Nope: Sibling Dynamics & Dissociation

<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 Ben Stover,
<v Speaker 1>individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're all
<v Speaker 1>licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists who practice
<v Speaker 1>out of Chicago. Even though we are licensed mental health professionals,
<v Speaker 1>this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes and to fulfill
<v Speaker 1>our love of dissecting pop culture and 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 1>If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
<v Speaker 1>a local mental health provider. Spooky Season, Today we are
<v Speaker 1>talking about Jordan Peele's Nope after random objects falling from
<v Speaker 1>the sky result in the death of their father, ranch
<v Speaker 1>owning siblings oj Emerald Heywood attempt to capture video evidence
<v Speaker 1>of an unidentified flying object with the help of tech
<v Speaker 1>salesman Angel Torres and documentarian Antler's host. Today, we will
<v Speaker 1>be talking about Ojy and Emerald's relationship as well as
<v Speaker 1>Jup's trauma. Then we will have treatment and final thoughts,
<v Speaker 1>like always. One of the first things I wanted to
<v Speaker 1>bring up to start the episode is that in the
<v Speaker 1>opening scene of the film, we see Ojy and Emerald's
<v Speaker 1>dad die. Yeah, freak accident of things falling from the
<v Speaker 1>sky goes right through his eyeball coorder or nickel, and
<v Speaker 1>that's it. That's all she wrote. And so part of
<v Speaker 1>what we wanted to talk about and what we see
<v Speaker 1>in the film is the family dynamics and how they
<v Speaker 1>change after losing the head of the household. Yeah. So
<v Speaker 1>the movie goes really quickly into six months after the
<v Speaker 1>dad's death. The opening scene is the death, and then
<v Speaker 1>we are right into six months later where we're introduced
<v Speaker 1>to Old who has kind of has classic younger sibling
<v Speaker 1>energy tendencies, and Og who is sort of like classic
<v Speaker 1>older siblings tendencies.
<v Speaker 2>Yep on time serious, focused on getting the test done,
<v Speaker 2>adherent to the family story, the family traditions, and the
<v Speaker 2>younger sibling who is constantly late and disregards pretty much everything,
<v Speaker 2>but also can turn it on and be the face
<v Speaker 2>that the older brother cannot be in this family.
<v Speaker 1>And I think something we're also made to believe right
<v Speaker 1>away is that the family business which is wrangling animals
<v Speaker 1>for Hollywood productions, is struggling. It seems like they're not
<v Speaker 1>booking as many gigs or they're just they don't have
<v Speaker 1>like the reputation that they had, like when their dad
<v Speaker 1>was around. Like their dad can kind of do everything
<v Speaker 1>he could both think the wrangler and the showman. I
<v Speaker 1>think the dad is the one who cultivated most of
<v Speaker 1>their relationships. Yeah, most of the working relationships with Hollywood
<v Speaker 1>and setting up gigs and setting up different things.
<v Speaker 2>Seems like the dad was really fully aware of that.
<v Speaker 2>Show businesses of relationships and a results business. And it's
<v Speaker 2>a ass kissing business. It is a respecting people's time
<v Speaker 2>when they don't respect yours, respecting people's power when they
<v Speaker 2>don't respect yours. Managing to say yes and keep everybody
<v Speaker 2>safe and tell a story and make people feel good
<v Speaker 2>about themselves when they do dumb shit. And we can
<v Speaker 2>see very clearly Ojay is not good at half of that,
<v Speaker 2>and his sister isn't good at the other half. Fortunately
<v Speaker 2>they're both good at their own unique things. Oja is
<v Speaker 2>great with the animals. Oj understands the safety pieces, but
<v Speaker 2>he can't communicate with people. He is very reserved and
<v Speaker 2>shut down, very introverted. He would prefer to be anywhere
<v Speaker 2>else than on a stage with light shining on him
<v Speaker 2>and people looking at him, where his sister yearns for
<v Speaker 2>it lights up under it. But she can't be on time,
<v Speaker 2>She can't respect people's space, people's business. The fact that
<v Speaker 2>these studios cost money to be in, that stars cost
<v Speaker 2>money to have around, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
<v Speaker 2>Oj couldn't be less interested in that shit. All he's
<v Speaker 2>trying to be is, hey, we'll get you a shot
<v Speaker 2>with the horse. Don't do dumb shit with the horse.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this is another classic movie. This could be on
<v Speaker 1>the Bengal board of this podcast, which is me saying
<v Speaker 1>we don't see a lot of these characters prior to
<v Speaker 1>the events of the movie, and that we don't get
<v Speaker 1>a good sense of what their personalities were like prior
<v Speaker 1>to their dad's death. Right, Because something that is very
<v Speaker 1>notable about Oja right away, kind of going off of
<v Speaker 1>what you were talking about Ben, is the house shut down.
<v Speaker 1>He is that he doesn't really make eye contact. He
<v Speaker 1>seems socially anxious and like you were saying, I think
<v Speaker 1>Hannah shut down, And it does make me curious how
<v Speaker 1>much of that is post his dad's death and how
<v Speaker 1>much of that's just how he presents, because my assumption
<v Speaker 1>is based on the reaction the director has that opening
<v Speaker 1>scene that OJ maybe never had the best people skills,
<v Speaker 1>because when they were like, oh, it's the dad died,
<v Speaker 1>it's just OJ. Now, that guy was like, oh, oh,
<v Speaker 1>that's a shame.
<v Speaker 2>I think that's likely. I think the dad was a
<v Speaker 2>very complete Hollywood person and could do all of these things,
<v Speaker 2>but his children are not. And I think it's very
<v Speaker 2>likely that OJ has always been a little bit more
<v Speaker 2>introverted and interested in being with the animals and doing
<v Speaker 2>things and doing things the right way and just focused
<v Speaker 2>on nose to the grind getting stuff done, and the
<v Speaker 2>sister has always been more interested in the show business
<v Speaker 2>side of it and isn't so attached to the animals.
<v Speaker 2>You can see throughout the course of the film she
<v Speaker 2>never goes up to the animal. She's not interested in
<v Speaker 2>their will being, She's just interested.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I think I think that Emerald refuses to work
<v Speaker 1>with the animals because she was not allowed to be
<v Speaker 1>trained to work with the animals, and so I think
<v Speaker 1>that because of that, she is taking out on oj
<v Speaker 1>the choices that their dad made about who got to
<v Speaker 1>get trained to be with the horses and who got
<v Speaker 1>to do the other part. Yeah, and so I really
<v Speaker 1>feel like she does it out of spite. He asked
<v Speaker 1>her to help multiple times and she won't even consider
<v Speaker 1>won't even consider it. She will like literally act like
<v Speaker 1>she can't hear him.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I don't know, Spikee doesn't seem like it fits
<v Speaker 2>her character as much as resistance to like protection self protection,
<v Speaker 2>I'm not. I'm just done as opposed to like fuck
<v Speaker 2>your spite's like fuck you.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think it's a fuck you. I think she's
<v Speaker 1>a that Like I think she's stuck in almost like
<v Speaker 1>a teenagery mindset about it. Yeah, Like she there's a
<v Speaker 1>part of her that's very much stuck in that story
<v Speaker 1>she tells about Jean Jacket the horse, Yes, where she's like,
<v Speaker 1>at that time, dad chose to not train me, and
<v Speaker 1>he was gonna finally like kind of loop me into
<v Speaker 1>the fold as part of the group of the two
<v Speaker 1>of you, and he didn't, and he trained you and
<v Speaker 1>said and he took my horse. And there's a story
<v Speaker 1>she created in that moment about that event that she
<v Speaker 1>seems very stuck in well, she's stuck. She's stuck as hell.
<v Speaker 2>She's stuck. But it's more angst than it is spie.
<v Speaker 2>Spite is more in that fuck you dad trained you.
<v Speaker 2>And I don't think she's holding that energy towards him.
<v Speaker 1>She might have, I mean, she does say dad loved
<v Speaker 1>you more than me. I will. I think what been
<v Speaker 1>saying is she might have energy towards their dad, or
<v Speaker 1>maybe when he was like, you don't, But you don't
<v Speaker 1>feel like she's she's taking out an OJ. I think
<v Speaker 1>she kind of does in a very sibling esque way
<v Speaker 1>where you can be having hard feelings instead of recognizing
<v Speaker 1>that you're just in pain, you're kind of like taking
<v Speaker 1>it out on the other simplane. Absolutely, And I think
<v Speaker 1>that's also not uncommon when you have unresolved beef with
<v Speaker 1>a parent who passes that she doesn't really have the
<v Speaker 1>opportunitymore to hash that out with her dad. They never
<v Speaker 1>got to a point where she was let into the
<v Speaker 1>fold of the training. So this is an unresolved story
<v Speaker 1>for her, and so where does she put that energy?
<v Speaker 1>But an OJ who doesn't feed into her really, which
<v Speaker 1>I think maybe that's why it's hard to they don't
<v Speaker 1>get a lot of active conflict because he doesn't really
<v Speaker 1>do that.
<v Speaker 2>He doesn't feed into anybody's anything. He says, Nope, he
<v Speaker 2>is aware. He reads animals, he reads behavior. He is
<v Speaker 2>a behavior expert. He reads it and interprets it, and
<v Speaker 2>he knows. Nope, you see it. That's his recurring things.
<v Speaker 2>Why is the title moment? Nope?
<v Speaker 1>And I think that Emerald and no Jaer is such
<v Speaker 1>like good examples of what happens between siblings when they
<v Speaker 1>no longer have sort of their like they're touchstone, like
<v Speaker 1>the thing that connects them, which is their parents. When
<v Speaker 1>your parents run around to keep you connected to each other,
<v Speaker 1>you now all of a sudden now have to figure
<v Speaker 1>out how to be connected on your own, Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>communicate more intentionally. The feeling I got is, even though
<v Speaker 1>they are working together, they don't feel like they talk
<v Speaker 1>a lot. They feel really distant. They don't feel like
<v Speaker 1>they're on the same page, to the point where I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>do they work together or she just helping him out
<v Speaker 1>like post his dad's debt to do kind of like
<v Speaker 1>the Razzle Dazzle, because she seems so disconnected from yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the business.
<v Speaker 2>Well, they have clear different attachments to it. When he's like,
<v Speaker 2>stop acting, Like if this is your sidegig, she said
<v Speaker 2>straight up to him, this is my side gig. Her
<v Speaker 2>acting and all her other stuff that she's trying to
<v Speaker 2>build for herself in her mind is her business. So
<v Speaker 2>I think recognizing that when you have a family business
<v Speaker 2>and the figurehead passes away, there's often a very different
<v Speaker 2>sense of connection and a connection and attachment to the
<v Speaker 2>business and the relationship people had with it and why
<v Speaker 2>they're trying to keep it on. She wants to keep
<v Speaker 2>it on because it's paying the bills, whether she wants
<v Speaker 2>to admit that in her angsty self or not. I
<v Speaker 2>don't think her anything is taking off, or she wouldn't
<v Speaker 2>have been sliding that in in the classic Hollywood actor
<v Speaker 2>way of like, by the way, I also wrote a screenplay,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm a director, and I'm an actress, and I
<v Speaker 2>do all these things and I can do everything. Please
<v Speaker 2>just God hire me so that I can make my
<v Speaker 2>dreams come true. Thank you. Your bill is forty seven
<v Speaker 2>to fifty, but he is clearly rooted in it. It
<v Speaker 2>means a lot to him. He is connecting to that
<v Speaker 2>as his way to honor his dad and keep the
<v Speaker 2>family business alive, where she just wants the story to
<v Speaker 2>stay alive.
