KPop Demon Hunters: Identity, Shame, and Healing Connections

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
<v Speaker 1>movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Britnie 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 fronted him and purposes and to
<v Speaker 1>fulfill 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.
<v Speaker 2>Welcome everybody to Popcorn Psychology. Today we will be doing
<v Speaker 2>the movie of the year ka pop demon Hunters. That's right,
<v Speaker 2>We're going to be golden today, y'all.
<v Speaker 1>Here we go.
<v Speaker 2>So today we're going to be talking about cape hop
<v Speaker 2>demon Hunters, self acceptance barriers, trusting others.
<v Speaker 1>And opening up.
<v Speaker 2>Then we're going to be getting into treatment and final thoughts.
<v Speaker 2>Just like always. Right off the bat, today Hannah is
<v Speaker 2>not feeling well, so it's just gonna be me and
<v Speaker 2>Brittany today on this episode. Hello, but we are looking
<v Speaker 2>forward to this and we've been watching the memes and
<v Speaker 2>gifts go NonStop, I know, even amongst dudes.
<v Speaker 3>Like literally, I was at a police station for work.
<v Speaker 2>Nothing but dudes cops in this police station and Golden
<v Speaker 2>was the first.
<v Speaker 3>King that came on.
<v Speaker 1>That's so interesting.
<v Speaker 2>They're all just jamming it out to it. I don't
<v Speaker 2>know what to tell you. This has become a cultural phenomenon.
<v Speaker 2>Netflix released it to the theater and that was the
<v Speaker 2>only time I have seen the theater packed in years,
<v Speaker 2>full every seat cool. My daughter loves it, so we've
<v Speaker 2>watched it forty seven times.
<v Speaker 1>I have seen it twice, and one of those times
<v Speaker 1>on one point five speed, which will make you feel crazy.
<v Speaker 1>So I wouldn't necessarily recommend, but I had to do
<v Speaker 1>a rewatch for today's episode, and I had limited time,
<v Speaker 1>and it was an interesting experience to rewatch very quickly.
<v Speaker 2>I don't think I could watch anything on one point
<v Speaker 2>five speed.
<v Speaker 1>I think I'd lose my shit. It's not as bad
<v Speaker 1>as you think. It just like feels like something's kind
<v Speaker 1>of wrong, you know, Yeah, But it's not like it's
<v Speaker 1>more just like everything's going really fast. Yeah, I can't.
<v Speaker 2>The pacing of things is important. I think I'd be like, well,
<v Speaker 2>I wouldn't do it for the first time watching this.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I just had to make sure to nail down
<v Speaker 1>some info that I wasn't retaining. But yes, I would
<v Speaker 1>say I know about this movie from how much Ben
<v Speaker 1>has told me, all the things that he just shared
<v Speaker 1>with you all. So Ben, can you take it away
<v Speaker 1>with introducing this movie to our lovely audience for people
<v Speaker 1>who maybe are childless like me and aren't familiar with
<v Speaker 1>this movie.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, so in K Pop Demon Hunters, which I discovered
<v Speaker 2>because my daughter took a chance on it when it
<v Speaker 2>popped up on Netflix, and ever since then, including last night,
<v Speaker 2>I've watched that movie many many times over and listen
<v Speaker 2>to the music over and over again. Produced four number
<v Speaker 2>one singles. It's just outrage as nothing has done that
<v Speaker 2>since In Conto Are come Close. This movie sets off
<v Speaker 2>right off the bat with establishing that in this universe
<v Speaker 2>there have long been a history of demons trying to
<v Speaker 2>invade the regular world, and a group of three women
<v Speaker 2>who are using music and song in addition to melee
<v Speaker 2>and bladed weapons to eliminate demons and create a magical
<v Speaker 2>barrier called the hon Moon to keep the demons contained
<v Speaker 2>in their world unable to invade ours, and when they
<v Speaker 2>do happen to breakthrough, because faith in the hun Moon disappears,
<v Speaker 2>then the Hunters are there to eradicate them with awesomeness.
<v Speaker 2>Throughout this film, we see Rumi, who is the main
<v Speaker 2>singer and leader of the pack as it were, in
<v Speaker 2>addition to Mirah, their main dancer, and Zoe, who are
<v Speaker 2>our three leads.
<v Speaker 1>In this film.
<v Speaker 2>And as we go through the story of K Pop
<v Speaker 2>Demon Hunters, we learned that Roomy is the daughter of
<v Speaker 2>a former Hunter and was trained by one of her
<v Speaker 2>mother's partners, and that she's a legacy thing. We catch
<v Speaker 2>these girls right at the beginning, at the end of
<v Speaker 2>a world tour where demons have kidnapped them, and the
<v Speaker 2>girls defeat the demons readily and handily before we get
<v Speaker 2>launched into the demon world, and we see that the
<v Speaker 2>demons concoct a plan to battle the girl band with
<v Speaker 2>a boy.
<v Speaker 1>Band of demons.
<v Speaker 2>Because what really solidifies the honey Moon isn't in fact
<v Speaker 2>the Hunters themselves, it's the fans. So if the demons
<v Speaker 2>can capture the fans more nummy souls for them, and
<v Speaker 2>so this plan launches. And of course, of course Rummy
<v Speaker 2>who happens to be part demon because her dad was
<v Speaker 2>a demon, which is unexplained.
<v Speaker 1>We don't have the answers to that. Yeah, and her
<v Speaker 1>mom's not around at all. She died as a baby.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe when she was a baby, she was a toddler. Okay.
<v Speaker 1>Of course Rumy falls in love with a demon, with
<v Speaker 1>a demon, it's swishy, swishy hair.
<v Speaker 3>With very swishy hair.
<v Speaker 2>But of course then she's able to save him and
<v Speaker 2>rescue him, and he then rescues her. Because it's a
<v Speaker 2>kid's movie and it's a tween awakening.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I believe what I said very crassly to you,
<v Speaker 1>Ben is that this movie is spank bank material for
<v Speaker 1>seven to nine year old girls. You can no And
<v Speaker 1>I only am saying that use as a seven to
<v Speaker 1>nine year old girl at one time in my life myself.
<v Speaker 1>The first time I watched it, take a drink here,
<v Speaker 1>because this is my catchphrase. This is more final thoughts.
<v Speaker 1>The whole time I was watching it, The first time
<v Speaker 1>I watched it with Hannah, because Hannah did watch this
<v Speaker 1>movie one and a half times, even though she couldn't
<v Speaker 1>be here today. I was just kept saying, this is catnip.
