October 5, 2018 • 49 mins
Horror fans Anney and guest co-host Lauren Vogelbaum talk about the horror movie trope of not believing women, and how it relates to #BelieveHer.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi. This is Annie and you're listening to Stuff Mom
Never told you. And today we're joined by a guest
co host, Lauren Volgal Bomb. Hello. That's me, Hi Lauren, Hi,
(00:29):
thanks for joining us. Yeah anytime, I mean maybe not
literally anytime, because I already do a lot of other things, Yes,
including a show, a little show you may have heard
of that we co host together once, food Stuff. It
is now called Savor Savor Savor, and just re launched
last week. We were trawling or eating lots of food,
(00:50):
drinking lots of drinks, a lot of people, talking to
some amazing people, and incorporating clips from those interviews into
our stories about different foods and food cultures. So it's
pretty I think it's okay. Yeah, we're not biased. No no,
And Lauren, has you've been on the show before? Have
you not? I have back up back when Kristen and
(01:12):
Caroline where where the hosts. I was on an episode
about Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I bugged them for
years about doing an episode about Buffy. Well, you succeeded.
It was a long, hard fought campaign, but it was
you got with you for his end. And that's one
of the reasons I wanted you to come on this
(01:34):
week to fill in for Bridget because, um, you like horror.
I like horror. Oh yeah, yeah. We talked about this
all the time. We do, we do. Um and I
feel like real life has started to feel a little
horror movie esque only just started. Yes, Um, so we
(01:59):
originally today we were going to talk about and we
are going to talk about the trope of in horror movies,
why don't people believe women? And it turned into that,
but also so much real life stuff. Yeah. I'm guessing
that some of you have seen or heard the phrase
believe women being tossed around lately. Yeah, so there's that
(02:23):
whole trend believe women turning on Twitter in response to
the accusations of assault made against Supreme Court Justice nominee
Brett Kevinaugh and the complete dismissal of these accusations are
even like just don't like people don't care, um in
in a lot of cases. Um, And you've probably all
heard these numbers before, but I think they're worth repeating.
(02:46):
Sexual assault is all too common. Some estimates say one
in five women, and it's more common than we think
in men as well. We don't hear about that as often,
but it should be part of the conversation. Absolutely, and
only somewhere from two to eight percent of sexual assault
Act stations are found to be false, But the conversations
we have around this would suggest that false accusations just
(03:06):
happened all of the time. Yeah. Um, And I've been
thinking a lot about this, and I think even outside
of sexual assault, people just don't believe women. And I
can think of so many examples in my life where
I've said something like, hey, I like this song and
been interrogated about it by a dude as if that
(03:27):
there's no way you know this song, you like this song?
You've never heard that song? Ye? What? In like a
fake geek girl way, like like you were trying to
impress them by saying that. Yeah. And it was weird
because I'm thinking of one particular instance, and it got
to the point where another guy who I didn't know
very well stepped in the conversation and said, Dude, she
(03:48):
said she likes it. I don't. I don't know what
was going on. It wasn't even that quote manly of
a thing. In fact, I would argue that that's more
tradition fominine type music. But whatever, Another example is how
I'm happy single people. That's impossible. You're just you don't
(04:10):
know what you're talking about, young lady. You're just miserably.
You don't know how to recognize it yet, but you'll
you'll understand. Um. And I found a lot of studies
researching this that show that managers are less likely to
believe women who ask for flex time as compared to men.
They think their priorities are divided with families. It couldn't be,
(04:34):
because they're they're human people. The only men are people.
Women are women. That's right, that's right. That's the heart
of this whole thing. Have you ever experienced something like this? Jeez,
it feels like about once a week. Uh. My favorite
is along the fake geek girl thing when when guys,
guys don't usually argue with me about it, but um,
(04:56):
but I get this response from dude. Sometimes they're shocked
beyond belief that I like this geeky thing that they
also like. They're like, well, but I'm like well but
what They're like, well be your girl, and I'm like yes,
And I like Batman. I don't know why everyone likes Batman.
(05:17):
It's it's strange. And another example and thinking about this
this morning got me so mad. Um I have a
bunch of intolerances to a bunch of different foods, well, peppers, onion,
stuff like that, which I discovered by getting like really
sick repeatedly from eating dishes that contain even just a
little bit of those things, and kind of like process
of elimination no pun intended, figuring out that it's those
(05:38):
specific foods. Um and Yeah, I had a dude argue
with me about how just just a little bit can't
possibly hurt you. It can't possibly and al was like,
what do I need to record bathroom noises and send
them to you? Like I don't you probably not talk
(06:00):
to you again. That's a long way to get to
solve the problem. Yeah, this is true. Yeah, I've mentioned
before on this show that, um I I often get
the fake gyk girl thing all of the time, and
then once you finally have proven yourself, then it's like
suddenly they're super attracted to me, at least in my case.
(06:24):
And I'm like, so your qualifications are you want someone
who's fluent and and marvel and that is kind of
a reflection of you. Well, that's for a different episode.
We also talked about this, this whole thing of not
believing women in our episode on women in pain, how
(06:45):
the medical community consistently dismisses women who who come and
try to get helps for pain specifically, and it takes
so much longer to get a diagnosis for traditionally women's
um issues, which is really frustrating. Oh. Absolutely, And and
this also ties into an intersectional issue. The medical community
(07:08):
also doesn't believe people of color pretty frequently. Studies have
shown that implicit biases lead doctors to prescribe fewer painkillers
and less aggressive treatments to black patients than white patients,
even when the patients present the exact same symptoms. So
there's there's a lot of issues there. There's a lot
of stuff that we need to work on. But in
(07:29):
this episode, we're going to try to use horror movies
as a semi fun lens to tackle a very depressing
and frustrating issue gay yeah um. Like we talked about
in our final Girl episode, horror movies are really great
reflections of the anxieties we have as a society, or
or the observations are hang ups. Just in general, I
(07:51):
think horror movies are a great way to sort of
test out where we are, do a little, a little, yeah,
to see to see see what's going on in the
mind of the common common person. Yeah, and if if
horror movies or anything to go by our horror media
in general, we do not believe women or people of color, yes, both, alright,
(08:15):
So even if we don't, Even if you don't, because
Lauren and I do. Even if you don't watch a
lot of horror movies, you have probably seen this before
in crime procedurals and supernatural killers, anything like that. You've
seen a character, most likely a female or a minority
or both, say hey, I don't like this, let's go
(08:35):
back and get ignored. And then probably they're both killed,
or maybe it's a bigger group all killed by a
monster in the woods or a serial killer in the woods,
or what have you. Or if the woman survives, the
police don't believe her, then, but I will admit the
monster killed my boyfriend might be a bit of a stretch,
(08:59):
I would. I would want to conduct some further investigation. Yes,
believe women find the truth. Yeah, I like that which
I've seen presented as a as a useful thing in
these are non horror I'm not going to say their
non horror and these are regular times, and these are
non movie times. Yes, those times. If it's a big
(09:21):
conspiracy and we're all in a movie, Oh man, what
a downer of a movie? It is okay. Um. So,
while most horror movie troops can be seen as moralistic
or cautionary tales, this one seems more just assumed. Um.
(09:43):
Take this scene from Night of the Living Dead, partly
because it illustrates the point and partly because it's in
the public domain. Here's the clip. Well, you used to
really be scared here, Johnny, you're still afraid. Stop it
now on me. They're coming for you, Barbara, stop it.
(10:04):
You're acting like a child. They're coming for you. That
comes one of them. Now he'll hear you. Here he comes.
I'm getting out. Spoiler alert. It was a zombie. Yeah,
Barbara was right. Barbara was right, And we were talking
(10:25):
about this off Mike, and the troope is sort of
one of necessity. If the one was like, I don't
like this, let's go home, and instead of calling her
a scaredy cat, the dude was like, yeah, okay, history ends. Yeah,
there's no there's no movie then, probably, but it is
interesting that a good percent of the time it is
a woman or a person of color are both that
(10:46):
is the one raising the concern and then getting ignored,
totally ignored. Yeah, yeah, so much so that when it's
not a woman or a person of color, it's strange,
like it's a it's usually a purposeful reversal. It becomes
the whole point. Like it was mind blowing in the
X Files that Molder, the guy, was the one jumping
(11:07):
to these crazy conclusions that usually turned out to be right,
and Scully was the scientific skeptic, a woman who is
a scientist. Weird what I um? Or when the stoner
character in Capit in the Woods tells everyone that, you know,
I've got a bad feeling about this, it's played for laughs,
you know. The other characters tell him to man up
and that the weed has a paranoid man um and
(11:28):
of course he's right though, and the weed is what
saves him. And and note also that this very frequently
happens to child characters, like basically none of the Harry
Potter series would have happened if the kids and the
adults trusted each other enough to fill each other in.
But the kids thought that they wouldn't be believed, and
the adults thought that the kids couldn't handle it. The
(11:50):
fact that this trope happens to women, people of color,
and children, I think really speaks to how infantilized those
two groups that are not ldren. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
great point. Um. And I thought about this a lot because,
as as listeners know, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan.
(12:10):
And uh, it's another one of those things where the
books wouldn't have happened if that trust had been there,
Like a lot of children's books do operate on that um.