<v Speaker 1>I think she does like the razzle dazzle of the
<v Speaker 1>story of that we're connected to, like the great great,
<v Speaker 1>great great great our great grandfather is the guy who
<v Speaker 1>was the first person on a film, And I think
<v Speaker 1>he just is like, yeah, like you're saying, this is
<v Speaker 1>our family business, and I'm just trying to what does
<v Speaker 1>he say, I got mouse to feed? He seems very
<v Speaker 1>rooted in the work ethic part of it, like keep
<v Speaker 1>your nose to the grindstone, trying to keep this farm afloat,
<v Speaker 1>trying to continue stability. Probably also honor our dad by
<v Speaker 1>not dive bombing his long, long, long generational family business. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>like the first year of him passing, and how he's
<v Speaker 1>actually not quite able to do that because he's having
<v Speaker 1>to sell all the horses, which is so sad, and
<v Speaker 1>that he's not telling her about that either.
<v Speaker 2>No, he's not. And it's clear that they're not partners,
<v Speaker 2>that they don't trust each other, they don't have the
<v Speaker 2>same sense of connection to things. And it is a
<v Speaker 2>routine problem when there's been a death because generally speaking
<v Speaker 2>that whoever's the head of the family has the keys
<v Speaker 2>to the kingdom and runs it their way, and everything
<v Speaker 2>runs through them, and they know all the secrets, they
<v Speaker 2>know all the ins and the outs, and they let other
<v Speaker 2>people in. But once they go, if other people aren't
<v Speaker 2>finding their life's purpose by doing what they did, and
<v Speaker 2>it and or it doesn't work for them the same way,
<v Speaker 2>because they're an entirely different person, and it's an absolutely
<v Speaker 2>unreasonable expectation. Lots of conflict, lots of struggles. How many
<v Speaker 2>times have we encountered clients who come in after there's
<v Speaker 2>been a death and their whole family just blew up.
<v Speaker 1>I also think when people are in are experiencing grief
<v Speaker 1>symptoms in general, during that time when everything you know,
<v Speaker 1>a lot of decisions have to be made after someone passes,
<v Speaker 1>and especially if you have a business, and so because
<v Speaker 1>so many decisions have to be made at once, there
<v Speaker 1>always ends up being a head person who just who
<v Speaker 1>either knows the business the best or everybody trusts the most,
<v Speaker 1>who ends up taking it over. And that is the
<v Speaker 1>person who does everything with it. But that it often
<v Speaker 1>almost always creates a conflict.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because all those decisions have to be made, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>when everyone is still dissociated. Yeah, and they're only coming
<v Speaker 2>in and out of being in pain being especially when
<v Speaker 2>it's a sudden death like this one. This wasn't planned for.
<v Speaker 2>Dad was clearly still actively working and planning to work
<v Speaker 2>for a while. He wasn't handing over the keys.
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't retired in anyway it seemed yet.
<v Speaker 2>Nope, and didn't seem like he was even thinking about it.
<v Speaker 1>Definitely not.
<v Speaker 2>And when that happens, that sudden death leaves more dissociation
<v Speaker 2>as opposed to people who have had the opportunity to
<v Speaker 2>slow grieve. Where you see someone deteriorating, you see someone
<v Speaker 2>not being themselves, not being capable, so you naturally have
<v Speaker 2>to start taking on a new role. None of that
<v Speaker 2>happened here. So the two children are struggling greatly with
<v Speaker 2>picking up the pieces. And when someone dies and you
<v Speaker 2>have to make all those decisions quickly while you can't
<v Speaker 2>even tolerate your own pain or reality because everything is shattered.
<v Speaker 2>You're making no decisions with parts of yourself, and that
<v Speaker 2>usually doesn't represent the full spectrum of your personality, your wants,
<v Speaker 2>your desires, your needs. You're just doing whatever you feel
<v Speaker 2>like you had to do in the moment and might
<v Speaker 2>resent that choice later.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and it makes me curious with OJ's presentation, it's
<v Speaker 1>the culmination of the grief we're talking about. Maybe this
<v Speaker 1>is also of his natural personality being more introvert and
<v Speaker 1>uncomfortable being on stage literally and then two burnt out.
<v Speaker 1>We're seeing him at the tail end of like six
<v Speaker 1>months of taking over the family business and making all
<v Speaker 1>those decisions not planned and not doing it as well
<v Speaker 1>as he needs to because he doesn't have the showman
<v Speaker 1>part of it and the relation part of it, and
<v Speaker 1>because he can't rely on Emerald, and so he is
<v Speaker 1>having to make all these tough, really sad decisions. And
<v Speaker 1>I would imagine that's also part of the ongoing grief
<v Speaker 1>for him. Is am I going to also lose my
<v Speaker 1>dad's farm. I'm losing all his horses, peace by piece,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm hoping I can buy them back one day
<v Speaker 1>from Jupiter Jupe, but I don't know that, and I
<v Speaker 1>can't rely on my sister. So the pressure of all
<v Speaker 1>those decisions and stress, how could he not be maybe
<v Speaker 1>even making silly mistakes, like even in the opening scene
<v Speaker 1>on this film set, I wonder too, with like not
<v Speaker 1>maybe handling that well, if that's also part of him
<v Speaker 1>like not very being not very present m hm, and
<v Speaker 1>maybe not being as assertive about those directions as he
<v Speaker 1>needs to be, because when you go through something like that,
<v Speaker 1>your brain is like not with you all the time.
<v Speaker 2>No, he's I mean, that's what dissociation is, right, he's
<v Speaker 2>only running in safe mode if he's struggling to cope
<v Speaker 2>with the guilt and the loss and the loss of
<v Speaker 2>those horses that he's clearly attached to each one of
<v Speaker 2>those that he sold. I'm sure he knew their name.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure he had a relationship with them. I'm sure
<v Speaker 2>he fed and raised them, and letting go of each
<v Speaker 2>one probably broke his heart into another fragmented piece.
<v Speaker 1>What's awful is he doesn't even know that he's selling
<v Speaker 1>those horses to be fucking alien food. Yeah, and that
<v Speaker 1>he's never he was that jupe guy, was never planning
<v Speaker 1>to sell those back to him, Oh no, because he
<v Speaker 1>was to feed them to it. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>It's not great, and for him to be experiencing all
<v Speaker 2>of that that would lead him to be even more
<v Speaker 2>shut down, even more fragmented as he's struggling to grapple
<v Speaker 2>with his own grief. And failures in realizing he can't
<v Speaker 2>be his dad, he can't be like him, He can't
<v Speaker 2>just turn on all that stuff. He needs his sister
<v Speaker 2>and she won't show the fuck up.
<v Speaker 1>Before we jump into Emerald, how about we take a
<v Speaker 1>break here. Also, if you would like to at this
<v Speaker 1>time leave us a rating and review where every listener podcasts.
<v Speaker 1>I really appreciate it is the best way for new
<v Speaker 1>people to find us, and we always appreciate them and
<v Speaker 1>read them. Thank you.
<v Speaker 2>And speaking of those, we mentioned our lovely bingo game
<v Speaker 2>that we always reference as if it's an actual real thing,
<v Speaker 2>Well it is now one of our kind listeners. Eva
<v Speaker 2>made one for us and we'll be happy to share
<v Speaker 2>it with you guys. So hopefully you guys enjoy that
<v Speaker 2>and enjoy her work because it's a really great culmination
<v Speaker 2>of all the nonsense that you hear from our mouths
<v Speaker 2>all the time. And somebody really cared a lot about
<v Speaker 2>the show, took a minute to make something like that
<v Speaker 2>for us, and we really appreciate those kinds of things.
<v Speaker 2>Wanted to throw shout out to Eve and say thank
<v Speaker 2>you for that.
<v Speaker 1>You can find it on our Instagram if you're interested.
<v Speaker 1>Emerald kind of the same with OJ. I sort of
<v Speaker 1>want to give her the benefit of the doubt. Is
<v Speaker 1>I wonder how much of what we're seeing of her
<v Speaker 1>now is maybe also a product of losing their dad
<v Speaker 1>and feeling aimless. And that seems like she's maybe sleeping around,
<v Speaker 1>She's maybe doing a little like being very cavalier, smoking
<v Speaker 1>a lot. She's vaping a lot in the movie. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if she's vaping weed or just vaping nicotine.
<v Speaker 1>That she seems to be kind of just acting, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>acting young, just acting unreliable, and drinking a lot. She
<v Speaker 1>drinks a lot in the movie too. She has a
<v Speaker 1>lot of goofing off, And I wonder how much of
<v Speaker 1>that is how she's always and I assume it is
<v Speaker 1>just the way that OJ treats her. But I also
<v Speaker 1>wonder if a lot of those things have exacerbated at
<v Speaker 1>this time where her dad has died and she doesn't
<v Speaker 1>get to, like I said, resolve all of those loose
<v Speaker 1>ends she had with him about who she is within
<v Speaker 1>the business and who she is to him, and yeah,
<v Speaker 1>what is her relationship to this work and does she
<v Speaker 1>want a relationship to this work? And it's all just
<v Speaker 1>hanging out there and she can't really take a break
<v Speaker 1>to figure that out because Oja, like you said, Ben
<v Speaker 1>needs her.
<v Speaker 2>And she needs him because her stuff isn't working. Getting
<v Speaker 2>anything to work in Hollywood is extremely difficult. It's not
<v Speaker 2>a slight on her, it's just it's extraordinarily difficult. Most
<v Speaker 2>people fail, and being an actor or anything involved in
<v Speaker 2>show business is an act of accepting rejection permanently, and
<v Speaker 2>many people struggle with that, particularly because they tend to
<v Speaker 2>be folks like myself who thrive on attention and need it,
<v Speaker 2>going with.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't know that's what you're in a savent.
<v Speaker 2>I am an attention horror and I am accepting of
<v Speaker 2>that fact. Anybody who knows me understands that, and it's okay.