<v Speaker 1>This is like tween or even kid pre tween catenip
<v Speaker 1>for girls. Oh yeah, Oh every single beat. I was like,
<v Speaker 1>this could have been made in a lab to attract
<v Speaker 1>young girls.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure it was, and they did an outstanding job,
<v Speaker 2>because the entire theater when we went to see it,
<v Speaker 2>let alone, everyone who has kids of this particular age
<v Speaker 2>group have been attracted to this like moths into flame.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. It makes me think of one of those movies
<v Speaker 1>when you're young and you don't know why you want
<v Speaker 1>to keep watching it so much. Yeah, but you can't
<v Speaker 1>stop thinking about it. But you don't really know and
<v Speaker 1>understand sexuality yet, but you know that you just want
<v Speaker 1>to keep watching the thing over and over again. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>They're not subtle about it being there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so I can definitely respect that about this movie.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, no, this is the this is fun
<v Speaker 1>times for a lot of I could just see my
<v Speaker 1>younger self in this movie as someone who grew up
<v Speaker 1>watching Boy Meets World. And you know, I was right
<v Speaker 1>in the midst of the first wave of swishy hair.
<v Speaker 1>The Sean Hunters. The Devin sawwas like, I see it.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, t Pega is an entire generation of dudes first.
<v Speaker 1>Cunch about fabulous hair. Correct couldn't have had better. I
<v Speaker 1>mean she was famous for it to cut it off
<v Speaker 1>to make a point in the show, and our hairs
<v Speaker 1>got better.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but she still has it and still looks, oh yeah,
<v Speaker 2>Well she shows up like social media always like yep,
<v Speaker 2>we're still good. But that in this movie, of course,
<v Speaker 2>all of these same things are providing that.
<v Speaker 3>For this generation.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And something you didn't mention that I think is
<v Speaker 1>important to mention, is that also a goal of like
<v Speaker 1>a final goal sort of of the continue continued trios
<v Speaker 1>of the Demon Hunter. Is this idea of creating the
<v Speaker 1>Golden Moon. Yes, that'll be like the final boss of
<v Speaker 1>the Hunt Moon. Once they do the Golden One, they
<v Speaker 1>won't really have to worry about demons anymore. It kind
<v Speaker 1>of feels like they're they're working up to that and
<v Speaker 1>then they can be done.
<v Speaker 2>Correct, Like they can steal it forever and the demons.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, notice that right in the beginning they almost
<v Speaker 2>got there. The one moon flashed a little bit gold
<v Speaker 2>and then the demon's urgency to launch. This plan was
<v Speaker 2>prompted by that because they see this future coming where
<v Speaker 2>they are sealed out and can never feast on souls again. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>as we get to know these characters and get to
<v Speaker 2>know a little bit more about what they're going on,
<v Speaker 2>plus a dope soundtrack that just makes this kitty crack,
<v Speaker 2>and then eventually, because you hear it enough times, the
<v Speaker 2>songs are infectious and all parents are now.
<v Speaker 3>Going like, damn, it is an earworm. It's just an earworm.
<v Speaker 2>It's like stuck in my head, to the point that
<v Speaker 2>one of my friends from where who also has a
<v Speaker 2>little girl in this age group, sent me a glorious
<v Speaker 2>meme of somebody like just cutting completely across traffic.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, and then they flashed to what was.
<v Speaker 2>Going on inside the car joke, and it's just a
<v Speaker 2>mom like straight up whaling golden, whaling, golden. The number
<v Speaker 2>of memes I've seen, like we all know that you're
<v Speaker 2>sitting at stoplights singing golden and like you see like
<v Speaker 2>metal heads doing and even going like with the windows
<v Speaker 2>rolled up, and like see if people just like bagging
<v Speaker 2>her head.
<v Speaker 3>What you think I'm listening to? What I'm actually listening to?
<v Speaker 1>Golden.
<v Speaker 2>It's a cultural phenomenon and I'm excited we're talking about
<v Speaker 2>it today.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So, I know, the big idea we wanted to
<v Speaker 1>hit with this episode is the idea of self acceptance,
<v Speaker 1>because that is the obvious main message of the movie
<v Speaker 1>and all the elements to it. And I know where
<v Speaker 1>we wanted to start with that idea is actually starting
<v Speaker 1>with what are the barriers to self acceptance? Because as
<v Speaker 1>we're meeting the main character, Roomy, she is someone that
<v Speaker 1>has not accepted obviously the demon part of herself, because
<v Speaker 1>I guess one thing we didn't mention is that if
<v Speaker 1>you're a demon, you have these things called patterns on
<v Speaker 1>you which look kind of like tribal tattoos, yeah esque,
<v Speaker 1>And she has those on her body that no one
<v Speaker 1>knows about, but her foster mom Feline are kind of
<v Speaker 1>like aunt mother figure. In the start of the movie,
<v Speaker 1>we're meeting someone who does not accept their actual self,
<v Speaker 1>their full self. She does not.
<v Speaker 2>She has been taught yes, not too because of how
<v Speaker 2>it will be seen by others. There's many powerful scenes,
<v Speaker 2>even going back to and Roomy is a clearly maybe
<v Speaker 2>oh like a six year old that Selene is having
<v Speaker 2>her cover up those patterns because of the way those
<v Speaker 2>will be seen. And she's Selene's telling her you're not
<v Speaker 2>like them. Those patterns are just remnants, but you still
<v Speaker 2>have to cover for them up because of how people
<v Speaker 2>will see them, especially other hunters.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so we come into the story where there is
<v Speaker 1>this very rigid idea about demons, obviously, and about any
<v Speaker 1>sort of association with demons or anyone who is a
<v Speaker 1>part of the demon world, like Ginu. There's this rigid
<v Speaker 1>id idea that Rumy has been taught. Well, they've all
<v Speaker 1>been taught that demons are capital E evil, capital B bad.
<v Speaker 1>There's no wiggle room around that they are bad. You
<v Speaker 1>can even tell us they're writing that takedown song later
<v Speaker 1>that their ideas are really extreme, and that becomes more
<v Speaker 1>and more highlighted as Roomy is creating more flexibility within
<v Speaker 1>herself of like how she appeels about the idea of
<v Speaker 1>demons as a total right.
<v Speaker 2>We even see they're all programmed with this song. Even
<v Speaker 2>as kids and kids sing songy wait we are Hunter's
<v Speaker 2>voice is strong, slaying demons with our song fix the
<v Speaker 2>world and make it right when darkness finally meets the light.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so truly actually black and white, thinking light and
<v Speaker 1>dark thinking very yeah, very extremes, no gray area, no nuance,
<v Speaker 1>no negotiation. And so then when someone like Roumy comes
<v Speaker 1>into existence, she's literally like the gray. She is indeed
<v Speaker 1>the gray. And so we see someone like sele Lean
<v Speaker 1>try to reconcile that kind of do mental gymnastics around
<v Speaker 1>that by by trying to like make this like all
<v Speaker 1>of a sudden, these exceptions, but still with this idea
<v Speaker 1>that this part of you that is obvious and like
<v Speaker 1>literally on your skin and growing and growing is bad.
<v Speaker 1>And so she like that rigidity still remains in the
<v Speaker 1>messaging that's Lene's giving Roomy basically her daughter, like she
<v Speaker 1>can't wiggle that for her.