And when I reread them as an adult, I had
to step back because I kept getting so angry thinking
why aren't the adults helping? Right? Oh man, yeah, there's
(12:32):
it's it's infuriating. Um. But but yeah, like like interestingly,
the way that the troope does play out, disbelieving these
people is to everyone's detriment, like you know, from either
just the main characters in the movie to like the
whole world. People suffer and perish because they aren't believing
these adult human people. Yeah, he's intelligent human beings. Right.
(12:58):
It's like it's like, I don't know if that's a
subconscious yeah, addition or yeah, um. However, I do think
that this trope of of these people being right can
also play into the sexist trope of women being preternaturally
or even magically intuitive. Um. This is a witch woman trope.
(13:21):
You know, the idea that ladies are just so mysterious,
who knows what's going on in our heads? Our thought
processes are just so different. Um. You know the idea
that men are logical or observational and women are emotional
or intuitive. Yeah. I was thinking about that too, and
I was thinking that it's another way, or it can
(13:41):
be used as another way to victim blame right totally,
like you should have intuited and then do and no
one believes us for frustrating. Yeah. And I would say
that like a high level of observational logic can look
like intuition um, similar to Arthur's Clark's often quoted adage
(14:01):
that um any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from from magic. Um.
Like if you take Sherlock Holmes, his whole stick is
that it seems like he's intuiting uh impossibly or even magically,
until he just breaks down his very rational observations. And
he's often portrayed as being fay or feminine or otherwise
non masculine. Maybe because of that, maybe alongside that, I
(14:23):
don't know. It's a weird yeah. Yeah, and we're gonna
come back a little bit too, this whole woman's intuition
and horror movies thing. But that is, I do like
that point that it can seem magical, but really you're
just reasoning it a oh yeah, very high level. Yeah.
I mean, and you kind of you kind of see it.
(14:45):
You kind of see it everywhere. You've got, you know,
the fortune teller, the wise woman, the woman healer or midwife.
If you add in n a dash of racism, you've
got the so called gypsy or voodoo woman. Um. If
you're if you're in a fictional universe that incorporates magic,
then like, okay, we we can talk about those characters,
you know, both both with the metaphors that are in
use there and also with the actual history of those
(15:08):
medicinal and of religious practices and the fact that women
have been accused of witchery all over the place. Um.
But it's so fascinating to me that even in horror
set in a non magical universe where the villain is
just a regular dude. You you still get this trope. Um,
it'll have that moment, yeah, that we're talking about where
(15:28):
the woman or the token Rachel minority will express that
seemingly intuitive thought. This feels wrong. I don't like it.
It's not it's not magic. They're just paying attention. Yeah, yeah,
pretty much. There's a great article over at Tour written
by Emily as your parent about this whole thing, and
it was so helpful when researching this, and we're going
(15:52):
to be referencing it throughout. Should you want to look
it up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. It's called the Peril of
Being Disbelieved, Horror and the Intuition of Women. Yes, And
we have just so many examples for you. But first
we're gonna stop for a quick break for word from
our sponsor and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So I'm
(16:23):
thinking about this. The more we thought about it, the
more and more examples we came up with. Oh yeah,
I started realizing that it's in everything. But we wanted
to point out a couple, a couple of really big,
strong ones. Yes, and I wanted to start with one
of my favorite favorite horror movies, Scream and Scream Too
(16:46):
which is also good. Um. And this is a great
example of what we're talking about for those of you
who haven't seen these movies. They follow Sidney Prescott played
by Nev Campbell, who in the first one is a
teenager in high schoo cool and she's tormented by the
ghost face killer. Um. I'm sure you've seen those sort
(17:06):
of grim Reaper costumes. Yeah, it looks like the Scream
the painting. Oh yeah, it does look like that. Yeah, um,
or how I imagine that Grim Reaper would look. But
I don't know if that's influenced by this or vice versa.
I don't know, but that's what the killer or killers
wears in these movies. Oh yeah, there's there's gonna be
(17:28):
spoilers in here. Just just just f y. I I
feel like the isn't the window is past. Yeah, but
if you're really concerned about it, yes, f y Um.
As we talked about in a little bit in our
final Girl episode, Scream is a hyper aware horror movie.
It's a horror movie making fun of horror movies. It's
(17:49):
playing off the tripes. It knows the tropes, it knows
that you know the tropes, and it uses that to
mess with you. I love the first time I saw
the first one, I thought almost every character was the
killer at some point. I loved it because they were
so great. They knew you were looking for these, which
is excellent. Um, and this trope of not being believed
(18:14):
with a touch of gas lighting in this case is
certainly played with here because it turns out Toney's boyfriend,
the person who keeps telling her everything's gonna be all right,
stop being so obsessed with the past. You're really overreacting,
he's the serial killer. Yeah, yeah, he Um, he knew,
(18:34):
he knew. Oh I don't know if you can say
the character n the trope, but he knew that was
a way to like he did, he's obsessed with horror movies.
That's true that. That's an interesting thing about these movies too,
is that the killers usually reference horror movies at the end,
as like I took um, I was influenced by Anthony
Perkins and Psycho like yeah, yeah, that's another interesting aspect
(18:58):
about these But um, if we moved to scream to
scream too gets super meta and I love it. At
this point, Sydney is in college and one of her
extracurricular activities is drama and oh yeah, she's being tormented
again by a ghost face killer and anyway, her starring
(19:20):
role is Cassandra from Greek mythology, and if you haven't
heard or aren't familiar with Cassandra, she was the daughter
of Troy's last king and Troy as in Helen of Yeah,
the god Apollo was super in love with Cassandra, and
he gave her the ability to see into the future
(19:43):
and hopes that that would win her over. I didn't though.
It didn't work and she she wasn't into it, so
he put a curse on her that made sure no
one would ever believe her prophecies. So she saw agamm
Noam's death, the fall of Troy. She told people no
one believed her. And if you've heard beware of Greeks
(20:06):
bearing gifts are possibly the translation is, but where the Greeks,
especially those bearing gifts? That is a quote from her
in French philosopher Gastone Buccalard even named a syndrome after her,
the Cassandra syndrome, to describe cases where legitimate concerns were
raised and not believed. Yes, well, which brings us back
(20:28):
to scream too. Okay, So Sydney isn't being believed. She's
playing Cassandra. Yes. Um. There's a scene where they're rehearsing
the play and Sydney playing Cassandra. She has sort of
this Greek chorus wearing masks behind her, kind of like
the stone versions of those tragedy comedy faces, and the
(20:49):
chorus begins to do this dance attack type thing at her.
There's a lot of choreography involved, um, only she's not
acting anymore because she sees that one of the actors
is wearing the ghost face mask under their hood. But
no one believes her. And it's great because they're chanting there,
like chanting behind her hill, Cassandra, no one believes you.
(21:13):
It's wild. And the finale of the movie takes place
on that stage and Sydney uses a lot of the props,
the disorienting music, the lights, the heavy bags holding up
the lights, the falling of styrofoam rocks and pillars, the
fog machine in her battle against the killer. And to me,
it's kind of saying that we haven't really gone that
(21:36):
far from ancient mythological Greece when it comes to believing women.
That it's a battle that we're still fighting. But I've
been known to perhaps read too much into horror movies. Anyway,
Here is a clip from the scene. Let's dramatic, right,
(22:10):
Oh yeah, we were, we were just like we we
watched We actually watched the clipping studio and h and
and producer Andrew and I. Neither of us have seen
this film in like about twenty years, and so it's
I forgot how much I freaked out when that scene
happened in the theater. It's great. Um. Yeah, there are
layers upon layers of um it playing on on the
(22:34):
first one, on the whole fear of the boyfriend. Now,
of course, Randy, the character who has all the horror
movie rules, horror movie rules about sequels. Um, when she
goes to the police, they don't believe her when she says,
I think it's this Yeah. Yeah. The entire sequel is
basically about her not being believed. Yeah. Wow. It's a
(22:56):
pretty good example for what we're talking about. Yeah. Um. Also,
I didn't know this that there is an Abba song
about Cassandra and it's it goes like, sorry, I didn't
believe you, You're right now we're all dead or some
heck aba, I know, getting getting serious there. I I
(23:22):
have I have an example, um that that I wanted
to discuss that isn't about women, but going back to
the intersectionality of people of color also having this happen
in horror films. Um, I wanted to talk about get Out. Yeah,
this is another film that is very reflexive about its tropes.