<v Speaker 2>But the people who really thrive on that, and it's
<v Speaker 2>their business to do so, need it and they don't
<v Speaker 2>function well without it, and if they can't find a
<v Speaker 2>way to do it in a way that provides for them,
<v Speaker 2>they set up complexes for themselves. And she is very
<v Speaker 2>clearly an embodiment of that, which I'm sure Jordan Peel,
<v Speaker 2>being someone who likely struggled to find his footing, understands
<v Speaker 2>full well because he's both lived that life and now
<v Speaker 2>made it on both sides of the camera, and I'm
<v Speaker 2>sure writing her is an homage to that. But people
<v Speaker 2>who get into that place will often resentfully do the
<v Speaker 2>thing that makes some enough money to survive, and I
<v Speaker 2>think that's very clearly what we're seeing her do. She
<v Speaker 2>has a resentful, angsty relationship with the business. She couldn't
<v Speaker 2>resolve the things with her dad that kind of broke
<v Speaker 2>her meaning and purpose to it. So she made her
<v Speaker 2>meeting and purpose trying to be a showbuz person and
<v Speaker 2>it's not working for her yet. But she's also not
<v Speaker 2>working this job in a way that's going to work
<v Speaker 2>for that business, and that leaves her kind of stuck
<v Speaker 2>in the middle in a very teenager replace and we
<v Speaker 2>see her seeking escape quite often.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And I wonder even she has undiagnosed ADHD because
<v Speaker 1>the way she comes off to like when they go
<v Speaker 1>meet with Jube and she wants up asking questions and
<v Speaker 1>she's walking around his office and she's spoken its uf
<v Speaker 1>interrupting and not there, and she's never on time, like
<v Speaker 1>I think there's also a possibility that she's got these
<v Speaker 1>other parts of it, and that would obviously make a
<v Speaker 1>career where you have to be your own boss. Whatever
<v Speaker 1>she's going to do very difficult. I want to give
<v Speaker 1>her the best of the down. Say, maybe she's undiagnosed ADHD,
<v Speaker 1>and not that she's just like a thoughtless, immature asshole,
<v Speaker 1>because that is how she comes off or the beginning scenes.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for sure, if she has ADHD, which is a
<v Speaker 2>plausible explanation for her behavior, I don't think she's I
<v Speaker 2>don't think either of them are broken assholes. I think
<v Speaker 2>they're just representations of personality types and that some people
<v Speaker 2>just are the way that they are. There may be
<v Speaker 2>dysfunction in things. I think the evidence for her behavior
<v Speaker 2>of interrupting and being late all the time and being
<v Speaker 2>unable to focus and liking to do lots of things.
<v Speaker 1>And not able to remember like the one important thing
<v Speaker 1>about the speech she gives, which is safety protocol.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, she definitely covered none of that. Definitely. Don't stand
<v Speaker 2>behind the horse.
<v Speaker 1>No, look, don't make contact. Oh look at the horse
<v Speaker 1>and the eyeballs.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and those don't.
<v Speaker 1>Put a fucking flash in their eyes.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Those are a mirror, Yeah, a big mirror. Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>what it was.
<v Speaker 2>Don't do the things that are jumb but she could
<v Speaker 2>only cover the story why are we important? Yeah, which
<v Speaker 2>left everybody else in the room going narrowing their eyes
<v Speaker 2>and looking at it. Wasn't okay, so we're just good, cool,
<v Speaker 2>We're good, we can do whatever we want. That went poorly. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>hallmarks of ADHD, but also hallmarks of people who are
<v Speaker 2>more of the extroverted type of personality. Say, where's the line?
<v Speaker 2>She may be across it, but you may even know
<v Speaker 2>other people who don't have an ad she that aren't.
<v Speaker 1>What I was thinking about, Emerald is that I also
<v Speaker 1>wonder if she is. And you guys can tell me
<v Speaker 1>what you think about this, because I think the experience
<v Speaker 1>that happened where the dad didn't end up training her
<v Speaker 1>was also when she was young, and so I wonder
<v Speaker 1>sometimes when parents die, sometimes people can regress a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>And I wonder if she's kind of regressing back to
<v Speaker 1>this point in her life where she had a lot
<v Speaker 1>of options or she thought that she had options that
<v Speaker 1>she would be able to do. So she's kind of
<v Speaker 1>like stuck. Her part is kind of stuck in this
<v Speaker 1>younger kind of frame of mind because because what I
<v Speaker 1>do feel like and I totally agree, like I don't
<v Speaker 1>think that she's just a self centered prick like I like,
<v Speaker 1>even though I literally because I say that too, because
<v Speaker 1>the arc of the story proves different. You gets stuck
<v Speaker 1>at an age, right, so you get stuck at an
<v Speaker 1>age where you experience this original trauma. And so I
<v Speaker 1>wonder if a part of her behavior and the way
<v Speaker 1>that she's kind of regressed a little bit has to
<v Speaker 1>do with that, that that is the time where maybe
<v Speaker 1>it felt like she had more options and more things
<v Speaker 1>that she could do, and now she's in a place
<v Speaker 1>where she can only do certain things. Too, she's definitely
<v Speaker 1>being very all or nothing, yes, very black and white.
<v Speaker 1>And also too, maybe the way her grief is presenting
<v Speaker 1>as well is maybe she's having a hard time being
<v Speaker 1>around the horses. Maybe they make her think of her dad.
<v Speaker 1>So also the part of her that's acting kind of bratty,
<v Speaker 1>I think more bratty is how she comes off. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and like I can't hear you when her brother's trying
<v Speaker 1>to get her to help with the horses. I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>Maybe she is a hard time being around them, Maybe
<v Speaker 1>she's a hard time being on the farm. She's choosing
<v Speaker 1>to sleep in a trailer on the property, even though
<v Speaker 1>they have a huge house, like there could be also
<v Speaker 1>a lot going on there because I think where I
<v Speaker 1>also want to give her the benefit of the doubt
<v Speaker 1>is how much she grows in this movie that she
<v Speaker 1>actually has a lot of intelligence, love consideration once she's
<v Speaker 1>able to access that through the events of the movie.
<v Speaker 1>And she's not just looking out for herself. She is
<v Speaker 1>thinking about her brother, and she is thinking about the
<v Speaker 1>situation at hand, and she is thoughtful and smart. She's
<v Speaker 1>not just a dingling who wants the hot shot and
<v Speaker 1>then she must move on with her life. So it
<v Speaker 1>does make Yeah, I think we're onto something perhaps of
<v Speaker 1>where maybe some of this obnoxiousness is her not dealing. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And I think and I think mentioning all of the
<v Speaker 1>different ways that she was maybe self soothing by using
<v Speaker 1>the vape, by drinking alcohol, that she was doing all
<v Speaker 1>of those things because she is so uncomfortable and most
<v Speaker 1>of the times we see her drink she's in the house.
<v Speaker 1>Oh that's true. Yeah, I think those are glaring music.
<v Speaker 2>She's doing a lot of things to take her back
<v Speaker 2>out of the experience she's having by being concretely in
<v Speaker 2>that space. Yah, which your senses can't be negotiated with.
<v Speaker 2>She is in the house, she is seeing all of
<v Speaker 2>the things that are in the house. So the only
<v Speaker 2>option if you can't escape physically is to escape mentally,
<v Speaker 2>and that's what she does. And it's not uncommon to
<v Speaker 2>see people get really obnoxious and avoid when they're going
<v Speaker 2>through a big loss, especially a sudden one, because they
<v Speaker 2>don't want to fucking deal with it, or they can't
<v Speaker 2>and they look at it and go like nope.
<v Speaker 1>Because watching this now with my therapist eyes, I was
<v Speaker 1>seeing so many moments where you can see something flash
<v Speaker 1>over Emerald's face where she wants to connect with oj,
<v Speaker 1>where she's having a feeling and she's looking at the
<v Speaker 1>back of his head as he's walking away from her,
<v Speaker 1>and you can tell that she wants to make a
<v Speaker 1>bit of connection to him, but she can't. Either she's
<v Speaker 1>not aware that's really what she wants, or she doesn't
<v Speaker 1>know how to do it, so she will say something Braddy,
<v Speaker 1>or be like, why don't we do this together, let's
<v Speaker 1>get drunk, or she'll she's trying to connect with him,
<v Speaker 1>but she's going about it in a way that doesn't
<v Speaker 1>actually communicate to him why that's important to her and
<v Speaker 1>why she is trying to like spend time with him
<v Speaker 1>and do all this goofing offfee kind of stuff with him.
<v Speaker 1>And that's also where I wonder even how much maybe
<v Speaker 1>their dad would overcompensate for or just accommodate for their
<v Speaker 1>differences in personality and communication style, that they were able
<v Speaker 1>to maybe kind of use their dad as a bridge
<v Speaker 1>between Ojy's really isolated introverse introversion and her very big
<v Speaker 1>extraversion because they're not they're both not great communicators. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and when you're siblings and you have a parent between
<v Speaker 1>the two of you, you don't necessarily have to work
<v Speaker 1>on being better communicators while they're around, but once they're gone,
<v Speaker 1>you do have to do that. And you can see
<v Speaker 1>at the beginning of the movie she's trying, but she
<v Speaker 1>can't connect her desire or even her insight. She has
<v Speaker 1>it with her action, and so obviously he doesn't understand
<v Speaker 1>why she's doing the things that she's doing other than
<v Speaker 1>the fact that she's not helping him and how he
<v Speaker 1>perceives it, and so it just continues, unfortunately, this moat between.
<v Speaker 2>Them without something like an alien presence trying to eat everyone.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know that they would have recovered from without
<v Speaker 2>something coming back to or requiring them to get in
<v Speaker 2>the moment right now with everything that you are. I
<v Speaker 2>don't know that they would have recovered. I think they
<v Speaker 2>would have continued splitting down the path for quite a while,
<v Speaker 2>and that moat space between them may have gotten irreparable.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely, And you see this in real life with clients.
<v Speaker 1>You see relationships falling off and people not talking to
<v Speaker 1>each other after someone's past like it's common for it's
<v Speaker 1>common for some of them. Those things to happen where
<v Speaker 1>either road together or we girl apart.
<v Speaker 2>Important to point out that if people can't actualize into
<v Speaker 2>themselves and do it their own way while honoring the
<v Speaker 2>traditions of the family, if somebody passes that, the rest
<v Speaker 2>of the family is likely to fall off because it's
<v Speaker 2>going to feel like an approximation. It's going to be
<v Speaker 2>either too much for one person who will stop doing it.
<v Speaker 2>Let's use holidays as an example of this. Christmas has
<v Speaker 2>always done one particular way or whatever big holidays, right,
<v Speaker 2>It's always done one particular way. And when the matriarch
<v Speaker 2>or patriarch or whoever passes away yep or can no
<v Speaker 2>longer complete that ritual. It's going to happen a new
<v Speaker 2>way that people are going to drive with or they're not.
<v Speaker 2>And one person may try to do it just like
<v Speaker 2>Mom and may call Mom's food, and then they're going
<v Speaker 2>to take all that pressure on, and everybody else is
<v Speaker 2>still going to be like, yeah, I don't know, Mom's
<v Speaker 2>not here, this doesn't taste like moms. Yeah, And if
<v Speaker 2>that person couldn't do well, we're trying this thing, and
<v Speaker 2>we're going to do this thing, or we're gonna remember
<v Speaker 2>Mom this way, but we're also going to try these
<v Speaker 2>new things that let all of us step forward into
<v Speaker 2>the family and run things, and we're gonna do a
<v Speaker 2>holiday this way this time. What's likely to happen is
<v Speaker 2>everybody either puts all the pressure on the family mascot
<v Speaker 2>and says, good, you do it just like Mom did.
<v Speaker 2>Do everything just like you, get all Mom's stuff, get
<v Speaker 2>all the dishes, make sure everything tastes exactly the same,
<v Speaker 2>and take all that pressure on and we'll do nothing.
<v Speaker 2>Or two people fight over it, or it becomes a
<v Speaker 2>big mess and it happens once and never again. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>can be some of the ways these things go. With
<v Speaker 2>practical examples, and we will see clients come in struggling
<v Speaker 2>that all their traditions are gone, all their supports are gone,
<v Speaker 2>anybody they're connected to is leaving them, and we see
<v Speaker 2>some of that in this film.
<v Speaker 1>And also oj and Emerald seem so isolated, like it
<v Speaker 1>seems like their family was just the two of them
<v Speaker 1>and their dad. Their mom isn't around. I assume she.
