District 9: Dehumanization, Empathy, and Forced Perspective Change

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
<v Speaker 1>movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
<v Speaker 1>I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by.
<v Speaker 2>Ben Stover, individual therapist.
<v Speaker 3>Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists.
<v Speaker 1>We're all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists,
<v Speaker 1>who practice out of Chicago. Even though we are licensed
<v Speaker 1>mental health professionals, this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes
<v Speaker 1>and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture and
<v Speaker 1>all forms.
<v Speaker 2>Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
<v Speaker 2>we aren't your therapist.
<v Speaker 4>If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
<v Speaker 4>a local mental health provider.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode of Popcorn Psychology.
<v Speaker 2>Today we are going to be talking about the two
<v Speaker 2>thousand and nine Oscar nominated film District Nine. This is
<v Speaker 2>our first four into the found footage genre, which was
<v Speaker 2>popular at the time this movie was out in District Nine.
<v Speaker 2>The plot of the film is that we see this
<v Speaker 2>alien population come to Earth and they are all getting
<v Speaker 2>very sick, and the humans, as they're watching this giant
<v Speaker 2>ship hover over their city, get really scared and they
<v Speaker 2>don't know what to do, so they get some prejudiced
<v Speaker 2>notions about what to do with this population. And when
<v Speaker 2>they finally decide they're going to open the ship, because
<v Speaker 2>nothing happens with it after a while, they open it
<v Speaker 2>and they find an entire population of several million sick aliens,
<v Speaker 2>and they, rather than try to help them or welcome
<v Speaker 2>them in, they quarantine them in a slum called District nine,
<v Speaker 2>which is what the movie is about. Throughout the course
<v Speaker 2>of this film, there's an agent of a private military
<v Speaker 2>corporation who's tasked with relocating these aliens to a place
<v Speaker 2>even further outside of the city of Johannesburg in South Africa,
<v Speaker 2>to a government tent facility that is we learn later
<v Speaker 2>substantially worsened, to quote the main character Vickers, basically a
<v Speaker 2>concentration camp. When he starts telling the truth that he's
<v Speaker 2>gloriously dissociated away from the harm he is imposing on
<v Speaker 2>this population through the course of his actions, comes in
<v Speaker 2>contact with an alien fuel that starts turning him into
<v Speaker 2>one of the aliens he's been working actively to corral
<v Speaker 2>and oppress, and we see him have to take on
<v Speaker 2>some force perspective of what it might be like to
<v Speaker 2>go from oppressor to one of the oppressed. So in
<v Speaker 2>today's episode, we'll be covering the psychology of oppression, empathy
<v Speaker 2>and forced perspective change and like always, treatment and final thoughts.
<v Speaker 2>So let's get rolling psychology of oppression. What do we
<v Speaker 2>see in this film that directed our attention that way? Sure?
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I think immediately we see the use of dehumanization,
<v Speaker 1>right immediately they talk about the use of even language
<v Speaker 1>calling them prons because they quote unquote look like prons.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know how much I would say they look
<v Speaker 1>like prons, like that's trump right, yeah, But how that
<v Speaker 1>is used soap in such a specific way in the
<v Speaker 1>movie that I don't even want to call them prons,
<v Speaker 1>Like I'm probably gonna call them aliens out of my
<v Speaker 1>overempathizing with fictional characters. Even we watch Vickars, this person
<v Speaker 1>who's supposed to be a professional, they're supposed to respect,
<v Speaker 1>is supposed to be really on top of it, right,
<v Speaker 1>even the callous, casual nature that he calls them prons
<v Speaker 1>and the way he is not taking them seriously as
<v Speaker 1>living creatures. And he's supposed to be the representative taking
<v Speaker 1>care of them quote unquote.
<v Speaker 2>Well, now just say it's the way he's representing himself
<v Speaker 2>when he wants their cooperation. But it's clear you say,
<v Speaker 2>he's got casual disrespect for them. Casual disdain. It does
<v Speaker 2>not them as valid at all.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the use of language, the way they talk about
<v Speaker 1>how odd they are, the way he talks about their culture,
<v Speaker 1>just right away. No attempt at finding what is similar,
<v Speaker 1>a lot of attempts at finding what is different and
<v Speaker 1>making them, Yeah, less of a thoughtful species than us.
<v Speaker 2>Unless deserving, less worthy of care, less worthy of decency,
<v Speaker 2>of respect of privacy, of anything that we might give
<v Speaker 2>to a intelligent creature. We look at the way he
<v Speaker 2>does mental gymnastics to enable himself to treat these obviously intelligent,
<v Speaker 2>advanced creatures as less than.
<v Speaker 1>And the way that he's able to use the way
<v Speaker 1>that they're different, like I said, as part of the
<v Speaker 1>Deman dehumanization. Like I think a great example is that
<v Speaker 1>they are a species that seems to pro create via eggs, so.
<v Speaker 3>Not mammalian, I guess.
<v Speaker 1>And he shows in the very early parts of the film,
<v Speaker 1>he's showing the camera people, Oh, look, we found a
<v Speaker 1>nest of eggs I don't know exactly how he talks
<v Speaker 1>about it, but how they build this whole contraption where
<v Speaker 1>there's like a cow carcass and the cow carcass feeds
<v Speaker 1>into the embryo sac or whatever, and the I'm sure
<v Speaker 1>we're gonna use the word collus a million times in
<v Speaker 1>this episode, the cowus nature in which he giggly starts
<v Speaker 1>to unattach it and keeps using the word abort too,
<v Speaker 1>And it's very ough akey way, the gleeful way, maybe
<v Speaker 1>that's a better word, the gleeful way, in which he's
<v Speaker 1>sort of showing off. What are these creature's children in
<v Speaker 1>their mind?
<v Speaker 3>Their babies?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and he's like, oh, look, we found a nursery
<v Speaker 1>pretty much of really vulnerable babies, alien.
<v Speaker 3>Babies, Hadi haha.
<v Speaker 1>Let's start detaching it so that they die, and then
<v Speaker 1>the slide it on fire, and let's then have some
<v Speaker 1>fun with the screaming sound that these babies make as
<v Speaker 1>they die. The way I put it versus the way
<v Speaker 1>he put it is an example of how we use
<v Speaker 1>language to change the way that we think about something,
<v Speaker 1>to create distance from it as part of that dehumanization. Right, Like,
<v Speaker 1>at no point is he using terminology, the same lexicon
<v Speaker 1>that human beings that we use to describe the same experience.
<v Speaker 1>Like I said, he's not saying these are their children,
<v Speaker 1>you know, these are the sounds they make when they die. Like,
<v Speaker 1>he's not using any equivocal language that would help us
<v Speaker 1>feel a connection and common ground with these beings. And
<v Speaker 1>it's all very like, Look, how weird they are, isn't
<v Speaker 1>it funny? Isn't it interesting? The very like scientific removal
<v Speaker 1>as well.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he alternates between a scientific disinterest and explanations of
<v Speaker 2>their ways and anatomy to malice and casual disgust at
<v Speaker 2>everything that's different. And why he's doing that is it's
<v Speaker 2>part of the process that humans go through when they're
<v Speaker 2>othering something, because humans are at their worst when they
<v Speaker 2>see something as different from themselves. The director was talking
<v Speaker 2>about in interviews he did about how he wanted to
<v Speaker 2>make the aliens be like on four legs and look
<v Speaker 2>a little more insectoid, but oh they couldn't because people
<v Speaker 2>wouldn't identify with them just because of our psychology and
<v Speaker 2>recognizing how potent that is that their bipedal and that
<v Speaker 2>they have eyes in the front that emote like ours do.
<v Speaker 2>Allows the audience to identify with them in ways that
<v Speaker 2>Vickers is refusing to. And Vickers and everyone else is
<v Speaker 2>that's wandering around casually shooting them and harming them, aborting
<v Speaker 2>their children, is.
<v Speaker 4>Just terrorizing them, just terrorizing them on a regular basis.
<v Speaker 2>And forcing them to eat animal scraps and cat food,
<v Speaker 2>not taking one single opportunity to welcome them into society,
<v Speaker 2>to integrate them anything, nothing, just lesser than and separate.
<v Speaker 2>And we see Brittany's talking about it. It's a complete
<v Speaker 2>process of separating them out and making them different and
<v Speaker 2>worse than you without making any efforts to connect to
<v Speaker 2>how they're the same. And that's the same process humans
<v Speaker 2>go through anytime they do anything atrocious. We see one
<v Speaker 2>of the most classic lines of cinema ever. It puts
<v Speaker 2>the lotion in the basket, or it gets the hose again,
<v Speaker 2>the use of the word it it dehumanizing. Serial Killers
<v Speaker 2>routinely dehumanize their victims. They don't use their names. They're
<v Speaker 2>just the whore or whatever else. They aren't people. And
<v Speaker 2>you see it over and over and over again in
<v Speaker 2>this movie, where they look at the aliens and just
<v Speaker 2>call them prawns and don't take any effort to care
<v Speaker 2>about what makes them special. They're just looking to exploit
<v Speaker 2>whatever they brought with them and get rid of them
<v Speaker 2>as quickly as possible, to take a break here.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I think what is also interesting in that it's been
<v Speaker 1>like twenty some years since they landed. That's an interesting
<v Speaker 1>choice on the writing of the movie because we're also
<v Speaker 1>witnessing Vickers as sort of the second generation. He's like
<v Speaker 1>the first generation that's grown up with the aliens. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>so the full integration since a kid of these ideas
<v Speaker 1>of how they're less than Look, there's a sign over there,
<v Speaker 1>no aliens over here, only humans over here. So he's
<v Speaker 1>been fully indoctrinated into this dehumanization, which also probably accounts
<v Speaker 1>for his casual nature of the slur on the casual,
<v Speaker 1>very unempathetic, almost antisocial energy he has about their safety,
<v Speaker 1>their livelihood, their ability to love their children. So, I
<v Speaker 1>mean that's a big part of it, right, I'm trying
<v Speaker 1>not to go to bananas with how much this makes
<v Speaker 1>me think of like American history, Yeah, and the indigenous
<v Speaker 1>people of America, but how a big part of how
<v Speaker 1>we also dehumanize people is you devalue their relationship to
<v Speaker 1>their children so that they're one, so that cultural can't
<v Speaker 1>be passed down right yep, or that they just can't
<v Speaker 1>exist period.
<v Speaker 3>Because also to the.
<v Speaker 1>Dehumanization part of it as well, to understand to really
<v Speaker 1>let yourself feel that this person could love their children,
<v Speaker 1>or this being could love their children. That's a think
<v Speaker 1>of pretty universal feeling right to either love your own
<v Speaker 1>child or to be loved by your parents. The connection
<v Speaker 1>we have to family and how deep that is and
<v Speaker 1>how human I guess that is, and so not letting
<v Speaker 1>the aliens also have that kind of bond or not
<v Speaker 1>recognizing it as such, even though they do acknowledge, like
<v Speaker 1>when he threatens Christopher's child to get him to comply.