It expects you to have these certain expectations and it
uses that to mess with you. Um, if you have
(23:44):
not seen it and you like either horror films or
ridiculously canny explorations of racism in liberal white America, stop
this podcast right now and go watch it because A
it's really good and be I'm going to spoil everything. Yeah,
it's so good. So yeah, okay. So so get Out
is a story about a black man's intuitive fears being
(24:05):
valid to the extreme. Our hero, Chris, has anxiety from
the get go about driving out to the country to
meet his white girlfriend's family. She assures him that everything
will be fine. Everything is not fine. Her family and
their friends are like walking microaggressions, and the one other
black dude there who is not a servant, gives Chris
this panicked, cryptic warning to get out. Um. Chris is
(24:30):
increasingly unsettled. He asked his girlfriend if they can leave,
and you know what, she says, yes, She's like, oh,
of course, of course we can go. She believes him immediately,
and Chris is relief and like mine, watching this movie
is intense and palpable, um, Like, you never expect that
(24:52):
to happen in a scary movie, but hell is your
characters being believed? Of course, this is, you know, a
horror movie, so it's a trick. Of course, she's in
on her family's plot to kidnap Chris and supplant his
consciousness with that of one of their white friends, because
Chris's body is healthy, their friends is not. In Black
lives don't matter. But y'all that moment where she says
(25:12):
that she believes him, I know, it's it kind of
goes back to what you were saying earlier about how
the purposeful. It seems so odd to have Skully be
the skeptic and scientifically it seems purposeful that moment. I
remember that to you being like, oh my gosh, it's
so refreshing, right, and then it's not. It's totally a
(25:34):
purpose um. The film also explicitly portrays black people not
being believed by police. Um. On on the way to
her family's house, Chris and the girlfriend hit a deer
and a cop shows up, a white cop, and even
though she was the one driving, the cop asks Chris
for his I D and only backs off when the
girlfriend insists that it's unfair and unnecessary. Um. And later
(25:58):
when Chris contacts a black and about how weird everything
is out out of the ranch, the friend calls the police,
but he is also dismissed. Um. And all of that
pays off with one more twist at the end that uh,
what was another moment that I was just like, well
in the theater, like I didn't even know what was
happening to my face. Um So so you know, it's
(26:19):
it's the end sequence. Chris is fighting the girlfriend for
his life and he's winning. Yeah, but but out of
the night, a police car approaches. And I've heard personally
never been that scared by police showing up. And it
was a profound privileged check for me. Like it was
one of those moments where I was just like, oh, oh, oh,
I get it. Thank you for telling me about it.
(26:41):
I'm listening, and I'm so sorry for like not getting
it previously. Um. And it turns out to be Chris's
friend who's a T s A agent, And I don't
care that probably they don't get cars like that because again,
just like that sense of relief, like you know, if
it had been cops, cops never would have believed him,
our judiciary system never would have believed him. Um, And
(27:01):
it turned out okay, which was such a relief. I
read that the original ending of the film actually had
cops show up and that the final scene is Chris
in in jail or prison. Um, And I am so
glad that Jordan Peele gave us that relief instead, even
if it's probably not realistic. Yeah, I think I saw
(27:21):
the alternate ending. I think you can see it, and
it was so it was just dismal. Yeah, it was
quite dismal. Um. But that was another That is another
great example of a a couple of things, a lot
of things, but a couple of things that we're talking
about of horror movies being reflective of of society and um,
(27:44):
fears that we have in society, and also just a
movie that knows its tropes and messes with you because
it knows that you know them too. Ah. Yeah, so smart. Yeah, well,
well to lighten things up a little bit, it was
so sillier. Examples like out of Yeah drive home, how calmon,
this trope is hocus pocus. Yeah, so I watched last night.
(28:07):
Oh it's a good movie, stayed very late, or it's
a silly movie. It's it's a movie I enjoy watching.
That's probably the best way to describe it. I watched
it so much as a kid. It was banned from
my household. I'm not allowed to watch it. In fact,
I didn't watch it from about the age of eight
until about the age of four because my parents Nope,
never again. So funny. Um, When Danny, who's a little sister,
(28:32):
tells her brother Max not to light the black flame candle,
he goes right ahead and does it. She says she's scared.
She doesn't want to do it. It's a dumb idea.
He's trying to impress. Yeah, a lady friend. But she
doesn't want him to do it either. Yeah, she's like,
I'm scared, don't do that. Also, it's like a museum. Yeah. Anyway,
(28:57):
we my friends and I played a drinking him to
it last night, and every time they said, Hollywood, you
had to take a drink. Um community in community, um Britta,
that's sort of a bit about the steps to writing
horror movies. And one of the episodes, and she tells
(29:18):
the story of a man and woman making out in
a car and the woman keeps hearing something and the
dude only agrees to check it out if she promises
to give him sex when he returns, so he doesn't yeah,
believe her. Yeah, but he'll use it, but he'll use
it to get sex. Yeah. Great. Um thriller the music video,
(29:40):
which I've never seen before. I'd seen the like short one,
but there's a long thirteen minutes. Yeah, it's beautiful. Well,
the whole plot thread is essentially this whole thing with
Michael Jackson telling his date, I don't be afraid because
it's only a movie. But the next then, of course,
it turns out that it's not just a movie and
she is follow by zombies. So that's encapsulated right there. Yeah,
(30:05):
if you haven't seen it out, I enjoyed it quite
a bit. Oh and it just like like yeah, like
once we started thinking about it, it's hard not to
pile up the the the examples of it. Um. I
think it's interesting that in some of these stories it's
it's not just other people disbelieving women, it's women doubting themselves.
(30:27):
Stuff like the Boba Duke, the Ring, Rosemary's Baby, Hunting
of Hillhouse, Hereditary, the Shining Joy, Spuyers, and Stranger Things.
I also think it's really interesting that all those characters
are mothers. Yes, and I'm not sure what exactly that says.
I think that's another episode about about motherhood and horror movies.
But oh yeah yeah, um, of course all of these
(30:48):
women finally do like own the fact that something we're
just happening and reach out for help and they're disbelieved.
But yeah uh and speaking of stranger things, oh okay,
I keep getting excited. Uh. I do love that the
two young women, um eleven and Nancy are a lot
more confident, Like they don't doubt themselves. Um, I mean
they're they're also dismissed, but but at least, you know,
(31:10):
I don't know, like it's it's better sweet like they
I think the point is that they haven't had that
confidence in their own senses ground out of them yet.
That is more bitter than sweet, perhaps, But um I
I do enjoy that as well. Here's hoping that. Yeah,
these fictional characters keep fighting the good fight absolutely. Um.
(31:33):
Right before we started podcasting, producer Andrew reminded us of
Aliens not Alien too. It is the second one that
is aliens with an S and not alien singular. But
the I just watched this recently as well, because I
do like a whole two month horror movie thing. Um.
(31:53):
And in the beginning, there's this committee of business people
and lawyers questioning replace the corney Weaver's character about her
experience on lv TO for six or whatever it is
um with the alien, and no one believes her. Yeah.
(32:15):
She keeps saying, like, it destroyed my crew, destroyed my ship.
The only way I could get out was to jettison
it and escape on this whole on the little pod.
And they're all like, I acid comes out of its rains.
They're like, lady, that's patently silly. Jo. Do you know
(32:38):
how much money we lost? Yeah? Yeah, they keep bringing
that up, the whole money thing. Um. And then when
she she's talking to the sort of marine, the alien marines,
the space marines, Alien Marines marines, um, and she's trying
to share a story and to me is obviously like
having difficulty. It's clear she has this experience. They sort
(33:00):
of or just like okay, yeah, sure whatever, Yeah, it's
just not that scary. Yeah sure, it's not that bad.
Um pretty much. And every episode of Supernatural the TV
series starts with this some version of this. Sure, a
lot of episodes of Buffy too, Yeah yeah, and and
(33:21):
frequently it's one of the it's one of the actual
Scoopy gang. Like, the number of times that Buffy herself
is disbelieved by everyone around here is truly remarkable because
it's just like, y'all, we did this last week and
the week before that, Um, paranormal activity to where it's
kind of an interesting dynamic and um, if you haven't
(33:44):
seen this, you probably know the gist of it. But
basically it's this couple and her boyfriend. It's weird because
it's like he believes her because he wants to. He
believes that there's paranormal activity. He wants to capture it.
But he does believe her when she's telling him how
serious and dangerous it is, so it's kind of a strange,
(34:06):
like he's excited by it. He keeps inviting it in
and she's saying no, like this is a scary thing
we need to bring to mess with it. In fact,
I think we should go do this and try to
fix it. And he keeps saying I can fix it,
it's not that bad. He doesn't believe her when she's
saying she's telling him the consequences and the severity, the
seriousness of it, which is an interesting kind of take
(34:29):
on the whole thing. Um and we when we're talking
about this, you might wonder why is this troupe so common?
Probably you have a good idea, but talked about it anyway. Emily,
as your parent in that article that we reverenced at
(34:51):
the top, wrote, every woman knows what this feels like.
They know what it means, They know how hard the
world works not to believe them. And this particular narrative
device always feels like a pointed jab, a great big
spotlight on that precise problem. It doesn't even matter if
it's intentional. In fact, the idea that it might be
unintentional makes it all the more poignant. Filmmakers and script
(35:15):
writers accidentally pointing out how women's fears are never taken
seriously again and again, and why would she have that
sense when no one else was bothered. Oh, you know,
probably women's intuition. But intuition is not a magical power
granted to half the population by sheer random happenstance. It's
not the consolation prize you drew because the world calls
(35:35):
you a woman. Intuition is an ability built up over time,
powered partly by animal instinct and partly by learning and
partly by experience. Any human being can tap into intuition,
but women are constantly pegged as the humans who own
this preternatural ability. Why because women are supposed to be
on their guard every second of the day, Because our
(35:56):
very existence in the right skirt or pair of high
heels is antation to untold abuses. Because we're not supposed
to trust anyone, but we're supposed to be unfailingly sweet
to everyone. Women are intuitive because tapping that intuition is
something that we are encouraged towards from the day we
were born, for the sake of our safety and our lives. Yeah,
(36:18):
you know, women and people of color have to pay attention.