<v Speaker 1>I might have missed this in the movie, but I
<v Speaker 1>assume she died when they were kids. There's like, no
<v Speaker 1>mom doesn't like exist in this movie. There's a picture
<v Speaker 1>of it, but there's no mention of her, there's no
<v Speaker 1>discussion of her.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I just assumed she died when they were kids. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know why. And so it does seem like all
<v Speaker 1>they have is each other, and so kind of what
<v Speaker 1>you're saying, Ben is Ojan and Emil just feel like
<v Speaker 1>two lost people who are floating in the ocean, and
<v Speaker 1>they want to be able to grab each other and
<v Speaker 1>depend on the other, but they can't. They can't find
<v Speaker 1>each other. And then what this alien situation does is
<v Speaker 1>it gives them a group project. It gives them something
<v Speaker 1>that they can focus on and be able to depend
<v Speaker 1>on each other about because she knows all the flashy
<v Speaker 1>shit about getting the cameras and where to put it
<v Speaker 1>on the internet because I don't even know, well, he
<v Speaker 1>doesn't have a smartphone. They should that he is a
<v Speaker 1>flip phone. In the very begining of the movie, that
<v Speaker 1>probably was to establish that he is very old school, yes,
<v Speaker 1>and she's very new school. Yeah. And so this is
<v Speaker 1>a moment where she's able to show her strengths and
<v Speaker 1>be dependable actually, and he's able to show his strengths
<v Speaker 1>and be dependable actually, And they start to listen to
<v Speaker 1>each other and take each other seriously, Like he goes
<v Speaker 1>to the circuit city or whatever fries with her to
<v Speaker 1>get the shit and she listens to him too, and
<v Speaker 1>they it gives them something to focus on that's not
<v Speaker 1>let's talk about dad dying and the fact that I
<v Speaker 1>don't know who I am anymore right now, and you
<v Speaker 1>don't know who you are right now and you're trying
<v Speaker 1>to figure it out. Having something to focus on, a
<v Speaker 1>project that you can lean on each other about is
<v Speaker 1>really helpful, and it helps them develop individually and helps
<v Speaker 1>them develop together. I mean, this movie ends the starts
<v Speaker 1>with them is them connecting again with that eye thing
<v Speaker 1>he does where he's like, I'm seeing you, so then
<v Speaker 1>you to do as kids. And I think, I guess
<v Speaker 1>what it helps about is not just like them noticing
<v Speaker 1>their strength with themselves, but also I feel like this
<v Speaker 1>project help them remember that they love each other if
<v Speaker 1>nothing else, absolutely, because it becomes and eventually it becomes
<v Speaker 1>about protecting each other. Yes, and so it changes from
<v Speaker 1>let's just make a lot of money off of having
<v Speaker 1>a UFO siding to I want to keep you safe
<v Speaker 1>and I see you and I care about you. And
<v Speaker 1>I think with Emerald, that's a lot of what she's
<v Speaker 1>looking for. Like all the times that she's staring at
<v Speaker 1>the back of OJ's head, what she's really wanting is
<v Speaker 1>pay attention to me, be with me. I want to
<v Speaker 1>spend time with you. I want to know that I'm
<v Speaker 1>important to you because I don't do the business well
<v Speaker 1>and I've never done the training well or at all,
<v Speaker 1>And so I think that's such an important moment for her.
<v Speaker 2>It is, and I think visually when that becomes super
<v Speaker 2>concrete to us as an audience, as he's riding the horse,
<v Speaker 2>he flips his hood up and has eyes on the
<v Speaker 2>back of his head.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, I didn't even think about that because it's
<v Speaker 1>to fuck with the alien, but it's also symbolic. I
<v Speaker 1>think one of the other parts of them having this
<v Speaker 1>project is also that it's something new. Right, So there's
<v Speaker 1>no this is what we did last time, there's no
<v Speaker 1>you should do it like this, there's no this is
<v Speaker 1>a new situation, which means they're both allowed to pick
<v Speaker 1>their role instead of being as signed their role, and
<v Speaker 1>that feels like that's I think that's what opens them
<v Speaker 1>both up to each other. They're writing new scripts scripts,
<v Speaker 1>this is a new story because now this is about us. Now,
<v Speaker 1>this is about us saving the farm and maybe humanity
<v Speaker 1>and maybe humanity but probably not, yeah, probably not. Just
<v Speaker 1>just that thing was.
<v Speaker 2>Huge, right, Well, it's like what I was saying with
<v Speaker 2>the Christmas tradition thing. Yeah right, it's exactly that they
<v Speaker 2>had to actualize into themselves as they are in this
<v Speaker 2>moment without trying to repeat Dad yes, and let each
<v Speaker 2>other fill the roles in a split form in whatever
<v Speaker 2>ways they can, and trust like, Okay, you do all
<v Speaker 2>this tech shit and I'm gonna do all of the
<v Speaker 2>behavior of some stuff, and I'm gonna trust that you're
<v Speaker 2>gonna do your thing. And I'm gonna do my thing,
<v Speaker 2>and we're gonna meet this together, and you know, each
<v Speaker 2>of us will get our help, and then it'll take
<v Speaker 2>both of us to wrangle antlers. Yes, because without without
<v Speaker 2>Emerald like lashing onto his tech savvy and his thing
<v Speaker 2>and understanding that this is the guy, this is the
<v Speaker 2>guy who's gonna want this, and we're gonna need him
<v Speaker 2>to make this money and to kind of save ourselves
<v Speaker 2>and this business and everything, and OJ going if you
<v Speaker 2>don't get to the fuck point with this man and
<v Speaker 2>let him know that he's going to capture a predator
<v Speaker 2>like he's not about all this shit that you are.
<v Speaker 2>He doesn't care about the attention. He wants the shot.
<v Speaker 2>He wants the impossible shot, impossible shot, he wants the nature,
<v Speaker 2>he wants the thing he this is his life mission
<v Speaker 2>and you need to get to the point he's not
<v Speaker 2>listening to you and without them having that as a
<v Speaker 2>culminating moment of oh okay, so we both have points
<v Speaker 2>that we need to combine and we can be our
<v Speaker 2>own thing together without having to replicate Dad. Then that
<v Speaker 2>team forms and a new thing grows out of the loss.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so why don't we take when more break here
<v Speaker 1>and we'll come back and speak a little bit more
<v Speaker 1>about I think OJ specifically and his arc in the story.
<v Speaker 1>One thing that was coming to mind to me listening
<v Speaker 1>to you is also how and you were saying this before,
<v Speaker 1>so I'm seeing any of your points, Ben feel free
<v Speaker 1>to jump in. Is that in the beginning of the movie,
<v Speaker 1>OJ is so insecure in his own way because he's
<v Speaker 1>trying to be the full version of his dad and
<v Speaker 1>understandably maybe like feeling pretty insecure because of that, because
<v Speaker 1>that's not his role that's not always comfortable with. And
<v Speaker 1>it is cool to see him over the course of
<v Speaker 1>the movie recognize that that his skills are really important
<v Speaker 1>and he does know what he's doing. I think that
<v Speaker 1>can also be so hard when you go through a
<v Speaker 1>big life transition like this that throws you into a
<v Speaker 1>role you weren't prepared for, is that it can make
<v Speaker 1>you really doubt yourself absolutely and doubt that you ever
<v Speaker 1>knew what you were doing. Like I wouldn't be surprised
<v Speaker 1>if he has some imposter syndrome in a bit of
<v Speaker 1>a way about the situation, like I can't get my
<v Speaker 1>shit together. Nobody in Hollywood seems to like me, I
<v Speaker 1>have to keep selling the horses, like, I'm sure he's
<v Speaker 1>in a place where he is, like, am I even
<v Speaker 1>good at this? So I think what is cool to
<v Speaker 1>see with him? And kind of the way that identity
<v Speaker 1>gets fucked with breathement in life transitions like this is
<v Speaker 1>he comes into his own own again or maybe even
<v Speaker 1>for the first time as an adult by himself without
<v Speaker 1>his dad leading the way, is like, I do know
<v Speaker 1>what I'm doing. Because this movie does a great job
<v Speaker 1>of showing the difference between OJ and how he interacts
<v Speaker 1>and figures out these aliens, this alien versus Jupe. Because
<v Speaker 1>what's funny is Jupe has had six months of planning
<v Speaker 1>for this live show he does, so he's been actively
<v Speaker 1>trying to like figure out how to corral this alien
<v Speaker 1>for six months and he fucks it up royally pretty immediately, yes,
<v Speaker 1>whereas our main character OJ is only aware of it
<v Speaker 1>for I don't know, a week or two, Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>he figures out exactly how to deal with it because
<v Speaker 1>he knows animals. He is good at this.
<v Speaker 2>And sometimes my way is exactly the right way. And
<v Speaker 2>once I figure it out, I'm sure and it's okay
<v Speaker 2>to be sure, and I think that the part he
<v Speaker 2>was missing. Yeah, like it's okay for me to be
<v Speaker 2>sure and where the daddy pants and say, this isn't
<v Speaker 2>a ship, it's an animal, and I know animals, and
<v Speaker 2>it's not just an animal, like this idiot tried to
<v Speaker 2>what do you like he made a mistake. He tried
<v Speaker 2>to train a predator. And you don't train predators. You
<v Speaker 2>make agreements with them.
<v Speaker 1>And you figure out, like he says, every animal has
<v Speaker 1>rules and you don't figure out those rules so you
<v Speaker 1>can break. Let me figure them out so you can
<v Speaker 1>obey them and survive.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, right, which is a real strong moment of power
<v Speaker 2>for him of finding his place in the world and
<v Speaker 2>then thriving with that knowledge, which is post traumatic growth.
<v Speaker 1>It's absolutely what I thought about Ojay, and I really
<v Speaker 1>enjoyed his shift, And I think the actor does a
<v Speaker 1>really good job of showing that with his confidence, like
<v Speaker 1>his body, his body changes. He does a really good
<v Speaker 1>job of showing a little bit different way that this
<v Speaker 1>that we can now tell that this character has confidence.
<v Speaker 1>This character now feels more comfortable, they feel like they
<v Speaker 1>know what they're doing. And I hope also that he
<v Speaker 1>feels like he's always been able to do this, that
<v Speaker 1>it's always been in him and I think even too.
<v Speaker 1>What I hope he can build from it as well
<v Speaker 1>is confidence that he does know how to read other beings.
<v Speaker 1>He can read like the eye thing that he does,
<v Speaker 1>the eye signal he does with Emerald, that he when
<v Speaker 1>that geen jacket story happened, he understood that she was
<v Speaker 1>upset because when she looked down at the training ring,
<v Speaker 1>he did that to her like I'm I see you.
<v Speaker 1>That fucked you over right now, and I get it,
<v Speaker 1>and so I can see how all this Hollywood glitzy shit,
<v Speaker 1>like I said, like that opening director scene has really
<v Speaker 1>corroded his confidence of like do I know people? Am
<v Speaker 1>I able to like figure people out? I don't seem
<v Speaker 1>to know what I'm doing and how to make people
<v Speaker 1>like me.
<v Speaker 2>Right, He settles into what has made him strong his
<v Speaker 2>whole life and then actualizes when he must, which is
<v Speaker 2>how we survive. When you can learn to trust that
<v Speaker 2>I as I am, with all that I am, the
<v Speaker 2>way that I see things enough and I don't need
<v Speaker 2>permission from anybody to be myself. I just need to
<v Speaker 2>do my thing and seize control of this moment in
<v Speaker 2>the way that I see it and that will be enough.