<v Speaker 3>Mm hmm, you know what I mean.
<v Speaker 1>And but they do that dehumanization there as well, where
<v Speaker 1>to really recognize when you're the oppressive party, to really
<v Speaker 1>recognize what you're actually doing to other living creatures, usually
<v Speaker 1>other human beings. Right, it is a truth that is
<v Speaker 1>almost impossible to sit with. Part of that is I
<v Speaker 1>think you were saying earlier, and like also blaming the aliens,
<v Speaker 1>blaming the other for their situation. Yes, so that was
<v Speaker 1>a great example where he's like, I'll call CPS basically
<v Speaker 1>and get your kid taken away, because look at this
<v Speaker 1>shithole that you're raising your kid in. You don't even
<v Speaker 1>care about your kid. Why are they in a shithole? Bro? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's not like they're like, I want to raise my
<v Speaker 1>kid in this piece of garbage.
<v Speaker 3>Yea, this is the only place they can live.
<v Speaker 1>So also, the way that an oppressive class will convince
<v Speaker 1>themselves that the situation that the oppressed are in is
<v Speaker 1>somehow their faults. Absolutely, because they're too dirty, stupid, whatever
<v Speaker 1>to get themselves out of it. And so what does
<v Speaker 1>it matter of the livelihood of their home, their children,
<v Speaker 1>all that stuff.
<v Speaker 3>Who cares? Absolutely? Absolutely?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it's the way that they do it in this
<v Speaker 4>film is just so connected to the way that people
<v Speaker 4>of color have been dehumanized in the United States. And
<v Speaker 4>it's really and I thought they did a really good
<v Speaker 4>job of showing that and showing how insidious it is,
<v Speaker 4>because it isn't just being a racist, It isn't just
<v Speaker 4>it's also just viewing them as less than period.
<v Speaker 2>And that's how humans are, whether it's the United States
<v Speaker 2>or anywhere else. Humans versus animals, humans versus other humans,
<v Speaker 2>humans versus the environment, viewing it as less than and
<v Speaker 2>worse creates a dissociative state that operates under its own
<v Speaker 2>definitions of things that are often reinforced by whoever's in power.
<v Speaker 2>And how did the Holocaust happen? The Jews got thoroughly othered.
<v Speaker 2>If you've ever seen Hotel Rwanda, you see the genocide
<v Speaker 2>happening between the two season the Hutus in that movie,
<v Speaker 2>I think I believe so they start calling one the cockroaches.
<v Speaker 3>As soon as we're doing that shit, we're done.
<v Speaker 1>It makes me think of two how in America they
<v Speaker 1>used to refer to black people's hair as wool as
<v Speaker 1>a way to make them more animalistic in our mentality
<v Speaker 1>because their hair is so different. Oh, their hair is
<v Speaker 1>made of wool like an animal. It's be sheared basically.
<v Speaker 1>But white people, our hair is I don't know, made
<v Speaker 1>of silk or whatever.
<v Speaker 3>The fuck? Yeah, actual hairy much.
<v Speaker 1>I think the use of the idea of dissociation is
<v Speaker 1>really interesting because to enact this kind of violence against
<v Speaker 1>Sentian beings, which is what we're just happening in this movie,
<v Speaker 1>that is traumatic. Well, it's like you have to chip
<v Speaker 1>away a bit of your soul and a bit of
<v Speaker 1>your empathy, right your humanity, every time you have to
<v Speaker 1>enact this torture, this mistreatment onto another senseient being. I
<v Speaker 1>think that dissociated nature is a good way to think
<v Speaker 1>of it. You know, I have to believe that you're
<v Speaker 1>less than because to fully realize that you are having
<v Speaker 1>the same love and thoughts that I'm having, how do
<v Speaker 1>I live with myself? How do I live with the
<v Speaker 1>trauma I have enforced? And or I felt like I
<v Speaker 1>was just falling orders that classic line that I felt
<v Speaker 1>like to make sure that I was safe, I had
<v Speaker 1>to enact on you. I'm watching the show Warrior right
<v Speaker 1>now on Netflix, which also made me think. I was
<v Speaker 1>thinking of that when I was watching this. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if you've so watched it, Ben, you freakin love Itace.
<v Speaker 3>It's Bruce lee esque. It's a movie.
<v Speaker 1>It's a show actually he thought of and then he
<v Speaker 1>died before he could make it, oh or as he
<v Speaker 1>was trying to make it. So it feels very bruce
<v Speaker 1>ly esque that it came out just a few years ago.
<v Speaker 1>It just finished I think last year, but that's about
<v Speaker 1>when the Chinese immigrated to America, specifically San Francisco, California,
<v Speaker 1>for the railroad and the cultural wars happening between the
<v Speaker 1>white rich people that got there first the Irish who
<v Speaker 1>feel now they feel disenfranchised because the Chinese have showed
<v Speaker 1>up and.
<v Speaker 3>They're getting all the work right.
<v Speaker 1>The way that they use the same language the same
<v Speaker 1>distancing themselves and I think also a great way to
<v Speaker 1>do that to is language too. In this movie, there's
<v Speaker 1>that language divide where you can clearly hear that the
<v Speaker 1>aliens are very smart when they show the subtitles of
<v Speaker 1>them speaking.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, they're aware of what's going on. They're capable.
<v Speaker 2>They're just in a destitute situation. So they're responding to
<v Speaker 2>a destitute situation as one does, as anyone or any
<v Speaker 2>creature ever does, because all living creatures contain similar brain
<v Speaker 2>structures at some levels, and we're all hardwired to do
<v Speaker 2>one thing above all else, survive. It will adapt to anything,
<v Speaker 2>because that is our prime directive, survive. And just because
<v Speaker 2>you've manufactured a situation that requires them to be in
<v Speaker 2>a constant survival state does not, in fact mean they
<v Speaker 2>are not capable of thriving. And that has been a
<v Speaker 2>problematic narrative that exists anytime there's othering an oppression going on,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, we're mentioned like the horror of like
<v Speaker 2>how these people can't love their children enough. Pretty sure,
<v Speaker 2>just a few years ago we saw a family separation
<v Speaker 2>policy of anybody arriving on the southern border in our country.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, yet again, like, well, they wouldn't have brought
<v Speaker 2>their children on such a dangerous certain they can't possibly
<v Speaker 2>love their children.
<v Speaker 1>Enough, as if you can't make the one step mental
<v Speaker 1>leap of well, if they had to bring their children
<v Speaker 1>through this situation, to go through all this stuff, and
<v Speaker 1>they must have been trying to save their children from something.
<v Speaker 2>Horrible, right, whatever they are escaping they interpreted as worse
<v Speaker 2>than the journey, so understanding how backwards and broken and
<v Speaker 2>what kind of horrible things humans can do to other
<v Speaker 2>living creatures that they justify and create this ability to
<v Speaker 2>completely shut out the intelligent sentient feeling life. Animals don't
<v Speaker 2>have feelings. It's okay to kill them. It's fine that
<v Speaker 2>migrants are being housed in shitty conditions, left to sleep
<v Speaker 2>on police station floors. It's fine that they're being busted
<v Speaker 2>all over the place for like fifteen hours by the
<v Speaker 2>governor of Texas rather than care for them. You know
<v Speaker 2>that kind of stuff. And these are things that I
<v Speaker 2>witnessed firsthand. Is working where I do. Seeing people showed
<v Speaker 2>up and there was there just wasn't anything. It's not
<v Speaker 2>that anybody was doing something particularly evil to them. Evil
<v Speaker 2>was already done. And it doesn't make it good or right.
<v Speaker 2>But this happens over and over again. Where we see refugees,
<v Speaker 2>where we see genocides, where we see apartheid, living situations,
<v Speaker 2>where we see segregation. All these things throughout history carry
<v Speaker 2>these same notes of dehumanization.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and unfortunately, I think what happened to this movie
<v Speaker 1>would be what happens because if we have this much
<v Speaker 1>trouble with people that pretty much look the same as
<v Speaker 1>you and me, but their skin colors a little different, right,
<v Speaker 1>imagine if an alien life form came down where they
<v Speaker 1>look that much different than us. And like I said,
<v Speaker 1>and then we force them into dehumanizing situations yep, like
<v Speaker 1>living in Islam or I think what I see a
<v Speaker 1>lot in Chicago, begging outside of a Trader Joe's or whatever,
<v Speaker 1>and then we judge them as less human like than
<v Speaker 1>us because they do shit like that, Like, but look
<v Speaker 1>at them, look how they live, and it's like, well,
<v Speaker 1>like I said earlier, why do they live that way?
<v Speaker 3>Exactly?
<v Speaker 1>Because but it helps the person in power. The people
<v Speaker 1>in power continue the narrative of like, I'm this kind
<v Speaker 1>of person, I'm this kind of living thing, and you're
<v Speaker 1>that kind of living thing. And you can't really have
<v Speaker 1>that much going on in your noggin because I'm here
<v Speaker 1>and you're there, idiot, And.
<v Speaker 2>It's fine that I have like so much more and
<v Speaker 2>you have so much less because it's like your fault.
<v Speaker 3>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely, I mean, if your ship didn't break, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like maybe you should have built a better ship. I no,
<v Speaker 2>never mind, we can't figure out interstellar travel at a
<v Speaker 2>substantial rate that would allow that many people of our
<v Speaker 2>population to travel. But like, and we can't make your
<v Speaker 2>weapons work or any things. Like maybe you guys could
<v Speaker 2>just make us able to use your weapons, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and then maybe you'd be cool enough to join the
<v Speaker 2>cool kids club. But probably not actually definitely definitely not well.
<v Speaker 1>And that's also, among many many things, one of the
<v Speaker 1>great tragedies of this way of thinking, right, kind of
<v Speaker 1>what we talked about the rival, how if you are
<v Speaker 1>working through fear, you will view like a new entity,
<v Speaker 1>a new group as a scary threat, and so then
<v Speaker 1>you try to shove them right, which is absolutely do
<v Speaker 1>in this movie obviously, instead of I don't know, working together,
<v Speaker 1>being curious about their culture, their language, their technology, which
<v Speaker 1>seems to kick our asses.
<v Speaker 3>If someone has come to us.
<v Speaker 1>Before we've gone to them, maybe they're scientifically more advanced
<v Speaker 1>than us.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely pretty simple.
<v Speaker 1>What is also, such like I said, tragedy in this movie,
<v Speaker 1>but then also in real life examples, is how much
<v Speaker 1>we lose culturally interculturally by not being like, Hey, what
<v Speaker 1>do you guys do within your families? What do you
<v Speaker 1>guys do for the holidays? What is your language? What
<v Speaker 1>are your rituals? What are your knowledge? Clearly Christopher our
<v Speaker 1>main alien with his very that also may think of
<v Speaker 1>Native American oppression, like giving them these English ass names. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>having by Christopher Johnson, I was like, this feels very correct. Unfortunately,
<v Speaker 1>he's obviously a genius. Yeah, I don't know if he's
<v Speaker 1>maybe a regular in terms of how smart all the
<v Speaker 1>aliens are.