We have to control how we move through the world
more carefully. You know. We we make note of our surroundings,
We pick up on nonverbal cues. It's a learned skill. Yeah. Um,
And I was thinking, I haven't seen this horror movie
in a while, but I was thinking about the silence
of the lambs Buffalo Bill. He says something along the
(36:40):
lines of you wouldn't believe how many people like, even
though they're scared, are too afraid to be rude. Oh
yeah right, I remember that part. Yeah, like they'll put
their safety at risk. And I feel that all the time.
Where I do think that, um, women in our socialized
(37:01):
to be so polite and so nice and so friendly.
Also watch out and watch out. It's your fault if
anything happens, I mean, if it really did happen. Yeah. Yeah, um.
We we do have some more history and science science
about why women, um and people of color are less
(37:24):
likely to be believed. But first we're going to pause
for one more quick break for word from our sponsor,
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So, as we've said
before on this show and in this very episode, harmonies
(37:44):
are a great mirror the hold up to society, and
this is no exception on a large societal scale. We
don't trust women. They're over dramatic, they overreact, people of
color to their unreliable narrators all of us. Yeah. Um,
and this goes back forever um in the case of women,
in the case of people of color, that the modern
(38:05):
concepts of race are relatively recent constructs um, created and
perpetuated during globalization and the and the slave trade to
dehumanize and discredit enslaved people's and since then, popular culture
has largely drawn people of color as unintelligent brutes. This
pervaded in the United States via minstrel shows basically right
up until the Civil rights movement in the middle of
(38:27):
the twentieth century. Um. But you know, although most people
know that like black face is bad now, um, those
biases are absolutely still part of our culture. Yeah. For women, Um,
there's an Egyptian pirus from six BC. It's the oldest
known medical text that actually describes depressive symptoms, and it
(38:50):
blames women's mental health problems on their uteruses moving around
their bodies making trouble. Yeah yeah, yeah, um yeah. Hop
over to ancient Greece A few centuries later you get
physicians talking about uterine melancholy. Um. Hippocrates gave us the
first written mention of hysteria around five b C. Hysteria
(39:12):
being described as an anxiety and other symptoms in women
caused by a bad and again wandering uterus. I don't
know why they thought it detached. Is it like a
ghostly uter I don't know. No, I think it was physical,
because they would they would give you like they would
like put like good smelling things by your nose and
like bad smelling things by your by your badge if
(39:35):
if they wanted it to move higher up in your body,
and they would reverse that. It's very sensitive to smell
if they wanted it to move back down again. I
know that's why they didn't let women wide trains for
a while. Oh yes, because they thought that like any
sudden stop. Heck, although that could have just been they
(39:55):
didn't want women writing traps. I don't know. I don't
know for sure or uh yeah. In the case of
ancient Greece, the cure for this was generally having sex
with men, of course, because men were believed to be
superior um and uh so later those those uh those
(40:15):
beliefs were codified into religion. You know, Eve was physically
mentally weaker than Adam, so she's the one who fell
for the serpent's trick. Yea, and yeah, The belief in
women being irrational due to problems with their sex organs
lasted into the twenty century. That's why it's why vibrators
were invented. People were like, ladies, you you really need
(40:37):
to You can't be coming into the doctor's office this
often to get have a vibrator to have orgasms. We
need to give you a take home method of solving
this problem. They didn't call it orgasms then, but yeah,
well one, that's one good thing I suppose. Yeah. Oh,
and I do want to put in here that that,
(40:58):
of course it is completely possible hormones to affect your
mental health, but like dudes have hormones too, breaking news.
I'm sorry you had to learn it here, but learn
it you did. Yeah. If we if we bring all
of this back to the whole hashtag believer and Brett
(41:21):
cobanaw thing um when it comes to sexual assault, there
has been some science looking into why we don't believe women,
and it has to do with how the brain handles trauma.
Survivors don't outwardly act how folks think they should. Instead
of a sobbing mess, they might seem kind of cold.
(41:43):
And that's because a lot of survivors experience disassociation from
their body. Also, a lot of times their memories might
seem flimsy, which causes people to doubt them. But again,
this is your brain shutting down all other functions that
don't have to do with pure survival. Wearing a traumatic,
potentially life threatening event, and in some cases it's not
(42:04):
that you can't remember, it's just you have difficulty retrieving
it and describing it. Another thing the brain does that
plays into this has to do with how it handles
and often rejects new information that challenges accepted patterns are perceptions.
If you find out a friend of yours, someone you've
known for a long time, is accused of sexual assault,
(42:25):
this challenge is something you've long held to be true,
and your brain is like, Nope, no, can't be obviously not. Yeah.
You can be presented with all these facts and your
brain is just um. But it is interesting to point
out that once a man gets involved, the story kind
of changes. Six women had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault,
(42:49):
and Tina Fey referenced these accusations twice, once on a
Weekend to update another time on thirty Rock, But it
was when the comedian Hannibal Burris called Bill Cosby a rapist,
and one of his bits that people started to think,
oh oh no, maybe we should look into this. It
took a man to legitimize the conversation and lead to
(43:10):
actual action, and just to drive his point home. In
some countries around the world, rape allegations have to be
corroborated by one or more men, and that used to
be the case in some some states in the US
as well. Yeah. Another way to look at this whole
thing is how in our society we elevate the desires
(43:31):
of men at the expense of women. Like in this
whole conversation about Brett Kavanaugh, the accusers are destroying his
life and his future, but never mind the lives and
futures and just general well being of the women involved. Yeah. Oh,
and in the nineties, the Philadelphia Police sex crimes unit
called themselves the Lion Bitches Unit. Yeah so sweet. Yeah yeah.
(44:00):
With the article I read, they didn't seem too upset
about getting found out either. Yeah uh um I read.
I read an excellent essay by Stephanie Merritt in The
Guardian called the cult of the unreliable female narrator must
be stopped um, in which she argues that society's disbelief
(44:21):
of women is exactly what makes horror movies like the
ones that we've talked about today so effectively frightening. Um.
She She says that because men are less vulnerable in
our society, those creative works wouldn't have quote the same
atmosphere of claustrophobic menace if the main characters were male. Yeah. Um,
(44:43):
I feel like we could keep talking about this forever
and keep bringing up examples forever. But that kind of
reminds me of The Witch. Oh yeah, um. Which what
I found so frightening about that movie was, Um, it
did such a great job of driving home to me
why Um. We we read about the Salem witch trials
all the time and it feels kind of at least
(45:05):
in my case, it's always felt kind of distant. But
that just brought home to me how there's no way
to prove you aren't a wish. No one believed the
main character thomasin um, Yeah, you can't prove that you're
not possessed by the demon, and it was terrifying. Um,
(45:25):
No one believed her, And I think that's what made
it so relatable is even if we're not exactly trying
to ward off accusations of witchcraft, although I mean you
can see parallels certainly in some things. That idea of
not being believed is scary and absolutely yeah, And I
(45:50):
think that really as a society, we don't want to
believe women because we don't want to have to deal
with it. We don't want to have to deal with
what it means and with having to do the work
too to fix it, to combat what these women, all
these women are saying is happening. Yeah. I think it's
the same reason that there's such pushback against Black Lives Matter,
(46:13):
because people are like, well, you know, like that that
intrinsic response that all lives matter thing is essentially saying like,
there's no problem, right, Like, why are you saying that
there's a problem. Stop saying that there's a problem. Yeah,
because if you admit that, then you have to admit
that you have to work on it, exactly right, that
it's it's a lot of work, and and it is frightening.
(46:35):
It's frightening. Um yea balloons balloons Uh oh, I just
watched it recently. No balloons. So this brings us to
the end of this episode, which I I foolishly when
(46:57):
I pitched it to you, Lauren, thought it was going
to be a much more fearful thing. I don't know
what I was thinking. I was like, we can relate
this to current events, which are great, so much fun.
Don't know what I was thinking, but it was really
enlightening to do. As someone like I said, we both
watch a lot of horror movies, and I'm going to
(47:19):
guess that for a lot of you, you're not going
to be able to unsee this now. Uh, it's really
everywhere it is. It is, and I don't know, and
I do think that it's it's it's an interesting and
like culturally useful trope, especially in discussions like this, you know,
like once you're aware of it, then yeah, hopefully you
(47:40):
can do stuff to help change it, one would hope.
And we're all about change again, growing for the better here. UM,
thank you so much for being on the show. Um,
hopefully you'll you'll come back. We can talk some more
horror movies one of other things. I won't ye cash
to you whatever you want to talk about. Yes, no,
(48:02):
I thank you so much for having me. This has
been This has been a lot of fun. Yeah and um,
you can always find the both of us on saver.
We would love for you to come check that out.
UM And I think I've mentioned before I love fan
fiction and uh we we're trying to get a little
(48:23):
maybe a mini series or on and off against series
of reading stuff that you, you listeners have written. So
if you have any fiction, nonfiction, anything fan fiction that
you've created that you are cool with us reading on
the air, please send it in UM. We might even
get some voices and some production some production work into it. Um.
(48:47):
And so yeah, I would love for any of you
all to send some stuff like that in UM. Also,
just um. Another mini series we're thinking about doing is
What's something your Mom Never told you? Because you know
this show we'll get back to our roots a little bit.
So if you have anything like that, we would love
to hear it. You can email us at mom Stuff
(49:08):
at how stuff works dot com. You can find us
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on Instagram at
stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to our
producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you for listening.
