brazen to to say that and
then offer no like mental health like fun and yeah,
(49:39):
the US thinks so little of actually treatment. Yeah that,
but yeah, we're gonna say it like that, right, And
I mean, this whole troope has especially been weaponized against women.
I mean every word in it. I feel like crazy
psycho bitch to dismiss um women. And I was thinking
(50:01):
about that song, that recent song, like yeah, she's sweet,
but she's psycho like it's everywhere. Um, and that's kind
of that whole term for pixie manic girl. It's that
same level of the cute manic girl. It's kind of
that whole level like Okay, why are you celebrating? And
also this is not a thing, stop it. That is
(50:22):
our messages. So yeah, that's an overview of this trope
that we see. Um, there's a lot to unravel here clearly, UM,
and just years and years and years of how women
are perceived in in our entertainment and in our culture. Um.
(50:43):
As usual, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
So if there's something you want us to focus in on,
let us know please, Or if there's an example we
missed do you think we should talk about, send it
our way, UM. And you can do that at our
email which is Stuff Medium mom Stuff at iHeart media
dot com. You can also find us on Twitter at
mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at Stuff I've Never
(51:04):
Told You. Thanks. It's always to our super producer Andrew Howard.
Thanks Andrew, and thanks to you for listening stuff I
never told you the protection of I heart Radio. For
more podcast from My heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stephan.
I never told your protection of I Heart Radio. I'm
gonna bix things up today, all right, all right, and
I'm not going to ask a question, or I could,
but it would be a very if we would be
(00:26):
having to act, because we actually already discussed this in depth.
But um, we recently learned Samantha and I both lovers
of horror movies. We love very different types of horror movies,
so today we're talking about a specific genre. Would you say,
what is your favorite genre of horror movies? So, I
guess it is a question after so I think my
(00:48):
favorite and I've told you those. I do love haunting
movies and possession movies, so things like Insidious is up
in my likes and uh, one of my favorite ones,
I guess I like. See, I just recently watched the
Paranormal Activity. Those are newer than those are newer to me.
So I watched the trilogy and I did not realize
(01:09):
they were all interconnected because I think I watched one
of the really newer ones that aren't. Yeah there's yeah, um,
so I like those. I do like the pop scars
and I'm like, oh, things are happening. What's happening? Kind
of unknown, but it's also kind of silly to me.
So I do love like the insidious. I do like
when John wu stuff. Typically he also expands to like
(01:31):
ten thousand different movies. But I don't love slasher movies.
That's probably one of my least favorites. And I do
love the psychological thrillers like The Strangers. That stuff breaks
me out, but I do love it. What about you? Yeah,
I definitely I love super natural horror movies, and I
love I mean, my my favorite hord movie all the time.
(01:54):
It's an extorcist, which I find interesting because I'm not
religious at all, but I think those trope like we
can all connect with those things. Um. And then I
I do like found footage, and I actually have a list.
I made a list during Quarantine when people ask me
like what movies should I watch? And I have this
list I've just been sending out and there's a section
on horror and I was looking through it. And I
(02:15):
apparently also like just weird, really strange, like time travel
horror movies or UM. I like trying to figure out
the puzzle of like oh, well, oh, how did this happen?
And when did this happen? And it might not even
make sense, and I just like it. Um Yeah, I
like I like a strange like a strange time travel
(02:38):
horror movie or just something really visually interesting. But I
haven't seen, um, but what we're talking about today, Like,
I haven't seen a lot of what you have, Samantha,
when it comes to psychological thrillers or what we're talking
about today, which is a whole trope that I didn't
even know existed. I was certainly like realized it was
(02:58):
a thing, I just didn't know how to nate to it, right.
I think when I discovered the name, I sent you
a text and you're like, oh God, Like we both
were like, this is the name of the trope when
knowing that it existed, but we didn't know what the
title was, right right? Um? So yeah. To keep up
with our love of Halloween in this month of October, uh,
(03:19):
we wanted to talk about the horror movie trope of
Psycho bitch Girl. Right, Psycho bitch Girl, crazy bitch Girl,
crazy woman, like any of those, but specifically Psycho bitch
Girl and m trigger warning. This is definitely just a
look at the trope and the stereotypes, and a lot
of the conversation is gonna be around dated movies that
(03:41):
have not aged well. So we'll go ahead and put
that as a big caveat a lot of this if
you look back on your like a holy crap, what
were they thinking. Um, we will mention, but don't get
into it too much about assault, death and mental health issues.
So I know you and I actually talked about that
fact that possible you don't watch any of these because
(04:01):
it is heavily reliant on those types of tropes and
those types of stereotypes, and it can be triggering for
a lot of people, especially I know when we talked
about and we'll talk a little more about revenge films,
it has to have some kind of big traumatic beginning
in order to like push the story forward. So it
kind of does that same thing and it's yeah, it
gets it gets in there. So we're gonna talk a
(04:22):
little bit about those movies. Just a heads up, yeah,
and also just a heads up, like as the trope's
name should tell you, a lot of this is offensive
and multiple ways, right right, Um, Yeah, but we're definitely
gonna talk about that more. But I want to go
ahead and say that, right, we'll get mad at us
for the title. We're not saying we approve of it.
It's just it isn't say as I say. Um. So,
(04:47):
if we look at movies like Fatal Attraction, Gone Girl,
or The Audition, there is a perpetual idea that women,
especially x is um are crazy. Of course, and again
like we know, I know it's uh not PC to
use that word, but this is like the drope um
and yeah, so yeah, I broke up with her because
they are crazy that sort of idea, um, And yeah,
(05:12):
we we see this all the time, and it's it's
upsetting how accepted it is, Like it's okay to say that.