<v Speaker 4>Yea.
<v Speaker 1>He also I also wouldn't be shocked if he was
<v Speaker 1>like the main engineer of the alien population.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And I think they I think they made clear enough
<v Speaker 2>that he's several notches above the average in many respects,
<v Speaker 2>although we don't get a lot of or any of
<v Speaker 2>his history.
<v Speaker 1>No vaginal I think is correct, because why would he
<v Speaker 1>be vulnerable? Why would he share anything of value with Vickers?
<v Speaker 1>We the humans have shown we will not appreciate it
<v Speaker 1>at best, will weaponize it against him. We will not
<v Speaker 1>hold it with tender hands. No, we will smack it
<v Speaker 1>to the ground and stomp on it and maybe laugh
<v Speaker 1>in your face. I'm curious because, especially in a then
<v Speaker 1>like you've, you talk a lot about the military and
<v Speaker 1>vets and stuff, and I think what this also makes
<v Speaker 1>me think of is the dissociative traumatic nature of people
<v Speaker 1>who get sent overseas and they have to engage in
<v Speaker 1>this level of dehumanization with the people within the countries
<v Speaker 1>they have to go in like all the Middle Eastern
<v Speaker 1>stuff that we've grown up with, right, And I know
<v Speaker 1>plenty of people because I grew up near an air
<v Speaker 1>force base, near military where they have PTSD because they
<v Speaker 1>had to shoot a mother and kill her and could
<v Speaker 1>tell that it was a mom, and how they had
<v Speaker 1>to do that mental gymnastics internally of life, like I
<v Speaker 1>have to think of her as less than my mom,
<v Speaker 1>because I am being put in this position where I'm
<v Speaker 1>supposed to treat her like a target and not a person.
<v Speaker 3>And how that does fuck with people?
<v Speaker 1>Obviously, because it's a very famous statistic, how much people
<v Speaker 1>in military of PTSD after the fact.
<v Speaker 2>Well, yeah, it's an extraordinarily complicated situation to be in,
<v Speaker 2>knowing you're going into someone else's land and they don't
<v Speaker 2>want you there, and if they perceive you as a threat,
<v Speaker 2>they're going to treat you like a threat up to
<v Speaker 2>and including outright killing you immediately. And at some point
<v Speaker 2>you have to make a decision whether you're going to
<v Speaker 2>survive because here you are in someone else's space. But
<v Speaker 2>how are you justifying that you're there? What's the noble purpose?
<v Speaker 2>Et cetera? How true does it feel right now when
<v Speaker 2>I have to pull the trigger against someone else who's
<v Speaker 2>going to kill me if I don't kill them, And
<v Speaker 2>all of the situation manufactured or not, depending on you know,
<v Speaker 2>which timeframe we're looking at, who's deciding what, who are
<v Speaker 2>we identifying with right why this is okay or not? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and all of that is a lot of
<v Speaker 2>work for veterans to have to do in anyone, anyone
<v Speaker 2>who encounters that life or death moment that at this point,
<v Speaker 2>regardless of what this person's situation is, who they are,
<v Speaker 2>what they're doing, they are going to kill me. If
<v Speaker 2>I don't kill them, you can and have to shut
<v Speaker 2>all that out in that second you're reacting. Gunfights aren't
<v Speaker 2>very long. Movies are bullshit. I've watched a lot of
<v Speaker 2>videos of very very real gunfights. They're not long. Of
<v Speaker 2>my job, not for entertainment of specify here.
<v Speaker 1>Right, I'm saying that because me and Hannah just made
<v Speaker 1>a weird look in his direction, like what, yeah, you
<v Speaker 1>do that free time, buddy?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, but that makes way more sense, That makes me
<v Speaker 3>more sense.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, of course, sometimes as part of the debriefing process, right,
<v Speaker 2>see videos of these things, and you realize movies dramatize
<v Speaker 2>things that happen in seconds, and then people spend their
<v Speaker 2>entire life learning the rest of the details that they
<v Speaker 2>couldn't know in that second, or maybe did know and
<v Speaker 2>had to unplug from because someone was about to kill them.
<v Speaker 2>There's that prime directive again, that's going to win. Somebody
<v Speaker 2>is going to lose that situation and your mission, no
<v Speaker 2>matter who you are or who that person is across
<v Speaker 2>from you is to not lose. It's very simple, but
<v Speaker 2>it gets really complicated when that dissociation turns back off.
<v Speaker 2>And I think seeing how that plays out in this
<v Speaker 2>film is part of what makes it so powerful. And
<v Speaker 2>God had an Oscar nomination for Best Pictures. They have
<v Speaker 2>to flip in this film where Vickers goes through all this,
<v Speaker 2>he's a Michael Scott type character. He's just so aloof
<v Speaker 2>to anything and just like, oh, yeah, it's fine, everything's fine.
<v Speaker 2>It's fine. If I do this, it's fine. If I
<v Speaker 2>sexually harass everybody, it's fine. If I body shame people,
<v Speaker 2>it's fine. If I do all these things that we
<v Speaker 2>see Michael Scott do as a clown. But Vickers isn't
<v Speaker 2>a clown. Vickers is a reper presentation of every system
<v Speaker 2>of oppression that's ever been especially in particular those that
<v Speaker 2>existed in South Africa. Seeing as this is a South
<v Speaker 2>African director telling a South African story about apartheid and
<v Speaker 2>District six, which is a real place where something very
<v Speaker 2>similar happened.
<v Speaker 1>I think also the other thing I wanted to note about,
<v Speaker 1>like the psychology of being the oppressor that I saw
<v Speaker 1>in this movie was the performance of cooperation.
<v Speaker 2>Well, before we do that, let's take a quick break
<v Speaker 2>and we'll get into that, because I think that's a
<v Speaker 2>lovely thing. But let's take a break here and go.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so the performance of cooperation is such an interesting
<v Speaker 1>thing that we will do as humans to also justify
<v Speaker 1>or to make right in our heads why we're doing
<v Speaker 1>what we're doing. And what I mean by that in
<v Speaker 1>this movie specifically, is how their way of forcing out
<v Speaker 1>this group of beings aliens and putting them into basically,
<v Speaker 1>at best of reservation, at worst, a concentration camp, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>is to call it an eviction and to have them
<v Speaker 1>sign eviction notices as if this is a bureaucratic situation.
<v Speaker 2>Right, it's a contracted space that everybody's agreed to certain
<v Speaker 2>rules and they haven't been paying. So admit, you got
<v Speaker 2>to go.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the performance of we're going around and we're going
<v Speaker 1>to have them sign this piece of paper for what.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it doesn't. It just doesn't make any sense. And
<v Speaker 4>I think it's a way. I think it's another way
<v Speaker 4>for them to show power and to be like, we
<v Speaker 4>are the ones who control where you live. We're the
<v Speaker 4>ones who control because it doesn't make any sense. Also
<v Speaker 4>that they would be getting evicted from an outside space. Yes, well,
<v Speaker 4>like that's really odd in general as well.
<v Speaker 1>It just is the way that a certain kind of
<v Speaker 1>human being. I think a lot of times why people
<v Speaker 1>which whatever anyone can thus different thoughts can I don't
<v Speaker 1>email me will lean on structure like a dance to
<v Speaker 1>legitimize things. This idea of well, we got their signature,
<v Speaker 1>though they signed it, so they are in compliance. They
<v Speaker 1>are complying with this relocation from a shanty town, a slum,
<v Speaker 1>to this reservation, this concentration camp. That way that later
<v Speaker 1>they can look at these papers and tell themselves a
<v Speaker 1>story about what happened, as if these aliens weren't being
<v Speaker 1>forced to sign with a literal gun to their heads
<v Speaker 1>as they are fire bombing their babies, as they are
<v Speaker 1>kicking down their homes and threatening their kid. He sends
<v Speaker 1>the Christopher like Christopher, God bless him. He it does
<v Speaker 1>the thing which makes sense, but not in this world, babe,
<v Speaker 1>where he's like, well, you're supposed to give me to
<v Speaker 1>one forever. Notice he's trying to play the game. It's interesting, Christopher.
<v Speaker 1>It does seem like he's trying to assimilate little bit.
<v Speaker 1>He's wearing clothes.
<v Speaker 3>Mm hmm.
<v Speaker 1>He's trying to communicate to Vickers, try to like appease
<v Speaker 1>his logic. Yeah, and it's heartbreaking because it doesn't fucking matter. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>what's on that piece of paper literally doesn't matter. It
<v Speaker 1>is a fantasy. It is a piece of make believe
<v Speaker 1>that the oppressor can look at to legitimize this situation. Sure,
<v Speaker 1>we're all in agreement. See and then yeah, if later
<v Speaker 1>the UN Court comes into call in, we can say, look,
<v Speaker 1>it was something we did together. Or like one hundred
<v Speaker 1>years from now, when people are reading it in a
<v Speaker 1>history book, they can tell a different story like Trail
<v Speaker 1>of Tears.
<v Speaker 3>Wise about how this happened.
<v Speaker 1>So it's just so interesting how I watched this with
<v Speaker 1>the work we do sometimes, right, how like we systems
<v Speaker 1>will want a certain level of compliant behavior from the
<v Speaker 1>oppressed so that we can feel like everything makes sense
<v Speaker 1>and no one's really doing anything bad because we're all
<v Speaker 1>in this together while working together humanely. Because yeah, evicting
<v Speaker 1>someone having them sign the eviction, it pretends that we're
<v Speaker 1>living in a world of normalcy exactly. Yeah, it literally
<v Speaker 1>doesn't make sense to do that. Other than the fact
<v Speaker 1>that the oppressors in this situation, the humans, they need
<v Speaker 1>that to feel okay, because we all do something to
<v Speaker 1>get a need met, right, So I feel like with that,
<v Speaker 1>it's like they psychologically need something they can look at
<v Speaker 1>that tells a different story, because why not just forcebly
<v Speaker 1>remove them, fucking.
<v Speaker 3>Chuck them where you're going to shut them anyway? Exactly.
<v Speaker 1>It's just and like having cameras there, it's just so
<v Speaker 1>interesting how we will pretend to act humanly and then
<v Speaker 1>pat ourselves on the back for the performance.
<v Speaker 3>Soall framework no substance.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Well, and like you brought up that moment of
<v Speaker 2>just casual horror, which is how humans behave where oh
<v Speaker 2>look they got a nest vigors Like, ah, yeah, that's
<v Speaker 2>that's They definitely don't have a permit for this. This
<v Speaker 2>is a noun sanctioned breeding facility or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>He says, Yeah, Like you're not complying. You're the one
<v Speaker 1>who's not following the rules.
<v Speaker 3>So I can't. I can't. My hands are tied. My
<v Speaker 3>hands are tied. Could I do exactly?
<v Speaker 2>Just I just got to take you to the gallows.
<v Speaker 1>Man.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry.