Hi. This is Annie and you're listening to Stuff Mom
Never told you. And today we're joined by a guest
co host, Lauren Volgal Bomb. Hello. That's me, Hi Lauren, Hi,
(00:29):
thanks for joining us. Yeah anytime, I mean maybe not
literally anytime, because I already do a lot of other things, Yes,
including a show, a little show you may have heard
of that we co host together once, food Stuff. It
is now called Savor Savor Savor, and just re launched
last week. We were trawling or eating lots of food,
(00:50):
drinking lots of drinks, a lot of people, talking to
some amazing people, and incorporating clips from those interviews into
our stories about different foods and food cultures. So it's
pretty I think it's okay. Yeah, we're not biased. No no,
And Lauren, has you've been on the show before? Have
you not? I have back up back when Kristen and
(01:12):
Caroline where where the hosts. I was on an episode
about Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I bugged them for
years about doing an episode about Buffy. Well, you succeeded.
It was a long, hard fought campaign, but it was
you got with you for his end. And that's one
of the reasons I wanted you to come on this
(01:34):
week to fill in for Bridget because, um, you like horror.
I like horror. Oh yeah, yeah. We talked about this
all the time. We do, we do. Um and I
feel like real life has started to feel a little
horror movie esque only just started. Yes, Um, so we
(01:59):
originally today we were going to talk about and we
are going to talk about the trope of in horror movies,
why don't people believe women? And it turned into that,
but also so much real life stuff. Yeah. I'm guessing
that some of you have seen or heard the phrase
believe women being tossed around lately. Yeah, so there's that
(02:23):
whole trend believe women turning on Twitter in response to
the accusations of assault made against Supreme Court Justice nominee
Brett Kevinaugh and the complete dismissal of these accusations are
even like just don't like people don't care, um in
in a lot of cases. Um, And you've probably all
heard these numbers before, but I think they're worth repeating.
(02:46):
Sexual assault is all too common. Some estimates say one
in five women, and it's more common than we think
in men as well. We don't hear about that as often,
but it should be part of the conversation. Absolutely, and
only somewhere from two to eight percent of sexual assault
Act stations are found to be false, But the conversations
we have around this would suggest that false accusations just
(03:06):
happened all of the time. Yeah. Um, And I've been
thinking a lot about this, and I think even outside
of sexual assault, people just don't believe women. And I
can think of so many examples in my life where
I've said something like, hey, I like this song and
been interrogated about it by a dude as if that
(03:27):
there's no way you know this song, you like this song?
You've never heard that song? Ye? What? In like a
fake geek girl way, like like you were trying to
impress them by saying that. Yeah. And it was weird
because I'm thinking of one particular instance, and it got
to the point where another guy who I didn't know
very well stepped in the conversation and said, Dude, she
(03:48):
said she likes it. I don't. I don't know what
was going on. It wasn't even that quote manly of
a thing. In fact, I would argue that that's more
tradition fominine type music. But whatever, Another example is how
I'm happy single people. That's impossible. You're just you don't
(04:10):
know what you're talking about, young lady. You're just miserably.
You don't know how to recognize it yet, but you'll
you'll understand. Um. And I found a lot of studies
researching this that show that managers are less likely to
believe women who ask for flex time as compared to men.
They think their priorities are divided with families. It couldn't be,
(04:34):
because they're they're human people. The only men are people.
Women are women. That's right, that's right. That's the heart
of this whole thing. Have you ever experienced something like this? Jeez,
it feels like about once a week. Uh. My favorite
is along the fake geek girl thing when when guys,
guys don't usually argue with me about it, but um,
(04:56):
but I get this response from dude. Sometimes they're shocked
beyond belief that I like this geeky thing that they
also like. They're like, well, but I'm like well but
what They're like, well be your girl, and I'm like yes,
And I like Batman. I don't know why everyone likes Batman.
(05:17):
It's it's strange. And another example and thinking about this
this morning got me so mad. Um I have a
bunch of intolerances to a bunch of different foods, well, peppers, onion,
stuff like that, which I discovered by getting like really
sick repeatedly from eating dishes that contain even just a
little bit of those things, and kind of like process
of elimination no pun intended, figuring out that it's those
(05:38):
specific foods. Um and Yeah, I had a dude argue
with me about how just just a little bit can't
possibly hurt you. It can't possibly and al was like,
what do I need to record bathroom noises and send
them to you? Like I don't you probably not talk
(06:00):
to you again. That's a long way to get to
solve the problem. Yeah, this is true. Yeah, I've mentioned
before on this show that, um I I often get
the fake gyk girl thing all of the time, and
then once you finally have proven yourself, then it's like
suddenly they're super attracted to me, at least in my case.
(06:24):
And I'm like, so your qualifications are you want someone
who's fluent and and marvel and that is kind of
a reflection of you. Well, that's for a different episode.
We also talked about this, this whole thing of not
believing women in our episode on women in pain, how
(06:45):
the medical community consistently dismisses women who who come and
try to get helps for pain specifically, and it takes
so much longer to get a diagnosis for traditionally women's
um issues, which is really frustrating. Oh. Absolutely, And and
this also ties into an intersectional issue. The medical community
(07:08):
also doesn't believe people of color pretty frequently. Studies have
shown that implicit biases lead doctors to prescribe fewer painkillers
and less aggressive treatments to black patients than white patients,
even when the patients present the exact same symptoms. So
there's there's a lot of issues there. There's a lot
of stuff that we need to work on. But in
(07:29):
this episode, we're going to try to use horror movies
as a semi fun lens to tackle a very depressing
and frustrating issue gay yeah um. Like we talked about
in our final Girl episode, horror movies are really great
reflections of the anxieties we have as a society, or
or the observations are hang ups. Just in general, I
(07:51):
think horror movies are a great way to sort of
test out where we are, do a little, a little, yeah,
to see to see see what's going on in the
mind of the common common person. Yeah, and if if
horror movies or anything to go by our horror media
in general, we do not believe women or people of color, yes, both, alright,
(08:15):
So even if we don't, Even if you don't, because
Lauren and I do. Even if you don't watch a
lot of horror movies, you have probably seen this before
in crime procedurals and supernatural killers, anything like that. You've
seen a character, most likely a female or a minority
or both, say hey, I don't like this, let's go
(08:35):
back and get ignored. And then probably they're both killed,
or maybe it's a bigger group all killed by a
monster in the woods or a serial killer in the woods,
or what have you. Or if the woman survives, the
police don't believe her, then, but I will admit the
monster killed my boyfriend might be a bit of a stretch,
(08:59):
I would. I would want to conduct some further investigation. Yes,
believe women find the truth. Yeah, I like that which
I've seen presented as a as a useful thing in
these are non horror I'm not going to say their
non horror and these are regular times, and these are
non movie times. Yes, those times. If it's a big
(09:21):
conspiracy and we're all in a movie, Oh man, what
a downer of a movie? It is okay. Um. So,
while most horror movie troops can be seen as moralistic
or cautionary tales, this one seems more just assumed. Um.
(09:43):
Take this scene from Night of the Living Dead, partly
because it illustrates the point and partly because it's in
the public domain. Here's the clip. Well, you used to
really be scared here, Johnny, you're still afraid. Stop it
now on me. They're coming for you, Barbara, stop it.
(10:04):
You're acting like a child. They're coming for you. That
comes one of them. Now he'll hear you. Here he comes.
I'm getting out. Spoiler alert. It was a zombie. Yeah,
Barbara was right. Barbara was right, And we were talking
(10:25):
about this off Mike, and the troope is sort of
one of necessity. If the one was like, I don't
like this, let's go home, and instead of calling her
a scaredy cat, the dude was like, yeah, okay, history ends. Yeah,
there's no there's no movie then, probably, but it is
interesting that a good percent of the time it is
a woman or a person of color are both that
(10:46):
is the one raising the concern and then getting ignored,
totally ignored. Yeah, yeah, so much so that when it's
not a woman or a person of color, it's strange,
like it's a it's usually a purposeful reversal. It becomes
the whole point. Like it was mind blowing in the
X Files that Molder, the guy, was the one jumping
(11:07):
to these crazy conclusions that usually turned out to be right,
and Scully was the scientific skeptic, a woman who is
a scientist. Weird what I um? Or when the stoner
character in Capit in the Woods tells everyone that, you know,
I've got a bad feeling about this, it's played for laughs,
you know. The other characters tell him to man up
and that the weed has a paranoid man um and
(11:28):
of course he's right though, and the weed is what
saves him. And and note also that this very frequently
happens to child characters, like basically none of the Harry
Potter series would have happened if the kids and the
adults trusted each other enough to fill each other in.
But the kids thought that they wouldn't be believed, and
the adults thought that the kids couldn't handle it. The
(11:50):
fact that this trope happens to women, people of color,
and children, I think really speaks to how infantilized those
two groups that are not ldren. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
great point. Um. And I thought about this a lot because,
as as listeners know, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan.
(12:10):
And uh, it's another one of those things where the
books wouldn't have happened if that trust had been there,
Like a lot of children's books do operate on that um.