<v Speaker 2>She can't, and she struggles to accept or know what
<v Speaker 2>to do with it herself because she got the same messaging.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, Unfortunately, she's doing what a lot of parents
<v Speaker 1>and adults will do when they've been raised within like
<v Speaker 1>a rigid cultural belief for very understandable reasons, you know,
<v Speaker 1>Like I don't want to ignore the fact that a
<v Speaker 1>lot of people were getting hurt in this movie by demons.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah they wema, you know what I mean, Like they're
<v Speaker 1>not misunderstood bad guys overall.
<v Speaker 2>No, this movie kept the ideas real simple bad guys
<v Speaker 2>are bad. And the number of missing posters we see
<v Speaker 2>for people that the demons of their souls, it's quite
<v Speaker 2>clear they're hurting people.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And so there's an understanding of where Sleine's coming
<v Speaker 1>from and why she feels like it's the right thing
<v Speaker 1>to do to continue these ideas, these strict ideas with
<v Speaker 1>Rumy and the sacrifice of that, or the cost of that,
<v Speaker 1>is Roomy being in this place where she thinks there's
<v Speaker 1>something bad about her, because that is the message you're
<v Speaker 1>saying that demons are point blank, no negotiation bad. I
<v Speaker 1>am obviously part demon, right, So something is wrong with
<v Speaker 1>me that I need to fix. I mean, that's literally
<v Speaker 1>what she's saying for most of the movie. I need
<v Speaker 1>to fix myself.
<v Speaker 2>And each time we see her struggle with that kind
<v Speaker 2>of thought and that shame that goes along with it,
<v Speaker 2>the patterns grow mm hmm, yeah, up to the point
<v Speaker 2>that they start covering her throat when it starts damaging
<v Speaker 2>her voice.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, Which is something that we'll be getting into more
<v Speaker 1>is how, at least in the work of the I
<v Speaker 1>do when people have these ideas in their heads about themselves,
<v Speaker 1>negativity about themselves, shame about themselves, especially if it's something
<v Speaker 1>that's been reinforced by beliefs in their childhood, beliefs in
<v Speaker 1>their parents, beliefs from society at large. Sometimes a way
<v Speaker 1>that people deal with it is by hustling really hard, overfunctioning,
<v Speaker 1>trying to be perfect, to like overcompensate for what they
<v Speaker 1>perceive as bad about themselves. And I think with her,
<v Speaker 1>you see right, I mean, this is how kind of
<v Speaker 1>the movie kicks off, is that she has this anxiety
<v Speaker 1>and urgency to make the Golden hone moon, because then
<v Speaker 1>she'll be good and what's wrong with her will be fixed.
<v Speaker 1>And ironically, this is how I perceive it is that
<v Speaker 1>her rush to do that and over well, the pressure
<v Speaker 1>she puts on that actually gives her what they call
<v Speaker 1>in sports psychology the yips yep where she loses her voice.
<v Speaker 1>And that to me, I don't know if you thought
<v Speaker 1>read it differently or more as part of a demon
<v Speaker 1>mythology stuff, but I read that more as just how
<v Speaker 1>like a psychosomatic response to the stress and to the
<v Speaker 1>situation she's in.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it's certainly what they're metaphorically representing Yeah, absolutely,
<v Speaker 2>and that plus the deeper motivation to be fixed and
<v Speaker 2>be good enough and finally be able to be okay,
<v Speaker 2>to have more than one person see the real her.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because she can't.
<v Speaker 2>And it's beautifully woven into this whole metaphor and within
<v Speaker 2>the narrative that when they're all trying to relax after
<v Speaker 2>this tour, what is the name of the song that
<v Speaker 2>gets dropped right after they do the couch Couch Couch.
<v Speaker 1>Golden And she doesn't allow that, she can't tolerate them
<v Speaker 1>waiting any longer to release that. Nope.
<v Speaker 2>Well, she saw flashes of the Golden hun Moon, Oh
<v Speaker 2>yeah during that last show, and she wants to capture
<v Speaker 2>because she's I think the director said like twenty two
<v Speaker 2>twenty three somewhere in there. And the lack of ability
<v Speaker 2>to connect to other people's limited I guess developing ability.
<v Speaker 1>I guess what why?
<v Speaker 2>I say the developing ability to connect to other people's
<v Speaker 2>experience is a little restricted by her deep want and
<v Speaker 2>need to be accepted as she is, but she can't
<v Speaker 2>do it until she's good enough.
<v Speaker 1>And a prime example of the limiting factor of it,
<v Speaker 1>like a concrete example is how they talk about going
<v Speaker 1>to the Korean spa, the spa as a way to
<v Speaker 1>relax and how bath house. I love a Korean spa.
<v Speaker 1>I always just thinking it was Krireans spouse. I love
<v Speaker 1>to go to the Korean Spa. There's one in Niles,
<v Speaker 1>Illinois that's stove called King Spam fevor in the area.
<v Speaker 1>Hit it up forty dollars for twenty four hour, be
<v Speaker 1>bopping around, and it is like a cultural touchstone of
<v Speaker 1>Korean culture to go to the bathhouse and relax, But
<v Speaker 1>you will be full naked as someone who goes to
<v Speaker 1>the Korean spa, you get full naked in front of everybody.
<v Speaker 1>So it is limiting her ability to engage with her
<v Speaker 1>friends in an activity that they all share, to engage
<v Speaker 1>in a relaxation technique that's very connected to their real
<v Speaker 1>friendship and also their culture and community. Yep. And so yeah,
<v Speaker 1>things are being kept from her and also things that
<v Speaker 1>she's having more more difficulty explaining away. So it's also
<v Speaker 1>the pressure of secret keeping.
<v Speaker 2>Correct In a culture where there's not as much body shame, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but there's conduct shame. People are much more free, especially
<v Speaker 2>with same sex. Opposite sex would be no go which
<v Speaker 2>they make clear like this is the men's bathouse. Oh sure,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the body shame is much different in their
<v Speaker 2>culture than us here in the especially Midwest USA.
<v Speaker 1>Because my wife actually.
<v Speaker 2>Had gotten us tickets to the Kingspa thing, and like,
<v Speaker 2>once I looked more into it, I was like, yeah, no,
<v Speaker 2>I don't think I want to spend my day off
<v Speaker 2>being naked with a bunch of dudes.
<v Speaker 3>This does not actually appeal to me.
<v Speaker 1>You should do it, you'd love it. I love it.
<v Speaker 1>I've got to Kingspa all the time. I don't think
<v Speaker 1>that I would get naked with other men. Ben, everyone
<v Speaker 1>start chanting, send us email, say Ben, get naked at
<v Speaker 1>the Korean Spa. I don't think it's going to happen,
<v Speaker 1>but it's not. And also that's like twenty five percent
<v Speaker 1>of way I know are a.
<v Speaker 2>Lot of the things looked really nice and if that's
<v Speaker 2>optional to do all that side of it, and I
<v Speaker 2>get that it's pretty freeing.
<v Speaker 3>It's not like they make you do that.