<v Speaker 2>That is the way we survive. I don't need to
<v Speaker 2>see it the way you do. I don't need to
<v Speaker 2>be like you. I need to be like me and
<v Speaker 2>go freely. And he does. Both of them do?
<v Speaker 1>Both of them do? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>But it takes them releasing themselves from oh, I have
<v Speaker 2>to be doing it this X y Z or what.
<v Speaker 2>I have to remember Dad's speech.
<v Speaker 1>All right, So we will take another break here and
<v Speaker 1>be back with Jupe. So one thing we haven't really
<v Speaker 1>touched on yet is that a big corner storm of
<v Speaker 1>this movie is a chimpanzee. Is it chimpanzee?
<v Speaker 2>Yes?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, a chimpanzee in a classic nineties alf esque sitcom
<v Speaker 1>goes feral, goes animal on the sitcom set and seems
<v Speaker 1>to kill most of the It's like a full house
<v Speaker 1>with a chimpanzee where he kills all the people in
<v Speaker 1>full house.
<v Speaker 2>The dad looks exactly like the exactly.
<v Speaker 1>Like the dad from ALF. Yess he does. I used
<v Speaker 1>to be scared of alf as a kid. Surprise, surprise,
<v Speaker 1>I used to have this the planet mail mec does
<v Speaker 1>not approve.
<v Speaker 2>No.
<v Speaker 1>I used to watch it as a kid when I
<v Speaker 1>was very young and I used to got into my
<v Speaker 1>he this idea that if I was laying in bed
<v Speaker 1>at night, if I turned over, that Alf would be
<v Speaker 1>standing over me while I slept. And I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>maybe I had a bad dream once and I couldn't
<v Speaker 1>get it out of my hand. And so now that's
<v Speaker 1>what I think of when I think of that scrappy
<v Speaker 1>cat eating alien dude.
<v Speaker 2>I had like Alf tapes that would like a little
<v Speaker 2>Alf like book on tape stories, not the but Alf
<v Speaker 2>was the ship for a while. Oh yeah, you're nightmares.
<v Speaker 2>Unfortunately took away some serious eighties kid joy from you.
<v Speaker 2>I think you're telling me.
<v Speaker 1>Listen, my overacting imagination stole a lot of joy from
<v Speaker 1>me as a kid.
<v Speaker 2>We had a cooking with Alf doll at our house.
<v Speaker 1>Bron amazing. But yeah. So another central character of the store,
<v Speaker 1>which we've been referencing here is there is Jupe shored
<v Speaker 1>for Jupiter, who owns a amusement park esque western Western
<v Speaker 1>disney landy kind of thing, very small.
<v Speaker 2>Though, side show, road show, roadside attraction. There we go,
<v Speaker 2>That's what I'm looking for. Roadside attraction Western tone.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, that's close to O Jane Emerald's family farm and
<v Speaker 1>he was the lead in that sitcom where he watched
<v Speaker 1>all of his coworkers get mulled to death by a chimpanzee,
<v Speaker 1>maybe even some of the audience members who are watching,
<v Speaker 1>and the only other survivor was his co star. That
<v Speaker 1>was his older sister. I think on the show who
<v Speaker 1>gets her whole face chewed off? She's the one that
<v Speaker 1>comes to the show and she has the veil on
<v Speaker 1>and it blows off. Yeah, yep, I always thought that
<v Speaker 1>that was the mom Oh no, first crush. Okay, that's
<v Speaker 1>what makes more sense. That makes more, way more sense. Okay. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So what's really interesting about his character from Jump is
<v Speaker 1>that he had this horrific I mean, that's the part
<v Speaker 1>of the movie that's really horror esque, are the scenes
<v Speaker 1>of Gordy that imp attacking and dupe hiding. Yes, and
<v Speaker 1>he has an interesting presentation as an adult around this trauma.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if you want to describe it, Hannah, Like,
<v Speaker 1>it's really interesting how he has recreated this trauma in
<v Speaker 1>his head to be something that is a spectacle. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>that's a great way to put it, which is what
<v Speaker 1>he wants to create, which is what he's trying to
<v Speaker 1>create by capturing the alien or whatever he thinks he's
<v Speaker 1>doing with the alien. But I think that he tries
<v Speaker 1>it into a story. And then but then he collects
<v Speaker 1>all the memorabilia from the show and from the set
<v Speaker 1>and all of the horrible stuff that happened, and he
<v Speaker 1>has this hidden Yeah, it's like Gripley believe it or not. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this hidden space that he that he keeps that it
<v Speaker 1>makes me wonder what he does what he does in there,
<v Speaker 1>Like does he go in there and dissociate, like what
<v Speaker 1>happens when he is It's such a different way for
<v Speaker 1>someone to express the trauma that they've been through. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>that he keeps this pristine showroom of not just like
<v Speaker 1>oh cute, like you're saying, like cute memorabilia from the show,
<v Speaker 1>but he is memorabilia from the day, Like he has
<v Speaker 1>the bloody shoe and some other shit too. And it
<v Speaker 1>also seems like he obsessively watches like the snl skit
<v Speaker 1>that was paired in the event, like he is a
<v Speaker 1>walking Wikipedia page about that event and like the social
<v Speaker 1>cultural impact of it, and he talks about it as
<v Speaker 1>if it is a cute story like a Ripley's believer
<v Speaker 1>it or not esque, not cute maybe, but he tells
<v Speaker 1>it very disconnected, like he's like it almost feels like
<v Speaker 1>he wasn't there, that he's just someone who's special interest
<v Speaker 1>is Gordy's TV show and collecting memorability the way that
<v Speaker 1>people can be weird about serial killers and stuff or
<v Speaker 1>like weird horrible tragedies. But he is the center person
<v Speaker 1>and he talks about it as if he wasn't there,
<v Speaker 1>but he was there, and as if he's fine. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and he's renting out that space to left weird couples
<v Speaker 1>and stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he's definitely not okay, he's not okay. I mean
<v Speaker 2>we see that he dissociates. He does a little headshake thing,
<v Speaker 2>and my clients get really mad at me when I
<v Speaker 2>point out that they do a head little head shake
<v Speaker 2>you can see sometimes when people are trying to shake
<v Speaker 2>something just out of their head. I'm mad right now.
<v Speaker 2>If any of you can see me, you know, love
<v Speaker 2>the co host can see me doing it, You guys can't,
<v Speaker 2>But people do it. There's this tiny little headshake and
<v Speaker 2>he does that, and Jordan Peele is kind enough to
<v Speaker 2>show us what he was seeing in his head that
<v Speaker 2>he's trying to shake out of it, but people will
<v Speaker 2>almost adopt a secondary persona of someone who observed it
<v Speaker 2>neutrally instead of being horrified and stuck.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because even though he's keeping all this shit around him,
<v Speaker 1>the ironic part, in my opinion, is that he is
<v Speaker 1>keeping it at arm's length. Mentally, he's trying to He
<v Speaker 1>was trying to. Really, he's really trying to. He's really, uh,
<v Speaker 1>white knuckling the fuck out of out of this. Like
<v Speaker 1>he like he's dissociative.
<v Speaker 2>He is.
<v Speaker 1>He looks like he's not there. It's a time it's
<v Speaker 1>trouble we see him. Yeah, most of the times that
<v Speaker 1>the camera is focused on him, he does not seem
<v Speaker 1>to be present. No, And I think that makes a
<v Speaker 1>lot of sense. I think maybe he's been stuck since
<v Speaker 1>that trauma happened.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, I think he's been stuck because it hit
<v Speaker 2>him in multiple ways. Because he was a child star
<v Speaker 2>on a successful show before that one, and this was
<v Speaker 2>to be his next project, yes, and that got taken away,
<v Speaker 2>and we know child stars struggle with that, which makes sense.
<v Speaker 2>You get all this attention, fame, money, et cetera, and
<v Speaker 2>you're on top of the world and all of a sudden,
<v Speaker 2>it's just gone, and that doesn't go well for people,
<v Speaker 2>which is understandable. But he went through all of that,
<v Speaker 2>and he went through multiple losses at once, Yes lost
<v Speaker 2>the show, lost his TV parents, his first crush and
<v Speaker 2>work sister got maimed, his animal co worker got shot
<v Speaker 2>in front of him. It did not represent good things
<v Speaker 2>happening to him, and then he stayed stuck in it.
<v Speaker 2>Because our brain craves the ability to make sense of
<v Speaker 2>things that have happened to us. It wants to gain
<v Speaker 2>mastery over it so that we can assign that to
<v Speaker 2>the past and let it go. All of the feelings, imagery, etc.
<v Speaker 2>That get stuck inside of our body and mind when
<v Speaker 2>a traumatic event happens want to move into storage. They
<v Speaker 2>want to go. Our brain wants to make them adaptive
<v Speaker 2>information that we can say, Okay, if that happened again,
<v Speaker 2>I would be able to deal with it because I
<v Speaker 2>know what to do. That wouldn't happen to me again
<v Speaker 2>because I do X, Y and Z, and that becomes
<v Speaker 2>adaptive information. It's not adaptive information for him because he
<v Speaker 2>hasn't processed it. It stays stuck in state dependent form
<v Speaker 2>in his body and in his mind. And that's why
<v Speaker 2>the part of him that seeks the control of that
<v Speaker 2>is collecting all of that stuff and keeping it around
<v Speaker 2>him because he is not convinced in the truest or
<v Speaker 2>the part of him that knows the truth. We all
<v Speaker 2>have one. It's one most of us don't like very much,
<v Speaker 2>but there's one part of our brain that knows the
<v Speaker 2>truth always and will always tell it to us, whether
<v Speaker 2>we want it to or not. And that part of
<v Speaker 2>him tells him you are not safe from this because
<v Speaker 2>he has not convinced it so by processing, so he
<v Speaker 2>keeps it all around.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and he's over identifying with his showman part, the
<v Speaker 1>part of him that is a entertainer, the ringleader of
<v Speaker 1>his current situation. He lets that part take the show
<v Speaker 1>when he can't handle it.
<v Speaker 2>Because that was the part that was most suddenly yanked
<v Speaker 2>from him.
<v Speaker 1>And also that's the part that lets him lean into
<v Speaker 1>that expertise as well without having to actually feel the feelings,
<v Speaker 1>which is why it's off putting if you've any kind
<v Speaker 1>of emotional intelligence. When he goes into that mode and
<v Speaker 1>he's talking about it, and especially when he's talking about
<v Speaker 1>that snl' yes, he is weird like it gives you
<v Speaker 1>the weirds, and that's because you can sense that he's
<v Speaker 1>not being authentic, that he is showing you a version
<v Speaker 1>of himself that's not rooted in quote unquote like normal
<v Speaker 1>human reactions. There's like a fake smile on his face
<v Speaker 1>that's eerie almost.
<v Speaker 2>Because he's telling a fake He's telling a fake story.
<v Speaker 2>So he looks glass and gone.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because Emerald asks him what happened? What really happened,
<v Speaker 1>and instead he talks about the snl skit.
<v Speaker 2>Which is safe because that's not what happened, and he
<v Speaker 2>can tell that story comfortably.
<v Speaker 1>He's like, you know, got to watch that snl skit.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And how many people would do that when people
<v Speaker 2>ask what happened on the worst day of your life?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? If I had a client do that, I would clock.