So today people use that today and everybody just kind
of like, really, it's two thousand twenties and stop it. Yeah,
And it is very difficult to talk about the horror
genre without talking about thriller psychological genre or erotic thriller um,
(05:35):
which does include like soccer girl, over zealous fan girls,
and even overly obsessive mothers. So yeah, just brace yourself.
All of that's coming. Um. And we did. Hey, I'm
holding to some of our older traditions. Want to define
what some say, psychobitic giral means and according to one
(05:56):
Urban Dictionary definition, it is a woman who's horble. It's
not a type of I'm not mispronouncing that. Apparently this
means normal for wore behaviors. Again according to Urban Dictionary,
I was like, what, um, and this is an imbalanced
troublesome upbringing or a current brain chemistry renders her irrational,
angry and prone to acts of violence. For example, this dude,
(06:17):
I'm gonna say this, dude, because the way they wrote
it was very specific in this example of like throwing
my thirty screen HDTV through the window. I don't know
why that was the example, but apparently that is the
example of psycho bitch girl. Yeah, yeah, I and I
(06:43):
when I was thinking about this, I keep thinking about
and we're going to talk about this, but like how
a lot of times these movies don't get me wrong,
the woman in them is doing things, they violent things
or whatever, but the man still has usually done something
pretty badly as well. Um, but you know it's, oh,
(07:03):
she threw my TV out the window because she found
out I actually have a wife and I've been lying
to or whatever. You know, we sort of forget that
part um and also, and I want to revisit this
maybe towards the end. I would just keep in mind
as we're talking about these, like imagine the roles are flipped,
or imagine that the like man is the stalker. I
(07:24):
feel like that has such a different vibe. It's much
more threatening in a physical way as opposed to I
feel like with a lot of these we're talking about
today with women, it's much more threatening in a sexual
she's in balanced in way. And if you actually look
at and we will look at a deeper a majority
of these uh psycho bitch tropes, the anger is pointed
(07:46):
to another woman. Yeah. Again to remember, I was trying
to remember the Beyonce wasn't Yes, and we don't talk
about that movie, but that's definitely came up as a
of an example as well. Yes, yes, Um, So I
would just keep all those things in mind and we
(08:07):
go over some of these examples. All right, So the
first movie we wanted to talk about we've mentioned above
is Fatal Attraction. I feel like this is the iconic
standard when it comes to erotic thrillers. In psycho bit Stroke,
which by the way, every single article mentions Fatal attraction
that I looked at, probably again one of the best
known movies for this. In this ven film, we have
(08:29):
main character Dan Gallagher played by Michael Douglas, who was
inseveral of these types of movies, by the way, who
has an illicit affair with Alex Forrester played by Glenn Close.
So if you're like any and haven't seen this film,
a quick rundown, they have an affair. He pretty much
drops her. She starts doing things like stalking, taking up pregnancy,
(08:49):
boiling a rabbit, kidnapping, and trying to kill the wife
because all that she wants is to have a baby
with Dan, and of course the family que Asa based
music which Annie also doesn't No, Nope, I sang this
tour not too long agos, like you never heard this movie.
I mean the song you've never heard this song that
was very sad. So after trying to kill the wife,
(09:11):
she gets shot by the wife and everything is hunky door.
Though according to reports and interviews with Glenn Close, the
original intent was to show the callousness of dance, dismissal
of his mistress, and the breakdown of Alex's life in psychopathy,
but it later was dwindled down to showing how quote
crazy and over the top Alex was and made Dan
(09:31):
more of the victim. Yeah and yeah, I haven't seen
this movie. Um, I didn't know that his wife killed
and you're right, that is a very he didn't even
take responsibility and heavy quotes yeah, even their whole time
together at the very beginning. The premise of the movie
is that he understands it as a one nice stand.
(09:54):
She obviously understands it as a one night stand, but
she refused to let it go. Oh oh, that always
annoys me when it's like, it can't be that you
miscommunicated to might change her mind, and now she wants kids.
Oh my god, I've got to get out of here.
This is a little crazy bit. I want to sleep
(10:15):
with you, would leave you? I don't understand. Yeah, throwing
around that crazy bitch as just to dismiss that a
woman could have legitimate emotions or change her mind or
want something that you don't want and maybe mis misrepresented
all that to say, I don't think Glenn clubs. I
haven't seen this movie. I'm not justifying her actions. I'm
just saying it's interesting the way that comes up a
(10:38):
lot in non murderous situations. So back to another Uh,
we have been talking about Stephen Kigg a lot like
so Misery. We're talking about Misery, which I've never seen,
but I have read the book. Um, and this is
yeah Stephen King classic. Um. Apparently Stephen King proclaimed it
(10:59):
to be one of his face he adaptions of his
books for film, and right now it's the only one
to win an oscar thanks to the incredible performance by
Kathy Bates. So for a quick rundown of this one,
we have romance author Paul Sheldon played by James Khan
and Annie Wilkes played by Kathy Bates, a seemingly kind
(11:21):
nurse who finds Paul after a car accident which he
has broken his legs and dislocated his shoulders. She brings
him to her home under the guys that she is
a good Samaritan She's going to nurse him back to health.
She then proceeds to let him know that she is
his quote number one fan and due to her kindness,
he allows her to read the newest manuscript for his
(11:43):
popular series based on his character Misery Chastain. Unfortunately, though
for him, she hates the ending and all those bad
stuff ensue. And I know I've said this before, but
I feel like every Stephen King book is about Stephen King.