<v Speaker 2>If you want to go in the pool or do
<v Speaker 2>that thing, that's that's kind of how that goes, and
<v Speaker 2>that's fine.
<v Speaker 3>People can do that if they want to.
<v Speaker 2>It's just not my jam But the thing that I
<v Speaker 2>think is really important with that is recognizing how odd
<v Speaker 2>it is your roomy won't go where her friends or
<v Speaker 2>the other girls in their band are like, dude, because
<v Speaker 2>everybody does this, why will you not go with us?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's so common that they can't stop trying to
<v Speaker 1>talk her into it, which I think is something we
<v Speaker 1>do when there's something that's very obvious. Yeah, and a
<v Speaker 1>culture is like eventually when we're down, she'll go to
<v Speaker 1>the bathouse of us, because yeah, it is such a
<v Speaker 1>part and you're right, like when I go to the
<v Speaker 1>Korean Spa, when I go to Kingspa, I didn't start
<v Speaker 1>going until I was in my thirties. Yeah, and I was, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>girls girls of all ages, like old women, younger women,
<v Speaker 1>kids are in there. I don't think younger than like
<v Speaker 1>maybe nine or something. There is like an age limit,
<v Speaker 1>and it is really rad to see. You're right like
<v Speaker 1>about the body, except in part that it's all bodies,
<v Speaker 1>all different kinds of bodies, and everyone's very chill about it.
<v Speaker 1>And I remember even thinking the first time I went,
<v Speaker 1>it would have been so cool, as like a younger girl,
<v Speaker 1>to see so many different body shapes so normalized and
<v Speaker 1>so relaxed.
<v Speaker 2>And this movie did a pretty good job of showing
<v Speaker 2>very different body topes just in the background characters. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>the main characters are pop stars, so I mean everybody's
<v Speaker 2>and they're also like warriors, right, and even the.
<v Speaker 3>Demons, like everybody's pretty fit.
<v Speaker 2>But the general population, they did a really good job
<v Speaker 2>of being pretty representative.
<v Speaker 3>But people look lots of different ways.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and then going into the bathhouse to kind of
<v Speaker 2>tie these ideas together would still unlike here where people like,
<v Speaker 2>if my body doesn't look the way I wanted to,
<v Speaker 2>I'd never go.
<v Speaker 1>Or just like our puritanical modesty culture where people would
<v Speaker 1>just I know so many people I guess you included
<v Speaker 1>Ben who die at the idea of being naked, amongst others.
<v Speaker 2>It's not that, it was more of the situation of
<v Speaker 2>taking a day off for that that I wasn't mentally
<v Speaker 2>prepared for.
<v Speaker 3>It's not like the modesty right, Like that's just weird.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>Sure my wife and I are doing a thing for
<v Speaker 2>us and then being separate and being uncomfortable and like
<v Speaker 2>adapting to a new thing.
<v Speaker 3>That's nothing wrong with it, just very new.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, it's definitely a culture shock. Thing from someone
<v Speaker 1>who was raised in the Midwest and raised to be
<v Speaker 1>very modest and puritanical about my body and nudity, right,
<v Speaker 1>you know where I'm still getting shipped from my mom
<v Speaker 1>about wearing shirts where the shirt doesn't touch my pants.
<v Speaker 3>To shee you sit about you know, your shirts being
<v Speaker 3>beyond your fingertips too.
<v Speaker 1>No, it was never that intense, so I'm but I
<v Speaker 1>didn't also try to wear short skirts, so maybe that
<v Speaker 1>would have made a difference. A part of what we're
<v Speaker 1>going into as well is how the rigid cultural ideas
<v Speaker 1>and messaging from Selene then translates as secret keeping, which
<v Speaker 1>then translates into these situations for Roomy where she is
<v Speaker 1>very isolated, yeah, and has to keep she Yeah, she
<v Speaker 1>has to keep a part of herself truly locked away
<v Speaker 1>from her friend. She has to lie to her closest confidants,
<v Speaker 1>the two women that she puts her lives in their
<v Speaker 1>hands every day.
<v Speaker 2>And presumably they're making millions of dollars because they've got
<v Speaker 2>like their own more than that.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, probably they're billion billion.
<v Speaker 1>They're the way that pop stars are nowadays.
<v Speaker 3>They've got an entire industry.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, and so how lonely she must feel from
<v Speaker 1>well that standpoint if you think about that, like being
<v Speaker 1>a pop star and the loneliness of that lifestyle that
<v Speaker 1>I think is very true for most people that are
<v Speaker 1>at that level of fame, And.
<v Speaker 2>I think they touch on that in this movie pretty well,
<v Speaker 2>like kind of illustrating the isolation that they have to
<v Speaker 2>kind of go out incognito so they don't get more help.
<v Speaker 2>They can't just have their own life without taking precaution.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and so so there's some loneliness and that true,
<v Speaker 1>and I think that would be maybe like an acceptable
<v Speaker 1>sacrifice because of the greater good that they're doing with
<v Speaker 1>their cause, not just pop stars, but you know, keeping
<v Speaker 1>humanity safe. Yeah. But then Roomy can't even be fully
<v Speaker 1>transparent and close to the small circle that she has
<v Speaker 1>because of the messaging that she's gotten from her parent basically.
<v Speaker 2>Right, which in Asian cultures is in particular, it's really
<v Speaker 2>important to understanding the collectivism and the impact of shame
<v Speaker 2>on how people see themselves. So it's not just the individual,
<v Speaker 2>it's also how she fits into society as a whole,
<v Speaker 2>So like multiple layers of shame and impact on what's
<v Speaker 2>happening to her and the motivation to keep it restricted
<v Speaker 2>from both her and Selene, her mother figure. And I
<v Speaker 2>think all of those really factor into how we see
<v Speaker 2>the character of Roomy develop and grow, and why when
<v Speaker 2>she sings the last song, it's so the last.
<v Speaker 1>Two free and what it sounds like.
<v Speaker 2>What it sounds like, Yeah, free and what it sounds
<v Speaker 2>like are really illustrative of her working on breaking free
<v Speaker 2>of how constricted she feels, and her and Genu both
<v Speaker 2>even though they're four hundred years apart, recognizing, yeah, this
<v Speaker 2>is kind of the culture here, and we all feel
<v Speaker 2>the impact of this well.
<v Speaker 1>And also because the jumping off of that, what genus
<v Speaker 1>darkest shame is and what makes him vulnerable to Guima
<v Speaker 1>and to staying on the side of I guess demon
<v Speaker 1>the demon world is the fact that he chose himself
<v Speaker 1>over his family, that he chose a life of comfort
<v Speaker 1>in the palace, Yeah, over his family, which is something
<v Speaker 1>he also keeps a secret fully from Roumy, for the
<v Speaker 1>same reason that room is keeping secrets from everybody else,
<v Speaker 1>which is, you know, if you tell me that a
<v Speaker 1>part of me is inherently bad and our culture reinforces it,
<v Speaker 1>then I can't tell their people that because they will
<v Speaker 1>think I'm bad, I won't have anyone in my life.