<v Speaker 1>I'd be I'll let him have it this time, but
<v Speaker 1>we're going to talk about that later, because that definitely
<v Speaker 1>reminds me of when you start working with someone. It's
<v Speaker 1>like the first or second session and you can tell
<v Speaker 1>that they're used to telling the story of their trauma, yes,
<v Speaker 1>but they're not actually feeling it yes, And the red
<v Speaker 1>flags are popping up in my brain at least like
<v Speaker 1>all over the place. I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna let
<v Speaker 1>the way don't. They don't know me yet, so I'm
<v Speaker 1>gonna let them have it. I'm not gonna poke at it.
<v Speaker 1>But hmm, I'm clocking all of this for later, because
<v Speaker 1>it's not he's not pulling it off in a way
<v Speaker 1>that if you, like I said, if you have any
<v Speaker 1>sort of emotional intelligence, it's obvious. And I think what
<v Speaker 1>is interesting is that there is that one scene before
<v Speaker 1>they start the first official show that involves the alien
<v Speaker 1>where he is fully the most associating, where he's like staring,
<v Speaker 1>like staring off into the distance, and his wife comes
<v Speaker 1>up and does something. She does come up to him,
<v Speaker 1>and she does start rubbing his finger in a way
<v Speaker 1>that seems very grounded, rubbing his hand in a way
<v Speaker 1>that's very grounding. It's like she can tell that he's associating,
<v Speaker 1>and she's doing something with him to get him back
<v Speaker 1>in the moment, because unfortunately she's also asking him to
<v Speaker 1>be a showman and to get out of your feelings
<v Speaker 1>and we need you to get on to get an on,
<v Speaker 1>which does suck.
<v Speaker 2>I think she's supporting him in what she thinks he
<v Speaker 2>wants it seemed like he kind of holds some power
<v Speaker 2>in that relationship, and yeah, that she's kind of along.
<v Speaker 2>There was some energy between the two of them that
<v Speaker 2>felt like there was a power dynamic. So I think
<v Speaker 2>I think she's just doing what she thinks she's supposed
<v Speaker 2>to and what he's probably coached her to do.
<v Speaker 1>Oh like, yeah, when you see me zoning out, come
<v Speaker 1>over here, or it seems like a practiced behavior, it does.
<v Speaker 2>For it to be the hand that he fist bumped
<v Speaker 2>with the chimp that kept him alive, for her to
<v Speaker 2>be grounding him to.
<v Speaker 1>That interesting Yeah, Yeah, those two.
<v Speaker 2>Scenes were tied together, that creepy, you know, fist pump
<v Speaker 2>thing with the chimp that just griped somebody's throat out
<v Speaker 2>and then because he didn't look at in the eye
<v Speaker 2>mm hmm and maintained his safety with it, when the chimp,
<v Speaker 2>you know, practiced the behavior that he fist pumped with it.
<v Speaker 2>It's that hand that the next scene is her rubbing,
<v Speaker 2>So that's not an accident.
<v Speaker 1>Let me ask the lay person question, because I would
<v Speaker 1>think this watching this movie. Why would someone who's also
<v Speaker 1>gone through this horrific event and is very aware of
<v Speaker 1>the event still because he's made a lot of his
<v Speaker 1>life and personality about it, put himself in another situation
<v Speaker 1>where he is inviting a potentially uncontrollable animal into his world.
<v Speaker 1>Because I think what we would typically think if I
<v Speaker 1>was watching this as someone who doesn't do therapy, that
<v Speaker 1>he would have like a trauma reaction where you'd be
<v Speaker 1>like no ooh, you know, he'd get scared, and he'd
<v Speaker 1>like would want nothing to do with it. So what
<v Speaker 1>do we have to say about someone who is repeating
<v Speaker 1>a situation?
<v Speaker 2>I got it because he was eight, yeah when he
<v Speaker 2>went through this trauma or ten or whatever he was.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, we don't know.
<v Speaker 2>And as we know from dealing with egocentric ten year
<v Speaker 2>olds in past episodes, that he is stuck in the
<v Speaker 2>egocentrism of thinking I can control it this time, If
<v Speaker 2>I take all of this on this time, I'll be
<v Speaker 2>able to save it. I'll be able to rewrite this,
<v Speaker 2>I'll be able to make it better, and this time
<v Speaker 2>I'll win. And the adult part of his mind that
<v Speaker 2>misses the fundamental truth of this episode or this movie
<v Speaker 2>that OJ knows is you can't train a predator. People
<v Speaker 2>make that mistake. I mean, what antlers say.
<v Speaker 1>Like Roy, Yeah, yeah, think.
<v Speaker 2>You thought you could do that. And we've covered this
<v Speaker 2>in an episode on the Mask of the Phantasm pretty thoroughly,
<v Speaker 2>so I don't feel the need to go into it.
<v Speaker 2>But our uh, our boy Bruce makes the same mistake
<v Speaker 2>over and over and over that Juke does. Of I
<v Speaker 2>can fix it if I am just good enough, if
<v Speaker 2>I am on top of it enough, if I do
<v Speaker 2>enough things, if I spend six months prepping this show
<v Speaker 2>and learning their behaviors, I can control the factors that
<v Speaker 2>I lost control of. But that is a ten year
<v Speaker 2>old part that doesn't realize the truth of the world
<v Speaker 2>is a predator will eat you at the first opportunity
<v Speaker 2>it's convenient for it. That's it.
<v Speaker 1>I was gonna say, he's suicidal, oh Dan, he doesn't
<v Speaker 1>care about himself, oh Dan?
<v Speaker 2>And who else did you say that about?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>For what reason?
<v Speaker 1>The same ones, same ones. But I feel like what
<v Speaker 1>you're saying, Ben makes a lot of sense, and it
<v Speaker 1>definitely and that definitely feels right. And my first thought
<v Speaker 1>was he's suicidal. I think he's doing that thing people
<v Speaker 1>like to do where they want. This is kind of
<v Speaker 1>what you're saying, Ben, But they where they want to
<v Speaker 1>pretend that the world is safer than it's been shown
<v Speaker 1>to them to be. And you know, people will get
<v Speaker 1>into like relationships that replicate abuse they experience as kids,
<v Speaker 1>stuff like that. People want to prove sometimes to themselves
<v Speaker 1>that it can be different. Yeah, and that was just
<v Speaker 1>a fluke, right, Yeah, And unfortunately there's so much hubris
<v Speaker 1>in that as well. That is a scary thing to realize, right,
<v Speaker 1>Like when I practice radical acceptance with clients, is like
<v Speaker 1>you have to radically accept that there's some things are
<v Speaker 1>never going to be within your control and that is
<v Speaker 1>really scary. It's really scary to recognize that there are
<v Speaker 1>certain elements in the world that can hurt you no
<v Speaker 1>matter what you do, and that you can't conquer everything
<v Speaker 1>and you can't control everything. And so yeah, he is,
<v Speaker 1>I think, trying to create that corrective experience, Yeah, in
<v Speaker 1>a not so great way, healthy way of like you're
<v Speaker 1>saying that this time it'll be different, yep. And it
<v Speaker 1>really makes him blind, which I think is also a
<v Speaker 1>side effect of not really processing. If you don't really
<v Speaker 1>process something, you don't learn from it, and you can
<v Speaker 1>repeat the same mistakes. Like when we talked about what
<v Speaker 1>eternal sunshine of the spotless mine, and how it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>actually do you any good to not remember the things
<v Speaker 1>that have happened to you that were hard because you
<v Speaker 1>learn from them, and that you'll just keep repeating it.
<v Speaker 1>So he's, I think, an example of someone who is
<v Speaker 1>refusing to process it for whatever reason, and he is
<v Speaker 1>doomed to make the same mistake, and there is probably
<v Speaker 1>a story in his head, like if I saw him
<v Speaker 1>for therapy, where I'd be like, why does it so
<v Speaker 1>important for you to corral this thing even though it
<v Speaker 1>could kill, it could harm so much if it's swallowing
<v Speaker 1>horses whole babe, Yeah, your kids are smaller than horses.
<v Speaker 1>Everyone you love is smaller than a horse, which makes
<v Speaker 1>them easier to eat. Yeah, and so putting all these
<v Speaker 1>people at risk it is nonsensical actually what he's doing,
<v Speaker 1>which maybe lends more to your theory, Hannah, what he's
<v Speaker 1>doing is so dangerous and reckless, and like I just
<v Speaker 1>kept thinking the Huberus when we were watching it. But
<v Speaker 1>I do see a lot of people, I think, especially
<v Speaker 1>in like I don't know, capitalistic culture, our Western culture,
<v Speaker 1>who really feel like they can conquer anything if they
<v Speaker 1>just try hard enough, and they aren't able to surrender,
<v Speaker 1>for example, girl, and they aren't able to surrender to
<v Speaker 1>the fact that there are bigger You need to humble
<v Speaker 1>yourself before the bigness that is nature, animals, alien life.
<v Speaker 1>And that's what's the difference between OJ as well. Right,
<v Speaker 1>A part of being an animal wrangler successful with animals
<v Speaker 1>is you have to respect them. You have to respect
<v Speaker 1>things bigger than you and powerful. You have to respect
<v Speaker 1>the rules and always, and JUP does not respect the rules.
<v Speaker 1>So we will take another break here and be back
<v Speaker 1>with treatment. So who are we thinking about for treatment?
<v Speaker 2>I am thinking about OJ, So I guess I'll go
<v Speaker 2>first here. Okay, surprise surprise you guys, huge surprise and
<v Speaker 2>a Bingo square. Probably is OJ is a prime can it?
<v Speaker 1>For?
<v Speaker 2>MDR?
<v Speaker 1>I don't think you've actually talked about AMDR for a
<v Speaker 1>while in a while, so agreed.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't, And I've been doing a lot of it
<v Speaker 2>lately because I've been getting some really strong cases for it,
<v Speaker 2>appropriate that are very appropriate for it, and it's been
<v Speaker 2>very successful. So it's a kind of on my mind.
<v Speaker 2>But MDR. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy is a
<v Speaker 2>very powerful therapy that works really well for a lot
<v Speaker 2>of things, but in cases like OJ's where he was
<v Speaker 2>present for a very bizarre event, and several of them
<v Speaker 2>where he saw horrible things that he couldn't have possibly
<v Speaker 2>digested all of that that he saw. But we'll start
<v Speaker 2>with his dad.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like the scene in the car, the scene where
<v Speaker 1>he's waiting with his dead body, exactly, the things they
<v Speaker 1>give him the nickel.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, that things like that would with him. The
<v Speaker 2>image of seeing his dad with his eye out would
<v Speaker 2>stick with him. It would be frozen flash fro was
<v Speaker 2>in his mind. And we already know he doesn't like
<v Speaker 2>to talk much. EMDR doesn't necessarily require clients to do
<v Speaker 2>a lot of talking. It's a lot of letting the
<v Speaker 2>brain do what it's supposed to do to process and
<v Speaker 2>a lot of the eye movement thing. How the therapy
<v Speaker 2>works is it works on two key principles. One is
<v Speaker 2>that we have an adaptive processing network in our brain that,
<v Speaker 2>like I was mentioning earlier, naturally wants to process what
<v Speaker 2>we go through to make it usable information. It takes
<v Speaker 2>it out of being emotional information we need to react
<v Speaker 2>to to survive and allows it to become usable information
<v Speaker 2>that we can categorize and store like a library so
<v Speaker 2>that we can pull from it as needed spontaneously to
<v Speaker 2>survive anything else. Similar and with the therapy you trigger
<v Speaker 2>or eye movements to enact what happens during rem sleep
<v Speaker 2>and remsleep is when our brain naturally processes information anyway.