<v Speaker 1>That's fallen orders, just fallen orders, babe. And the thing
<v Speaker 1>that's so also horrible about it but real, is that
<v Speaker 1>you're making the rules, babe, you know what I mean? Like,
<v Speaker 1>who who said that you needed a permit? These are
<v Speaker 1>alien creatures that've never been here before you decided they
<v Speaker 1>needed a permit to do that, you know, and you're
<v Speaker 1>making it up so to help you feel better, to
<v Speaker 1>fulfill this cycle that you want to live in.
<v Speaker 2>Correct, And it's all part of that dissociation, right, that
<v Speaker 2>they have to create some kind of narrative because no
<v Speaker 2>one believes they're the villain in their own story. Hang.
<v Speaker 2>When I took criminal psychology and criminal sociology courses in
<v Speaker 2>undergrad those are the most striking things that I learned
<v Speaker 2>is that nobody thinks they're the bad guy. Yeah, nobody.
<v Speaker 1>I mean I think about I've watched documentaries where people
<v Speaker 1>have gone to the South nowadays and try to get
<v Speaker 1>Southern white people to acknowledge slavery basically, and they'll say
<v Speaker 1>something along the lines of, well, they had a good
<v Speaker 1>time here, we treated them well, right, like they there's
<v Speaker 1>a narrative that some white people in the South have
<v Speaker 1>around slavery to make that even okay.
<v Speaker 3>That a good time.
<v Speaker 1>That's I mean, like, think about the recent things that
<v Speaker 1>what was it Disanta said that, like slavery was good
<v Speaker 1>for black people because it taught them a skill.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't hear that, but it doesn't surprise me. Ugh,
<v Speaker 2>I mean horrible, it's horrible.
<v Speaker 1>But like, yeah, it's I think it's just continuing of
<v Speaker 1>this mental gymnastics of like I have to.
<v Speaker 3>Give meaning to this situation.
<v Speaker 1>I have to make it better because I can't sit
<v Speaker 1>in the discomfort of the fact that I treated another
<v Speaker 1>sentient creature, another human being that way. I can't fathom it.
<v Speaker 1>I can't deal. So I have to tell myself in
<v Speaker 1>story and then I'm gonna tell my kids that story.
<v Speaker 1>And then now we're wearing the Confederate flag and being like,
<v Speaker 1>this is just about uh, our heritage, this has something
<v Speaker 1>to do.
<v Speaker 3>With slavery or racism.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, you're wearing the flag
<v Speaker 1>of a loser.
<v Speaker 2>So agreed, humans have done this. It's not just our country,
<v Speaker 2>it's not just our people. It's everywhere in any context
<v Speaker 2>where there's power dynamics and somebody's on an agenda and
<v Speaker 2>needs to dissociate themselves away from the humanity or the aliveness,
<v Speaker 2>the souls.
<v Speaker 3>I guess maybe would be the words we use of humanity. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>like you're less human than me.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they justify doing whatever they want to do. People
<v Speaker 2>in China who died building the Wall and were conscripted
<v Speaker 2>into building the Great Wall of China were literally just
<v Speaker 2>buried and made into mortar in the wall. It just
<v Speaker 2>became part of it. This stuff happens across cultures. It's
<v Speaker 2>white people have their bullshit, but so does every other
<v Speaker 2>type of human. It's just everywhere. Some are worse and
<v Speaker 2>we're more familiar with somemach. This movie was a look
<v Speaker 2>at the evils of apartheid through the lens of aliens,
<v Speaker 2>and it's It was a very real thing for South Africa,
<v Speaker 2>and South Africa is still a kind of a rough place,
<v Speaker 2>still not integrated. The people who were brought up to
<v Speaker 2>think a certain way still do. There's still people in
<v Speaker 2>our country who view Japanese Americans is less than There's
<v Speaker 2>a fantastic song by Mike Shinoda of Lincoln Park called
<v Speaker 2>Kenji off Him, one of his solo projects. If you'd
<v Speaker 2>never listen to it, I recommend it. Its powerful to
<v Speaker 2>look at the efforts of this person, to try to
<v Speaker 2>engage with the performance of cooperation, to join the army,
<v Speaker 2>to do all the things, to have the house, to
<v Speaker 2>have the business, and still ended up in an internment
<v Speaker 2>camp during World War Two because obviously all of the
<v Speaker 2>Japanese who had moved here hundreds of years ago were
<v Speaker 2>part of the invasion of Pearl Harbor. Because obviously the
<v Speaker 2>mental gymnastics are serious, and the dissociations and the need
<v Speaker 2>to protect the resources of one in group versus another
<v Speaker 2>can really enable humans to do horrible things to each
<v Speaker 2>other and always has and it's scary and it should
<v Speaker 2>frighten us all if we see our leaders knowing all
<v Speaker 2>this in modern times, using dehumanizing language, and it's really
<v Speaker 2>troubling to see it so quickly adopted as normal again.
<v Speaker 2>Mm hmmm, Yeah, does anybody else have anything on that? No,
<v Speaker 2>all right, let's take another break here and we'll move
<v Speaker 2>on to empathy and why that's important.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, empathy is important to talk about because to do
<v Speaker 1>all the things we've been talking about so far, you
<v Speaker 1>have to have an absence of empathy. Because to feel
<v Speaker 1>empathetic for someone is to acknowledge their internal world and
<v Speaker 1>their feelings and their i want to say humanity, which
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if that works in this work situation
<v Speaker 1>where they're aliens. Yeah yeah, we I guess define as
<v Speaker 1>humanity to see that with than them as well, right yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And to do that and to also oppress them impossible,
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, impossible.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's just why it's association, right, like, because it is.
<v Speaker 2>It's impossible.
<v Speaker 3>You're absolutely right, and so we are viewing.
<v Speaker 1>Obviously, Vickers be wildly unempathetic, which is why he comes
<v Speaker 1>off like such a fucking asshole. It's horrible, absolutely, and
<v Speaker 1>so unlikable, and they're also unlikable.
<v Speaker 2>Yes.
<v Speaker 1>He goes through a Banana's experience, which is where he's
<v Speaker 1>literally put in the shoes of the beings that he's oppressing,
<v Speaker 1>which doesn't happen typically in the real world, right right,
<v Speaker 1>because you can't change your skin color, you know, unless
<v Speaker 1>you're Rachel Dole.
<v Speaker 2>Is all.
<v Speaker 1>He gets sort of like you kind of put it bend,
<v Speaker 1>forced perspective change, forced empathy, which I guess I could
<v Speaker 1>argue is that really empathy if you have to become
<v Speaker 1>the other person, the other being in order to get it.
<v Speaker 2>I understand your question. Mm hmmm, I don't I think
<v Speaker 2>that's one that's probably been debated in philosophy since forever.
<v Speaker 2>I think I don't know that I would split the
<v Speaker 2>hair in a different song. As there is an understanding
<v Speaker 2>you are being empathic. What causes it to change can
<v Speaker 2>be good route or a not so good route. In
<v Speaker 2>this movie definitely explores the you're gonna walk all of
<v Speaker 2>the miles in all of my shoes and then maybe
<v Speaker 2>you'll get it, and they create an interesting thought experiment
<v Speaker 2>that makes something that's generally, like you said, impossible possible
<v Speaker 2>through the magic.
<v Speaker 3>Of cinema and science fiction.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it isn't usually so possible in real life to
<v Speaker 2>fully take on, except maybe the show we got to
<v Speaker 2>watch and all loved was seeing a very very wealthy
<v Speaker 2>family lose everything, have to go into Shit's creek.
<v Speaker 4>Oh shit, Oh Shit's creek. Okay, and wow, I did
<v Speaker 4>not know where you were going there. I was prepared
<v Speaker 4>for anything, but not that. Yeah, absolutely absolutely where.
<v Speaker 2>I think that, at least in the Western world here
<v Speaker 2>where we h habitate, I think that's the most common
<v Speaker 2>example of people having everything and then having nothing that
<v Speaker 2>causes a forced perspective change of oh oh things are
<v Speaker 2>hard here or and I think in Sicko. Was that
<v Speaker 2>Michael Moore's movie about like the insurance industry.
<v Speaker 3>The healthcare industry.
<v Speaker 2>Healthcare, Yeah, I believe so, where you would see people
<v Speaker 2>who'd been working as insurance adjusters then all of a
<v Speaker 2>sudden have cancer in their family or some kind of
<v Speaker 2>other chronic illness, and then having sat there and clicked no, deny, deny, deny, deny,
<v Speaker 2>and then to realize how terrible it is and how
<v Speaker 2>many barriers these gatekeeping things like my favorite friend in
<v Speaker 2>the universe, Telligence, love to put in people's way, and
<v Speaker 2>then have to shift and realize, oh, oh no, this
<v Speaker 2>is fucked up. Like viewing people not on a case
<v Speaker 2>by case basis and having an agenda of getting them
<v Speaker 2>care but rather of saving money is fucked and that
<v Speaker 2>causes a lot of pain. And oh yeah, it was
<v Speaker 2>fine when they were just like case numbers. I was saying, like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>got to keep my ratio click nope, to all of
<v Speaker 2>a sudden it being your family that needs care and
<v Speaker 2>the insurance company Daddy's saying, oh, your numbers came up. Sorry, nah,
<v Speaker 2>let's make it difficult and maybe we'll just rule your
<v Speaker 2>care experimental. Sorry, we can't pay for that. But that's
<v Speaker 2>the only thing that'll save my wife's life. Too bad,
<v Speaker 2>it's experimental. We can't pay for it. Sorry, it's just
<v Speaker 2>not a good value.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I think that is a good example of how distance,
<v Speaker 1>like I was talking about, like the bureaucracy, right, yes,
<v Speaker 1>will create a lack of empathy. If I don't have
<v Speaker 1>to see you as an individual person with a full life.
<v Speaker 1>If I view you as a number, as a statistic,
<v Speaker 1>as a piece of paper coming along my desk, then
<v Speaker 1>I don't see you as a real person. Right. We
<v Speaker 1>do struggle to empathize, right, That's why we like to
<v Speaker 1>use anecdotal testimonials. And how whenever it's that time again,
<v Speaker 1>voting season in America or anywhere else, there's always that
<v Speaker 1>running gag on snl of. I think al Gore would
<v Speaker 1>show like a picture of an old lady, this is
<v Speaker 1>ethel she can't get her prescription drugs. But it's like
<v Speaker 1>the point is trying to make it human, trying to
<v Speaker 1>make it something we can understand in this situation. It
<v Speaker 1>is interesting how quickly this is the most total version
<v Speaker 1>of the shoe going on the other foot. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>that the whole movie happens over seventy four hours, because
<v Speaker 1>at the very end they go seventy four hours after exposure.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah and yeah, crawling. He looks like Jeff Goldblum in
<v Speaker 3>The Fly and.