And when I reread them as an adult, I had
to step back because I kept getting so angry thinking
why aren't the adults helping? Right? Oh man, yeah, there's
(12:32):
it's it's infuriating. Um. But but yeah, like like interestingly,
the way that the troope does play out, disbelieving these
people is to everyone's detriment, like you know, from either
just the main characters in the movie to like the
whole world. People suffer and perish because they aren't believing
these adult human people. Yeah, he's intelligent human beings. Right.
(12:58):
It's like it's like, I don't know if that's a
subconscious yeah, addition or yeah, um. However, I do think
that this trope of of these people being right can
also play into the sexist trope of women being preternaturally
or even magically intuitive. Um. This is a witch woman trope.
(13:21):
You know, the idea that ladies are just so mysterious,
who knows what's going on in our heads? Our thought
processes are just so different. Um. You know the idea
that men are logical or observational and women are emotional
or intuitive. Yeah. I was thinking about that too, and
I was thinking that it's another way, or it can
(13:41):
be used as another way to victim blame right totally,
like you should have intuited and then do and no
one believes us for frustrating. Yeah. And I would say
that like a high level of observational logic can look
like intuition um, similar to Arthur's Clark's often quoted adage
(14:01):
that um any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from from magic. Um.
Like if you take Sherlock Holmes, his whole stick is
that it seems like he's intuiting uh impossibly or even magically,
until he just breaks down his very rational observations. And
he's often portrayed as being fay or feminine or otherwise
non masculine. Maybe because of that, maybe alongside that, I
(14:23):
don't know. It's a weird yeah. Yeah, and we're gonna
come back a little bit too, this whole woman's intuition
and horror movies thing. But that is, I do like
that point that it can seem magical, but really you're
just reasoning it a oh yeah, very high level. Yeah.
I mean, and you kind of you kind of see it.
(14:45):
You kind of see it everywhere. You've got, you know,
the fortune teller, the wise woman, the woman healer or midwife.
If you add in n a dash of racism, you've
got the so called gypsy or voodoo woman. Um. If
you're if you're in a fictional universe that incorporates magic,
then like, okay, we we can talk about those characters,
you know, both both with the metaphors that are in
use there and also with the actual history of those
(15:08):
medicinal and of religious practices and the fact that women
have been accused of witchery all over the place. Um.
But it's so fascinating to me that even in horror
set in a non magical universe where the villain is
just a regular dude. You you still get this trope. Um,
it'll have that moment, yeah, that we're talking about where
(15:28):
the woman or the token Rachel minority will express that
seemingly intuitive thought. This feels wrong. I don't like it.
It's not it's not magic. They're just paying attention. Yeah, yeah,
pretty much. There's a great article over at Tour written
by Emily as your parent about this whole thing, and
it was so helpful when researching this, and we're going
(15:52):
to be referencing it throughout. Should you want to look
it up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. It's called the Peril of
Being Disbelieved, Horror and the Intuition of Women. Yes, And
we have just so many examples for you. But first
we're gonna stop for a quick break for word from
our sponsor and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So I'm
(16:23):
thinking about this. The more we thought about it, the
more and more examples we came up with. Oh yeah,
I started realizing that it's in everything. But we wanted
to point out a couple, a couple of really big,
strong ones. Yes, and I wanted to start with one
of my favorite favorite horror movies, Scream and Scream Too
(16:46):
which is also good. Um. And this is a great
example of what we're talking about for those of you
who haven't seen these movies. They follow Sidney Prescott played
by Nev Campbell, who in the first one is a
teenager in high schoo cool and she's tormented by the
ghost face killer. Um. I'm sure you've seen those sort
(17:06):
of grim Reaper costumes. Yeah, it looks like the Scream
the painting. Oh yeah, it does look like that. Yeah, um,
or how I imagine that Grim Reaper would look. But
I don't know if that's influenced by this or vice versa.
I don't know, but that's what the killer or killers
wears in these movies. Oh yeah, there's there's gonna be
(17:28):
spoilers in here. Just just just f y. I I
feel like the isn't the window is past. Yeah, but
if you're really concerned about it, yes, f y Um.
As we talked about in a little bit in our
final Girl episode, Scream is a hyper aware horror movie.
It's a horror movie making fun of horror movies. It's
(17:49):
playing off the tripes. It knows the tropes, it knows
that you know the tropes, and it uses that to
mess with you. I love the first time I saw
the first one, I thought almost every character was the
killer at some point. I loved it because they were
so great. They knew you were looking for these, which
is excellent. Um, and this trope of not being believed
(18:14):
with a touch of gas lighting in this case is
certainly played with here because it turns out Toney's boyfriend,
the person who keeps telling her everything's gonna be all right,
stop being so obsessed with the past. You're really overreacting,
he's the serial killer. Yeah, yeah, he Um, he knew,
(18:34):
he knew. Oh I don't know if you can say
the character n the trope, but he knew that was
a way to like he did, he's obsessed with horror movies.
That's true that. That's an interesting thing about these movies too,
is that the killers usually reference horror movies at the end,
as like I took um, I was influenced by Anthony
Perkins and Psycho like yeah, yeah, that's another interesting aspect
(18:58):
about these But um, if we moved to scream to
scream too gets super meta and I love it. At
this point, Sydney is in college and one of her
extracurricular activities is drama and oh yeah, she's being tormented
again by a ghost face killer and anyway, her starring
(19:20):
role is Cassandra from Greek mythology, and if you haven't
heard or aren't familiar with Cassandra, she was the daughter
of Troy's last king and Troy as in Helen of Yeah,
the god Apollo was super in love with Cassandra, and
he gave her the ability to see into the future
(19:43):
and hopes that that would win her over. I didn't though.
It didn't work and she she wasn't into it, so
he put a curse on her that made sure no
one would ever believe her prophecies. So she saw agamm
Noam's death, the fall of Troy. She told people no
one believed her. And if you've heard beware of Greeks
(20:06):
bearing gifts are possibly the translation is, but where the Greeks,
especially those bearing gifts? That is a quote from her
in French philosopher Gastone Buccalard even named a syndrome after her,
the Cassandra syndrome, to describe cases where legitimate concerns were
raised and not believed. Yes, well, which brings us back
(20:28):
to scream too. Okay, So Sydney isn't being believed. She's
playing Cassandra. Yes. Um. There's a scene where they're rehearsing
the play and Sydney playing Cassandra. She has sort of
this Greek chorus wearing masks behind her, kind of like
the stone versions of those tragedy comedy faces, and the
(20:49):
chorus begins to do this dance attack type thing at her.
There's a lot of choreography involved, um, only she's not
acting anymore because she sees that one of the actors
is wearing the ghost face mask under their hood. But
no one believes her. And it's great because they're chanting there,
like chanting behind her hill, Cassandra, no one believes you.
(21:13):
It's wild. And the finale of the movie takes place
on that stage and Sydney uses a lot of the props,
the disorienting music, the lights, the heavy bags holding up
the lights, the falling of styrofoam rocks and pillars, the
fog machine in her battle against the killer. And to me,
it's kind of saying that we haven't really gone that
(21:36):
far from ancient mythological Greece when it comes to believing women.
That it's a battle that we're still fighting. But I've
been known to perhaps read too much into horror movies. Anyway,
Here is a clip from the scene. Let's dramatic, right,
(22:10):
Oh yeah, we were, we were just like we we
watched We actually watched the clipping studio and h and
and producer Andrew and I. Neither of us have seen
this film in like about twenty years, and so it's
I forgot how much I freaked out when that scene
happened in the theater. It's great. Um. Yeah, there are
layers upon layers of um it playing on on the
(22:34):
first one, on the whole fear of the boyfriend. Now,
of course, Randy, the character who has all the horror
movie rules, horror movie rules about sequels. Um, when she
goes to the police, they don't believe her when she says,
I think it's this Yeah. Yeah. The entire sequel is
basically about her not being believed. Yeah. Wow. It's a
(22:56):
pretty good example for what we're talking about. Yeah. Um. Also,
I didn't know this that there is an Abba song
about Cassandra and it's it goes like, sorry, I didn't
believe you, You're right now we're all dead or some
heck aba, I know, getting getting serious there. I I
(23:22):
have I have an example, um that that I wanted
to discuss that isn't about women, but going back to
the intersectionality of people of color also having this happen
in horror films. Um, I wanted to talk about get Out. Yeah,
this is another film that is very reflexive about its tropes.
