Videodrome with Melissa Lozada-Oliva

00:00:01
Speaker 1: On the Bechde Cast, the questions asked if movies have women and them all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism, the patriarchy and fast start changing with the Bechdel.

00:00:14
Speaker 2: Cast, Hey Jamie, Yes, I'm gonna try something, Okay, Caitlin, Long Live the New Flesh Dull Cast. On the Flesh Dol Cast, the questions asked, why is there a vagina in my stomach? Someone remix it?

00:00:39
Speaker 3: We don't have much time there.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: And that's past that, and now.

00:00:48
Speaker 3: We get to we should do that every time we do a body horror movie, is did it pass the fed the flesh do test?

00:00:54
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:00:55
Speaker 3: Is it fleshy enough? I think this movie is gonna be a hard guest, although I honestly, I mean maybe this is me being unwell possible. I was kind of like, wow, I thought there would be more flesh.

00:01:08
Speaker 2: You know, the it takes a while for the flesh to get going, and then it doesn't ramp up quite the way I was remembering. I guess I'll talk about my history. This is the kind of movie I never well, yeah I dnt. But like whenever I watch a Croninberg movie or a David Lynch movie or any movie that's just like, it's a weird it's a weird auteur guy.

00:01:31
Speaker 3: I love it.

00:01:32
Speaker 2: Most of the time the David's, the David's are out there making weird shit.

00:01:37
Speaker 3: Lynch is head or miss for me. David Cronenberg almost never misses. For me, it's it's a whole lot of yes. But I always picture my like I was doing it yesterday because Sarah was staying with me, And I always picture my uncle trying to describe a body horror movie, and it really enhances the experience for me. It's like, so there's this.

00:01:57
Speaker 4: Guy and his television has boobs and he's motive boating it, and I'm supposed to know what the fuck is going on and I don't.

00:02:11
Speaker 3: It's I highly recommend just having an I do the same thing with Black Mirror episodes where he's like, this guy is having sex with his computer in the port.

00:02:23
Speaker 2: I mean, that's bry episode. Internal monologue is watching all of these things in that exact accent.

00:02:30
Speaker 3: Also, Uncle Caitlin, Okay, this and this is a show that exists. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.

00:02:37
Speaker 2: Yes, this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test and sometimes the Fleshtel test when when needed, when needed, simply as a jumping off point to initiate larger conversations about representation, inclusivity, all of that kind of stuff. What is the Bechdel test, though, Jamie.

00:03:00
Speaker 3: Well, the Bechdel Test is a media metric crew I just created, created by queer cartoonists. I understand where the words were getting mixed up. I just wanted to say queer so badly for some reason.

00:03:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, okay.

00:03:18
Speaker 3: Created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallis Test. A lot of versions of this test. It originally appeared as a joke in an eighties comic anthology called Dikes to Watch Out For, but it's since been adopted as a way to sort of see how gender is treated in movies, which is usually bad. The version of the test we use requires that there'll be two people of a marginalized gender with names who talk to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue. That's it, low bar. This movie does pass in a way that I thought was funny.

00:03:54
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm glad you paid attention because I didn't as per usually.

00:03:58
Speaker 3: Okay, well, yes it does. But we'll get there because we have to get our guest in here a returning three timer four timer three three.

00:04:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, that means.

00:04:09
Speaker 3: You get a hat. I wish we had hats.

00:04:12
Speaker 2: This means you get a fleshy VHS tape that will mail to you.

00:04:17
Speaker 3: At five. We start promising that we'll get you a jacket, but the jacket never materialized ever comes.

00:04:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. Anyway. Our guest is a writer. Her newest book, Candelaria, which is about a Guatemalan grandmother at the end of the world and how her granddaughters started it started the apocalypse. It was just released, so you can read it and buy it and do all the things with it now. And you know her from our episodes on is It thirteen? Going on thirty and Spanglish? Right, okay, what a legacy.

00:04:51
Speaker 5: We also made Manhattan.

00:04:53
Speaker 2: No, no, you made that up. We did cover that movie, but that was with a different person.

00:04:59
Speaker 5: All right.

00:05:00
Speaker 2: Anyway, it's Melissa Losanta Leiva.

00:05:03
Speaker 3: Hi, welcome back, welcome back. We love her.

00:05:08
Speaker 2: First of all, tell us about your book.

00:05:10
Speaker 3: Yes, it's so good. So tell us about it.

00:05:14
Speaker 5: Yes, So my book is it is about a guatemal and grandmother at the end of the world over the course of the day, and then it goes back a year later and you see her Guatemalan American loser granddaughters and the ways that they start the end of the world. And there is a fair amount of body horror stuff with the television screens. Cannibal, Unwanted Pregnancies. Yeah, that's my book.

00:05:43
Speaker 3: So we asked you when you're coming on to promote the book, we asked you to send us a list of movies that felt Candelaria adjacent, and you sent Martha, Marcy May, Marlene Prometheus, Videodrome, and Splice. So we are covering Video Drome by mister David Kroneberg himself. What is your connection to Video Drome? When did you first see it? What's your relationship with David?

00:06:13
Speaker 5: Actually, I've never seen this movie before except to come on this podcast. But my friend Oz Rodriguez, who did Vampires Versus the Bronx cool and he was like, oh, you must love Video Drome And I was like, I don't know, I've never seen that, and he was I think you would really like it because there's a lot of there's like scenes that are similar in my book to Videodrome with TVs and flesh. So I was like, talk about it, that could be fun. And I'm from what I've seen from the clubs I saw of video Drome, the body horror effects are super goofy, and that's that was fun.

00:06:57
Speaker 2: I can't wait to read it.

00:06:58
Speaker 3: It's so good. It's the read of the year. I love it. Wow nice, it's so and also it just I don't know, it's so I love reading books where I'm like, I know where they are. Yeah, I'm easy. I'm easy in that way. It's like I know they're going to college quarter theater while they're just like me.

00:07:16
Speaker 5: Uh.

00:07:18
Speaker 3: It's so, it's so so good. That's so funny that you haven't that you hadn't seen it before. Yeah. I feel like that comes up pretty frequently, where everyone assumes that everyone's seen every movie on the planet and you're like, no, I guess that me and David Cronenberg just both like the same kind of perverted stuff.

00:07:34
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, it was nice. I wonder why I thought of this. Also, Yeah, Also, I think I feel like I've seen I mean, well, we can talk about it. I feel like movies like an ancestor for a few other horror movies like The Ring, and I.

00:07:51
Speaker 2: Was getting strong Ring vibes from this movie because both of them are about you watch a mysterious videotape and then bad things start to happen.

00:08:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love both of these. I guess that this is just a subgenre that I love. Kitlin, what's your history with video drome? Slash the David Cronenberg Expanding Universe?

00:08:15
Speaker 2: So I'm not much of a Kronenberg head. I don't mind body horror if I feel like it's there for a reason. But I feel like, at least in videodrome, I'm like, what does a vagina in your abdomen that you put VHS tapes into have anything to do with the like corruption caused by the media kind of thing.

00:08:40
Speaker 3: I don't know that he knows, and I find that enjoyable.

00:08:45
Speaker 5: I had no idea what he was doing. It's kind of fun.

00:08:49
Speaker 3: It's so circuitous. It reminded me of like listening to my pediatrician talk about why watching TV is bad for you when I was little, and he's like, and I was like, why is it?

00:09:00
Speaker 2: He like, it's just it just is definitely not good, right, So I don't really know why the body horror is present. I know why it is in something like The Fly, which I've seen, and I haven't seen that one in a while. I also hadn't seen Video Drum in a really long time. I watched a handful of actually probably only two Kronenberg movies in college, and then I was like, I don't think this is for me, so I didn't watch any others. But I have a limited experience with Cronenberg. But I had seen Video Drome, and I really only remembered the abdomen vagina VCR and the bulging TV that like throbs and is horny, and that's.

00:09:48
Speaker 3: Pretty much it. Love the horny TV.

00:09:51
Speaker 2: Jimmie, what's your history with Cronenberg in general? And Video Drome?