One way, this is a fear that he Well, he
said that when he wrote this, he got the inspiration
(12:05):
when he fell asleep on the plane and ILike, I
think he had been met by someone about how much
they liked the book or something, and he fell asleep
on the plane and this is his dream of what
had could have happened. Wow. Well, lucky for him it
didn't because bare you know A and he incapivates his character,
um demands a new book in which he brings misery
(12:25):
back to life. This is what fan fiction is for.
You can do it yourself. But anyway, we see the
overall levels she's willing to go to save her favorite character,
everything from drugging him, breaking his ankles, killing a police officer.
After complying and writing a new book, he tricks her
into a celebration where a violent struggle occurs and he
(12:47):
bashes her head in and makes an escape. Uh. This
movie does show a little struggle of the overall trauma
he has gone through with the postcene of him being
triggered UM. So that does add a bit of depth
to his care Arcter. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting.
I'm like he wanted to put this again kind of
like himself about Oh, you know, these are the traumas
(13:08):
that these people when they do this, when they go
beyond this, when they demand this, And it could be
this whole story of ownership once you give to your
the audience, who now owns this book or who now
owns this content? And that's a whole other conversation we've had.
But yes, of course this homely sweet nurse ends up
losing it and uh has to die for it in
the end. Well that's interesting too, because I was imagining
(13:31):
if if it's a female writer, a woman writer, and
a man tormentor, it just becomes it's less about breaking
gender norms, which is troubling in itself because like it's
still scary and it's still bad, but it doesn't feel
as like weird. And that's part of the reason what
our authors do this intentionally, I would imagine a lot
(13:54):
of the time is you don't suspect that an older
woman will do this kind nurse woman, which, yeah, it's
kind of troubling that I guess we've sort of held
up our hands and said, yeah, man can be aggressive
and that's not so out of the norm of reality.
But for women, they're crazy. They're crazy, bitch, and please
(14:17):
now keep saying this, but it's the whole again. Yes,
and we we are going to talk about that. And
another movie which I actually forgot about until I started researching,
This is the Hand that Rocks the Cradle Um, which
was released in n and plays on so many tropes
and had a lot of mixed reviews and one article
(14:40):
the critics stated this movie was a movie that asked
the audience quote not to think, but to react, which
the critics said was difficult even for the current time
frame in the nineties. So the plot, it all begins
with the main character, Claire Bartel, who was pregnant with
her second child, going to a new obstetrition where she's
molested by the doctor, Dr mott Um. After she reports
(15:00):
him to the police, several other women coming forward ledging
the same type of abuse. He then shoots himself rather
than getting arrested, leaving behind his wife, Mrs mott played
by Rebecca the Morning, who was pregnant at the time.
After losing everything due to the incident, Mrs Mott loses
the baby as well. She then proceeds to plan her
revenge against the main accuser, Claire bartell Um. At this
(15:24):
point she gets hired by Claire as a nanny under
a pseudonym of course. Uh. And when she then tries
to ruin Claire's family and her life of manipulating the
older daughter and turning her against her family, breastfeeding the
newborn causing it to imprint is that how they said it?
On her um, and trying to seduce a husband, which
doesn't work because you know he's a great guy, and
(15:45):
then by killing her best friend, who by the way
is Julianna Moore. Yeah. I was like, oh, they realized
she was in this movie, um because she was figuring
it out. So if you haven't already guessed it, yes,
dear Mrs Mott gets killed, um acts identally by the
wife who figures everything out, and that's the end of that,
and that's the end of the movie, and then the
(16:06):
family list happily ever after. So it just has this
like whole level like victim blaming, sexual assault, like this
whole fear of losing babies and having babies and taking families.
It's kind a lot in there and you kind of
like sit there and it's been a very long time
since I've seen it, but they have this whole like
plague of like these are the thanks you are trying
(16:27):
to be afraid of, and this is what happens to
motherhood and lots of things, and you need to be
careful what you say. It is a very weird kind
of mixed ideas, And like I said, there was a
lot of mixed reviews of like is this a good movie?
Is this a bead? What's happening? But Rebecca de Morny's
performance was actually amazing and very frightening. So she did
(16:50):
a good job on that one. Yeah, I haven't seen that,
but intriguing. Um, I haven't. Okay, we're about to talk
about what I haven't seen, but I feel like I've
seen and that is a single white feeding. Everybody feels
that way. Yes, So this one is a bit of
a flip um because it's more of an erotic thriller
with hom erotic overtones. So we have Hettie I'm gonna
(17:12):
go with Eddie played by Jennifer Jason Lee and Ali
played by Bridget Fonda. Um, and yes, there are a
lot of pop cultural references made in regards to this film,
so it's definitely worth talking about. UM. Here we see
a different take um As, where it's not just a
look at the fears women have and the herring tells
of marital transgression, but a possible cautionary tale of female
(17:35):
independence as well as sisterhood, or, as one article says,
also a story that has a lesbian phobic lair. And
I would definitely definitely agree with that, even not having
seen it. Um. I've seen clips of it, and I
remember when I was in college, I was telling Samantha, like,
I just have this really funny story where my one
(17:56):
of my best friends, um, because this was my first
year of college, right, and you're making a bunch of
new friends. And it so happened that she ended up
in a dorm where she I was best friends with
all of her roommates, and I ended up in a
dorm where she was best friend of all all my roommates.
And there was just sort of this tension. There was
(18:16):
this weird thing there because we both understood it, but
we never really talked about it. And we used to
joke about, like, don't single white female trying to replace me. Um.