It expects you to have these certain expectations and it
uses that to mess with you. Um, if you have
(23:44):
not seen it and you like either horror films or
ridiculously canny explorations of racism in liberal white America, stop
this podcast right now and go watch it because A
it's really good and be I'm going to spoil everything. Yeah,
it's so good. So yeah, okay. So so get Out
is a story about a black man's intuitive fears being
(24:05):
valid to the extreme. Our hero, Chris, has anxiety from
the get go about driving out to the country to
meet his white girlfriend's family. She assures him that everything
will be fine. Everything is not fine. Her family and
their friends are like walking microaggressions, and the one other
black dude there who is not a servant, gives Chris
this panicked, cryptic warning to get out. Um. Chris is
(24:30):
increasingly unsettled. He asked his girlfriend if they can leave,
and you know what, she says, yes, She's like, oh,
of course, of course we can go. She believes him immediately,
and Chris is relief and like mine, watching this movie
is intense and palpable, um, Like, you never expect that
(24:52):
to happen in a scary movie, but hell is your
characters being believed? Of course, this is, you know, a
horror movie, so it's a trick. Of course, she's in
on her family's plot to kidnap Chris and supplant his
consciousness with that of one of their white friends, because
Chris's body is healthy, their friends is not. In Black
lives don't matter. But y'all that moment where she says
(25:12):
that she believes him, I know, it's it kind of
goes back to what you were saying earlier about how
the purposeful. It seems so odd to have Skully be
the skeptic and scientifically it seems purposeful that moment. I
remember that to you being like, oh my gosh, it's
so refreshing, right, and then it's not. It's totally a
(25:34):
purpose um. The film also explicitly portrays black people not
being believed by police. Um. On on the way to
her family's house, Chris and the girlfriend hit a deer
and a cop shows up, a white cop, and even
though she was the one driving, the cop asks Chris
for his I D and only backs off when the
girlfriend insists that it's unfair and unnecessary. Um. And later
(25:58):
when Chris contacts a black and about how weird everything
is out out of the ranch, the friend calls the police,
but he is also dismissed. Um. And all of that
pays off with one more twist at the end that uh,
what was another moment that I was just like, well
in the theater, like I didn't even know what was
happening to my face. Um So so you know, it's
(26:19):
it's the end sequence. Chris is fighting the girlfriend for
his life and he's winning. Yeah, but but out of
the night, a police car approaches. And I've heard personally
never been that scared by police showing up. And it
was a profound privileged check for me. Like it was
one of those moments where I was just like, oh, oh, oh,
I get it. Thank you for telling me about it.
(26:41):
I'm listening, and I'm so sorry for like not getting
it previously. Um. And it turns out to be Chris's
friend who's a T s A agent, And I don't
care that probably they don't get cars like that because again,
just like that sense of relief, like you know, if
it had been cops, cops never would have believed him,
our judiciary system never would have believed him. Um, And
(27:01):
it turned out okay, which was such a relief. I
read that the original ending of the film actually had
cops show up and that the final scene is Chris
in in jail or prison. Um, And I am so
glad that Jordan Peele gave us that relief instead, even
if it's probably not realistic. Yeah, I think I saw
(27:21):
the alternate ending. I think you can see it, and
it was so it was just dismal. Yeah, it was
quite dismal. Um. But that was another That is another
great example of a a couple of things, a lot
of things, but a couple of things that we're talking
about of horror movies being reflective of of society and um,
(27:44):
fears that we have in society, and also just a
movie that knows its tropes and messes with you because
it knows that you know them too. Ah. Yeah, so smart. Yeah, well,
well to lighten things up a little bit, it was
so sillier. Examples like out of Yeah drive home, how calmon,
this trope is hocus pocus. Yeah, so I watched last night.
(28:07):
Oh it's a good movie, stayed very late, or it's
a silly movie. It's it's a movie I enjoy watching.
That's probably the best way to describe it. I watched
it so much as a kid. It was banned from
my household. I'm not allowed to watch it. In fact,
I didn't watch it from about the age of eight
until about the age of four because my parents Nope,
never again. So funny. Um, When Danny, who's a little sister,
(28:32):
tells her brother Max not to light the black flame candle,
he goes right ahead and does it. She says she's scared.
She doesn't want to do it. It's a dumb idea.
He's trying to impress. Yeah, a lady friend. But she
doesn't want him to do it either. Yeah, she's like,
I'm scared, don't do that. Also, it's like a museum. Yeah. Anyway,
(28:57):
we my friends and I played a drinking him to
it last night, and every time they said, Hollywood, you
had to take a drink. Um community in community, um Britta,
that's sort of a bit about the steps to writing
horror movies. And one of the episodes, and she tells
(29:18):
the story of a man and woman making out in
a car and the woman keeps hearing something and the
dude only agrees to check it out if she promises
to give him sex when he returns, so he doesn't yeah,
believe her. Yeah, but he'll use it, but he'll use
it to get sex. Yeah. Great. Um thriller the music video,
(29:40):
which I've never seen before. I'd seen the like short one,
but there's a long thirteen minutes. Yeah, it's beautiful. Well,
the whole plot thread is essentially this whole thing with
Michael Jackson telling his date, I don't be afraid because
it's only a movie. But the next then, of course,
it turns out that it's not just a movie and
she is follow by zombies. So that's encapsulated right there. Yeah,
(30:05):
if you haven't seen it out, I enjoyed it quite
a bit. Oh and it just like like yeah, like
once we started thinking about it, it's hard not to
pile up the the the examples of it. Um. I
think it's interesting that in some of these stories it's
it's not just other people disbelieving women, it's women doubting themselves.
(30:27):
Stuff like the Boba Duke, the Ring, Rosemary's Baby, Hunting
of Hillhouse, Hereditary, the Shining Joy, Spuyers, and Stranger Things.
I also think it's really interesting that all those characters
are mothers. Yes, and I'm not sure what exactly that says.
I think that's another episode about about motherhood and horror movies.
But oh yeah yeah, um, of course all of these
(30:48):
women finally do like own the fact that something we're
just happening and reach out for help and they're disbelieved.
But yeah uh and speaking of stranger things, oh okay,
I keep getting excited. Uh. I do love that the
two young women, um eleven and Nancy are a lot
more confident, Like they don't doubt themselves. Um, I mean
they're they're also dismissed, but but at least, you know,
(31:10):
I don't know, like it's it's better sweet like they
I think the point is that they haven't had that
confidence in their own senses ground out of them yet.
That is more bitter than sweet, perhaps, But um I
I do enjoy that as well. Here's hoping that. Yeah,
these fictional characters keep fighting the good fight absolutely. Um.
(31:33):
Right before we started podcasting, producer Andrew reminded us of
Aliens not Alien too. It is the second one that
is aliens with an S and not alien singular. But
the I just watched this recently as well, because I
do like a whole two month horror movie thing. Um.
(31:53):
And in the beginning, there's this committee of business people
and lawyers questioning replace the corney Weaver's character about her
experience on lv TO for six or whatever it is
um with the alien, and no one believes her. Yeah.
(32:15):
She keeps saying, like, it destroyed my crew, destroyed my ship.
The only way I could get out was to jettison
it and escape on this whole on the little pod.
And they're all like, I acid comes out of its rains.
They're like, lady, that's patently silly. Jo. Do you know
(32:38):
how much money we lost? Yeah? Yeah, they keep bringing
that up, the whole money thing. Um. And then when
she she's talking to the sort of marine, the alien marines,
the space marines, Alien Marines marines, um, and she's trying
to share a story and to me is obviously like
having difficulty. It's clear she has this experience. They sort
(33:00):
of or just like okay, yeah, sure whatever, Yeah, it's
just not that scary. Yeah sure, it's not that bad.
Um pretty much. And every episode of Supernatural the TV
series starts with this some version of this. Sure, a
lot of episodes of Buffy too, Yeah yeah, and and
(33:21):
frequently it's one of the it's one of the actual
Scoopy gang. Like, the number of times that Buffy herself
is disbelieved by everyone around here is truly remarkable because
it's just like, y'all, we did this last week and
the week before that, Um, paranormal activity to where it's
kind of an interesting dynamic and um, if you haven't
(33:44):
seen this, you probably know the gist of it. But
basically it's this couple and her boyfriend. It's weird because
it's like he believes her because he wants to. He
believes that there's paranormal activity. He wants to capture it.
But he does believe her when she's telling him how
serious and dangerous it is, so it's kind of a strange,
(34:06):
like he's excited by it. He keeps inviting it in
and she's saying no, like this is a scary thing
we need to bring to mess with it. In fact,
I think we should go do this and try to
fix it. And he keeps saying I can fix it,
it's not that bad. He doesn't believe her when she's
saying she's telling him the consequences and the severity, the
seriousness of it, which is an interesting kind of take
(34:29):
on the whole thing. Um and we when we're talking
about this, you might wonder why is this troupe so common?
Probably you have a good idea, but talked about it anyway. Emily,
as your parent in that article that we reverenced at
(34:51):
the top, wrote, every woman knows what this feels like.
They know what it means, They know how hard the
world works not to believe them. And this particular narrative
device always feels like a pointed jab, a great big
spotlight on that precise problem. It doesn't even matter if
it's intentional. In fact, the idea that it might be
unintentional makes it all the more poignant. Filmmakers and script
(35:15):
writers accidentally pointing out how women's fears are never taken
seriously again and again, and why would she have that
sense when no one else was bothered. Oh, you know,
probably women's intuition. But intuition is not a magical power
granted to half the population by sheer random happenstance. It's
not the consolation prize you drew because the world calls
(35:35):
you a woman. Intuition is an ability built up over time,
powered partly by animal instinct and partly by learning and
partly by experience. Any human being can tap into intuition,
but women are constantly pegged as the humans who own
this preternatural ability. Why because women are supposed to be
on their guard every second of the day, Because our
(35:56):
very existence in the right skirt or pair of high
heels is antation to untold abuses. Because we're not supposed
to trust anyone, but we're supposed to be unfailingly sweet
to everyone. Women are intuitive because tapping that intuition is
something that we are encouraged towards from the day we
were born, for the sake of our safety and our lives. Yeah,
(36:18):
you know, women and people of color have to pay attention.