00:09:57
Speaker 3: So I haven't seen I had not seen Video Drum, so I'm not I don't know. I'd like Letterbox users do not come for me. You can like a director and not see every single fucking thing they've made. It scarce. I'm so afraid of movie fans anyway.

00:10:13
Speaker 2: Scary.

00:10:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm a David Cronenberg fan. I'd seen I mean, i'd seen The Fly, I'd seen Shivers, I'd seen both Crimes of the Futures. I'd seen a movie of his that I don't think people talk about very much, and I just I don't remember if it's good, but I definitely remember being affected by it. Dead Ringers. Have either of you seen that one?

00:10:34
Speaker 2: Uh?

00:10:36
Speaker 3: Oh it is Uh it's Jeremy Irons and Genevieve Bougold. I don't know who that is, but they played twin twin kind of collegists. Oh my god, and it's just like the most Cronenburghie thing of all time because they you just start at kind of like you don't need to like go through leap through any hoops to get to where he wants you. To be sure. I love body orror. I don't need a reason for it. Really. I do think Cronenberg is so so mommy, like in the way that like where you're like, well, I think that that's where his problems lie. That's my guess. It seems like maybe he has some things to work through and and maybe he hasn't. But it's been fun to watch.

00:11:25
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:11:26
Speaker 3: I liked Video Drome. I love that it's gross. I love that it's short.

00:11:30
Speaker 2: Oh, I do like that.

00:11:32
Speaker 3: Love the horny TV. And I think my general opinion is I felt like the back half of the movie moved way slower because I don't care about the James Woods character. I care about all of the women that he's meeting that call him ugly. I liked that part the best, But then you get the horny TV at the end, so you know it's like it's where it's worth it, It's worth the ride.

00:11:55
Speaker 5: Sure, I was like, why does this guy look so familiar? And I realized he played Hercules and I think he played Hades and her Es. Yes, he modeled his face and did it kind of look.

00:12:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's the I mean he is the absolute worst as as a person. Yes, yeah, he.

00:12:17
Speaker 2: Has horrible politics, just a troll ghoul of a man. And I also just hate him as a performer. Him and like Kevin Costner are just if they're in a movie, I won't see it because of them. I just hate seeing them on screen.

00:12:33
Speaker 3: I don't know which one is Kevin Costner. I can't mix up all I know I like. I mean, obviously no dispacey, but I think I like Kline. I like it's Kevin.

00:12:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and then of course Kevin lemonnon my Ken Kevin.

00:12:51
Speaker 3: He belongs in He's an actor named Kevin. I'm being ridiculous. No, you're not Kevin Klein. Yeah right, Kevin Lemignon. Now we're talking. Yeah, okay, okay, let's talk about Video Drum, the movie by David Cronenberg that came out.

00:13:09
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty three. Thank you, you're so welcome. And before we do that, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk about it. We'll be right back, and we're back, and here is the recap for Video Drome. We meet Max Wren. That's James Woods. He's the president of a Toronto based TV station, Channel eighty three, which shows kind of anything ranging from softcore porn to violent smut type stuff. And we see him going around wanting to buy various videos to put on his channel. Some of it he feels is too soft and not tacky enough.

00:14:02
Speaker 3: I'm just like, can you do like, could you do this in Canada? Is it a Canada thing? I feel like on American TV this would not fly. I'm not I mean, you show snuff movies on TV in Canada.

00:14:15
Speaker 2: I doubt it. I think this is just like it takes place in a world where poor like our easily accessible on television.

00:14:27
Speaker 3: I love, I love a strange and ominous, distant near future.

00:14:31
Speaker 5: Yea, it's nice.

00:14:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So this is a Canada where you can show it's not films on TV and James Wood's job is to find the scariest ones.

00:14:39
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, and so Max Wren finds a show called video Drome where a woman is being tortured and eventually murdered, and he thinks this is awesome. He thinks this is a great fit for his Channel eighty three, and I like with it.

00:14:58
Speaker 3: Once they start saying video drome in this movie, then people are saying video drome at least once a minute, and it's used as a noun, and it's uses an adjectivist, uses a verb. As the movie goes on.

00:15:10
Speaker 5: I don't hear it at first, and they're like what, and then he's like video drome and then he spells, wait, I.

00:15:17
Speaker 3: Have I took a screenshot of one part where I'm like, this is getting ridiculous in a good way, but it was James Wood's like, tell me about my video drome? Problem, and you're like, what are you talking? Like, I really loved it. They talk about it like it's a place. At one point it's a brain tumor. Sometimes it's just kind of a general vibe. You just don't really know. And by the end, I'm like, I'm no clearer on what was going on with videos.

00:15:42
Speaker 2: It's like what is video drome? But also what isn't video drome?

00:15:47
Speaker 5: You know?

00:15:48
Speaker 3: And that's what makes us think.

00:15:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, so goofy, I love it.

00:15:55
Speaker 2: So this guy Harlan is helping Max pirate video drum and what's going on with him?

00:16:03
Speaker 5: Is he he keeps calling him patron.

00:16:06
Speaker 3: Yeah right, that's kind of his thing. Yes, and he wears interesting shirts and that's kind of all you need to know about. Well, actually no, there's there's a good twist with him.

00:16:16
Speaker 2: Later, there is there is They think video Drome is coming from Malaysia, but then they realize it's coming from Pittsburgh. Shout out to Western Pennsylvania.

00:16:28
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I'm like, does Pittsburgh claim this movie? They like, yeah, that's where all the fucked up stuff apens. If it's too fucked up for Canada, you gotta go to Pittsburgh. I love Pittsburgh. Shout out the Ketchup Museum.

00:16:44
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, of course. Okay. So then Max is a guest on a talk show along with a guy named Professor Brian Oblivion.

00:16:54
Speaker 3: Great character name, yes, and a.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: Woman named Nicky Brand played by Debbie Harry.

00:17:01
Speaker 5: Debbie Harry, she was this.

00:17:04
Speaker 3: She was I think maybe it's just her general hairstyle. When I looked at her first, I was like, is that Michelle Pfeiffer. But I think it was just her hair shape. I love when pop stars are in movies, and this was like a good pop star role because it didn't she didn't need to be amazing.

00:17:19
Speaker 2: It's kind of like when Jennifer Lopez was in the Cell.

00:17:23
Speaker 5: Oh yes, I love this.

00:17:26
Speaker 2: It's a bizarre one.

00:17:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like a subcategory pop pop girlies who cannot really act. But if but if cast correctly, it's a fun time.

00:17:36
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:17:38
Speaker 2: Uh okay. So all of these guests on this talk show are talking about erotic media and its effect and influence on society, and it's making me think and we're thinking about it. But Max is horny, and he's like, hey, Nikki, you want to go out to dinner?

00:17:56
Speaker 5: With me, he asks her on air television.

00:18:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, that scene is I think I really liked it. It's so bizarre. I had to rewatch that scene several times to be like what, because it's I mean, it's it's interesting that like, we do know say what you will about how women are portrayed in this movie. We will say things about it, but we do know what everyone's job is, and everyone's job is very weird. It's like, and she don't. It's so bizarre because it's in that scene Nikki says the right thing and has the right values and then immediately does the opposite. And I was like, oh, I feel kind of seen by that, right, Like I also know what my values are and constantly disobey them right the second I get one percent horny.

00:18:43
Speaker 2: So not to mention, because she's just like, we live in an over stimulated society, and I think that's bad. And then he's like, well, what about that red dress you're wearing, you hypocrite, And I'm like, excuse me.

00:18:59
Speaker 3: She's She's like, yeah, the red dress is a bit much like Oh my god. I thought I really appreciated the host of the show. I thought she she was really trying to keep things on.

00:19:11
Speaker 5: Jack while James woods, Yeah, they're the.

00:19:14
Speaker 3: Guest like was being actively sexually harassed, but was like, no, this is cool. And poor poor Rena, she's just trying to keep things. She's she's talking to a dead guy on a videotape, doesn't even know it. Marina is just in it. She's trying to say that sex and violence on television in Canada is not good.

00:19:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, damn anyway, So they go on the date Max and Nikki and she's like, let's watch porn. It puts me in the mood. And then she puts on Videodrome and despite its violent nature, she really likes it. Cut to them naked and while they're having sex or like, you know, I don't know, hornily canoodling.