<v Speaker 2>Right, because they don't just reinforce, they enforce yes. And
<v Speaker 2>if I'm seeing as shameful, that's intolerable.
<v Speaker 1>Mm hmm.
<v Speaker 2>And I think to kind of build up that, it
<v Speaker 2>seemed like, though we don't see it, it seemed like
<v Speaker 2>the subtext that Gino was giving us was that it
<v Speaker 2>was grimand that tempted.
<v Speaker 3>Him to do that in the first place. It kind
<v Speaker 3>offered him a deal.
<v Speaker 1>He made a deal with the devil basically, right, made
<v Speaker 1>the deal with the devil, though in a very desperate time.
<v Speaker 1>It seemed like it was very survival oriented. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>desperation oriented absolutely, that he made that decision. How we
<v Speaker 1>can all make really horrible decisions when we are feeling desperate,
<v Speaker 1>when we are feeling unsafe, when we need to survive,
<v Speaker 1>and also when we're really young. So I assume he
<v Speaker 1>was also probably a teenager or twenty when that happened
<v Speaker 1>as well.
<v Speaker 2>I presume he was around the same age that yeah
<v Speaker 2>she is now, or maybe even younger. That he started
<v Speaker 2>like sixteen and then moved into that palace life as
<v Speaker 2>he got into his early twenties. Before we dive deeper,
<v Speaker 2>into kind of the impacts of that. We should probably
<v Speaker 2>take a break here, so in order to cover up
<v Speaker 2>for that shame, that inherent guilt and the cultural pressures
<v Speaker 2>that later that on top of the individual shame and
<v Speaker 2>guilt their regrets to shame the guilt that they feel
<v Speaker 2>personally plus societally. Right, it affects both of those characters,
<v Speaker 2>and also it affects Zoe and Mira too.
<v Speaker 3>We just only get little glimpses of it here and there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and that's the shame as well. Not to use
<v Speaker 1>that word that we've been using all episode already, but shame.
<v Speaker 1>The shame of it is that are you feeling shameful
<v Speaker 1>about using the word shame? Maybe because I feel shame
<v Speaker 1>that I should have a bigger vocabulary than that. You know,
<v Speaker 1>let's not pathologize me right now, then, I'm not pathologizing
<v Speaker 1>Gil that in keeping the shame too. It also when
<v Speaker 1>we do seecret keeping out of shame, right, especially with
<v Speaker 1>people that are very close to us, which is usually
<v Speaker 1>honestly who we keep them secrets from. Sometimes too, we
<v Speaker 1>feel the most at risk of losing those people like
<v Speaker 1>we read them the most. We can counterintuitively keep more
<v Speaker 1>secrets from people closer to us because we want to
<v Speaker 1>keep them or we're more invested in their opinion. Like,
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of elements that can make that happen.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, we are wired to be social creatures for pack animals,
<v Speaker 2>and love in its rost form, at least according to
<v Speaker 2>Sue Johnson, who's created emotionally Focused Therapy, which is a
<v Speaker 2>couple's love is a survival mechanism that we form these
<v Speaker 2>bonds with the people who create a reliable, dependable source
<v Speaker 2>of needs getting met. And absolutely the people closest to us,
<v Speaker 2>the ones that have earned our trust.
<v Speaker 1>It's invaluable. Yeah, And where you were going with the
<v Speaker 1>mirror and Zoe part of it is what also is
<v Speaker 1>awful about the secret keeping. They don't know what's going on,
<v Speaker 1>but they can tell over the course of the movie
<v Speaker 1>that something obviously is wrong. She has the yps. She
<v Speaker 1>is being even more secretive and avoid ye of them
<v Speaker 1>and with drawn, Yeah, withdrawn. And then when the finally
<v Speaker 1>the secret comes out at the end and she tries
<v Speaker 1>to go towards them, but she's like fully patterns out
<v Speaker 1>and they're like, oh, is that if then your secret
<v Speaker 1>comes out after the fact, or if your friends or
<v Speaker 1>close loved ones are making assumptions. The long story short
<v Speaker 1>of what I'm saying is you also can no longer
<v Speaker 1>control the narrative if you rely on secret keeping, because
<v Speaker 1>other people in your life, if they do give a
<v Speaker 1>shit about you, we'll start picking up on whatever weird
<v Speaker 1>stuff you're doing. Character weird, avoid any behavior you're doing,
<v Speaker 1>and they may come to their own conclusions, or they
<v Speaker 1>might think that you're mad at them or something, and
<v Speaker 1>then their response to you you might misunderstand. As see,
<v Speaker 1>they can tell that I am bad, and then it
<v Speaker 1>can perpetuate this secret keeping shame spiral.
<v Speaker 2>They can get stuck in absolutely and there is no
<v Speaker 2>accident in this movie. This movie is clean. And we
<v Speaker 2>see this all explode on stage in front of an
<v Speaker 2>entire stadium full of people where the demons imitate Mir
<v Speaker 2>and Zoe and this song Takedown that they've been working
<v Speaker 2>on to it kind of get into a diys war.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, distracts going around.
<v Speaker 2>Right with the Saja Boys, the Demon band, and you
<v Speaker 2>see Roomy struggling with like trying to rewrite the lyrics
<v Speaker 2>as she's getting more empathy for Genu, but the hate
<v Speaker 2>part of it it comes out is that these the
<v Speaker 2>demon sees and imitate Miror and Zoe and seeing this
<v Speaker 2>song to her, that's clearly they're breaking up the band
<v Speaker 2>because she sucks and it's happening in front of everybody,
<v Speaker 2>and then they pull her sleeves off to show her
<v Speaker 2>patterns to the whole world to the point where it's undeniable,
<v Speaker 2>that visceral feeling of nope, hmm, nope, that's why. That's
<v Speaker 2>why you don't tell anybody, because it'll blow up in
<v Speaker 2>your face.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it starts to become a self fulfilling prophecy because
<v Speaker 1>what her friends are really mad about is that they
<v Speaker 1>don't know what's going on. They're just forming their own
<v Speaker 1>conclusions based on their own belief systems, their own messaging,
<v Speaker 1>and the fact that if you've been keeping this a
<v Speaker 1>secret for me, then it must be bad because that
<v Speaker 1>self perpetuating idea.
<v Speaker 3>Mira looks at her and says this whole time.
<v Speaker 1>Exactly, and someone like Mira, you can not keep secrets from.
<v Speaker 2>Mira goes into her room and like hasing a moment
<v Speaker 2>vulnerability is asking.
<v Speaker 1>Her, Sup, Yeah, you're being weird. This is your opportunity
<v Speaker 1>to come clean.
<v Speaker 3>Kind of talk to me. Because Mira has revealed.