But okay, back to the movie. Here we see a
very traumatized woman, Hetty, who's twin sister drowned at the
age of nine, um, coming into Ali's life, who, after
finding out her fiance had cheated on her and then
(18:38):
um being professionally and sexually taken advantage of by a
rich man, needed to find a new roommate. Single white
female enter Hetty, who slowly changes her physical appearance to
mimic Alley's as well as impersoning her at different locations
and overall trying to become her. We quickly see things
unravel and Hetty is trying to control and manipulate Ali
(19:02):
by hiding things from her as well as impersonating her,
which eventually leads to Hetty killing at several people and
trying to get Ali to take her own life as well. Um.
The boyfriend's death scene includes a stiletto. Yeah. This is
kind of I remember because it became an iconic thing
where people were like, oh my god, how do you
kill some more with that? Yeah, she uses stiletto to
(19:22):
kill the boyfriend. Of course. Um, if you're gonna wear stilettos,
we always make it a weapon. Um. After the death
of Hetty, we see a little more depth with Alie
sympathizing with Hetty and stating that part of Hetty, whose
real name we find out is Ellen, of her issues
that she had survivor's scale from death of a twin
(19:44):
which caused that type of trauma. And the more we talked,
like the more I researched it, the more I looked
at it, Yeah, there was this whole overall. This is
why this movie is very problematic. They love Cayman, but
really we're afraid of lesbians and here are these things
and is As have this whole thing, and we're gonna
talk about that a little deeper, the sexualization within these movies.
But it's interesting to get really into, like, yeah, what
(20:07):
I'm just wrong with people? Yeah, during this time period,
I feel like there was a lot and it still happens,
for sure, but I feel like there was a glut
of like lesbian phobic, biphobic messaging or I mean it's
still phobic, but like I can turn her like this
like chasing Amy type of thing, but definitely. And it
(20:27):
was a comedy as well as horror, So it's one
or the other that has made fun of or being
straight of and we're gonna talk about that a little more.
But it is interesting to know this is one of
those movies that they talk about. Um. And then another
movie which I don't think I've ever actually watched. I
just remember hearing a lot of it. You've actually seen
this one, huh, which is a Gone Girl. It's not
(20:49):
necessarily a horror, but it is a psychological thriller and
trying to like piece together what's happening. Um. But again,
I didn't want to mention it because this also reversed
the trope a little bit from wife being the victim
to wife being the mastermind and being a psycho bitch
character instead of the innocent that's just walking and watching
it or being victimized by the psycho bitch. For the plot,
(21:10):
we see the picture of perfect couple which comes crumbling
down as Amy played by Roseman Pike uh Pierce missing
and a case is open due to her disappearance and
possible death. All the while, Nick played by Ben Affleck,
is trying to prove his innocence as evidence starts to
mount against him and he's suspected of foul play. Here,
we see things unravel from flashbacks of the relationship to
(21:32):
his eventual cheating of course. Uh. And then we are
included in as Nick tries to get answers that Amy
has been plotting against him in order to punish him
for his misdis including framing him for her own murder
and accusing him of assault and abuse. It eventually falls
apart and she returns home, blaming an X for all
of the events. Also, they remained together as she is
(21:53):
artificially inseminated herself with nick sperm and is now pregnant
with his baby, and they remained together unhappily ever after.
Oh it is interesting because she yeah, she goes from
all she's the victim and we're trying to figure out
this mystery to know she did it because he was
(22:14):
a terrible husband essentially um. But it does show. It's
one of the few examples on here, I think where
it's like, you don't ever they're both almost equally guilty.
I know some people would be mad at me for
saying that, because clearly she did kill Um, but but
I mean that in terms of how we are the
viewer is like, it's not like they're like, look, Nick
(22:36):
is so perfect, and she's clearly crisy um. And then
in the end he's sort of complicit like that. It's
it's hard to describe, I guess, but um. This also
this movie is one of the funniest meetings I've ever
had in my life. Was when this just came out
and we were talking about um, because you know that
(23:01):
it was like you can see Ben Affleck's penis if
you positive at the right spot. And we were talking
about this and one of our coworkers, Matt, who some
of you might know from other podcasts we do but
is like the sweetest, literal, sweetest person I know. Um,
he was looking around at as kind of confusedly and
then he said, wait, are we talking about his dog
(23:21):
right now? Yep? Oh, it was so funny. And then
we had somebody on the phone and he like it
was like everybody shut up, and he was like, hey, hey,
Tyler on the phone, they're talking about Ben Affleck's dog. Yeah. Sorry.
But anyway, So here in this example we see the
(23:43):
Psycho Bitch Show being used as a payback revenge con
that makes the adulter pay not by the jilted lover
but by the angry wife. Um. There is a lot
of debate of whether or not. This character is another
stereotype of an angry bitch who lies about being assaulted
and manipulate lative and the poor husband is the victim.
Once again, this this also comes up. This was one
(24:05):
of the first times I heard cool girl because she
has a whole monologue about being the cool girl. Um,
it does seem to be portrayed differently in the book.
I read the book, but I can't recall um that anyway,
which you see the male character being a lot more
misogynistic than in the movie. I do think I did
like him better in the movie. But anyway, but her
(24:27):
overall callousness and evil does seem to ask her sympathy
um for the poor fool fore dope partrayed by bid Afflet.
I mean, he does seem to have that clueless face.