00:19:59
Speaker 3: She corn swear to God.

00:20:07
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know if he's inside her, but they are canoodling and it's horny.

00:20:12
Speaker 3: So I was I rewatched The Fly recently, and I wonder Jeff Goldbloom's character in The Fly has you know his his mattress is basically on the floor, which makes sense with the character James Wits. I'm like, all these men have beds that are very low to the ground.

00:20:30
Speaker 2: And you would think if he owns a TV station, he could do. He has a ford I have.

00:20:36
Speaker 3: He has the budget for it. But I'm just like, what is it with all these bed frameless protagonists.

00:20:43
Speaker 5: He must Cronenberg, must sleep on the floor himself.

00:20:46
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it gets it's something something creative. Juice is Yeah, I used to sleep on a mattress on the floor. I feel like that is unfairly gendered.

00:20:56
Speaker 5: They're like, oh yeah, dead beat god like a series like Plastic Tubs from Mikia.

00:21:02
Speaker 3: Ooh.

00:21:03
Speaker 5: I was like, and that's.

00:21:06
Speaker 3: That's craft, that's elevation. It feels like a very late twenty tens kind of meme of like, ugh, this guy doesn't even have a bed frame. I was like, look, I can't talk. I slept for a full year. There is a mouse that crawled in my bed, and then I had to sleep in the bed with my roommate who I shared a room with.

00:21:24
Speaker 2: That's beautiful.

00:21:26
Speaker 3: The struggle is universal. If you don't have a bed frame, you are seeing yes.

00:21:32
Speaker 2: Anyway, back to horny canoodling. Oh god, now Max cannot get video Drome out of his head, and now he wants all of the shows he buys for his TV station to be more scandalous and violent, like videodrome because he's he thinks that's what's next in adult entertainment, and he wants this woman who he works with, Masha, to find out who makes video drome so that he can acquire it legally.

00:22:01
Speaker 3: I guess, okay, Masha, Yeah, awesome character.

00:22:04
Speaker 5: I know.

00:22:04
Speaker 3: Why didn't we get more Masha serious? One of the many I like. Again, one of the things that I like about this movie is James Wood's character is a scumbag who sucks, and I feel like Cronenberg loses track of that because he expects us to care about him the whole time, which I didn't. But whenever he encounters a woman, she lets him know that he's a scumbag who isn't as hot as he thinks he is. And I really liked that Masha does it. She's like, yeah, you're a little old for me and Debbie Harry She's like, well, this has been a fun, you know, two time hookup, but I'm moving to Pittsburgh. Fuck you, Like you're just like good, good people should bail on this guy. He's the worst.

00:22:46
Speaker 5: I also, when you're talking about Cronenberg's mommy problems. I was like, maybe ma Sasha.

00:22:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's like, even my mom doesn't want to hook up with me. Maybe my mom thinks I'm old.

00:23:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. Isn't there a part where he's like, ooh, we could take a shower together? And she's like, how about this hot young waiter who's next to me, I'm going to hit on him instead.

00:23:10
Speaker 3: I loved Masha, I wish yes more, not enough Masha, not enough any of the women because I also I also loved Bianca, but we'll.

00:23:23
Speaker 2: Get to her, yes. And I liked Bridi too.

00:23:26
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:23:27
Speaker 2: Anyway, So Nick and Max are still hooking up, and she tells him that she's going to Pittsburgh to audition for Videodrome, but he doesn't think it's safe. He doesn't want her to do it, and then she deliberately burns herself with a cigarette to show him that she means business or something. I don't know.

00:23:50
Speaker 3: I don't know. He's just sort of crown and bringing out that one. That was a fun scene to watch too, because it just keeps cutting between them, and James Woods is like, I don't know, She's like, stop us stop, I won't stop up. Cool. Awesome. Good job you guys.

00:24:10
Speaker 2: Good job. So the next day, Max meets with Masha again and she's like, look, Video Drum is bad news. What you see on the show, the torture, the mutilation, the murder, it's not acting. It's real. And then she tells him that a guy named Brian Oblivion is connected to Video Drome in some way, and he's like, oh, I know him. I was on a talk show with him.

00:24:40
Speaker 3: With him, right, He's like, oh, actually, I was sexually harassing someone while he was talking. So we're basically friends.

00:24:48
Speaker 5: On a TV screen.

00:24:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, So then Max goes to pay a visit to Brian Oblivion, but his whole thing is that he refuses to be in the same room as people. He's only willing to be seen on a TV screen. Or he has his daughter Bianca be his liaison. And then Max is like, okay, well, mention Videodrome to him, and then I think he will want to talk to me. Then Max's assistant Bridie comes to his house to bring him a videotape, and he's now like hallucinating this like bizarre violent stuff. He has this vision where he assaults Bridey, but then it's actually Nikki, but then he actually didn't assault anybody.

00:25:41
Speaker 3: It's we'll come back to that scene that was yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:44
Speaker 2: And then she leaves and then he watches the tape and on it is Professor Brian Oblivion telling him about video drome.

00:25:54
Speaker 3: And at this point they're saying video drome about every one seconds?

00:25:59
Speaker 5: What's video Oh, and the tape is breathing when he puts it in, it starts to breathe.

00:26:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like pulsing.

00:26:05
Speaker 3: It's great. It's the effects in this movie. I mean it like kind of goes without saying the effects in this movie are absolutely they're cool, wonderful.

00:26:13
Speaker 5: What did they use? Do you think? Have you?

00:26:17
Speaker 3: I haven't looked into who does his practical effects, although when I was rewatching The Fly recently, I wonder if it's the same person, because the Fly won an Oscar for special effects because it was whoa so, I mean deserved. He really did turn into a fly, if you recall let's see. Indeed, Yes, I think I think it's the same guy, Rick Baker.

00:26:41
Speaker 5: Everything's so slimy, it's so good.

00:26:43
Speaker 2: It's slimy.

00:26:44
Speaker 5: It's throbbing, grabbing ballooney.

00:26:47
Speaker 3: Oh wait, no, sorry, he didn't do. He did another movie that I watched recently called rat Boy. Whoa, but that's for another day. I'm having a hard time right now, so I'm watching a lot of watching things like rat Boy. He's really good. It's essentially Yes, it came out the same year, so I feel like, you know, the.

00:27:09
Speaker 5: Fly, he was like using the same materials.

00:27:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, Unfortunately, he did Baker do.

00:27:16
Speaker 2: He didn't do Video Drome, Okay, but he did.

00:27:18
Speaker 3: He did. He did Video Drome, Okay, got it. Other things he's done include The Exorcist, he did Rat Boy, awesome. He worked on Star Wars. He did the Thriller music video special effects. He did that Freaky Beauty and the beast Ron Pearlman TV show that I love. That was Hamilton yea, yeah, I love that. Oh my god, so good. He did Gremlins to the New Batch. Yeah he's got he Oh my god. He did Jim Carrey Grin Okay. Yes, he did the Haunted Mansion two thousand and three, which we just covered. He did the Ring he did Yeah, he did Molificia.

00:28:01
Speaker 5: So he did the ring and video drum.

00:28:03
Speaker 3: And video drum. It makes you think.

00:28:06
Speaker 5: It all comes back together. We all go through the abdomen slid together and out Pittsburgh.

00:28:14
Speaker 3: We wear the slits we bore in life. Anyways, not the same guy as the fly. Okay, accomplished guy, And yeah, I hope the answers your questions.

00:28:25
Speaker 2: You Okay. So we're seeing Professor Oblivion talk about video drome and how he started having hallucinations that caused a tumor in his brain, not the other way around, where like a tumor that he had was causing the hallucinations. And then he's like, and then when the doctors removed the tumor, it was video drome.

00:28:52
Speaker 3: And then you're like, what, so what is no? No, I just thought I figured out what video drum was. Now I'm back square.

00:29:00
Speaker 5: So it's like Hakuna matata. It's it's just a feeling.

00:29:06
Speaker 3: That's like part. I mean, that's what's fun about David Cronenberg's movies is like, very often people are just saying shit, they're just saying whatever. They're just like all right, and then we cut to the to the stomach vagina. You're like, yeah, it makes sense.