<v Speaker 2>A human yes right, Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And when he's laying in that medical experimental lab and
<v Speaker 1>they're all standing around him talking about him as if
<v Speaker 1>he's not there, him getting such a stark real world
<v Speaker 1>individual experience of this is what it feels like to
<v Speaker 1>be not thought of at all, That I am not
<v Speaker 1>even something they feel worthy to talk to, even as
<v Speaker 1>they're talking about me as if I'm like a piece
<v Speaker 1>of a literal piece of meat, a weapon, an advantage,
<v Speaker 1>and how there is no empathy here and I am
<v Speaker 1>not being heard, like the way he's like crying and
<v Speaker 1>he's like, can I talk to my wife? He's trying
<v Speaker 1>to touch I think his father in law and like
<v Speaker 1>tug on his jacket in a very human way.
<v Speaker 3>It sucks that it there's that level of.
<v Speaker 1>Bananasness for him to really have empathy for the condition
<v Speaker 1>he has been gleefully bringing others into.
<v Speaker 2>Right, And I did not believe him. I don't know
<v Speaker 2>if I'm supposed to that he didn't know that that
<v Speaker 2>lab was down there and that the medical experiments and
<v Speaker 2>other horrible things that were happening were happening, or if
<v Speaker 2>he was just straight up lying too, he was lying,
<v Speaker 2>I thought so.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he was lying for sure.
<v Speaker 1>Especially if he has a father in law that that's
<v Speaker 1>high up, Like I wouldn't be shocked if he'd never
<v Speaker 1>seen anything like that before.
<v Speaker 3>Like if Vickers wasn't allowed to.
<v Speaker 1>Enter those spaces, sure because he didn't have clearance, the
<v Speaker 1>clearance or the need to be there. Sure, but I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure everybody sort of knew where people are going, and
<v Speaker 1>people were getting like black bagged or whatever. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>feel like I might have been inferring. But when he's
<v Speaker 1>leading Christopher through there, I felt so bad for Christopher.
<v Speaker 1>When they were in the lab and Christopher's like, what's happening?
<v Speaker 1>What is his place? The way he was kind of
<v Speaker 1>trying to like bullshit with him. Yeah, even though I
<v Speaker 1>know he'd been there before. That felt like to me,
<v Speaker 1>him knowing him having known how bad this is, but
<v Speaker 1>him acting like it's no different than experimenting I don't
<v Speaker 1>know on rats, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Until it hit him, Like he had several moments of
<v Speaker 2>force perspective change throughout this film, like him pulling the
<v Speaker 2>trigger himself.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, that is also a way that people will remove
<v Speaker 1>themselves empathetically. Right, is I'm not the one doing it,
<v Speaker 1>that person's doing it. So that's a great point you're making,
<v Speaker 1>Ben correct.
<v Speaker 2>Even in executions in a firing squad, let's say there's
<v Speaker 2>just typically seven rifles, only four of them are loaded
<v Speaker 2>with real bullets. All of them have blanks. But it
<v Speaker 2>creates some plausible deniability for the shooters that mine was
<v Speaker 2>the blank.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>They can all go home telling themselves they weren't the one.
<v Speaker 3>Holy fuck, I didn't know that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's why they do it in front of a
<v Speaker 1>squad of people, so that no one knows who's the
<v Speaker 1>actual one that killed the person.
<v Speaker 3>Wow.
<v Speaker 1>So it's a psychological game that they play to live
<v Speaker 1>through it mentally.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and they're with electric chairs. There are other such
<v Speaker 2>things that are often three switches and only one was live.
<v Speaker 1>It's such an interesting observation of human nature that we
<v Speaker 1>know it's fucked. We always know it's fucked what we're doing,
<v Speaker 1>that we have to create these like mental fails. Like
<v Speaker 1>these mental fail saves loopholes so that we can live
<v Speaker 1>with ourselves. It's that existential I don't know if that's
<v Speaker 1>the right word for it, but well, maybe cognitive dissonance.
<v Speaker 3>This is cognitive dissonance.
<v Speaker 1>Liminal space mentally of like we almost as fucked, right,
<v Speaker 1>but we're not gonna stop doing it. We're just gonna
<v Speaker 1>play a little game on ourselves, yeah, so that we
<v Speaker 1>can tell ourselves a story. And like true empathy gets
<v Speaker 1>in the way of all this stuff. I think one
<v Speaker 1>of the moments in the movie where you see him
<v Speaker 1>gain awareness in real time is when they put the
<v Speaker 1>alien in front of him to shoot.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, and they make him shoot. It's not they're literally
<v Speaker 2>cattle prodding him, yeah, to make his muscles convulse because
<v Speaker 2>he's refusing to engage, engage and pull the trigger and
<v Speaker 2>test these alien weapons. That since now he has alien
<v Speaker 2>DNA and his arm is turned into an alien arm
<v Speaker 2>that he can now operate because now he's valuable. Now
<v Speaker 2>he can do that. So as he's going from like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>look it's this this thing, Oh Thomas, Thomas, just put
<v Speaker 2>your gun on him, they're definitely criminals. This jolly dissociation
<v Speaker 2>from it to you're killing a living thing right now, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>is a immediate shift where you can see him display
<v Speaker 2>the concern for another life that has always been there.
<v Speaker 2>It's the most critical thing to understand about dissociation that
<v Speaker 2>people don't. If you dissociate something, it doesn't go away.
<v Speaker 2>It's not gone. It's just frozen in a pocket reality somewhere.
<v Speaker 2>But the part of you that always knows the fucking
<v Speaker 2>truth knows it's there and actively defends it. And that's
<v Speaker 2>why we have these mental gymnastics things that we do,
<v Speaker 2>because we're actively walling off something painful, and sometimes to
<v Speaker 2>survive you have to do painful things, or sometimes you're
<v Speaker 2>caught in a system where we're all doing bad things.
<v Speaker 2>So it's okay, right, No, No, it's not okay.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Because when he was.
<v Speaker 1>All like, oh, I mean, don't put him in front
<v Speaker 1>of me, when he was like protesting, and I was like,
<v Speaker 1>what's different between this guy in front of you, this
<v Speaker 1>alien guy in front of you, and the bajillion others
<v Speaker 1>that you just gleefully let get shot when you were
<v Speaker 1>doing your evicting.
<v Speaker 2>Right, what one point five million or something that they
<v Speaker 2>made several points to a reference, it's over a million
<v Speaker 2>lives that he knows he's putting into a concentration camp
<v Speaker 2>because those are words, he says, Yeah, all of a
<v Speaker 2>sudden he knows that truth, that barrier has been kicked
<v Speaker 2>down by reality. They're like, guess what, bitch, you knew
<v Speaker 2>what you were doing. And that's part of why this
<v Speaker 2>forced perspective change and recognizing that we can always find empathy,
<v Speaker 2>sometimes we have to actively choose to It's always there.
<v Speaker 2>We always know that something else is alive, Like Brittany,
<v Speaker 2>you mentioned, like some universal existential truths, there is nothing
<v Speaker 2>that is alive that wants to die that's going to
<v Speaker 2>voluntarily do so outside of the feeling they have no
<v Speaker 2>other choice to get out of pain. But there is
<v Speaker 2>nothing that is alive that isn't afraid of being not alive. Period.
<v Speaker 2>There is no parent that doesn't want to be with
<v Speaker 2>their child. It's just simple, like sure, it can get
<v Speaker 2>more complicated from there, but on some level it's there.
<v Speaker 2>But understanding the importance of having empathy and connecting to
<v Speaker 2>other living creatures and understanding the ability to connect to
<v Speaker 2>their experience and understand that from their point of view,
<v Speaker 2>how they understand the world is always going to be
<v Speaker 2>valid for them, regardless of what you think about it
<v Speaker 2>or how you're taught to think different it's always going
<v Speaker 2>to be real for them, and their feelings and pain
<v Speaker 2>will always be real and we can never ever not
<v Speaker 2>know that.
<v Speaker 1>So I think for someone like Vickers, when you don't
<v Speaker 1>have this extreme circumstance that causes this force perspective change, right,
<v Speaker 1>that what you have to do instead more of like
<v Speaker 1>the real war version of this is being willing to
<v Speaker 1>sit in the discomfort of the truth, be willing to
<v Speaker 1>sit in the discomfort of the decision you've made, how
<v Speaker 1>you've prioritized the in group or yourself specifically, how you
<v Speaker 1>have reaped the benefits of your privilege, even sitting in
<v Speaker 1>the discomfort of acknowledging you have privilege. Even if you're
<v Speaker 1>not a billionaire, you can still have privilege that has
<v Speaker 1>helped you through your life. So for someone like Vickars
<v Speaker 1>in real life, to gain that empathy, you have to
<v Speaker 1>sit in a lot of discomfort, which for some people
<v Speaker 1>they would define as impossible. I don't think it's ever
<v Speaker 1>impossible to do that work. If you feel motivated to
<v Speaker 1>do that work. It is really hard work. Especially when
<v Speaker 1>you are used to being the privileged class, you don't
<v Speaker 1>experience a lot of discomfort. That is the part of
<v Speaker 1>the privilege is you get to be pretty comfortable most
<v Speaker 1>of the time, and so there can be less tolerance
<v Speaker 1>for hard truths, for uncomfortable situations, and so for someone
<v Speaker 1>like Vicker's, there isn't always the motivation, yeah, to push
<v Speaker 1>the discomfort to gain the empathy, unless something extreme happens,
<v Speaker 1>like the situation where all of a sudden you're amongst
<v Speaker 1>the people. I think an interesting scene in the movie
<v Speaker 1>that felt like very much real life.
<v Speaker 3>A lot of these things do.
<v Speaker 1>But when he's standing in the line for food with
<v Speaker 1>the other aliens and he doesn't quite know how to
<v Speaker 1>ask for what he wants, He's like asking for freaking.
<v Speaker 3>Like what like a Hamburger Schwarmer.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, like something that makes absolutely knows on whatsoever.
<v Speaker 3>It's like, you got a hot dog over here? Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>what the fuck do you think you are?
<v Speaker 4>Bro?
<v Speaker 1>That's such an example of I was shitting on you
<v Speaker 1>guys and dehumanizing you, but now I want to just
<v Speaker 1>lean into your culture because I have to, but still
<v Speaker 1>not quite demonstrating the empathy, because I will say with him,
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna sure what you guys think. He still is
<v Speaker 1>looking out for number one till the last ten minutes
<v Speaker 1>of the movie. So even though he's had this forced
<v Speaker 1>perspective change, he's still pretty unempathetic.
<v Speaker 3>For most of the movie. He's willing to sell out
<v Speaker 3>the other aliens. He fucks up their whole shit.
<v Speaker 1>He almost like fucks everything up for like Christopher and
<v Speaker 1>the ship and how he's like saving that fuel for
<v Speaker 1>twenty years, all because he wants to be part of
<v Speaker 1>the privileged class again, and that feels so important that
<v Speaker 1>that is continuously conflicting with his empathy during the movie.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that last moment where he confronts Christopher right after
<v Speaker 2>they get out of the lab, where Christopher has realized
<v Speaker 2>the depth of horrors well as the slum wasn't enough,
<v Speaker 2>absolutely just shows. I mean, we see Christopher associated a lot.