I do remember seeing the scenes and he just has
a clueless face the entirety of the movie. So that's
(24:50):
pretty much this whole role in that is just looking
confused and like realizing he's screwed. Um and yes, are
so any other examples, especially in the nineties. Maybe that's
why I know so much about them. This is my era,
and because it's just such a big theme at that point,
which includes Basic Instinct, which has that big seduction scene
(25:11):
we know of with Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas, and
of course the icicles. So I don't know if you've
bet well that's how she murdered people. It was an
ice pick. I think it was an ice pick. I
think I got that one. Okay. I was like, Icycle
would have been so much smarter. It just melts away
trying to remember that. Right y'all, listeners tell me, I'm
not gonna look this up up rather that you tell
(25:31):
me if you actually saw this movie. I can't quite remember.
There's the ice pick or an icicle. Um. And then
The Crush, which is a movie about a teenage crush
going wrong with Alicia Silverstone and Carrie Always Uh. Someone
had actually written a whole article about it and how
much they loved her character, just because they were talking
about how as a fourteen year old, how much do
(25:52):
you have to love and how much confidence do you
have in in yourself that you would just go after
people like that? And I was like, okay, okay, but
a kind of a turn um um. And man, just
seems women are wanting sex makes them crazy. That seems
like that's the theme here. If women want sex or
if women have sex, it makes them crazy according to
(26:15):
all these movies, and and of course we wanna talk
a little more about that. But yeah, definitely is this
theme that goes throughout and speaking of themes, we are
not done with this, oh no. But first we have
a quick break for a word from our sponsor and
(26:40):
we're back, Thank you sponsor. So yeah, well, we were researching.
Um we did find a few honorable mentions I guess
not uh necessarily the main characters who were seen as
the psychopathic girl or girlfriend. Um, so we wanted to
go over a handful of those, right, um, And honestly
this one talk to me and I wanted to talk
(27:01):
about it with you a little bit. But in Harry
Potter they actually they actually named Belitrick's Uh yeah, yes,
you could consider definitely a psychopath at evil. But because
it's fantasy, you know, like children's fantasy. On top of that,
I didn't see that as much is not what you
typically think. Um. Also, she wasn't anybody's partner necessarily, like
she was a doting like servant more than anything else.
(27:22):
What do you what do you think? Well, I'm assuming
that this all comes from the Cursed Child. What it
is spoiler alerts anybody who doesn't want to know. Yeah,
she is with Baltimore and Cursed Child, and she's like
so desperate to be with him and to serve him
(27:43):
and um give him whatever he wants. That she sires
his child, um, so that he can have an air
even though he was like, but doesn't he think he's
never gonna die? Um? I thought he was dead? He
is he there's flashbacks, there's like a whole time traffic
thing and most okay, all right, Yeah, so that would
make a lot more sense because I was like, what
(28:03):
she's not They did such a great job in the
movies and the books before. Yes, I'm very sad about
talking about this a little, you know, at tricks on
this one. Yes, this has been tainted for me, But
that to put them in such a not like it's
not sexual, Yeah that I didn't think of it that way,
I guess. Yeah. I mean there's certainly, and I might
(28:26):
be ruined by all of my reading a fan fiction,
but if all of my reading a fan fiction is correct,
and you all know I don't look for romance. A
lot of people did interpret her relationship as borderline, at
least borderline. I guess it's almost like worshiping someone so
much that if he had said we're together, she would
have been like, okay, you know what I mean. Anybody
(28:48):
would have said that, like anybody who serves them. They
would never said no if it was a man woman,
but she would have been proud of it. She would
have been honored. That's fair. She doesn't want to be
chosen by him and does stick to him. Um. And
I do remember the scene where you know, Molly calls
him calls her a bit so fair enough. Um. And
then another mention is a wedding crashers Amy Sich's character,
(29:10):
who is more the comedic take and to me seems
a little fit like fit into the pixie man a girl,
but definitely does fit the whole. What is that guy
getting in trouble genre movies where they have to have
that one girl who's stalking them, you know, and oh
my god, look at this crazy girl. So yeah, she
definitely was one of the big mentions. Well, that's an
(29:32):
interesting aspect of it too, is when you talk about
something like that which is more comedic, um, the idea
that there's almost an air of I am so attractive
or I'm so worth having and of course they have
almost groupies that you've got to have one following you around.
(29:53):
And it's funny like it's a marker of I don't know,
being a virile, attractive man. The women can't resist you, right, Um,
and then there's a girl interrupted Angelina Jolie. Oh. I
read that book, but it was a long time ago. Um.
I did a project on it in high school. Yeah,
(30:14):
and this whole thing and we're gonna come back and
talk about this a little bit more, I know, but um,
you can debate it was trivializing or romanticizing mental health needs,
and I think that's one of the reasons I chose it.
Like when you're in that sort of melancholy poetic art.
I'm not going to say everyone goes through the stage,
but a lot of people do. When you're in high
(30:35):
school and you're kind of being all sad and that
this I thought was like, oh, look how beautiful sadness
can be. Which I know it was very problematic and
I've I've grown listeners. Yeah, but that's the thing is
still get what it's what gets fed to us, and
believe what this is right right, Um, but yes, definitely
(30:59):
Angelie to Jolie's character, I could see fitting that trope.