00:29:24
Speaker 2: Okay. So then Nikki shows up in this video and strangles Brian Oblivion and then she's like, we want you Max, and then his TV starts throbbing and bulging, and then he makes out with it.

00:29:39
Speaker 3: So then the lady from Blondie is in the television television has boobs. It's horny. You can stick your head in it. I had no fucking clue what was going on?

00:29:51
Speaker 2: Five stars yep, okay. So then Max discovers that Brian Oblivion died nearly a year ago, that he helped to create video Drome, but then when he realized what it did to people, he tried to shut it down. But Bryan Oblivion's business partners didn't want that, so they murdered him. And then Max starts having even more visions. He hallucinates that this huge gap opens up in his abdomen aka his vagina VCR and he shoves his whole hand inside and puts a gun gun in there?

00:30:34
Speaker 3: What and then that's a I mean, that's a perfect reveal. There's that he's just dated a gun. Yeah, awesome.

00:30:43
Speaker 5: I wonder if it's like the metaphor is like the video tape is just as dangerous?

00:30:52
Speaker 2: WHOA again?

00:30:55
Speaker 3: I was like, did I was? It's so funny because you're like the intent who knows.

00:31:02
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't be cool if there was a gun in the stomach slit and it's like, yeah, it would be cool, and it was.

00:31:10
Speaker 3: I liked it, but I was like, yeah, menes date violence and destruction.

00:31:17
Speaker 5: And then it's like we're just smarter than the movie. Probably Yeah, yeah.

00:31:21
Speaker 3: I think it's just just like rick, could we fit a gun in?

00:31:26
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, or like put a videotape in the well what is it called? Now? I just want to say, slit? What was it called? In the video scene in the VCR in.

00:31:36
Speaker 3: The in the you put the video drome in the video drome to watch video drome. As a result video.

00:31:43
Speaker 2: Then you start video druming all over the place.

00:31:46
Speaker 5: But the action is a little bit like fucking.

00:31:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it feels all very video droum yea. Yes, the more we talk about this movie, the more I like it, unfortunately, and the more I just like it so that a color different flesh doel cast conversation.

00:32:04
Speaker 5: So I had a great time.

00:32:06
Speaker 2: Yes, well glad somebody did. Okay. So then a man named Barry Convex approaches Max and very Convex works for a corporation that makes video video Drum question Mark.

00:32:24
Speaker 5: And they also when did they were the glasses always are like, I was like, wait, what, how when did we go to a glasses store?

00:32:31
Speaker 2: So he's like, yeah, my company manufactures and supplies eyeglasses for I think he said like developing nations or third world countries or something like that, and we work with NASA to make like missiles or something I don't know.

00:32:49
Speaker 3: Video drum.

00:32:52
Speaker 2: And also they make video Drum. And Max learns that the videos he has previously where just tests and that they will be launching Videodrome to the public soon. And Barry Convex wants to record one of Max's hallucinations and analyze it because he's concerned for Max and what might happen to him. So then they like induce this hallucination and Max has a vision where he's whipping Nikki, but then we pull out to reveal that he's actually whipping a TV set that has Masha on it and she's like feeling the pain of being whipped. And then suddenly he's out of the hallucination or is he? But he's in.

00:33:47
Speaker 3: Bed the drome and that's video drum, classic videodrome moment.

00:33:54
Speaker 2: But he's He's in bed next to Masha, who appears to be dead, so Max calls Harlan to come over and take pictures, but then Masha's body is nowhere to be found, almost as if Max also hallucinated that. So then Max goes to the video lab where they pirate and record video Drome because Max wants to see last night's broadcast. I think he thinks that maybe his hallucination would be video Drome or something. Again don't understand, but he learns that there was no video Drome transmitted last night. In fact, there was never a transmission of video Drome because what was happening was Harlan was playing Max pre recorded tapes to get him involved in video Drome. So it's also a recruitment tool, huh. And then Barry Convext shows up again. He's like, yeah, Videodrome is a scum show and only degenerate losers would like it, and that's why we're going to use your TV station to start broadcasting Videodrome to a wide audience.

00:35:17
Speaker 5: Are they try? So it was like they they're like you like this, We're going to kill you? Or like are we gonna Are they trying to kill the viewers.

00:35:25
Speaker 2: Okay, So I didn't quite understand until I consulted scholarly journal Wikipedia. Okay, And I believe Barry Convex's goal is he wants to like put an end to this like media induced cultural decay by.

00:35:44
Speaker 3: Giving pediatricians message, right.

00:35:48
Speaker 2: And they're gonna do this by giving brain tumors, like terminal brain tumors to anyone who is so obsessed with sex and violence that they would watch videodrome. So they're liberately killing people who they think are like degenerates by showing them video drome knowing that it will kill them.

00:36:08
Speaker 5: Like I watch this movie, it did not get that because.

00:36:11
Speaker 6: It's not very clear whoa which at least is a part of this movie's legacy is that it's I was reading about the production history and like how the first time the original cut of the movie was like under eighty minutes long and you really could not tell what.

00:36:25
Speaker 3: Was going on. And David Kreunenberg, I mean, I really like his interviews. He was like, yeah, I guess I cut the part where you learned that Max works at the TV station. So people got really confused. I do feel I don't know, I don't that also wasn't clear to me on the first viewing. It took me that till the second viewing to like have it come across clearly, which is so bizarre because they're talking about video drome all the time, but because you can't really understand what it is based on how they talk about it, You're like, well, I don't how could I possibly? Maybe my brain is too small.

00:36:58
Speaker 2: No, but no, I think it's it's not super clear. It's not clear. And because those guys also, like Barry Convex, makes it seem like video drum is awesome until he's like, no, it's not. I want to use it to kill people. And it's like, but wait.

00:37:11
Speaker 3: What Yeah, yeah, okay, I love it.

00:37:16
Speaker 2: So then the vagina slit VCR thing in Max's abdomen opens up again, and Barry Convex shoves a videotape of something. I don't know if it's Max's recorded hallucination into it or it's something else, or if it's just video drum. What is video drum? Anyway, whatever's on the videotape seems to be telling Max to kill his business partners and give Channel eighty three to Barry. Because Barry wants to use Channel eighty three to broadcast video drum so that people will watch it and die. So then Max reaches into his vagina VCR in his abdomen and pulls out the gun from.

00:38:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, that he stored in there just wasn't ready before it was it was still he still had a gun in the oven or like gun in the oven. Oh no, oh, I knew that was gonna.

00:38:16
Speaker 2: Kick Kaylen Wow, I love a pun in the oven. Also, so he's like kind of Gregnant with a gun if you think about it.

00:38:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, the gun's name is greg Yeah, Okay.

00:38:31
Speaker 2: So he pulls the greg the gun out, and the gun kind of permanently fuses to his hand, but only sometimes. Sometimes it's attached to his hand. Sometimes his has a regular hands.

00:38:47
Speaker 5: It's a normal gun.

00:38:49
Speaker 3: It's really confusing, but I love. I love the reveal when he goes to like the dance show. Shortly afterwards, he's just sitting at a table. He pulls out his gun hand and you're like, yeah, yeah, really really cool.

00:39:03
Speaker 5: And it's looking like slimy and like it looks like it really hurts.

00:39:10
Speaker 3: I've been enjoying recently whenever I watch a movie and something is like so dramatic but doesn't quite hit for me to just sell say like wow, really cool to the screen. Cool just to take him down a peg, got his ass, got his as Wow, really cool, James Wood gun hand really cool?

00:39:30
Speaker 2: Nice try.

00:39:31
Speaker 5: Yeah I really was watching this like that was awes.

00:39:37
Speaker 2: I mean it's a cool effect, it is, Yeah, okay. So then Max goes to his own TV station and shoots his business partners with his gun hand, and then he goes to kill Bianca oblivion and she's like, no, don't because videodrome is brainwashing you to do this. And video Drum killed Nicki Brand or someone killed Nicki Brand. But anyway, she's been dead the whole time, yeah, I think.

00:40:10
Speaker 3: Which is also like, well, then how the hell do we talk about her on the fucking show. She's been dead the whole time? And I video drum you.