<v Speaker 2>He has to leave his son behind in the ship
<v Speaker 2>and comply because he realizes he's gonna get shot right
<v Speaker 2>now if he doesn't get into this atv right now.
<v Speaker 2>The colonel will shoot you in the head now and
<v Speaker 2>you have no chance of getting your son. So he
<v Speaker 2>has to leave behind his lear worry about whether his
<v Speaker 2>son survived the crash caused by Vickers. Before all that,
<v Speaker 2>when Vickers finds out that Christopher's like, hey, I can't
<v Speaker 2>fix you now. It's going to take three years to
<v Speaker 2>fix you. I can't. I just can't. I can't fix
<v Speaker 2>you now. I have to save my people. I can't
<v Speaker 2>let my people be medical experiments as horrible things happen,
<v Speaker 2>which makes sense, and Vickers is like me, but me,
<v Speaker 2>that breaks the deal we made. I got you into
<v Speaker 2>the lab, I got you all this stuff you were
<v Speaker 2>supposed to fix me definitely all about number one. And
<v Speaker 2>when that becomes untrue, what does he do? He attacks Christopher,
<v Speaker 2>lies to his son. Christopher gets captured because of this,
<v Speaker 2>locked out of the ship, and then has to watch
<v Speaker 2>as the SAM site the surface to air missile blows
<v Speaker 2>up the only known chance to get back on his
<v Speaker 2>ship that he's been working for for twenty years, because
<v Speaker 2>Vickers was butt hurt and couldn't accept reality. So yes,
<v Speaker 2>I think understanding that that force perspective thing. Just because
<v Speaker 2>it's happened doesn't mean it's been accepted.
<v Speaker 4>He really feels like a character somebody who would have
<v Speaker 4>this experience if he wasn't turning literally into an alien.
<v Speaker 4>Of course, I really don't feel like he'd be a
<v Speaker 4>person who would stay in that empathetic space like I
<v Speaker 4>think he would very much just go right back to
<v Speaker 4>being a.
<v Speaker 3>Part of the privileged class.
<v Speaker 4>I'd be really surprised if, let's say, if they cut
<v Speaker 4>his arm off and then he just didn't have an arm,
<v Speaker 4>but he was still a human.
<v Speaker 3>He really doesn't get it. That's what it kind of
<v Speaker 3>feels like.
<v Speaker 4>I know that the point of the film is that
<v Speaker 4>he then finally, at the last fucking second, he waited
<v Speaker 4>until the last moment where he could show any empathy whatsoever,
<v Speaker 4>he finally does that. But I think in the real world,
<v Speaker 4>I think this guy goes back to being an assa
<v Speaker 4>the next day.
<v Speaker 1>Well, if there's one thing that the oppressive class loves
<v Speaker 1>to do, it's vacation, Yes, in the experience of the oppressed,
<v Speaker 1>and then make that their whole personality mm hmm for
<v Speaker 1>a hot minute, and not understanding that their ability to
<v Speaker 1>vacation in it, to go in and out of that
<v Speaker 1>experience is privilege. Yep, this is going to be such
<v Speaker 1>the silliest example, but it's the first one I thought of, which,
<v Speaker 1>so stupid Tyra Branks put on that fat suit for
<v Speaker 1>the Tyra Branks so so you can see what it
<v Speaker 1>was like to be a fat person. For a day
<v Speaker 1>and cry about it, but then she can take that
<v Speaker 1>suit off yep and be a supermodel.
<v Speaker 2>Right, how is that for you?
<v Speaker 1>Or like when Bruce Wayne goes into that developing country
<v Speaker 1>prison and then once he's got all his lessons from
<v Speaker 1>Batman begins, once he's learned everything he needs to learn,
<v Speaker 1>he calls his daddy Butler and he's like, hey, get
<v Speaker 1>the PJ and come pick me up.
<v Speaker 3>I'm done with slumming it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yep.
<v Speaker 1>That's also another example of are you really having empathy
<v Speaker 1>if you're not acknowledging the ease at which you can
<v Speaker 1>go back and forth out of that experience in which
<v Speaker 1>the people that are actually in that experience they cannot
<v Speaker 1>do that.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't see Bruce Wayne picking up any disenfranchised people
<v Speaker 1>who are wrongly in prison and picking them on the
<v Speaker 1>PJ with him, exactly, did we? No?
<v Speaker 2>Nope, we see you know all of that, but understanding
<v Speaker 2>like how powerful it is to have empathy versus vacation
<v Speaker 2>in it and then not stay. I just would love
<v Speaker 2>to see what the fallow up statistics of Undercover Boss are.
<v Speaker 2>How many of those people that have gone on that show?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah right, actually like started giving a shit about their
<v Speaker 2>employees beyond like the five minutes where they vacationed in
<v Speaker 2>their lives.
<v Speaker 3>Have you heard of poor people?
<v Speaker 2>I just met some?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.
<v Speaker 2>You should get that.
<v Speaker 3>Girl a raise.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but just her though not like everybody else. It's
<v Speaker 2>like literally exactly the same as her. Just her, because
<v Speaker 2>now I feel bad for her and her situation.
<v Speaker 1>She has a life, she has internal world, she has
<v Speaker 1>that she loves what she has.
<v Speaker 3>She has to work another job because this one doesn't
<v Speaker 3>pay her enough. Yeah, motherfucker.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think you're exactly right, Hannah. And also to
<v Speaker 1>like jump off of that as well, I think that's
<v Speaker 1>also part of the mental gymnastics, where when he's in
<v Speaker 1>that situation, why does he want to become a human again?
<v Speaker 1>Other than I'm sure that horrific pain he's in physically, is.
<v Speaker 3>That he knows it's bad.
<v Speaker 1>He knows being an alien in this world sucks ass
<v Speaker 1>that you get hurt and you get tortured, and you
<v Speaker 1>have to eat cat food and you're treated like shit.
<v Speaker 1>So he knows that it's not good to be one,
<v Speaker 1>and yet he can't translate that all the way to
<v Speaker 1>like we should stop doing this, to them. He just
<v Speaker 1>knows he doesn't want to be a part of that.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, what is her name? That old white lady
<v Speaker 1>who does the racism work, who's been on like Oprah Windfree,
<v Speaker 1>she's famous. She is white hair do, Yeah, sure hair do,
<v Speaker 1>and she loves to turn a white person out with
<v Speaker 1>her like I guess what we call DEI ask things
<v Speaker 1>that she's been doing. She's been doing since the eighties,
<v Speaker 1>the way that she likes to fuck up a crowd
<v Speaker 1>of white people. And I think she did this on
<v Speaker 1>the Oprah Winfrey Show in like nineteen ninety two. Is
<v Speaker 1>raise your hand, white people if you would like to
<v Speaker 1>trade places with the black person today, And none of
<v Speaker 1>them raise their hand, and she was like, yeah, because
<v Speaker 1>you know what it's actually like.
<v Speaker 3>But at the same time, you're.
<v Speaker 1>Gonna say it's not that bad, Well, then raise your
<v Speaker 1>hand if it's not that bad, if it's no different.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, I think that's also the part of the
<v Speaker 1>empathy discomfort shift that someone like Vickers would have to
<v Speaker 1>acknowledge in those moments. Right is right now, I am
<v Speaker 1>acknowledging that I don't want to be an alien.
<v Speaker 3>I don't want to be part of this class because
<v Speaker 3>it's bad.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, But at the same time I want to be
<v Speaker 1>like it's not that bad, or like it doesn't matter.
<v Speaker 3>Right, it's not that big of a deal.
<v Speaker 2>And if they told him, no, we can get this
<v Speaker 2>arm off you. You can have your wife and your life back,
<v Speaker 2>but you got to go back to your job. Which
<v Speaker 2>Charlie problem do you think he picks?
<v Speaker 3>Oh, he would.
<v Speaker 1>Be doing such a level of dissociative ned Flanders esque
<v Speaker 1>sweater vest wearing attitude having this. Yeah, he might adopt
<v Speaker 1>a dissociated personality. The part of him that experienced this
<v Speaker 1>will get locked in a box in the back of
<v Speaker 1>his brain so that he could keep doing the work
<v Speaker 1>in front of him and act like it's fine. Like
<v Speaker 1>I could see him even going harder with the weird
<v Speaker 1>persona he showed in the beginning of the movie. Oh yeah, absolutely,
<v Speaker 1>locally docally, nothing to see here, folks, yep.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So I think we've covered all that pretty well.
<v Speaker 2>Is there anything else? Anybody wants to say? No, No,
<v Speaker 2>let's take another break here and we'll go into treatment.
<v Speaker 2>Who wants to go first?
<v Speaker 3>Well, which one of us is going to try treat Vickers?
<v Speaker 3>I mean, this is kind of a pickle, Right, who
<v Speaker 3>do we pick to treat?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, humanity, Vickers the alien making his little heart craft
<v Speaker 1>in the piles of garbage.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, leaving him at his wife's doorstep.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, to humanity, and you just can't help but feel
<v Speaker 2>for him. They did it on purpose, They made you
<v Speaker 2>connect to his humanity, but not till halfway through the
<v Speaker 2>film where they showed him starting to get sick and like,
<v Speaker 2>go to that party where you can connect to like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>man on the cake.
<v Speaker 4>It's so interesting how fast that all of that happens
<v Speaker 4>in that scene. That scene is so wild. They're trying
<v Speaker 4>to do something. He comes in and they're like, let's
<v Speaker 4>do the cake. It happens so fast, and I'm just like,
<v Speaker 4>he is gonna I knew he was gonna vomit on something.
<v Speaker 4>He looked like he was gonna shit his pants, Like, yeah,
<v Speaker 4>do you come with diarrhea coming into the house where
<v Speaker 4>they're like, I can't die.
<v Speaker 2>Don't look at me like.
<v Speaker 4>This, yes, please don't look at me.
<v Speaker 2>Coming out like hot lover. Yeah, like shitting in a
<v Speaker 2>garbage can in front of everybody who's having a surprise
<v Speaker 2>party for you kind of energy. Yeah, but it's horrible.
<v Speaker 4>Thank God, but it also was like a party to
<v Speaker 4>celebrate them starting getting to get rid of the aliens
<v Speaker 4>into the other spot, right, isn't what the.
<v Speaker 3>Party of promotion is? Promotion promotion, promotion party.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, you know they're all company.
<v Speaker 1>Ye.
<v Speaker 2>The father in law is the you know, big dig
<v Speaker 2>daddy here.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>Is there an individual in this movie to treat Christopher?
<v Speaker 3>I mean I don't feel it. Does he need it
<v Speaker 3>because he got the hell out of there?
<v Speaker 2>Oh, he's going to need it.
<v Speaker 3>I mean he's definitely gonna need it.
<v Speaker 4>He's going to need it, and who knows what version
<v Speaker 4>of what he would need because who knows what it's
<v Speaker 4>like on his home planet.
<v Speaker 1>We did talk about how they have like medical machines.