And then Friday, um, which spoiler alert, Uh, the mom
is actually the serial killer in this one. And I
knew this before I even saw firteenth because it's the
question that trips up Drew Barrymore and Scream when the
(31:19):
the serial killer was asking her like, who's the killer
and she got the answer wrong because everyone assumes it's
Jason because the rest of the series it is, But
it's actually Jason's mom who wants revenge for these camp
counselors who were having sex and not watching her child,
and he drowned in crystallick Um, which by the way
(31:41):
is a portal to Hill and the FBI comes in
and sends Jason to space because obviously, uh, what I've
seen all of these now and about it. But anyway, Um,
this is also kind of a play on the always
blame the mother trope because um, she turned out to
(32:05):
be the serial killer. Usually you're blaming the mother for
this male sero killer's accents, but in this case, she
actually was the serial killer. And actually in Scream too,
the spoiler alert, the killer in that one. Billy Loomis's
mom from the first one. Billy Loomis from the first one.
Um she I'm pretty sure they purposefully cast one who
(32:25):
looks like the mother in Friday kind of pay homage
to that. Yeah, Scream definitely likes to do tongue in
cheek homages to other horror movies, which is fair. Which,
by the way, I watched Urban Legend talk about homages,
and the main guy who plays Freddie is in it too,
teaches Urban Legends and I forgot that. I'm like, oh
(32:45):
my god, I haven't seen Urban Legends and it's bad.
It's really bad. But I watched it again last night,
but I was just like, what is this? Um? Anyway,
Another comedy version of the Psycho Bits trope is My
Super Ex Girlfriend, which is not really a popular movie,
but I just remember thinking, what is this uh? And
here we have Uma Thurman being a superhero who is
(33:08):
heartbroken and becomes vengeful and, as it stays in one article,
becomes more neurotic as her relationship with Luke Wilson's character ends. Um.
And this one is supposed to be a comedy again,
like I said, and does have a flip at the
end where the women are the heroes making a difference
and you know, stopping crime while the male partners are
you know, sitting back holding their persons, waiting for them
(33:29):
to come back. So it does have that little flip
and then it's definitely tongue in cheek, but it starts
with what if your ex girlfriend who you see is
crazy and cleany, which is what they describe her as,
UM has superpowers, you know, And then it goes into
this so it's like, take take what you know is
already a bad trope and add a lot more power
(33:50):
and danger because she is so strong now, which could
be said like, yeah, that's what happens when we talk
about men having too much power and being a lot
more stronger than you. Maybe that's what it looks like.
I don't know, uh. And then we we did want
to mention carry, which we already talked about in her
episode on why are period so terrifying? UM? But I
(34:12):
want to add here both the mother and daughter we're
on the list for. We had kind of two different quotes,
two different types of quote. Psycho you got religious and tortured.
And I suppose while we're at it, we can mention
psycho m the mom and psycho who also well, I
guess she's not the serial she's not the serial killer.
He has a dual personality because of the abuse that
(34:33):
he'd suffered. But it's not right, that's right, it's not
about that. But if you want to talk about the
fear of women in sex, the main female character is
running away, I could believe because of an affair, and
so she kind of has to pay in the end
for her sexuality and guilt. And then one less one
we wanted to mention and we spoke about a little
(34:54):
bit earlier, is the audition, And oh my god, this
one haunts me. And I blame Annie and I for
not telling me what kind of movie this was. But yes,
it would play on the traumatized and victimized with unresolved
mental health issues that turns someone violent, interrrational, And yeah,
I was not expecting this, and it is a Japanese film.
(35:15):
It's a lot about torture, and I didn't he this
um and even the trauma was like, oh my god,
why So I wasn't ready because I don't love slasher films,
so I figure I already mentioned that I don't like
torture films. I hate it. I've never seen any of
the saw I don't I've never seen Hostile. I don't
like it. I think it's disgusting. And nothing about this
like yes people love like the horror aspect of being like,
(35:37):
oh my god, what this happens to you? I don't
need to see it. So I wasn't expecting it. So
when I came across, I was like, I think the
first question. When I hadn't met any couple of years ago,
I was like, hey, what are your favorite horror films?
Because you know she's a horror movie buff, of course
I I need to know, and she put this at
the top of her list. I was like, cool, cool, Cool,
I'll watch it. She's like, yeah, yeah, you should watch it.
(35:58):
And I watched it. I think I started text and
you're like, what the hell is wrong with you? What
have you done to me? Well, okay, to be fair
to me, I don't think I brought it up. I
think your partner brought it up. And I was like,
that's a really good movie. But I hadn't seen it
so long and I totally forgot about what it's all about,
and I rewatched it. After you're horrified text. I was like, oh, yeah,
(36:19):
that's pretty messed up. And for me, for me watching
horror movies like this, I have to finish it or
it lingers with me, like something about not finishing it
just causes more nightmares for me. So I had to
finish it, and I was so unhappy. Yeah, and you know,
like this movie is probably one of the ultimate examples
of what we're talking about because it's it's gotten the
(36:42):
like she's an ex she's got this abuse, and then
there's torture um and again he kind of he played her.
He totally the main male character totally played her and
used her. She she got heard some mne for sure.
I guess you could include the American version of the
grudge to write because she was sort of a that's
(37:06):
kind when we were talking about the mother or even
like the supernatural level of what's going on of who's
blaming what and what comes out right, And this is
kind of what we're talking about. You like the pre
no I like the pre hauntings, and you like the aftermath.
So these are the things that would have happened, but
the beginning part is awful, like seeing them how they
got murdered, how they got stocked, how they got that
(37:27):
and then but instead, So it's definitely I think that's
how we kind of put the line or the metric,
I guess, but yeah, but for sure, this is definitely
one of those movies that plays on every single one
of this trope. Not only do you play on the
innocent sweet girl who he has to have because she
seems so innocent in pera but then turns out she's
(37:49):
not so innocent in pera and she breaks havoc. Yes, yes, okay,
so we've covered a lot of ground, but we did
want to talk about some some themes in these movies.