00:40:20
Speaker 2: Know, yes, okay, And then a TV set reaches out with a fleshy hand and shoots Max, but it doesn't kill him. It just switches the channel away from the video drome. That's you know, kind of controlling his thoughts and movements. And now he's compelled by the idea of death to video Drome Long Live the New.

00:40:53
Speaker 3: Flesh, Yeah, which is what is he saying but also sounds cool, and he says it.

00:41:01
Speaker 5: Also it's like the first time that they've said it, and there's like ten minutes left and they just.

00:41:06
Speaker 3: Keep saying it for the next ten minutes and you're like, oh, yeah, that phrase we know and love and just hear it.

00:41:14
Speaker 2: Yes, okay. So then Max goes back to Harlan, who puts this like fleshy throbbing VHS tape into the vagina VCR.

00:41:28
Speaker 3: Cheering, cheering, we love it.

00:41:30
Speaker 2: We're like woo hoo. But his slit eats off Harlan's hand and then Harlan explodes.

00:41:40
Speaker 3: Very teeth two thousand and nine vibes.

00:41:43
Speaker 2: Very teeth true.

00:41:45
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:41:46
Speaker 2: Then Max goes to Barry Convex's trade show where people are dancing that's what you were talking about, Jamie, and Max shoots Barry Convex while he's yelling death to Videodrome, long Live the New Flesh.

00:42:01
Speaker 5: He gets on the microphone and says it yeah, and then he doesn't mic drup.

00:42:05
Speaker 3: He's like, Okay, whoa what are you saying at that trade show? Is just like, well, this weird thing happened at one point, but other than that, it was a lovely event.

00:42:15
Speaker 5: I love my new glasses. Yea.

00:42:18
Speaker 2: So he kills Barry Convex, and then Barry Convex's guts and brains are like wriggling their way out of his body. And then Max runs off and goes to the harbor and goes into this like condemned ship and inside is another TV set and Nikki brand is on it and she's like, Okay, you damaged videodrome, but you didn't kill it. It still exists, and to fully destroy it you have to move on to the next phase Jesus, which means that he has to become the new flesh and get rid of the old flesh aka he has to kill his human body so that he can live inside of a TV or something.

00:43:06
Speaker 5: Has risen, you know.

00:43:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:43:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:43:10
Speaker 5: At the end, it was like, Jesus, I.

00:43:12
Speaker 3: Despise this character so much. You are not gonna sell me on a christ allegory at the very end of this damn movie. Nice try, David, I don't think So.

00:43:23
Speaker 5: He died twice for our sins.

00:43:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got I go sins.

00:43:29
Speaker 5: Oh my god.

00:43:31
Speaker 3: Jesus also famously had a gun in his stomach, so it makes sense.

00:43:38
Speaker 2: Okay, So Max realizes what he has to do, which he does. He puts his gun that's fused to his hand up to his head. He says, long Live the New Flesh, and then the movie cuts to black as we hear a gunshot and that's the end of the movie. So let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss to video drum and then video drum.

00:44:11
Speaker 3: Video drum. We're back. It's video drum to video drum. You're watching video drum and that's messed up? Or is it? But it is?

00:44:19
Speaker 2: What if?

00:44:20
Speaker 3: Is it?

00:44:20
Speaker 2: What if the Bechdel cast has the same effect on people as video drum and it's like brainwashing.

00:44:27
Speaker 3: It makes them want to kill people.

00:44:30
Speaker 2: Let's hope not. Anyway, where do we start?

00:44:34
Speaker 3: Oh boy, well, I kind of. I mean, let's let's start by talking about women, as we have been known to do from time to time over the years. Yeah, yeah, I think that, Like it's Cronenberg. I was sort of reviewing the many waves of discourse that has gone around about David Cronenberg's movies because they're so body horror focused, because they're very often body horror focused in a way that feels like explicitly like things are happening to women or it's about women. And there's been a few different ways, like some I think I read some mid twenty tens discourse that argues his entire body of work is inherently misogynists, which I disagree with. But then there's moments where I don't like. I think I just find him confusing enough that I'm maybe overly excusing things. But there's I don't know, as far as videodrome goes, I'm not like offended by anything that is being explored. I just am like, Wow, this guy really has some things to figure out about how he feels about I don't know, I don't know what did What did you all think about? I guess especially like the body horror specifically, and then we can sort of go character by character A stomach vagina, I say, sure.

00:45:58
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean we've talked about vagina monsters in a lot of movies, and specifically which horror movies.

00:46:07
Speaker 3: Which he is a huge proponent of, and I think that, like I guess, the closest you can get is with the with the various vagina monsters we've covered. It's like usually a male hoteur that maybe sees a vagina as something very threatening and confusing that wants to destroy, and there's elements of that here, because it's like that is like the thing that you are inserting the tape into very heteronormative body horror in order to like destroy.

00:46:37
Speaker 5: But then he like uses it. It starts being this like freaky thing and then it becomes him and then the character like accepts it and it's almost good. I don't know, right.

00:46:48
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's like by the end of the movie, this movie's so confusing, yeah, because it's like there are certain we've got a variety of slits here. We've gotten the video drome slit and that that is like a source of evil and chaos. But then by the end, the James Woods stomach slit is a source is like what saves him, but also he kills people with it. So you're like, I don't know, I don't know. I think it is safe to say that David Cronenberg's a big fan of the vagina monster. There's I really want to rewatch the Twin Gynecologist movie because there maybe that's a Patreon thing, but it's just bizarre, and like I think part of because I just rewatched The Fly as well, it's interesting that these are Usually it's like the male protagonist that's undergoing the body horror physical transformation, and women suffer as a result of it. Women bear witness to it, but it's mostly like the body horror is their problem. It's not something that they are experiencing.

00:47:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like at the end, Nikki's like, you're still changing, and it's like she's talking to like a little sister getting her period or something like there's still you're still becoming like the woman you need to be or I don't know.

00:48:10
Speaker 3: Or like Geena Davis in The Fly, like she's just taking care of Jeff Goldblum as he turns into a fly, showing him compassion and sympathy and like, you know, stuff that good qualities. But it's just like, yeah, this is just her problem. This, Yeah, And I think that that is like an interesting thing to explore. I don't think it's done particularly well in video drum, though, I.

00:48:31
Speaker 2: Guess I appreciate that because so much body horror in horror movies is at the expense of women, and it's like, look at this woman who is like over fifty, right and or not attractive by traditional Western beauty standards, and therefore she's a hag who is like slimy and rotting, and all the body horror is like right at the expense of her like size and age, and it's just like a very heightened grossness that is attributed to or like connected with or conflated with like an older woman. That's what so much of body horror is. So I appreciate that the movie isn't doing that, but I think it's just.

00:49:24
Speaker 3: I think that women are just like sort of incidental to this story in a way that makes it and so I think, like, yeah, having and again this is like very obviously we'd like, I don't want to be overly prescriptive in describing women as inherently connected to vaginas, but it the way that like, it's it's bizarre to see so much vagina specific body horror while most of the women are incidental to the story, right, You're like, yeah, it feels like having it both ways in a way that feels undercooked. I don't know. I feel like there are some directors in their body of work where you can feel kind of an open hostility towards women, and I don't feel that in David Cronenberg's work. I think he just kind of like doesn't understand them well enough to write them.

00:50:12
Speaker 5: I wonder he seems really like fascinated because I mean, I mean, I feel like I would argue that he's like, I don't know, having the slit is making him like a woman. Again, not saying that having a vagina makes you a woman, but it seems like he's like really fascinated by like female suffering and he's like it must be so hard to have all these holes and like things.

00:50:35
Speaker 2: And things come out of them like igor and I don't understand. Yeah, I think he's like I get the impression that he's like scared of women.

00:50:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, which is like good he should be. He should be afraid of us, But like, I don't know, it feels like a curiosity fascination that never I mean really, and even though I'm a fan of his work, he never quite he never gets it. It's so funny because it's like when you watch like a Julia du Cerno movie, she gets it frame one and that's but like I feel like Chroniberg has like spent a lot of his career being like women, what's going on there, what's going on with their bodies? And why he doesn't quite get there. But I don't think it's like an offensive or for the most or at least in the space of this movie. I just am like, he's just a little all over the place with it. Yeah, and I guess I wish well, actually, Kaitlyn, speaking to your point, Yeah, that, like you see, I always think of the Shining when we talk about like making a woman over fifty just inherently grotesque, the scariest thing.