<v Speaker 2>I wish we got to know more about Miraa and Zoe,
<v Speaker 2>but we get I agree that kind of snippets at them,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm sure we will later. But the looks at them,
<v Speaker 2>we see Mira is clearly insecure and has been kicked
<v Speaker 2>out of her family or left it and isolated from them,
<v Speaker 2>and views these girls as her found family, and she's
<v Speaker 2>profoundly attached and terrified that she will lose them. And
<v Speaker 2>then to see that this whole belief system that they're
<v Speaker 2>all supposed to have been adherent to. The demons are bad,
<v Speaker 2>but one of them has patterns, lows her whole narrative
<v Speaker 2>that she traded everything for, and you see her she
<v Speaker 2>says something like I knew none of this or I
<v Speaker 2>knew this was all too good to be true.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, she has like a nihilistic statement. She makes very painful,
<v Speaker 1>very painful, and like I said, it's this is where
<v Speaker 1>secret keeping and the shame can really start to like
<v Speaker 1>eat itself and supply itself. At this point in the story,
<v Speaker 1>Rumy does look like more of a demon, right. She's
<v Speaker 1>got the one eye, she's got the voices kind of changing.
<v Speaker 1>The one hand is demony she does unfortunately looks scarier. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and she's transforming. And also because she waited so long
<v Speaker 1>to tell her friends what's going on, which that can
<v Speaker 1>happen I think a lot in real life, which is
<v Speaker 1>people will sit on a secret, well, they'll secret keep
<v Speaker 1>about something they think shameful about themselves or something they've
<v Speaker 1>done that they think shameful, and then the longer they
<v Speaker 1>sit on it, the worse it gets. Then it's like
<v Speaker 1>they're lying on lying and lying. The thing that they're
<v Speaker 1>secret keeping maybe gets to a point where it might
<v Speaker 1>actually be pretty.
<v Speaker 3>Bad and dangerous to everyone.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And then they finally tell the people, and then
<v Speaker 1>they get their reaction. They're fearing, not because the people
<v Speaker 1>wouldn't have accepted them in the very beginning, but they
<v Speaker 1>waited un till it got to a point where it
<v Speaker 1>is really hard to explain away or to get people
<v Speaker 1>to have the patience to listen.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because now you put them in danger as opposed
<v Speaker 2>to everybody approaching it from a point of safety.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>But now it's out in the open, and not only
<v Speaker 2>are Mirah and Zoe finding out that she's part demon
<v Speaker 2>and has been her whole life, everyone else knows it too,
<v Speaker 2>m or I mean, I guess it doesn't.
<v Speaker 3>The general public doesn't know.
<v Speaker 1>What's going on. They maybe think she has these They
<v Speaker 1>just know that the band's fighting and broke up, right.
<v Speaker 2>It's just like they're a little ambiguous about whether regular
<v Speaker 2>people even see the demons.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because they talk about how all the things as
<v Speaker 1>they do are like special effects, right, Wow, they have
<v Speaker 1>such cool stage production, right when they're flying in the air.
<v Speaker 2>I guess that's the one inconsistency because they when they.
<v Speaker 1>Show like the rules of the world in that way, right.
<v Speaker 2>When they show like the feudal people, they clearly are
<v Speaker 2>aware of the demons and are afraid of them. And
<v Speaker 2>then the hunters come in and like people are clearly
<v Speaker 2>hiding and cowering from the demons when the hunters are
<v Speaker 2>destroying them, like sweeping through town when they're Yeah, which
<v Speaker 2>is telling the legends.
<v Speaker 1>Yet the biggest celebrities in the world aren't being recognized
<v Speaker 1>as slang demons correct on top of trains and stuff
<v Speaker 1>like that.
<v Speaker 2>Correct that that is the one inconsistency that I found
<v Speaker 2>in the film, And I was kind of like, well,
<v Speaker 2>hold on, yeah, what are the rules of the world?
<v Speaker 2>What are the rules here, like can people see the
<v Speaker 2>demons or not? So it's where if you feel even
<v Speaker 2>confused now, it's like.
<v Speaker 1>Or even like do they do something to them that
<v Speaker 1>like wipes people's memories or like can they not see
<v Speaker 1>them even the hunters themselves. Yeah, you're right, there's a
<v Speaker 1>little because I watched a lot of Buffy the Vampire
<v Speaker 1>Slayer when it first came on TV, so like eleven on,
<v Speaker 1>maybe even younger, and a big part of that show
<v Speaker 1>is what you're talking about is where she's like trying
<v Speaker 1>to make up bullshit reasons for why she's out at
<v Speaker 1>night doing this, why you might have saw her hit
<v Speaker 1>that guind face, why she's got a bruise on her face.
<v Speaker 1>You know, Like a lot of her stuff is the
<v Speaker 1>stress of being incognito doing something very wild, pretty out
<v Speaker 1>in public. So you're right, especially Cain, they given the
<v Speaker 1>recognition of our main characters.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you would think that there'd be some awareness that
<v Speaker 2>demons are real in the world and.
<v Speaker 1>Like that it's their job to take care of them,
<v Speaker 1>and that's part of why they're so.
<v Speaker 2>Loved, right, unless that's one of the functions of the hound.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe to kind of keep people in the dark no
<v Speaker 1>pun intended, right that they don't.
<v Speaker 2>They don't see it, and part of the Houtmon's magic
<v Speaker 2>is to make it so they.
<v Speaker 1>Keep us signorant. Yeah, maybe I could see that. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>if we knew more about the cultural understands too, whatever,
<v Speaker 1>like under context, cultural context. I'm sure this a lot
<v Speaker 1>of this stuff comes from. Sure, maybe would help us
<v Speaker 1>if everyone knows and we're just ignorant to it. Email
<v Speaker 1>us or me suggests on Instagram or Facebook or someone, right,
<v Speaker 1>which is where are not Korean? We are end? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So like, if there's something about this, we're being very
<v Speaker 1>and if anyone's like screaming at their car radio or
<v Speaker 1>they're into their headphones or whatever, you can let us know.
<v Speaker 1>We're open to learning. Yes, we're very open to learning.
<v Speaker 2>The things that we see in this film, you know,
<v Speaker 2>come from a new culture understanding being introduced to us,
<v Speaker 2>which is part of the power of this film that
<v Speaker 2>we're even talking about it. And I think that's a
<v Speaker 2>good thing that we're getting exposed to more cultures in
<v Speaker 2>film and more nuances about so many things, instead of
<v Speaker 2>it being like and here's the pretty White Princess and
<v Speaker 2>her world in France and here's the pretty white princess
<v Speaker 2>in Germany, and what about the pretty white Princess Norway.
<v Speaker 2>This is a good thing that we're seeing people from
<v Speaker 2>different parts of the world and different things and learning
<v Speaker 2>about different cultures through this beautiful art form.
<v Speaker 1>And there's lots left to learn.
<v Speaker 2>What we do see on this lovely counseling, and we
<v Speaker 2>see the impact of this shame and guilt and the
<v Speaker 2>isolation it creates. We definitely see some overfunctioning and perfectionism.