But before we do that, we're gonna fall use for
one more quick break for a word from my sponsor,
(38:17):
and we're back. Thank you, sponsor. So one of the
big themes in these movies is revenge, and almost every
single one we talked about, in fact, we see this
theme of revenge. Um. And we've talked about women before
women in revenge films, and we've talked about the ins
and outs of revenge films and how women are portrayed
(38:37):
in these films. Um. I know I've talked about before.
I generally don't like revenge movies, even though it seems
that I play a lot of revenge video games and
when I write, I write a lot of revenge, So
I don't know what that's all about. But I didn't.
I watched a lot of them for this research, and
I have to say, like two or three of them
(38:58):
haunt me, um, and not a bad way. Necessarily, they're
the ones written directed by women. UM. And I think
that's why it's it felt more true and in that
way more like painful, like my heart hurts, um, because
when you're talking about like rape and revenge is just
this awful traumatic thing and look at the outcome of it. Um.
(39:19):
But uh, I mean, as is the case in a
lot of these things, the revenge doesn't often match the
ensuing actions these women take. Um. One article said that
if Scorner mistreated quote, she then ends up trying to
exact revenge, becoming obsessed, sometimes even murderous. No matter what
(39:40):
direction of film takes, it is clear the woman is
meant to be seen as in quotes crazy. The use
of this trope has been heavily critiqued, not only because
of its portrayal of women, how it connects to stereotypes
about mental health. It invalidates women's behavior and real mental
health struggles by simply reducing the person to being crazy.
When a woman is deemed crazy, she is dismissable and irrelevant.
(40:05):
And yeah, that is a really big discussion within these
movies like the Very Trope, It's right there. Why does
over dramatizing and stereotyping and mental health make the plot
of these films and continue to cause damage an open
conversation of these mental health issues. And I actually think
this is a problem in horror at large because a
lot of times the twist is somebody has a mental
(40:27):
health issue or that's why they're doing whatever it is
that they're doing, whatever nefarious thing they're doing, which is problematic. Yeah,
and we're gonna talk a little more in depth about
it later at the end of this because it's definitely
something we need to cover and have a continued conversation
because as much as we enjoy being scared, as much
as we see this plot as something that brings along
(40:48):
the movie, it's problematic and we have to be able
to confront that. But on top of that, we also
wanted to talk about motherhood um as a theme. If
you couldn't tell many of the films and characters have
some type of credit sism of either being a mother,
not being a mother, or wanting to be a mother.
Uh Specific to the movie Fatal Attraction. One article written
by a man in the Hess. She writes, when Glenn
(41:10):
closest thirty six year old book editor has a one
night fleeing with Michael Douglas is happily married attorney Dan Gallagher.
Dan expects the cool girl which we talked about with
Gone Girl um independent Alex to remain discreet. Instead, her
biological call it goes berserk and she cuts her Risks
incessantly calls his home and now since she's pregnant, throws
acid on his car, boils his kids. Perfect Bunny abducts
(41:32):
his perfect child and attempts to stablish perfect housewife, and
at the film's end, the perfect wife shoots the psycho
butch in the heart by killing Alex and in the
seas her just dating fetus. The film restores the safety
of the perfect family, or, as Susan Valley wrote of
the message in her book Backlash, the best single woman
is a dead one. So we see over and over again,
(41:54):
whether we look at the protective mothers like comedies and
Monster in Law, which is the Jenner Lopez Jane Fonda movie,
or grieving mothers like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
or Friday the Thirteenth, or even manipulum mothers. We see
the same theme over and over again about how this
causes them to be or the lack of or any
of these is why they're psycho as they say, right,
(42:15):
and existing outside of being independent and not needing a man,
and then that making you quote crazy, Um, yeah, because
it's threatening the patriarchal system we all live in. We
also wanted to talk about sex and sexiness, which is
a very broad theme that yeah, we can talk about
pretty much in anything. We talked about media, um, but
(42:39):
we couldn't ignore the obvious trip of film fatals and
their use of sex and sexiness to gain injury to
someone's life, into someone's life, or just as a way
of meeting um. In fact, a majority of films with
psychopathic women seem to fall under the exotic thriller genre
as well, um, which allows for the movie to talk
about the horror of where in having or enjoying sex
(43:02):
without giving too much credit or sexual identity for women.
Movies like basic instinct and though we didn't talk about
it earlier, swim fan Jennifer's Body, which is a really
wonderful movie. I actually really like that one. Um continue
to exploit female bodies and the idea of their usefulness
and for the world of film fatals abbender rights. In
the world of erotic thrillers, sex as a tool and
(43:24):
revenge is always an option, right and many articles have
been written about the biphobic and overall lesbian phobic representations
of the characters within this this trope in genre, again
using basic instinct as the example, the relationship between character
Catherine and Roxy. We see the relationship through the male
gaze and is often portrayed as merely objects to quote
(43:45):
arouse the male viewer. As an article from the bitch
Flick states, uh, the author continues and rights though many directors,
specifically male male directors don't necessarily mean to objectify their
characters quote their female characters are shown to have some
charming quality, but in the in the end that I
promiss you was and manipulative and never to be trusted. Yes,
(44:06):
and this reminded me of something I totally forgotten about.