We have to control how we move through the world
more carefully. You know. We we make note of our surroundings,
We pick up on nonverbal cues. It's a learned skill. Yeah. Um,
And I was thinking, I haven't seen this horror movie
in a while, but I was thinking about the silence
of the lambs Buffalo Bill. He says something along the
(36:40):
lines of you wouldn't believe how many people like, even
though they're scared, are too afraid to be rude. Oh
yeah right, I remember that part. Yeah, like they'll put
their safety at risk. And I feel that all the time.
Where I do think that, um, women in our socialized
(37:01):
to be so polite and so nice and so friendly.
Also watch out and watch out. It's your fault if
anything happens, I mean, if it really did happen. Yeah. Yeah, um.
We we do have some more history and science science
about why women, um and people of color are less
(37:24):
likely to be believed. But first we're going to pause
for one more quick break for word from our sponsor,
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So, as we've said
before on this show and in this very episode, harmonies
(37:44):
are a great mirror the hold up to society, and
this is no exception on a large societal scale. We
don't trust women. They're over dramatic, they overreact, people of
color to their unreliable narrators all of us. Yeah. Um,
and this goes back forever um in the case of women,
in the case of people of color, that the modern
(38:05):
concepts of race are relatively recent constructs um, created and
perpetuated during globalization and the and the slave trade to
dehumanize and discredit enslaved people's and since then, popular culture
has largely drawn people of color as unintelligent brutes. This
pervaded in the United States via minstrel shows basically right
up until the Civil rights movement in the middle of
(38:27):
the twentieth century. Um. But you know, although most people
know that like black face is bad now, um, those
biases are absolutely still part of our culture. Yeah. For women, Um,
there's an Egyptian pirus from six BC. It's the oldest
known medical text that actually describes depressive symptoms, and it
(38:50):
blames women's mental health problems on their uteruses moving around
their bodies making trouble. Yeah yeah, yeah, um yeah. Hop
over to ancient Greece A few centuries later you get
physicians talking about uterine melancholy. Um. Hippocrates gave us the
first written mention of hysteria around five b C. Hysteria
(39:12):
being described as an anxiety and other symptoms in women
caused by a bad and again wandering uterus. I don't
know why they thought it detached. Is it like a
ghostly uter I don't know. No, I think it was physical,
because they would they would give you like they would
like put like good smelling things by your nose and
like bad smelling things by your by your badge if
(39:35):
if they wanted it to move higher up in your body,
and they would reverse that. It's very sensitive to smell
if they wanted it to move back down again. I
know that's why they didn't let women wide trains for
a while. Oh yes, because they thought that like any
sudden stop. Heck, although that could have just been they
(39:55):
didn't want women writing traps. I don't know. I don't
know for sure or uh yeah. In the case of
ancient Greece, the cure for this was generally having sex
with men, of course, because men were believed to be
superior um and uh so later those those uh those
(40:15):
beliefs were codified into religion. You know, Eve was physically
mentally weaker than Adam, so she's the one who fell
for the serpent's trick. Yea, and yeah, The belief in
women being irrational due to problems with their sex organs
lasted into the twenty century. That's why it's why vibrators
were invented. People were like, ladies, you you really need
(40:37):
to You can't be coming into the doctor's office this
often to get have a vibrator to have orgasms. We
need to give you a take home method of solving
this problem. They didn't call it orgasms then, but yeah,
well one, that's one good thing I suppose. Yeah. Oh,
and I do want to put in here that that,
(40:58):
of course it is completely possible hormones to affect your
mental health, but like dudes have hormones too, breaking news.
I'm sorry you had to learn it here, but learn
it you did. Yeah. If we if we bring all
of this back to the whole hashtag believer and Brett
(41:21):
cobanaw thing um when it comes to sexual assault, there
has been some science looking into why we don't believe women,
and it has to do with how the brain handles trauma.
Survivors don't outwardly act how folks think they should. Instead
of a sobbing mess, they might seem kind of cold.
(41:43):
And that's because a lot of survivors experience disassociation from
their body. Also, a lot of times their memories might
seem flimsy, which causes people to doubt them. But again,
this is your brain shutting down all other functions that
don't have to do with pure survival. Wearing a traumatic,
potentially life threatening event, and in some cases it's not
(42:04):
that you can't remember, it's just you have difficulty retrieving
it and describing it. Another thing the brain does that
plays into this has to do with how it handles
and often rejects new information that challenges accepted patterns are perceptions.
If you find out a friend of yours, someone you've
known for a long time, is accused of sexual assault,
(42:25):
this challenge is something you've long held to be true,
and your brain is like, Nope, no, can't be obviously not. Yeah.
You can be presented with all these facts and your
brain is just um. But it is interesting to point
out that once a man gets involved, the story kind
of changes. Six women had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault,
(42:49):
and Tina Fey referenced these accusations twice, once on a
Weekend to update another time on thirty Rock, But it
was when the comedian Hannibal Burris called Bill Cosby a rapist,
and one of his bits that people started to think,
oh oh no, maybe we should look into this. It
took a man to legitimize the conversation and lead to
(43:10):
actual action, and just to drive his point home. In
some countries around the world, rape allegations have to be
corroborated by one or more men, and that used to
be the case in some some states in the US
as well. Yeah. Another way to look at this whole
thing is how in our society we elevate the desires
(43:31):
of men at the expense of women. Like in this
whole conversation about Brett Kavanaugh, the accusers are destroying his
life and his future, but never mind the lives and
futures and just general well being of the women involved. Yeah. Oh,
and in the nineties, the Philadelphia Police sex crimes unit
called themselves the Lion Bitches Unit. Yeah so sweet. Yeah yeah.
(44:00):
With the article I read, they didn't seem too upset
about getting found out either. Yeah uh um I read.
I read an excellent essay by Stephanie Merritt in The
Guardian called the cult of the unreliable female narrator must
be stopped um, in which she argues that society's disbelief
(44:21):
of women is exactly what makes horror movies like the
ones that we've talked about today so effectively frightening. Um.
She She says that because men are less vulnerable in
our society, those creative works wouldn't have quote the same
atmosphere of claustrophobic menace if the main characters were male. Yeah. Um,
(44:43):
I feel like we could keep talking about this forever
and keep bringing up examples forever. But that kind of
reminds me of The Witch. Oh yeah, um. Which what
I found so frightening about that movie was, Um, it
did such a great job of driving home to me
why Um. We we read about the Salem witch trials
all the time and it feels kind of at least
(45:05):
in my case, it's always felt kind of distant. But
that just brought home to me how there's no way
to prove you aren't a wish. No one believed the
main character thomasin um, Yeah, you can't prove that you're
not possessed by the demon, and it was terrifying. Um,
(45:25):
No one believed her, And I think that's what made
it so relatable is even if we're not exactly trying
to ward off accusations of witchcraft, although I mean you
can see parallels certainly in some things. That idea of
not being believed is scary and absolutely yeah, And I
(45:50):
think that really as a society, we don't want to
believe women because we don't want to have to deal
with it. We don't want to have to deal with
what it means and with having to do the work
too to fix it, to combat what these women, all
these women are saying is happening. Yeah. I think it's
the same reason that there's such pushback against Black Lives Matter,
(46:13):
because people are like, well, you know, like that that
intrinsic response that all lives matter thing is essentially saying like,
there's no problem, right, Like, why are you saying that
there's a problem. Stop saying that there's a problem. Yeah,
because if you admit that, then you have to admit
that you have to work on it, exactly right, that
it's it's a lot of work, and and it is frightening.
(46:35):
It's frightening. Um yea balloons balloons Uh oh, I just
watched it recently. No balloons. So this brings us to
the end of this episode, which I I foolishly when
(46:57):
I pitched it to you, Lauren, thought it was going
to be a much more fearful thing. I don't know
what I was thinking. I was like, we can relate
this to current events, which are great, so much fun.
Don't know what I was thinking, but it was really
enlightening to do. As someone like I said, we both
watch a lot of horror movies, and I'm going to
(47:19):
guess that for a lot of you, you're not going
to be able to unsee this now. Uh, it's really
everywhere it is. It is, and I don't know, and
I do think that it's it's it's an interesting and
like culturally useful trope, especially in discussions like this, you know,
like once you're aware of it, then yeah, hopefully you
(47:40):
can do stuff to help change it, one would hope.
And we're all about change again, growing for the better here. UM,
thank you so much for being on the show. Um,
hopefully you'll you'll come back. We can talk some more
horror movies one of other things. I won't ye cash
to you whatever you want to talk about. Yes, no,
(48:02):
I thank you so much for having me. This has
been This has been a lot of fun. Yeah and um,
you can always find the both of us on saver.
We would love for you to come check that out.
UM And I think I've mentioned before I love fan
fiction and uh we we're trying to get a little
(48:23):
maybe a mini series or on and off against series
of reading stuff that you, you listeners have written. So
if you have any fiction, nonfiction, anything fan fiction that
you've created that you are cool with us reading on
the air, please send it in UM. We might even
get some voices and some production some production work into it. Um.
(48:47):
And so yeah, I would love for any of you
all to send some stuff like that in UM. Also,
just um. Another mini series we're thinking about doing is
What's something your Mom Never told you? Because you know
this show we'll get back to our roots a little bit.
So if you have anything like that, we would love
to hear it. You can email us at mom Stuff
(49:08):
at how stuff works dot com. You can find us
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on Instagram at
stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to our
producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you for listening.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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