<v Speaker 1>Well, and that also goes back into like the all
<v Speaker 1>or nothing thinking, which is you're either like all good
<v Speaker 1>or you're all bad. And how that matches the rigidity
<v Speaker 1>of the messaging given to to all the girls and
<v Speaker 1>to Selene you know what I mean that they all
<v Speaker 1>have been carrying for generations, generations and generations. Yeah where,
<v Speaker 1>because it's so rigid there, Like I said, there isn't
<v Speaker 1>any room for an anomaly like Roomy. There's no framework,
<v Speaker 1>there's no schema, there's nothing, And so Selene's kind of
<v Speaker 1>trying to shove Roomy into the schemas that she already has, yep.
<v Speaker 1>And all that does is perpetuate that rigidity, like I'm saying,
<v Speaker 1>and it gets to the climax of the movie If
<v Speaker 1>You Will, where after the sort of breakup on stage
<v Speaker 1>where everyone sees her patterns, she goes to Selene and
<v Speaker 1>she's literally like, you should just kill me. She kind
<v Speaker 1>of actually says like you should have killed me as
<v Speaker 1>a baby. You missed your chance. You should just kill
<v Speaker 1>me now, which that is such a that's like taking
<v Speaker 1>that all nothing thinking to like the farthest realm that
<v Speaker 1>it could go, which is either I am good and
<v Speaker 1>I stay alive or I'm bad and I am I
<v Speaker 1>should be dead. And that does show up in real
<v Speaker 1>life when people are like I could argue that is
<v Speaker 1>roomy suicidal in that moment, you know what I mean,
<v Speaker 1>and how that does show up. She kneels down with
<v Speaker 1>the sword. Yeah. I thought she's, yeah, gonna take it
<v Speaker 1>to the chest. For a second, I was like, I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure a movie like this for kids wouldn't have done that.
<v Speaker 1>So I was like, oh my gosh, where this is going.
<v Speaker 2>Well, she's shown even more shame by like offering it up,
<v Speaker 2>offering it up and saying, I you know, I won't
<v Speaker 2>fight you.
<v Speaker 1>There can be passivity to sudicidal ideation, which is I
<v Speaker 1>will just let something happen to me, right, or I
<v Speaker 1>will put myself in situations where something is more likely
<v Speaker 1>to happen to me. Like it's not always I'm going
<v Speaker 1>to stab myself with the sword. Nope, it can be
<v Speaker 1>like I'm gonna put myself in a position for someone
<v Speaker 1>else to stab me with the sword. Right, I don't care
<v Speaker 1>for myself. I won't fight it.
<v Speaker 2>I won't fight hers suicide by cop yeah, or like,
<v Speaker 2>I mean that's a more active one, but the passive
<v Speaker 2>suicidal ideations can be much more difficult to see.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And even in the situation like Roomy, you could
<v Speaker 1>argue that she's just trying to fulfill her cultural thing,
<v Speaker 1>you know. I mean there's honor with that, you know,
<v Speaker 1>there can also be like honor within these ideas, yeah, and.
<v Speaker 2>Honor of taking herself out or she's the problem, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and it's getting taken out.
<v Speaker 1>And like Selene has that big reaction because obviously she
<v Speaker 1>loves Roomy and she's known room of her whole life,
<v Speaker 1>and Roomy is a good person and her daughter more
<v Speaker 1>or less exactly, and like the last thing she has
<v Speaker 1>of I'm assuming her best friend, which is Roomy's biological mom.
<v Speaker 1>I assume we don't know their story yet, right, And
<v Speaker 1>we don't see the other song It'sister, either, which is
<v Speaker 1>also weird. It's like everything, it's like life starts, like
<v Speaker 1>history starts kind of in this movie, right where we
<v Speaker 1>started with movie. But this is where kind of the
<v Speaker 1>rubber hits the road in the sense that Rumy is
<v Speaker 1>trying to honestly fulfill the rigidity of the cult, of
<v Speaker 1>the messaging and the belief system that she's been shown
<v Speaker 1>her whole life. And Selene's the one that has the
<v Speaker 1>conflicting reaction, Right, I love you, don't do that. I
<v Speaker 1>don't want you to be gone. I want you to
<v Speaker 1>be here with me. But and I know I usually
<v Speaker 1>say and, but this is a butt situation. There's definitely
<v Speaker 1>a butt situation. I am still not going to address
<v Speaker 1>or challenge the ideas that got us in this fucking situation.
<v Speaker 1>Like Selene is the one I was the most irritated
<v Speaker 1>with and disappointed with. Yeah, I can see where she's
<v Speaker 1>coming from, of course. And she fucked this girl over,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and then did it again. And then it's
<v Speaker 1>shocked when this girl's like fucking kill me, you know.
<v Speaker 1>And then yeah, and then she doubles down like, which
<v Speaker 1>is a product of hypervigilant, like the ideas we just
<v Speaker 1>have to keep covering it and then we have to
<v Speaker 1>keep lying to your friends.
<v Speaker 3>We can fix it by staying the same.
<v Speaker 2>And that scene I think is the most powerful one
<v Speaker 2>in the entire film.
<v Speaker 1>That was really a good moment, Like when she's like,
<v Speaker 1>we'll just cover it up and we'll just tell Mira
<v Speaker 1>and so we that it was all a trick by demons,
<v Speaker 1>And I'm like, that's like the worst thing you could
<v Speaker 1>have said, doubling down on the messaging when this girl
<v Speaker 1>is clearly could not be in more agony and she
<v Speaker 1>came to you for help, and she came to you
<v Speaker 1>and she's so vulnerable, And I think vulnerability as created
<v Speaker 1>by shame is a topic. I don't know if we
<v Speaker 1>want to take a break and then jump into that.
<v Speaker 2>I think so, because I definitely have a lot to
<v Speaker 2>say about in that scene in particular, because I think
<v Speaker 2>it was, like I said, probably the most impactful one,
<v Speaker 2>and I think it's going to be adopted by a
<v Speaker 2>lot of people. So yeah, we can take a break
<v Speaker 2>here and come back to that. Where do you want
<v Speaker 2>to start with that?
<v Speaker 1>It seems like this well where my brain's going is
<v Speaker 1>taking that idea and going into different scenes. So if
<v Speaker 1>there's more you want to say about this particular scene,
<v Speaker 1>I want to throw it to you. Sure.
<v Speaker 2>So, I think in this scene, we see this recurrent
<v Speaker 2>place where they've been training, and I think it's a cemetery.
<v Speaker 2>They clearly got this tree with ribbons tied into it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's a very momentous place for them.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and it seems like it's a spiritual place.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yes, it does seem like a very meaningful place
<v Speaker 1>for them.
<v Speaker 2>As they she goes to find Selene, their Slene's clearly
<v Speaker 2>aware that the world is going to shit because she's armed.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and might even be praying. You see this movie
<v Speaker 1>more than me. But it does seem like she's like
<v Speaker 1>having a moment of reflection. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I think maybe she's kneeling and then she stands up
<v Speaker 2>quickly with her scythe But she's clearly afraid.