But um so there was this thing I at work
back when Kristin past host and creator Kristen, when I
did the videos, she did one a parody of this
thing called the Crazy Hot Matrix UM, which many of
you probably have heard of from I believe it was
on How I Met Your Mother, but that this was
(44:28):
a video that a man like a man made and
legitimately believed that the more beautiful woman is, the hotter
she is, the more crazy she is, and he had
this graph and um, when we made the parody of it,
this was the one that got me duckt um people.
They were so mad about it and I was like,
(44:48):
it were clearly we're joking, but also this video is
a real thing that exists. Um. But the fact that
that was the one that got me docks, I think
is very telling when it comes to this trope and
how we do view women still as like, yeah, you
can have sex with this crazy hot woman, but she
don't forget she's crazy and you don't want to marry
(45:09):
her because that was the point, Like you wanted to
marry a five and have sex with the ten um
and all of this is offensive. I don't agree with
any of it. I hope that's clear, But oh yeah,
this is definitely like pickup artist's charts to they they
really saw the character Barney as being an icon for them.
So I could absolutely see you being raped over the
(45:29):
coals by them. For sure. It was wild. We had
to get security guards. Um. Yeah. So we we did
want to talk about this stigma with mental health and women. UM.
So we've given some examples. There are so many, but
we've given some of the psycho bitch chope in the
horror thriller genre and how it has slowly been changing
throughout the years, but not necessarily as fact as you
(45:52):
as fast as you might expect with the growing fairness
movements and just discussions around mental health. However, we did
want to talk about, though we're all ablest idea behind
the genre and usage of the term crazy and psycho bitch. Um.
And though we won't go into the history of the
language because we have done that before. Um, we did
want to look at the continued stigma tropes like these
(46:14):
perpetuate and the damage they cause. As one article said, quote,
the trope of the psycho bitch is something that oppresses
women and people with mental illnesses simultaneously. In it, writer
Joe and Show talks about the dangers of how these
tropes not only maintain the negative stereotypes, but continue to
negate the legitimacy of violence against women with disabilities. She writes,
(46:36):
when they experience violence because they are seen as crazier,
because they are not able to understand or communicate what
happened to them, their attackers are rarely brought to justice.
And this is a big conversation for us, as we
are recently discussed in our Violence against Women episode on
how vulnerable we make people in the disabled community feel
when we allow such ablest representation to be mainstream, right,
(47:01):
And I think it was legitimately calling out the fact
that when we have these things saying it's their fault
that people no longer believe them. So they have all
of these hurdles already just being able to say whether
they're not able to communicate with people, or whether they're
not able to prove something, all of these things, but
(47:21):
to have this other part of yeah, but but what
did you do? But you're you're crazy. You can't even
talk about it because whatever what not? She haven't. She
even gave an example of a client she had who
stated that she did not want to report rape because
she would have to name all the medications she has
and the side effects, and that alone could discredit her.
(47:41):
So you have all of these things already happening, and
then you have movies like this that perpetuate and literally
uses their trauma as a blurb and then blame them
for all the things. And don't get me wrong, all
these things are bad, but it's also unrealistic little violence
that these men supposedly portray. But at the same time,
(48:02):
how that term crazy psycho bitch uses that connotation, that's
what lingers over them about a person. So no matter what,
this crazy maybe, and it's not okay to say that
at all, but it just reference to the worst idea
of the psycho bitch trope. Yeah, but yeah, and beyond that,
we look at the other side of that coin. You're
welcome UM as that it portrays people diagnosed with mental
(48:25):
health issues as violent and unhinged and dangerous, which again
places a mistrust and an ugly shameful stereotype for those
diagnosed UM, which is as another article from bitch Flake
talks about which films continue to use as shocked factor
portions of this fictional entertainment that again leads to misconceived
stereotypes and again silences people who have these issues and
(48:49):
who are living with this and are able to maintain.
These are things that are being completely dismissed. And and
again it's kind of that same level when we talk
about mass shootings, when we talk about the dangers that
have happened and people who have where we have had
incidents and just being saying it's a mental health thing
and just categorizing it like that, And it's so dangerous
because that's not what pushed them right to that volatile state.
(49:14):
Just because they have a diagnosis does not mean they're
going to do this. And to label it like that
and to put a headline like that once again leads
to this awful stereotype and an awful misconception which is
being popularized by a lot of films like this. Yeah,
and that's it's really brazen to to say that and
then offer no like mental health like fun and yeah,
(49:39):
the US thinks so little of actually treatment. Yeah that,
but yeah, we're gonna say it like that, right, And
I mean, this whole troope has especially been weaponized against women.
I mean every word in it. I feel like crazy
psycho bitch to dismiss um women. And I was thinking
(50:01):
about that song, that recent song, like yeah, she's sweet,
but she's psycho like it's everywhere. Um, and that's kind
of that whole term for pixie manic girl. It's that
same level of the cute manic girl. It's kind of
that whole level like Okay, why are you celebrating? And
also this is not a thing, stop it. That is
(50:22):
our messages. So yeah, that's an overview of this trope
that we see. Um, there's a lot to unravel here clearly, UM,
and just years and years and years of how women
are perceived in in our entertainment and in our culture. Um.
(50:43):
As usual, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
So if there's something you want us to focus in on,
let us know please, Or if there's an example we
missed do you think we should talk about, send it
our way, UM. And you can do that at our
email which is Stuff Medium mom Stuff at iHeart media
dot com. You can also find us on Twitter at
mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at Stuff I've Never
(51:04):
Told You. Thanks. It's always to our super producer Andrew Howard.
Thanks Andrew, and thanks to you for listening stuff I
never told you the protection of I heart Radio. For
more podcast from My heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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