<v Speaker 1>What if they have one for your brain and like
<v Speaker 1>whatever brain damage happens from trauma it can help with.
<v Speaker 3>That'd be dope, that'd be pretty cool.
<v Speaker 2>I mean that'd be great.
<v Speaker 3>Well.
<v Speaker 1>I think the first step to treating someone like Christopher
<v Speaker 1>is they have to be in a safe place.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, correct, And then shame must be addressed because there's
<v Speaker 2>going to be several things going on for him when
<v Speaker 2>he's returned to safety. He had to do everything that
<v Speaker 2>he did the exact way he did it, or he
<v Speaker 2>died yep, and everything stayed the same. He failed his people,
<v Speaker 2>and his son died, and he had to do all
<v Speaker 2>that he had to do while accepting my son may
<v Speaker 2>already be dead, which, as we've covered before, no parent
<v Speaker 2>wants that, of course, but at some point you're still alive.
<v Speaker 2>And prime directive one like.
<v Speaker 3>Where's Christopher's mama, Christopher Junior?
<v Speaker 1>I mean so like also the grief of if they
<v Speaker 1>have partners.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and create children right the way that we do.
<v Speaker 2>Right, where is it? How is it? There's so much
<v Speaker 2>he would need to work through and it would take
<v Speaker 2>a long time. Were he human, of course, because presuming
<v Speaker 2>we understand their DNA, it would be a.
<v Speaker 4>I know, I feel like I keep trying to come
<v Speaker 4>at this from like we could do this, or we
<v Speaker 4>could do that.
<v Speaker 3>And a really big part of this is.
<v Speaker 4>He should be seeing an alien for therapy, do you
<v Speaker 4>know what I mean? Like he shouldn't be seeing a
<v Speaker 4>human for therapy, he should be seeing an alien.
<v Speaker 3>Facts Yeah, so like so I don't know were.
<v Speaker 2>He human and were his brain to function as humans do,
<v Speaker 2>at least the way those of us sitting here with
<v Speaker 2>degrees discussing this like we know anything about aliens, would
<v Speaker 2>conceptualize it, right.
<v Speaker 1>Well, we know something about refugees, Yeah, of course. And yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I think there's survivor's guilt, I think is what you're
<v Speaker 1>talking about to a certain extent, the shame of being
<v Speaker 1>one of the ones that made it out of a
<v Speaker 1>horrible situation.
<v Speaker 2>That too, I hadn't even thought of that angle, But yes,
<v Speaker 2>no disagreement there. His case would be extraordinarily complex. This
<v Speaker 2>would be ACPTSD case. He had twenty years of terror,
<v Speaker 2>oppression that was ever present, and all the cascading stacking
<v Speaker 2>effects of that would be extremely difficult to work through.
<v Speaker 2>The shame of having to lower himself to the levels
<v Speaker 2>he did when he's clearly so capable of so many things,
<v Speaker 2>and being powerless against the situation, unable to help in
<v Speaker 2>the way he wanted to, would be a lot. But
<v Speaker 2>also working through the attachment he would have formed to
<v Speaker 2>Vickers because Vickers saved his life in the end, but
<v Speaker 2>also Vickers is part of the whole reason why your
<v Speaker 2>life needed saving, and it's really fucked. Yeah, there's going
<v Speaker 2>to be some part of him that wants to go
<v Speaker 2>back and hold to his promise and be better than
<v Speaker 2>what happened to him. In another part that's going to
<v Speaker 2>be like what nonsense are you even saying right now?
<v Speaker 2>Why would you ever go back there? And yet another
<v Speaker 2>part that's going to be like, exterminate the planet of
<v Speaker 2>humans and take their fucking resources because they're goddamn monsters. Yep,
<v Speaker 2>And that will be a war in side of his
<v Speaker 2>head if he's, you know, remotely right, got similar biology
<v Speaker 2>does the layers and layers of complication that come with
<v Speaker 2>CPTSD would make him an interesting case. And I don't
<v Speaker 2>think anybody else remotely would interest me to treat figures.
<v Speaker 2>His wife is going through her own batch of dissociation
<v Speaker 2>right now.
<v Speaker 3>Well, and she's being her dad. Is that fucking monster? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Who was willing to treat her husband, who he knows
<v Speaker 1>like cattle. We see the dehumanization process that he does
<v Speaker 1>very quickly. Well, you know, he was always an idiot,
<v Speaker 1>yeah so, and he was wesh so babe. He literally
<v Speaker 1>tells his wife, you're gonna have to let him go,
<v Speaker 1>like that's crazy, Like it's a dog they had to
<v Speaker 1>put down.
<v Speaker 2>He had no hesitation that they were going to vivisect him.
<v Speaker 2>Cut his heart out of his chest and maybe gass
<v Speaker 2>him so he doesn't feel pain, but the objective is
<v Speaker 2>to get the heart. Yeah, he gonna die either way,
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't matter, is fine. Dead men tell no tales, right, Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, So I think, yeah, Christopher and his son is
<v Speaker 1>the only people that I really gave a shit about
<v Speaker 1>by the end, and I.
<v Speaker 3>Think you're right.
<v Speaker 1>I think a real world version of him would be
<v Speaker 1>someone who has fleed somewhere horrible where a lot of
<v Speaker 1>their family and cultural group are still exists, having to
<v Speaker 1>make sure that they're safe before they can even do
<v Speaker 1>that work. Right, You can't really do that work while
<v Speaker 1>you're in the midst of it exactly, kind of going
<v Speaker 1>back to the hierarchy and needs idea, like, until you
<v Speaker 1>have your basic needs met and safety, you can't really
<v Speaker 1>do higher work because your branch is trying to survive.
<v Speaker 1>I think with him in a therapy way as well,
<v Speaker 1>especially because he's so smart and so capable, I think
<v Speaker 1>there would also be the debate internally that you would
<v Speaker 1>have to maybe help him through with therapy from a
<v Speaker 1>place of meaning and purpose. Do I have to go
<v Speaker 1>back and say the people that I can am I
<v Speaker 1>too scared to go back, and I just want to
<v Speaker 1>stay here and try to make a life home with
<v Speaker 1>my child.
<v Speaker 3>Do I leave my child and go back. Our job
<v Speaker 3>would probably be just to try to talk through with.
<v Speaker 1>Him what he feels like he needs to do, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and what's possible and why, and help create meaning and
<v Speaker 1>make sure that's coming from a place of like you
<v Speaker 1>were talking about, and like not just shame.
<v Speaker 3>I have to go back there from in more like emotional.
<v Speaker 1>Place, yeah, versus I have the means and the ability
<v Speaker 1>to go back there, and it fits my values to
<v Speaker 1>go back there. And when I am sound enough physically, mentally, whatever,
<v Speaker 1>I will go back there and I will help them.
<v Speaker 2>And if that's what he chooses to do, that's from
<v Speaker 2>an empowered state, which that's fine, that's free will. Even
<v Speaker 2>if you may sit and look at it you want
<v Speaker 2>to go save the dude who threatened to just take
<v Speaker 2>your child.
<v Speaker 3>Viguers will probably.
<v Speaker 1>Just be swept up in the masses of aliens if
<v Speaker 1>they got rescued.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it was just like but specifically you know
<v Speaker 2>that there would likely have been a trauma bond that
<v Speaker 2>would make him feel response to do so because he
<v Speaker 2>said he would, and people get those kinds of things
<v Speaker 2>stuck all the time in their heads, even if it's
<v Speaker 2>a ridiculous notion for them to do.
<v Speaker 1>So I think for treatment, I'm going to go a
<v Speaker 1>different route because, as we said, there's not really anyone
<v Speaker 1>to treat this movie besides Christopher. Because this is a
<v Speaker 1>lot of this is a social issue, it is a
<v Speaker 1>systemic issue. So I recently set up a training for
<v Speaker 1>the practice I work out about decolonizing mental health. And
<v Speaker 1>actually the person that we had trained us is named
<v Speaker 1>Aaron Matthews, and her.
<v Speaker 3>Practice is called living in Empathy.
<v Speaker 1>Oddly for just coincidentally from what we've been talking about,
<v Speaker 1>she had us do a cultural genograham And I think
<v Speaker 1>that was very interesting for me as a white therapist
<v Speaker 1>to be mindful of the cultural biases, that cultural identities
<v Speaker 1>that impacts me and the thoughts that I have and
<v Speaker 1>what I bring to the work I do as a
<v Speaker 1>therapist who works with all different kinds of people. So
<v Speaker 1>I would say from a treatment perspective, as a working therapist,
<v Speaker 1>I think it's always very good, especially if you are
<v Speaker 1>a part of a historically oppressive class like I'm a
<v Speaker 1>white Christian technically not practicing, but you know, yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>got you, and I'm like straight, and you know cisgendered
<v Speaker 1>that you have to be aware of your own biases,
<v Speaker 1>and like, like I was saying earlier, you have to
<v Speaker 1>work on being uncomfortable and work on recognizing what you
<v Speaker 1>don't know and reading shit that you would normally read.
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't no offense to my family, I guess, but
<v Speaker 1>maybe a fense. I wasn't really exposed to any sort
<v Speaker 1>of DEI thoughtful. I was raised in like white as White, Ohio.
<v Speaker 1>So like, I just recently read Between the World and
<v Speaker 1>Me by Tanahasecoast, which I know everybody talks about, but
<v Speaker 1>I think that's a great book to read as a
<v Speaker 1>clinician in terms of really getting into the mindset of
<v Speaker 1>being part of the oppressed class of people and how
<v Speaker 1>that trickles down into what we've been talking about, the
<v Speaker 1>culture and violence, and how people who are used to
<v Speaker 1>being oppressed will integrate violence into the way they parent
<v Speaker 1>their children, to the way that they police their own
<v Speaker 1>community to a certain extent as a way to survive
<v Speaker 1>the oppressive class. Don't walk out there with that attitude
<v Speaker 1>because you'll get hurt. So I'm gonna whoop you so
<v Speaker 1>that you can stay in line and how we will
<v Speaker 1>use violence to contain mm hmm, even within our own
<v Speaker 1>groups from the bigger right that we're more scared of.
<v Speaker 1>And so, yeah, I think if you're a therapist and
<v Speaker 1>you we all have our own echo chamber, that it's
<v Speaker 1>part of I think being a good ethical therapist is
<v Speaker 1>you have to read things and expose yourself and make
<v Speaker 1>yourself uncomfortable and ask yourself questions about like why do
<v Speaker 1>I think that's true? Why do I think that way
<v Speaker 1>of being is messy or classless or off putting? Is
<v Speaker 1>that because I've been made to believe that was that
<v Speaker 1>part of a do humanization from my grandparents' generation that's
<v Speaker 1>still trickle down to me that I'm holding on to
<v Speaker 1>not even being aware of. And then don't get caught
<v Speaker 1>up in your white tears by being like, oh I'm
<v Speaker 1>sad and I feel bad that I have those internal thoughts.