00:51:46
Speaker 2: The Shining VI Suspiria eighteen Ye just discussed. There's countless examples.

00:51:53
Speaker 3: So so many in a way that feels just like, oh, this is a reflection of the values of who's making it. They're like, oh, yeah, well, older woman equals scary, grotesque, nasty. But yeah, I mean you have in with Masha. You do have an older woman in this movie who is I mean, she does experience. That's the tricky part, because it's like Masha is just kind of generally a fabulous character and like she is not subject to the kind of like leering cruelty that you would often see older women be subject to.

00:52:27
Speaker 5: She's almost sextualized also like.

00:52:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, like she's like a cool, hot, horny older lady. But then as the movie, it's the same thing with the Debbie Hairy character, where it feels like they're being presented pretty non judgmentally, but then they experience suffering later on.

00:52:43
Speaker 2: Well, right, so this is what I don't I mean, well, this is what I don't get, and I also don't get everything else. But so every woman you see is brutalized at some point in the movie, either by Max Wren actually physically, or it's a part of his hallucination, or maybe it's always him hallucinating but some of it's self inflicted, or is it just Max when hallucinating that because you see various like when Nikki burns herself with a cigarette and or she wants Max to like inflict cutting on her. So I don't know what to make of any of that, because the movie is also asking us. The movie is like, hey, let's root for this guy, or at least the movie is following a man who is obsessed with snuff film where women are being brutalized. He thinks it's awesome. He hears that it's real, and that women are actually dying. He doesn't deter him. He is like, yeah, more of this and then yeah, you see various scenes where he assaults a woman or hallucinates that he has assaulted a woman.

00:54:02
Speaker 3: But it's like, that's what It's so confusing to me that by the end we're supposed to be like yeah, James Woods, because it felt are we like I don't, I don't know, that's the confusing.

00:54:12
Speaker 5: Like well, I feel like in like a like another David, the other David Lynch who's like like Twin Peaks, that Bob character is supposed to represent like the evils of man, you know, and I feel like maybe David Cronenberg is like James Woods is like the evils of man.

00:54:29
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:54:30
Speaker 5: I think he's I think he's trying to do like a pro woman thing in this movie, but like in a really goofy way that not necessarily effective, but him being like you see how bad men can be.

00:54:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, well and that came through. That came through for me at a bunch of points. But yeah, it's I mean, it's whatever. This is just like kind of classic ou tour man director thing where it's like, yeah, this is a pro women movie where all of the women are brutalized and they disappear halfway through the movie. But it is very pro women and I have proof in your like exact whatever. But like, yeah, I mean I don't think that we're supposed to be like cheering for James Woods. I think it's just because the movie becomes so narrowly focused on him specifically as the movie goes on, because we get this spread of a lot of interesting characters, but then they're you know whatever, killed off, brutalized, We're dead the whole time, all this confusing stuff And yeah, there are so many which is wild because there's so many interesting women in the space of this story that kind of like get lost. I think Nicky I don't love her arc but she has one, but it's like Masha, she kind of disappears. Bianca like that sort of gets dropped a little bit. I'm like, bring back poor Rena. The host like Bridey is just sort of a witness to violence and keeps showing up for James Woods. Anyways, there's a lot of women in this movie, but they but like they don't have And I liked h with the Bianca character. I liked where you sort of start with her where she's you know, I mean, it turns out she's saying this because her dad has been dead for a year. But she's like, my father and I don't have conversations he has, we have. He does monologues and like examining that and like that father daughter relationship, and you're like, that's interesting. But then it kind of gets dropped as well. I don't know. There was so much interesting stuff presented in this movie, and I think I just was sort of bummed that it ends up zoning in on what it does, because it felt like there was a lot to explore.

00:56:34
Speaker 2: A if it's if the movie is like commentary on you know, the corruption and the moral decay of society that is caused by mass media and like excessive violence and like exploited sexuality on TV, which I was like, Okay, what is that? What Cronenberg trying to say? Like what has he said about this movie and like what his intentions are with it? And I found a quote in an interview where Cronenberg says, quote, it's very hard for me to say what Videodrome is about. In a sense, I think it's totally misleading to say it's a criticism of television or that it's an extension of network. I think he's referring to another movie he made called Network of Blood, but I also don't know what he means by that anyway. Back to the quote, I think it's totally misleading to say that it's a criticism of television or that it's an extension of network or something like that.

00:57:41
Speaker 3: It really is.

00:57:41
Speaker 2: Exploring what I've been doing all along, which is to see what happens when people go to extremes in trying to alter their total environment to the point where it comes back and starts to alter their physical selves.

00:57:56
Speaker 3: Unquote, I think he's referring to them movie Network, which is also about TV.

00:58:02
Speaker 2: I thought that too, maybe right exactly, so that is possibly what he meant as well. In any case, that quote is just as confusing to me as the plot of the movie. So I still don't know quite what he's saying or what his intentions were with Video Drum.

00:58:19
Speaker 5: He's just like, I just have ideas that I want to floor.

00:58:23
Speaker 3: I just thought horny TV and kind of just like went from there.

00:58:28
Speaker 5: But because like everyone else left for the day and you're home all alone and you get horny because you want to watch.

00:58:33
Speaker 3: Horn But like, what if that was like a cool, smart movie. Yeah, I don't that's surprising to hear because I felt like that was like what the movie was circling around, which I don't even think, Like I don't even disagree with that message. It feels dated in a way where it's like, I don't know, sex and violence on TV is corrupting our children. Yeah, it's very like Reagan era kind of messaging, and it's interesting seeing it in kind of like an art movie. This like sort of it feels like a very like I don't know, authoritative like this. I remember having to write an essay about why violence on TV was bad for me in the fifth grade in like whatever, the two thousands, and it's like this is just like messaging that's been coming out as forever and it's I mean, it's obviously a more complicated issue than that. I like, yeah, I don't think, you know, young people should watch a shitload of sex and violence on TV, but I think when it's like prescribed to everyone where it's like no one can watch sex and also the fact that and I think that Kronenberg I don't know, maybe he isn't trying to say this, but like conflating sex and violence as like equally damaging images to take in, because those are always the two things that are brought up as like, well, this is what's fucking people up. And you're like, I'm I'm willing to say violence is, yeah, but sex not so much. But I don't. I mean, apparently he didn't mean any of that in that way, and so so who I don't.

01:00:07
Speaker 2: Know knows, But I still think, like, you know, he's focused on the extreme of what people might do in response to like being influenced by sex and violence. I keep thinking of the theme song for Family Guy, where she's like fine lanced in movies and sex on TV.

01:00:27
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, we should cover Family Guy on this show.

01:00:30
Speaker 5: Oh okay.

01:00:33
Speaker 2: But I guess he's like criticizing the extreme of what that might do to people. But I also, I don't know, I'm just like it feels like a weird Oh you're you're blaming people for being corrupted by media without stopping to think, like, Okay, who is making most of mass media? Why are those people making this media? What their values? What do they think is marketable?

01:01:03
Speaker 3: And the answer is that the Max character is doing though right, like he kind of represents the like curator aspects of like and and this shame like I guess going back to like him not being a character we're rooting for, is that, like he is the one that is curating all of this, like with with no care about like who's going to see it. It's just about profits and keeping the station on air. So I feel like there is like common but again it's it's it gets so muddled that it's confusing.

01:01:40
Speaker 2: Especially by the end, where it's like, right, if he's like an I guess not even an anti hero because we're not, like, I'm not on board with anything he's doing. But if the movie is trying to comment on something, then why do we keep following his journey? And then it's like, Okay, he has to destroy video Drone, But it's not because of any conclusion he draws himself. It's because like his brainwashing just got switched over to now Bianca Oblivion is brainwashing him or kind of controlling him or something, and it's all just too I don't know. It's just one of those movies where it's like it's it's too experimental. Almost to I actually have like a clear narrative, so it's hard to analyze in any meaningful way.

01:02:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to meet the movie where it's at, because I have no idea where it's at.