<v Speaker 2>In dreams, we work on moving information from the emotional
<v Speaker 2>side of our brain on the right to logical information
<v Speaker 2>on the left. And you want to engage both sides,
<v Speaker 2>both hemispheres of the brain to do that, which is
<v Speaker 2>why our eyes flip back and forth, because we're allowing
<v Speaker 2>information to be synthesized between the sides of our brain,
<v Speaker 2>and that's how it goes from emotionally reactive to okay,
<v Speaker 2>resourced and useful information. The other thing that having eye
<v Speaker 2>movements or any other kind of alternating stimulus on either
<v Speaker 2>side of the body, whether it's touch, sound, or visual
<v Speaker 2>is it helps disrupt dissociation, so it keeps a person
<v Speaker 2>concretely aware that they are in the present and not
<v Speaker 2>in the traumatic incident. Again, and oftentimes when people are
<v Speaker 2>overwhelmed with terrifying moments of their life, they dissociate back
<v Speaker 2>into that moment or into another one that is just
<v Speaker 2>like it, and they're powerless again, and they seek control
<v Speaker 2>over past, present, and future, but only a sliver of
<v Speaker 2>the present because they know they're okay in the present,
<v Speaker 2>so they don't need to worry about it, so they
<v Speaker 2>worry instead about the past where they got hurt and
<v Speaker 2>the future where they get hurt again. What the therapy
<v Speaker 2>does is it grounds them concretely to you are okay
<v Speaker 2>right now, and then because the body is reminded of that,
<v Speaker 2>it relaxes, and you think about the two things that
<v Speaker 2>heal trauma is dispairing a distressing stimuli with a relaxed
<v Speaker 2>muscle body MDR is one way to get there. There
<v Speaker 2>are many but relaxed muscle body distressing stimuli. Pairing those
<v Speaker 2>equals a calming response that allows that healing to take place.
<v Speaker 2>So oja with all of these whole horrible, overwhelming stimuli,
<v Speaker 2>Like we hear the sound as an audience, but imagine
<v Speaker 2>how loud all those sounds would have been, or what
<v Speaker 2>he's likely to be hearing is the sound that he
<v Speaker 2>thought were bullets, and he's likely to have that initial
<v Speaker 2>fear that you're just seeing dust kickup as those metal
<v Speaker 2>fragments that we learned later is basically it's alien shitting
<v Speaker 2>just fucked up. Agreed, But it was random metal fragments
<v Speaker 2>that got stuck in the horse, stuck in the house
<v Speaker 2>that all of a sudden he sees his dad struck
<v Speaker 2>by one. So he's gonna hear that, he's gonna see it,
<v Speaker 2>he's going to have all that sensory input connected, and
<v Speaker 2>then he's going to have to recover from it. And
<v Speaker 2>I think EMDR would be a great therapy for someone
<v Speaker 2>like him that doesn't especially want to talk, but can
<v Speaker 2>probably sit in front of a light bar and have
<v Speaker 2>his eyes go back and forth and have me say
<v Speaker 2>what are you noticing now? And he can repeat that
<v Speaker 2>and say as much or as little as he wants,
<v Speaker 2>and then okay, go with that, and he doesn't have
<v Speaker 2>to explain a damn thing to me. He doesn't have
<v Speaker 2>to connect to anything other than his own experience and
<v Speaker 2>let his brain do that work, which would probably work
<v Speaker 2>for him as behaviors because he would get it quick
<v Speaker 2>once he felt it. So I think, for all of
<v Speaker 2>those reasons for oj AMDR would be my therapy of choice,
<v Speaker 2>and I think he'd respond tremendously well to it.
<v Speaker 1>I agree, yeah, because he's not a talker, and if
<v Speaker 1>you just had him sit down in front of a
<v Speaker 1>therapist to do like talk therapy, yeah, hell no. No.
<v Speaker 1>So I'm going to take the talker, which is Emerald.
<v Speaker 1>And ironically, I think what would really help Emerald, at
<v Speaker 1>least the Emerald we see at the beginning of the movie,
<v Speaker 1>is the interpersonal effectiveness techniques that you learn in dialectical
<v Speaker 1>behavioral therapy, because she does have a hard time connecting
<v Speaker 1>her desires with how to appropriately convey them. So a
<v Speaker 1>lot of DBT is kind of centered on two principles,
<v Speaker 1>which is distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness. And so even
<v Speaker 1>with the distressed tolerance part, I think that would also
<v Speaker 1>help as well, because as we've talked about, she seems
<v Speaker 1>to be relying on maybe a series of we would
<v Speaker 1>call maladaptive coping skills. Maybe we'd also call them self
<v Speaker 1>destructive coping skills, is what they're called. A lot in DBT,
<v Speaker 1>so the drinking, the casual sex, the vaping, the who
<v Speaker 1>knows what she's doing, like running around she's doing.
<v Speaker 2>She definitely gave like the gonna go see a man
<v Speaker 2>about a dog kind of line.
<v Speaker 1>Stealing from Jupiter's farm ranch place, stealing the horse. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Like she does a lot of impulsive stuff, right, And
<v Speaker 1>so what DBT does which I think would help her,
<v Speaker 1>is it slows you down. You learn all about mindfulness,
<v Speaker 1>so it has to slow you down, which would be
<v Speaker 1>good for her because she does seem to be very
<v Speaker 1>go go go. She relies a lot on distraction, So
<v Speaker 1>it would require her to learn how to sit in
<v Speaker 1>the moment, which is good reflect how she's actually feeling,
<v Speaker 1>which I don't think she does enough of, yeah, which
<v Speaker 1>is And so I might even have her keep like
<v Speaker 1>a thought record kind of thing of like when you're
<v Speaker 1>wanting to do this destructive behavior, and we'll define what
<v Speaker 1>those are. I want you to take a beat and
<v Speaker 1>think to yourself, why do I want to do that?
<v Speaker 1>What emotion's going on right now? Was there a trigger?
<v Speaker 1>Is there another skill I could try and practice instead?
<v Speaker 1>And then sometimes you can also do the after evacs,
<v Speaker 1>which is like I did the thing already, how do
<v Speaker 1>I feel now? What maybe could have done differently? So
<v Speaker 1>just really practicing building awareness into why you have these
<v Speaker 1>habits and what you're trying to actually do to feel better,
<v Speaker 1>and can we try something else? And then like I said,
<v Speaker 1>she probably would need. Sometimes literal templates is also what's
<v Speaker 1>good for DBT, like literal templates about like how do
<v Speaker 1>I tell someone that I'm having a feeling in a
<v Speaker 1>way that they will actually hear it? How do I
<v Speaker 1>request something from someone? So she's someone i'd teach, like
<v Speaker 1>dear man to which you can look up if you're
<v Speaker 1>interested in that, because it's a long acronym. But I
<v Speaker 1>think she would benefit a lot from having these skills
<v Speaker 1>in her back pocket to pull from, because even though
<v Speaker 1>she is very extroverted and seems very charming and maybe
<v Speaker 1>he can get things she wants in the moment, she
<v Speaker 1>actually can't communicate her literal emotional needs. And I think
<v Speaker 1>that's what she really needs help with, is like slowing
<v Speaker 1>down learning replacement skills, learning that what she's doing is
<v Speaker 1>actually coping skills maybe aren't serving her, and then being
<v Speaker 1>like really talking through like your actual support system, your
<v Speaker 1>brother when you get pissed off because he won't do
<v Speaker 1>this with you, Why does that feel so important? Are
<v Speaker 1>you actually helping him understand what you need? And that's
<v Speaker 1>where things like the dear man and stuff would come in,
<v Speaker 1>of like how do you actually articulate what's going on
<v Speaker 1>instead of just saying why don't you drink with me?
<v Speaker 1>Or such a stick in the mud, and then he
<v Speaker 1>can just be like, Oh, you're being us so annoying again.
<v Speaker 1>I like tell clients if you say it like that,
<v Speaker 1>they don't know what's going on in your head. They
<v Speaker 1>don't know why you want them to do this thing
<v Speaker 1>with them, they don't know why it's important. They just
<v Speaker 1>think you're being annoying or random or whatever, and they're
<v Speaker 1>not mind readers. You have to be clear with people
<v Speaker 1>about the story in your head, about what's going on,
<v Speaker 1>so that they can also correct it if they need to.
<v Speaker 1>That's a lot of that stuff too. At DBT is
<v Speaker 1>slowing down whatever narrative you're riffing off of, which I
<v Speaker 1>think she also has with like the gene jacket story.
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of strong narratives in her head about
<v Speaker 1>who she is that she also needs to take more
<v Speaker 1>responsibility for and practice the difference between what actually is
<v Speaker 1>happening and the story I'm hearing about it. So that's
<v Speaker 1>what I would do with Emerald. I think she needs
<v Speaker 1>a lot of like more that heavy handed skills based stuff,
<v Speaker 1>and because she is maybe ADHD I think that can
<v Speaker 1>help to have more concrete things, like a workbook that
<v Speaker 1>you can focus on and reflect on instead of just
<v Speaker 1>like trying to everything. So I decided that I would
<v Speaker 1>work with OJ and Emerald and I would do family
<v Speaker 1>therapy with them. Essentially sibling therapy is what I would
<v Speaker 1>be doing with them. Now, something that I've heard is
<v Speaker 1>that when people hear family therapy they think that if
<v Speaker 1>every single person from the family can't come, that they
<v Speaker 1>can't do it. And you can do family therapy in
<v Speaker 1>all different kinds of ways. Family therapy can be done
<v Speaker 1>where you are with siblings, you can work with a
<v Speaker 1>whole family, you can work with a couple. There's so
<v Speaker 1>many different combinations that you can do the same kinds
<v Speaker 1>of things with different groups of people and it can
<v Speaker 1>still be considered family therapy. So one of the things
<v Speaker 1>that I do when I work with siblings and also
<v Speaker 1>sometimes with couples, and this is kind of the same
<v Speaker 1>idea that we see in the film that we already discussed,
<v Speaker 1>which is that they get a new task. And so
<v Speaker 1>what I would do with them in my therapy room
<v Speaker 1>is I would ask them to complete this exercise that
<v Speaker 1>I do with that I do with siblings that I
<v Speaker 1>do with couples. And so the way it goes is
<v Speaker 1>essentially one person is the speaker and one person is drawing.
<v Speaker 1>The person who is speaking is describing a piece of
<v Speaker 1>paper and the shapes on it that are in front
<v Speaker 1>of them to the person who has to draw, and
<v Speaker 1>they can't see it, right, say, they can't see it.
<v Speaker 1>I usually set them back to back and so they
<v Speaker 1>can't see what the person is drawing, and so they
<v Speaker 1>just have to go based on how they see the picture.
<v Speaker 1>The goal of this is it never looks the same.
<v Speaker 1>It never looks like the picture. That's what the goal is.
<v Speaker 1>It never looks like the picture. And and what the
<v Speaker 1>real goal is is that then we talk about communication, Right,
<v Speaker 1>why did when this person was the speaker, maybe the
<v Speaker 1>picture was a little bit clearer versus the other way around.