<v Speaker 1>Get over it, just recognize it, commit to doing it
<v Speaker 1>differently than your four fathers, and move through it. So
<v Speaker 1>that's kind of where I would say to take this
<v Speaker 1>stuff we've talked about and put it into treatment as
<v Speaker 1>your continue education as a therapist.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I don't know
<v Speaker 4>that I have anything else to say about treatment. I
<v Speaker 4>don't really know that there's Like we said, there isn't
<v Speaker 4>anything that I see here that particularly is connected to
<v Speaker 4>families and couples, just like in terms of the only
<v Speaker 4>family that we see is these two characters that we
<v Speaker 4>don't really know that much more about besides that they're
<v Speaker 4>father and son, and also their relationship looks very loving
<v Speaker 4>and as loving as it can be in a war
<v Speaker 4>torn life.
<v Speaker 1>That you're Yeah, I think the only thing that would
<v Speaker 1>be interesting maybe from like a family therapy perspective, but
<v Speaker 1>I don't think you have to go into this go
<v Speaker 1>into this is Christopher Junior. I'm calling him having to
<v Speaker 1>go back to a culture that he was never raised in.
<v Speaker 1>I wonder how much that would mirror the immigrant experience.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like the first gen experience that kind of thing,
<v Speaker 1>and how he's so eager to go home because his
<v Speaker 1>dad's been telling him what home's like. But I wonder
<v Speaker 1>what that'll be like for him to actually be there.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's a good point.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that would be powerful. I think I would also
<v Speaker 2>want to know how they work through coming back together
<v Speaker 2>from this experience, they probably would need to be debriefed
<v Speaker 2>and have sessions together about now they're a unit outside
<v Speaker 2>of their own culture, like those two because of what
<v Speaker 2>they went through, they'll be the only ones, yeah, return
<v Speaker 2>that survived. Yeah, because it's just them and that chip's
<v Speaker 2>not like they tractor beamed everybody. Just those two and
<v Speaker 2>there's still two million left beat behind. That'd be a lot. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And we don't know how old. Is this a grogu
<v Speaker 2>situation where he's right right, he.
<v Speaker 1>Looks like like he's eight. Yeah, that's what my brain thinks.
<v Speaker 2>But I know what you mean, ben, Right, We don't
<v Speaker 2>know how what their you know, life cycle is their biology, right,
<v Speaker 2>we'll covered that. But the when people go through and
<v Speaker 2>experience together as a father and son and then they're
<v Speaker 2>going to have to kind of change their relationship to
<v Speaker 2>whatever is expected of them within the culture they're returning to,
<v Speaker 2>and how that's going to be so much different. That's
<v Speaker 2>going to be a lot of opportunity for family therapy there,
<v Speaker 2>I think.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Yeah, I definitely could see that.
<v Speaker 4>I mean that definitely would be something if you have
<v Speaker 4>two survivors of something and that they survived it together
<v Speaker 4>and having them together and being able to talk about
<v Speaker 4>their different experiences.
<v Speaker 3>In session together would be really important.
<v Speaker 4>For them to have empathy for each other, but also
<v Speaker 4>just to get a better sense of what actually happened
<v Speaker 4>out there in different ways. So yeah, well, even though
<v Speaker 4>it's like even like a processing benefit to it, right, Yeah, exactly,
<v Speaker 4>like almost like doing your individual trauma processing in front
<v Speaker 4>of someone else, Yes, so that you well, so it's
<v Speaker 4>being witnessed, yeah, which is also really important when we
<v Speaker 4>talk about trauma survivors in general. Be really important to
<v Speaker 4>have some witnessing happen to what to what you went
<v Speaker 4>through as validation.
<v Speaker 1>I would also imagine too, with the two of them,
<v Speaker 1>that Christopher's story of the trauma is going to be
<v Speaker 1>very different than his son's, Yeah, because the different generation
<v Speaker 1>Christopher Junior was born in this situation, just how cognizant
<v Speaker 1>they are of it. And so I think maybe family
<v Speaker 1>Therapy EVE would be helpful if I was thinking of this,
<v Speaker 1>like regular regular humans, to make sure that Christopher isn't
<v Speaker 1>projecting his trauma experience onto Christopher Junior, Yeah, especially since
<v Speaker 1>he's so young. Yeah, adults, we do that all the time,
<v Speaker 1>and so make sure I'd be like, well, Christopher. We
<v Speaker 1>have to make sure that you're letting Christopher Junior's experience
<v Speaker 1>be his m and that you're not making assumptions in
<v Speaker 1>any direction onto him.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's not for him.
<v Speaker 1>It's not gonna help him feel better if you're barfing
<v Speaker 1>your trauma experience onto him or to reverse which is
<v Speaker 1>it's not that bad.
<v Speaker 3>Shut up.
<v Speaker 1>Like sometimes that witnessing is helpful so that everyone can
<v Speaker 1>tolerate everyone else's experience of the trauma. Yeah, I mean
<v Speaker 1>of like we can talk about it and it does
<v Speaker 1>not have to be a secret.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, which is important. It's so important, all right, So
<v Speaker 2>I think that covers treatment pretty well recognize the opportunities
<v Speaker 2>for CPTSD and a great number of folks, even if
<v Speaker 2>based on our feelings from the movie, we would not
<v Speaker 2>necessarily see Vicker's family as Oh, these people would be
<v Speaker 2>the ideal person That stands out to me is treatment.
<v Speaker 2>Please know. What doesn't mean we don't think they need
<v Speaker 2>and deserve treatment, just recognizing who would be the most
<v Speaker 2>interesting case to us individually. Is the thought experiment here? Yes,
<v Speaker 2>So the next section we're going to move into here
<v Speaker 2>is final Thoughts. Let's take our last break here before.
<v Speaker 3>Final thought, so I'd go first.
<v Speaker 1>I saw this movie when it first came out because
<v Speaker 1>it was such a hot movie. Everybody was talking about it,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, one thing about me is something's trending,
<v Speaker 1>I want to get my eyeballs on it. So I
<v Speaker 1>saw when it first came out. I really really liked it.
<v Speaker 1>It was one of those movies that as soon as
<v Speaker 1>I saw it, I was like, I can't wait to
<v Speaker 1>watch that again, and then I think I forgot.
<v Speaker 3>About it for fifteen years. I enjoyed watching it again.
<v Speaker 1>It was interesting how much this movie made me feel
<v Speaker 1>sick now versus when I was younger and more sheltered,
<v Speaker 1>And I think I had more empathetic separation when I
<v Speaker 1>watched it when I was younger, and now watching it
<v Speaker 1>after being a therapist for twelve years and trying to
<v Speaker 1>be a better white person and all this stuff and
<v Speaker 1>having all the current stuff that goes on in the
<v Speaker 1>world and being more exposed to that, it made me
<v Speaker 1>feel nauseous at parts of this movie heartbreaking. So I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if I'll ever revisit it because it's not
<v Speaker 1>a fun watch, but it's a very good movie. I
<v Speaker 1>think it makes its points very well. It's hard hitting
<v Speaker 1>in the way that it should be a hard hitting
<v Speaker 1>because the disgusting stuff we've seen this movie is all
<v Speaker 1>stuff that happens in real life to real people. So yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I think it's an important movie. I'm glad it exists.
<v Speaker 1>I'm glad it was made. I don't know if I'll
<v Speaker 1>ever revisit it unless I'm maybe showing it to someone
<v Speaker 1>who's ever seen it. But I like talking about it
<v Speaker 1>today for sure.
<v Speaker 3>So I like this.
<v Speaker 4>Movie, but it's not fun to watch. I've never heard
<v Speaker 4>of this movie. I had no idea what it was. Really,
<v Speaker 4>not even a clue even heard of it. Never even
<v Speaker 4>heard of it. Oh no, fall asleep in the middle
<v Speaker 4>of it. So this is what I'm gonna say. I
<v Speaker 4>will watch it again because I think I need to.
<v Speaker 4>And that's about it. I don't really have any other
<v Speaker 4>final thoughts today. It's a good movie. I think it
<v Speaker 4>has good information in it, blah blah blah. But I
<v Speaker 4>don't know. I just didn't feel that connected to it.
<v Speaker 4>I don't really know why. It's just kind of weird
<v Speaker 4>for me a lot.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. So yeah, so it was, so I'll definitely watch
<v Speaker 3>it again. And it was fun to talk about.
<v Speaker 2>So this movie is definitely one I haven't know that
<v Speaker 2>I've watched it. I own it, so you know, I
<v Speaker 2>must have watched it before when it came out, But
<v Speaker 2>I think watching it now was a drastically different experience
<v Speaker 2>than watching it when it first came out. I would
<v Speaker 2>have been in grad school at the time when I
<v Speaker 2>watched it, and I know I went with my mom
<v Speaker 2>to see it. Probably saw it because Peter Jackson produced it,
<v Speaker 2>and it was trending and it was you know that
<v Speaker 2>the viral marketing campaign for this was tremendously successful.
<v Speaker 3>Mm hmm, I remember that too.
<v Speaker 2>It was great. The found footage thing was just so big.
<v Speaker 2>At this point in time too, they're really trying to
<v Speaker 2>push that this movie is really powerful. It really is
<v Speaker 2>hard hitting, and it shows truths of the world and
<v Speaker 2>the rawness of the combat, the quick cuts, the way
<v Speaker 2>the violence is gratuitous and realistic is important, and the
<v Speaker 2>callousness as we discussed about the dehumanization and of how
<v Speaker 2>you take out prawn and replace it with any other
<v Speaker 2>slur about any other people that's ever been used throughout history,
<v Speaker 2>and it becomes really clear what the point of this
<v Speaker 2>film is. There are very, very few things separating any
<v Speaker 2>of us from being marginalized into Yes, some people have
<v Speaker 2>more privilege and armor that it makes it less likely,
<v Speaker 2>but that could happen to anybody and happens throughout history,
<v Speaker 2>and it's really important to watch for the signs of
<v Speaker 2>it and be aware when it's happening or if you're participating,
<v Speaker 2>and to not because it's dangerous. It's dangerous in a
<v Speaker 2>way that sweeps like in City is Virus. It's a
<v Speaker 2>really strong blight on humanity, and I think this movie
<v Speaker 2>did such a beautiful job of highlighting the evils of
<v Speaker 2>it and how fucked up it is that we only
<v Speaker 2>see it when it's happening to us. Film is important.
<v Speaker 2>I think it's really good, but it is a rough
<v Speaker 2>watch and I probably won't just pop it in my
<v Speaker 2>player and.
<v Speaker 1>Like a cozy Sunday be like I'm gonna watch District
<v Speaker 1>nine right and get some hot chocolate going.
<v Speaker 2>No, but I'm glad it exists for when it needs
<v Speaker 2>to be part of the conversation because it's very powerful
<v Speaker 2>film and it really did stand out at its time
<v Speaker 2>and it still does well.
<v Speaker 1>Thanks for joining us. As always, you can find us
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<v Speaker 1>also find us on threads at popcorn Psychology. If you
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