01:02:36
Speaker 5: I know, yeah, I think it's like a part of a League of or just like a string of movies where men are concerned about technology becoming autonomous, and I don't know, maybe in a way technology is woman video drone right right.

01:02:55
Speaker 3: Well that's like the other thing too, is like yeah woman is machine. Was like, yeah, yeah, okay. We talked a little bit about Nikki. I wanted to go back to her for a second because she's a very confusing character. And then you're sort of told like, well, don't worry about how confusing it was because she was dead and so she was a hallucination, so like, don't worry about it.

01:03:17
Speaker 2: The inception effect, yes always yes.

01:03:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.

01:03:21
Speaker 5: I kind of thought that they knew each other already in like a better call soul way where I was like, oh, there, they're just.

01:03:28
Speaker 3: I'm confused about like how she could have been dead the whole time if we see her in person so much, it's like she was on TV. I'm assuming other people could see her. She couldn't have been in a hallucination way.

01:03:39
Speaker 5: She was dead the whole time or when she went to Pittsburgh not.

01:03:43
Speaker 3: Clear anyways, So it is it is the inception effect where you're like, well, can we even talk about this character as a woman if she strictly theoretically exists as the projection of a man? Right? Oh, we don't really know, but for the sake of doing it anyways, one thing I did, like, I don't know, and I probably accidental from Cronenberg, but how she like said like, yeah, there is too much sex and violence on TV, and I worry about how it affects people. And then she like immediately bails on anything she was saying the second that she gets horny, and I was like, okay, I've done that, yeah, fair enough. But and then like she's you know, into like sato masochistic stuff. Yeah, I feel like, I mean, I've seen that presented worse in movies where it's like at very least like in the scenes where it happens, there is I I was like, okay, nineteen eighty three, like there is like consent involved, Yeah, And she says like this turns me on I want you to do this to me, and so it it. I don't know. I think in a way that if that those conversations hadn't happened, it would have been creepy gaulish and the stuff that we see pray frequently.

01:04:58
Speaker 5: It's something that she wants.

01:05:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's something that she asks for and uh, you know whatever, he's happy to do it and that's the business. But I don't know, I just wanted to give that little crumb of like, all right, good job movie. Consent, Yeah took place.

01:05:17
Speaker 2: But I don't know exactly what the movie is saying. But it also seems to be conflating like like a sado masochistic kink with corruption, right, yeah, for sure, and that she's doing this because of like she has this kink because she's been corrupted.

01:05:35
Speaker 5: In the hypnotizing and oozled right.

01:05:38
Speaker 2: Like it's part of the moral decay of society.

01:05:41
Speaker 3: You can only be kinky if you've watched video drum, you're like, well, no, some people are kinky and then they go to work. Yeah. I don't know, again, a mixed bag, but I was surprised at consent being presented at all in a movie from the early eighties true, and then we have I mean we've talked about Masha. I feel like she's just like a generally under serviced character, and then she comes back to be like we she disappears, and then she comes back to be abused, and then she's really gone. Bianca, I think, is a really interesting character who is also kind of dropped throughout the movie. I don't know, Yeah, we just had a lot of interesting beginnings and.

01:06:24
Speaker 2: No follow through. I mean, I guess Bianca comes back around because she's the one who's like, I release you from your control. Videodrome has over you, but now you have to carry out my agenda, right death to Videodrome. Long Live the New Flesh, which, like you know, I don't know what that means, but it's a woman in chard but.

01:06:48
Speaker 3: It's active, it's active. Yeah, I mean she's like running her dad's weird business question mark after he dies. I mean, she's she definitely moves the platforward quite a bit. But just like like with most of the characters, you're like, what is going on with her?

01:07:06
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, despite knowing that her philosophy is long Live the New Flesh, because I don't exactly understand what that means or what her actual values are. I could not like ever get a handle on what she actually wants or what she's trying to do because she's so cryptic in the way she.

01:07:28
Speaker 3: Talks, right, which she takes after her father in that way. Yes, but yeah, I mean I think it would have been interesting and again was just given her more to do, and like if maybe she had had a different vision for video drum than her father. Wasn't just carrying out his wishes and was like had her own vision. I mean, there were so many ways that this movie could have been eaten just as like gross and confusing, and the many women we meet could have been like more meaningfully involved than it had, like moved the plot along in a more interesting way.

01:08:04
Speaker 2: Especially because like all of the I mean videodrome whatever it may be, but when we see it, when it's the version of him watching a videotape or some like broadcast or what he thinks is a broadcast, where it's a naked woman being brutalized, and it's unclear if it is acting, it's unclear if it's actually real. It's unclear if this woman is like consenting to what's happening or if she's not whatever it is, because it's so unclear, you just sort of have to maybe guess that she's being tortured against her will and then apparently murdered. And I guess my point is, like, because so much of the violence we see is directed at women, why then do we not see like women try to rise up and fight against this? Or I don't know, it's just like, right, everyone seemed I mean, speaking of oblivion, Brian oblivion, everyone just kind of seems oblivious as to what's happening, or like when, for example, when Masha finds out like it's not acting, it's real, why does she not do something to try to stop it?

01:09:26
Speaker 3: Or yeah, it's it is confused. Yeah, again, it's obviously very different because the time is different and the director is so unique and I like him a lot, but like it reminds me of yeah, like the wave of movies that came out post Me Too from famous male directors that were like, all right, I gotta say something, but what am I gonna say? And you're just girls, We've been pretty mean to him, right, and like just it's all kind of is like even if the intent is good, which it isn't always necessarily. I think in Cronenberg's case, I don't feel animosity towards women. I just like, what do you really have to say?

01:10:09
Speaker 5: Yeah?

01:10:10
Speaker 3: About you know? But that's fine. I don't know. Is there anything else people? I wanted to talk about?

01:10:18
Speaker 2: Nothing that I can articulate into words because I can't understand what I saw. But fun fact, so I think a couple of years before this, Kronenberg directed a movie called Scanners, which was a box office success, which led him to be offered Return of the Jedi. Wow, people like, you should direct Return of the Jedi because Scanners was a hit, and He's like, no, I don't want to direct any material produced by other filmmakers. So he turned it down. But can you imagine what a Kronenberg Return of the Jedi would have been? I cannot. Another fun fact, different endings were shot this movie. Yes, I was once again consulting scholarly journal Wikipedia.

01:11:07
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was.

01:11:10
Speaker 3: One of them.

01:11:10
Speaker 2: Was the ending we see in the film, which was apparently James Woods's idea. He's like, what if I shoot myself on the ship?

01:11:19
Speaker 5: So Jeremy strong of him.

01:11:23
Speaker 2: Another ending was Max Bianca and Niki appear on the set of Video Drome, and Bianca and Nicky also have the slits in their abdomen, out of which come like mutated sex organs, like they pop out of their slits like that, and that would have been cool. And then another ending featured an orgy where Max, Bianca and Nicki have sex and there's different like I think body horror sex organs that are they're using in the orgy.

01:12:05
Speaker 3: I feel like this is just like a really fun h illustration of how like, yeah, Cronenberg is just like horny. He's like, well, here's three different horny endings and we'll just kind of see which one is.

01:12:19
Speaker 5: The horn that ended with the ladies. If the ladies came back.

01:12:23
Speaker 3: That would be yeah, I mean, that would be closer to what it seems like he wanted to do now that I'm.

01:12:29
Speaker 5: Like, if the girls had slits, do you think Cronenberg is thinking of it as a vagina or just a slit?

01:12:36
Speaker 3: I don't.

01:12:37
Speaker 5: I wonder if you've never never even occurred to him.

01:12:40
Speaker 3: Oh, that would be embarrassing for him, But I don't. I genuinely don't know. I like because all of his interview, all the interviews around this as illustrated are baffling and do not support what I thought he was trying to say so hilarious.

01:12:58
Speaker 5: I don't know, have you seen Brandon cherryfle No, it's a show. I think I'm one of three people have seen it. But there's a scene where she keeps throwing up these cats and because like a witch put a curse on her, and I want to stop throwing up these cats, like stop it, and she's like, fine, you won't throw up any cats. And then she gets a slit in her rib cage and it's like this rib cage vagina, and she keeps like birthing these little cats, and then eventually she gets fucked in her rib cage vagina with a hand. Oh it's very similar.