<v Speaker 1>It's usually something like a house, right, or like it's
<v Speaker 1>like a house like yeah, like just like truthfully, just shapes. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>most of the time, it's just and so and a
<v Speaker 1>part of the reason why I would want to do
<v Speaker 1>that with them is, as we've talked about, they have
<v Speaker 1>a hard time communicating, and so I would do this
<v Speaker 1>activity with them to help them understand that you're looking
<v Speaker 1>at this picture and you're trying to describe something, and
<v Speaker 1>there's different ways that you can do that, and there's
<v Speaker 1>different ways that can be effective, but that when we're
<v Speaker 1>talking to somebody, we have to give them more information.
<v Speaker 1>More information is always better than less information people. I know,
<v Speaker 1>I have a lot of couples. When I work with
<v Speaker 1>couples and they come in and one person is able
<v Speaker 1>to really express themselves and one person isn't, and they're
<v Speaker 1>not able to accommodate each other. For that experience, it's
<v Speaker 1>a good exercise helping people realize how much they rely
<v Speaker 1>on assumptions. Yes, and assuming that people think the way
<v Speaker 1>they think exactly. So when I say draw a straight
<v Speaker 1>line up, yes, I assume you know also know what
<v Speaker 1>that means.
<v Speaker 2>Yes.
<v Speaker 1>It really is a good exercise for realizing how specific
<v Speaker 1>you actually have to be in communication exactly.
<v Speaker 2>And that even then it's going to require revision.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, So making assumptions really fucks everything up side note
<v Speaker 1>everyone assumptions, especially in couple especially in couple relationships. But
<v Speaker 1>I feel like with the sibling therapy, part of the
<v Speaker 1>reason why we want to do that is to help
<v Speaker 1>them both understand how vague they are being in their
<v Speaker 1>descriptions and how they're expressing things to each other. And
<v Speaker 1>so I think that would help them. A give them
<v Speaker 1>a new project they can try together, be it, lets
<v Speaker 1>me see it in real time, which also is very
<v Speaker 1>helpful to see how they work together. So I get
<v Speaker 1>to see them do that in real time and see
<v Speaker 1>then I can talk to them about communication. And is
<v Speaker 1>a good way to have a physical example of we
<v Speaker 1>just did some thing and you saw what the outcome was. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And I think it would be helpful for them to
<v Speaker 1>improve their communication. Do you think it would also be helpful.
<v Speaker 1>I'm curious what you think, because we were talking about
<v Speaker 1>how the project of this movie helps them. If they
<v Speaker 1>didn't have the alien thing, do you think it would
<v Speaker 1>be helpful if you gave them maybe a small project
<v Speaker 1>on the farm that maybe had nothing to do with
<v Speaker 1>like the business business to do together, Like there's this
<v Speaker 1>day to fix it up together, figure out how to
<v Speaker 1>do that. That's something you do every week together, no
<v Speaker 1>matter what happens. When the two of you, you kind
<v Speaker 1>of come together and you work on something that you
<v Speaker 1>love that means something to both of you. Yeah, absolutely together, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I would definitely give them something like that to help
<v Speaker 1>them to have to work together in the moment, which
<v Speaker 1>is which is why they're so successful in the film.
<v Speaker 1>So really, I would be doing this with the OJ
<v Speaker 1>and Emerald at the beginning of the movie, yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>not necessarily the ones at the end, because at the
<v Speaker 1>end they've had like almost post traumatic growth together. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and they're in a much different place. Yeah. But I
<v Speaker 1>just want to talk about sibling therapy because I don't
<v Speaker 1>talk about it very much. So yeah, all right, Well,
<v Speaker 1>one last break here and me back with final thoughts.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Hannah, because this is one of your faves,
<v Speaker 1>I'll have you go first. So I love this movie.
<v Speaker 1>I loved it when we saw it in the I think,
<v Speaker 1>did we see it together in the movie theater? I
<v Speaker 1>think so. Nope, Yeah, I think we did.
<v Speaker 2>So.
<v Speaker 1>I loved seeing it in the movie theater. It was
<v Speaker 1>very shocking and very exciting. It was just a beautiful
<v Speaker 1>way to tell a really interesting story. And the acting
<v Speaker 1>is excellent, the cinematography is amazing, and I really enjoy
<v Speaker 1>the sibling relationship. You know, it's so rare that we
<v Speaker 1>have in media a family of people of color who
<v Speaker 1>have good relationships with each other, or who can grow
<v Speaker 1>towards each other and are able to have positive relationships.
<v Speaker 1>We don't see that very much, and so a part
<v Speaker 1>of what I really loved about this is that we
<v Speaker 1>got to see a really beautiful relationship in a different
<v Speaker 1>context for once, which is really nice. And Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>I love it. I love everything about it. I watch
<v Speaker 1>it every once in a while. I bought it because
<v Speaker 1>that's how much I like it, So I will definitely
<v Speaker 1>watch it a thousand more times. All right, I'll always
<v Speaker 1>go to you, Ben, since this is your first watching
<v Speaker 1>of it.
<v Speaker 2>It is my first watching of it, and I loved it.
<v Speaker 2>I have loved each of Jordan Peele's movies that I've
<v Speaker 2>seen for similar reasons. I love the way he works
<v Speaker 2>everything into the story. He's going to show it to you,
<v Speaker 2>and then he's going to tie it together throughout the story,
<v Speaker 2>and it will all make a full complete circle at
<v Speaker 2>the end, and you won't necessarily see what he's going
<v Speaker 2>to show it to show you, but then he'll show
<v Speaker 2>you in the end and kind of give you that
<v Speaker 2>sense of accomplishment that you understood his film. And he
<v Speaker 2>lays it up but also works a lot of things
<v Speaker 2>in subtly, like the way these characters gain mastery of
<v Speaker 2>themselves and their story and their history and their race
<v Speaker 2>and the exclusions that are in there, like they're going
<v Speaker 2>to be famous because of the work that they did.
<v Speaker 2>She used her technological wizardry to get those pictures and
<v Speaker 2>use them in the same rotary thing. I forgot what
<v Speaker 2>the name of that that first motion picture clip is,
<v Speaker 2>but I know they have it at the Field Museum
<v Speaker 2>here in Chicago. What I didn't know that, or the
<v Speaker 2>Chicago History Museum, one of them, because I think they
<v Speaker 2>showed it the Columbia Exposition, Colombian Exposition.
<v Speaker 1>Figuring that out.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, they have it, or they have a thing
<v Speaker 2>but where you spin a circular thing about Nickelodeon.
<v Speaker 1>It's not called that, but I know what you mean.
<v Speaker 1>Why do you think there was a nickel because it's
<v Speaker 1>a Nickelodeon.
<v Speaker 2>There you go behind the dad's eye.
<v Speaker 1>Oh shit, there you go. Symbolism, symbolism. I was just
<v Speaker 1>gonna say that this movie, every time I watch it,
<v Speaker 1>I noticed something new, And that's also what makes it
<v Speaker 1>really fun.
<v Speaker 2>Those little things like that. That's that kind of thing
<v Speaker 2>appeals to me as an audience member, but the easter
<v Speaker 2>egg kind of thing that he puts into these like yeah,
<v Speaker 2>the nickel I mean seriously, is a nickelodeon? That's why,
<v Speaker 2>exactly why? And watching that I remember watching that as
<v Speaker 2>a kid. I don't know if maybe it's it's one
<v Speaker 2>of the museums here. Anyway, they have that horse thing
<v Speaker 2>where you spin the pictures and she is taking pictures
<v Speaker 2>with the well.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, which is another spin rudimentary.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, correct, and each rotation is a picture. But she's
<v Speaker 2>taking a still shot, which is how they did that
<v Speaker 2>moving picture. It wasn't a movie.
<v Speaker 1>They picture picture, picture, picture, picture, picture picture.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And that's they created their own camera to do that.
<v Speaker 2>Her own way of doing it took a picture I
<v Speaker 2>think every ten feet or something to catch the horse moving.
<v Speaker 2>And that was invented. And she's inventing a new way
<v Speaker 2>to capture pictures with the well, to capture pictures vertically
<v Speaker 2>of this alien to prove it, and her and her
<v Speaker 2>brother both had to completely actualize themselves in their own
<v Speaker 2>ways to form a complete unit and rescue their family
<v Speaker 2>farm and their history and make relevance of this jockey
<v Speaker 2>who was gone. And they did it in a way
<v Speaker 2>that's relevant to their family by recreating that shot mechanic.
<v Speaker 2>It's just brilliant writing to tell a very human story
<v Speaker 2>but also make it all relevant to itself, to the characters,
<v Speaker 2>to society at large, and do it in a way
<v Speaker 2>that's entertaining masterpieces.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I also love this movie and I'm excited
<v Speaker 1>for you to watch it another time, Ben, because, like
<v Speaker 1>Hanna was saying, it's such a tightly written story that
<v Speaker 1>every time I watch it, I notice new things, Like
<v Speaker 1>I didn't realize because I've only seen it. Maybe this
<v Speaker 1>is like my third time watching it. I never noticed
<v Speaker 1>how much set up they do in the beginning of
<v Speaker 1>the movie, laying the groundwork for like where he's bread
<v Speaker 1>crumbing about Jube's show, where you hear Jupe in the
<v Speaker 1>far distance practicing for the show, Like I never noticed
<v Speaker 1>that at first, Like this movie. And I've seen this
<v Speaker 1>movie like twenty times and I didn't fucking notice either.
<v Speaker 1>So this movie does a great job of yeah, like
<v Speaker 1>bread crumbing, all the stuff that's gonna happen later, like
<v Speaker 1>everything makes sense, which I didn't appreciate the first time
<v Speaker 1>I watched it. One because it was the first time
<v Speaker 1>I watched it but also it felt so random with
<v Speaker 1>like the chimp stuff, and then it went to this family,
<v Speaker 1>and so I've appreciated it more every time I watch it.
<v Speaker 1>I love all the performances in it. I love that
<v Speaker 1>it felt more et esque. I love an alien movie,
<v Speaker 1>and this is more like a sci fi adventure situation,
<v Speaker 1>like a family sci fi drama, then a horror movie.
<v Speaker 1>So when I went into it the first time, I was,
<v Speaker 1>you know, expecting something like Us, which scared the Jesus
<v Speaker 1>out of me.
<v Speaker 2>So alien robots bad.
<v Speaker 1>Just for the record, yes, exactly, And so I love
<v Speaker 1>this movie. I'll watch it again. I love Daniel Kalua
<v Speaker 1>in it. I love Kiki Palmer in it. I love
<v Speaker 1>that it's such a tight little movie. I love when
<v Speaker 1>the alien shits all over their house out of revenge,
<v Speaker 1>which is so disgusting. But yeah, I will watch this
<v Speaker 1>movie ten times over. And this is yeah three for
<v Speaker 1>three with Jordan Peele Movies on the podcast. So if
<v Speaker 1>you like this, we also did Us and we've done
<v Speaker 1>get Out, so we've covered them all so far exactly.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Well, on that note, we will close out
<v Speaker 1>this episode in our second Spooky Season episode. If you
<v Speaker 1>would like to find us. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
<v Speaker 1>and threads at popcorn Psychology. You can email us at
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<v Speaker 1>an alien cloud or whatever in the sky, don't try
<v Speaker 1>to rein it in, just you know, try to leave
<v Speaker 1>it alone. If we've learned nothing from this episode and
<v Speaker 1>have a good spooky season, Happy Halloween.