01:13:30
Speaker 2: I see.

01:13:31
Speaker 3: I love body horror so much.

01:13:32
Speaker 5: I feel like, why would you do that?

01:13:36
Speaker 3: Stop.

01:13:37
Speaker 5: I went to the Medieval Museum and I was like, oh my god, people are putting boobs on necks. You know, a slit can go anywhere. I mean, yeah, uh.

01:13:48
Speaker 2: The only other thing I wanted to comment on was and I think these characters are supposed to like represent the like industry and how the values of like the entertainment industry are usually weird because it's run by sis had white men mostly, but it's those guys who are like watching that porn in the beginning that they think is like too soft and innocent, right, just like the way that they're talking about like porn from East Asia and how they can like capitalize on like fetishes and stuff like that. It just like felt icky, but I think it's supposed to be icky, but no one really challenges it in the scene, so I'm not totally sure.

01:14:34
Speaker 3: And come back either well, and then you have that like that exchange at the end that also felt very Reagan era where he's like North Americans are too soft, yea, And it just felt like they were talking about stuff that supernationalistic people still talk about today of like you know, everyone out east is coming for us, and I'm like, I don't even know if he was thinking about. Yeah, yeah, it did feel exactly. And then you're like, and that's why we need to have snuff films in Canada, and you're just like, huh, a little convoluted, a little bizarre, but yeah, it just felt like that scene in particular was like so eighties in a way. And I'm not trying to suggest that I think Cronenberg feels that way obviously, like the bad guys are the ones saying it. But it was just like, well, what's all this? Then? What is he trying to say? And then in the interviews it seems like he's not sure. He doesn't know, however, says that this movie passes the Bechdel test in a fun way to tell me it passes. During the TV broadcast between Rena and Niki Oh right, Rena says, what about it? Nikki? Is it socially positive? And she says, well, I think we live in overstimulated times. We crave stimulation for its own sake, We gorge ourselves on it. We always want more, whether it's tactile, emotional, or sexual. And I think that's bad. And that's the exchange the passes. I mean, James Woods, is there no one is talking to or about him?

01:16:01
Speaker 2: True, But then right after that, he's like, you hypocrite, You're wearing a red dress, which is like the whole like, oh but what was she wearing? Did she was she asking for?

01:16:12
Speaker 3: It? Is like the.

01:16:13
Speaker 2: Vibes that conversation gives off.

01:16:16
Speaker 3: That's why I thought it was a funny pass because she immediately is hit on and never speaks to a woman for the rest of the movie. Again. Right after that exchange.

01:16:26
Speaker 5: It is it's so true to life. You can pass the Bechdel test in real life and then base yourself is.

01:16:32
Speaker 2: Great relatable yeaheah, Well, what about our nipple scale though, the perfect metric on which we write a movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist.

01:16:46
Speaker 3: Lens like bo.

01:16:51
Speaker 2: But I'll give the movie one vagina slit ooh and interpret that how you will. But what I mean by that is I'll give the movie one nipple because I think there is commentary to be made on the way media influences individuals and society. In fact, that is what our show is. We are commenting on that media influence.

01:17:20
Speaker 3: But this is basically video drum.

01:17:22
Speaker 2: We are video drum. If you were wondering what video drum was the whole time, the answer is it's the Bechdel cast. But I think we usually make sense and present a clear analysis, whereas I don't really know what Cronenberg is saying half the time, and he's often showing a bunch of brutalization of women in a way that I don't really know what his intentions are, and yeah, just not really characterizing the women in a way that makes any sense, and not letting them have fully fleshed out stories or really contribute anything to this story aside from and twist they were dead for a long time, or twist they were a hallucination, or you know whatever. None of it makes sense to me, And I'll give it one nipple and I'll give it to w Harry.

01:18:21
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna go two and a half on this one. I agree with you, Caitlin. I think that this movie is like kind of like I mean, it's visually incredible, but story wise really messy and confusing, and it sounds like Cronenberg struggled to get this movie to a place where it even sort of made sense, and it still kind of doesn't. But I'm gonna give it two and a half because I like the women that we meet. I think that at least the first half of this movie I really enjoyed because you get a wide spread of women, they have a widespread of opinions, we know what their jobs are, they're cool, it seems like the movie respects them. And then in the back half that kind of goes away in a way that I found really frustrating, and then tried to end on this like sort of pro woman's sort of anti media message that fell flat because I just feel like the James Woods character is just like so repugnant that I struggled with it. But I think it was like an attempt to say a lot of things. I think I agreed with what he was saying for the most part, and I just like David Cronenberg's I'm probably ranking it too high. Two and a half nipples from me. I'm going to give one to Debbie Harry, I'm gonna give one to Masha, and I am going to give one to the waiter that or the half to the waiter that Masha had sex with.

01:19:51
Speaker 2: Melissa.

01:19:52
Speaker 3: How about you.

01:19:53
Speaker 5: I think were given three stars, and I think the stars, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, believable. I'm so sorry, the stars are over the covering them up because.

01:20:07
Speaker 2: Because because we can't be seeing sex gets too scandalous and it will corrupt us.

01:20:11
Speaker 5: All exactly, and we're not in Canada and we can't see lude stuff on local access television or whatever. I think, well, I think I just like I don't know if he's like the first guy to like do this, but it is interesting seeing like similar imagery like in movies now, like in Cam or like even in Big Mouth where kid gets so like addicted to his phone that the phone starts like horny talking to him, and like I found it fun for him to. I like seeing him like explore these ideas of like like addiction to screen and sex and corruption and in like a almost not primitive way, but just like in it's like the beginnings of someone thinking about this, and it's never like fully formed thought, but I'm like, oh yeah, like people are still thinking about this and you know, worried about like brain damage with screens and horn and that kind of thing. And I also I really liked the DeBie Hairy character, the Masha character. It was it's cool to see an older woman be be funny and sassy. And I think, I mean as like fugged up as it is. The scene where he's like whipping the screen and she's on it is like really a tour interesting. But yeah, I mean I think, like I'm like, what if a woman did this, I think maybe it would be better.

01:21:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, it's like and I feel like Cronenberg's work at least paved the way for women's body horror that I like much better. I feel like, without Cronenberg, you probably wouldn't have a Julia du Cernaut down the line.

01:21:57
Speaker 2: That's true.

01:21:58
Speaker 3: So I appreciate it from that because yeah, I just feel like because she's.

01:22:03
Speaker 5: My favorite, right, Yeah, and I think she's a lot more successful and like talking about grand unified theory of female pain or whatever or whatever or whatever. So yeah, and I watched it and I was like, oh, yeah, this is kind of a similar to my book, but as a woman, a woman a video drum experience, I'm like, oh, I think I I explored it in a different way, but you'll have to booth to understand what I mean. And Okay, so the three nipples go to Debbie Harry and oh the girl who wakes him up in the morning, and it's like, this is your.

01:22:45
Speaker 2: Own oh BRIDI his assistant.

01:22:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, she was cool, and I'm going to give one to the to the chest pussy the amins lit she so hard.

01:23:00
Speaker 2: It's our video cassette recorder, more like vagina cassette recorder.

01:23:06
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, Melissa, thank you so much for coming back. On the show.

01:23:10
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me again so fun, oh.

01:23:12
Speaker 3: My gosh, and remind us where we can get your book and where we can find you on the internet.

01:23:17
Speaker 5: You can get my book wherever they're sold, preferably not Amazon, local bookstore, bookshop, dot org, eBay. And you can follow me at E L L O Melissa on all social media platforms.

01:23:33
Speaker 2: O hell, Yes, you can follow us on social media platforms at Bechdel Cast. You can go to our Patreon slash Matreon at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, where you'll get two bonus episodes every single month, plus access to the back catalog of well over one hundred bonus episodes.

01:24:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can also get our merch at teapublic dot com slash the Bechtel Cast. With that, let's pull a gun out of our slits and videodrome.

01:24:14
Speaker 2: Whatt's video drome all the way home.

01:24:17
Speaker 5: Boom boom, bye bye