<v Speaker 1>She's aware of what's happening.
<v Speaker 2>And the thing I think in that confrontation, like you're
<v Speaker 2>describing where Rumy comes to her, she is full half
<v Speaker 2>demon at this point, like two face.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the one eye, the one hand, the voice is
<v Speaker 1>coming out at times.
<v Speaker 2>You know, the more angry she gets, like she's less
<v Speaker 2>reserved and guarded and perfect. She's raw and emotional. She
<v Speaker 2>is not measured and logical and driven. She is pure emotion.
<v Speaker 2>And when that demon voice comes out with the echoes
<v Speaker 2>and the modulation on it, it's clearly meant to.
<v Speaker 3>Show this is odd, scary, it's unnerving.
<v Speaker 1>It's very again, it's type for her and against type
<v Speaker 1>for culture.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yes, And looking at that moment where she's confronting
<v Speaker 2>her and saying, why couldn't.
<v Speaker 1>You love fling? Yeah, as I all of me? Because
<v Speaker 1>she goes like do and she's like oh, and I'm
<v Speaker 1>like that's right, girl, scream at her.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I think that moment, like as I was
<v Speaker 2>watching out, this is going to be adopted by a
<v Speaker 2>lot of people, but in particular, I think the LGBT
<v Speaker 2>community is going to attached to that probably has and
<v Speaker 2>seeing that, like, why couldn't you love all of me
<v Speaker 2>instead of trying to only love the part of me
<v Speaker 2>that fit your image?
<v Speaker 1>Yes? And that's that's fucking real. Like, that's that's a
<v Speaker 1>message that I think can translate overall cultures absolutely some
<v Speaker 1>form of the other. I think of all the cultures
<v Speaker 1>too that have like I said, I think at the beginning,
<v Speaker 1>like rigid religious beliefs too, And how there can be
<v Speaker 1>this idea that there is like a little morality basically,
<v Speaker 1>and I can't hate this in love the center like
<v Speaker 1>that's kind of a version of that pretty much bullshit. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>I go Amish parents who just have children that are
<v Speaker 2>jerked off as they call it.
<v Speaker 1>Oh did you know that? You know that I didn't
<v Speaker 1>know that phrase. I'm assuming it means something different. Yep.
<v Speaker 1>Do they know what it really means within the Amish community,
<v Speaker 1>I have no idea, good question.
<v Speaker 2>It's what it means when people leave the faith and
<v Speaker 2>they do their.
<v Speaker 1>A and then choose to leave.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it creates a complicated relationship with the parents where
<v Speaker 2>they don't know what to do. How do they love
<v Speaker 2>their child and have contact with them, but the child
<v Speaker 2>is living in a totally different world.
<v Speaker 1>Which you're right, is like with the LGBTQ community, and
<v Speaker 1>I see a lot of parents try to do a
<v Speaker 1>version of this, which is like I love you, just
<v Speaker 1>keep that part of your life away from me. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>same shit, And that doesn't work because, like Remy was saying,
<v Speaker 1>we all have all of us as all of us.
<v Speaker 1>But it's simply to tell someone to keep a part
<v Speaker 1>of them hidden is to reject them. Yes, And that's
<v Speaker 1>the long and the short of this actually was that
<v Speaker 1>is an obvious part of our identity that is not
<v Speaker 1>something you can hide or you can perform out of.
<v Speaker 1>Like if you are more effeminate and you're a great person,
<v Speaker 1>acting more masks, you know what I mean. Like, it's
<v Speaker 1>just this idea that you have to perform a version
<v Speaker 1>of yourself so that you can be loved, requires then
<v Speaker 1>you to reject a part of yourself, which is rejecting you.
<v Speaker 1>It's masking, it's all that stuff.
<v Speaker 2>And it becomes a huge issue. And I think that
<v Speaker 2>scene in particular really echoed a lot of social and
<v Speaker 2>cultural issues that just like we're ascribing different things to it.
<v Speaker 2>I think it's a very projective scene that allows people
<v Speaker 2>to see themselves and feeling not loved and that a
<v Speaker 2>person is expressing unconditional love to them.
<v Speaker 1>But it's not. It's conditional. It is conditional. If you're
<v Speaker 1>telling your kid, I do love you, but that part
<v Speaker 1>of you ew, I don't want to hear about it,
<v Speaker 1>or just don't tell me about it. That is that
<v Speaker 1>is conditional then, and.
<v Speaker 2>It is therefore cognitive dissonance. You are doing a different
<v Speaker 2>thing than you are saying.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, and Selina's got cognitive dissonance in droves oh totals,
<v Speaker 1>and you can see like in the acting of the
<v Speaker 1>animation or struggle with that.
<v Speaker 2>Right and Roomy is flat calling her on it, which
<v Speaker 2>has been fears that she's had for her whole life.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure of feeling that she's almost lovable, but she'll
<v Speaker 2>be fully lovable. I don't think she feels unloved, but
<v Speaker 2>she's not fully lovable until she gets these patterns off
<v Speaker 2>and fixes everything.
<v Speaker 1>Which is something that I see a lot in a
<v Speaker 1>lot of my clients and that I've experienced myself. Like
<v Speaker 1>I come from a very I was very impacted by
<v Speaker 1>diet culture, just because I was growing up in the
<v Speaker 1>nineties early two thousands when the fashion was low rise
<v Speaker 1>jenes or really the fashion was being very thin. Yep.
<v Speaker 1>The accessory was your flat stomach, right. And I'm not
<v Speaker 1>a naturally thin person. I never have been, I never
<v Speaker 1>will be. That's like one of those things where it's like,
<v Speaker 1>if I can just get thin enough, then I'll have
<v Speaker 1>act to everything else. And people have that about money,
<v Speaker 1>about status, about relationships, about being more modest or being pure.
<v Speaker 1>If we're thinking of this more in the religious ways,
<v Speaker 1>suppressing parts of yourself, and then if I can finally
<v Speaker 1>just squash that part of me or fit in and
<v Speaker 1>conform in this way, then I'll finally be happy. But
<v Speaker 1>because it's not authentic, really it's a lot of work.
<v Speaker 1>Because even here in the movie, this idea that Selene
<v Speaker 1>has been selling Roomy that once they get the Golden
<v Speaker 1>hund Moon that her demon self will go away, they
<v Speaker 1>don't know that that's not proven. They've never had in
<v Speaker 1>a situation like this before, they never had a Golden
<v Speaker 1>hun Moon, and they've never had someone like Roomy. So
<v Speaker 1>also who knows what would have happened when the Golden
<v Speaker 1>hunt Moon went down, right, Nobody knows. So it's also
<v Speaker 1>similarly magical thinking. The way that when I have to
<v Speaker 1>have had done my own therapy, and also when I
<v Speaker 1>work with clients with this kind of stuff, is that
<v Speaker 1>it's a very it's magical thinking this idea that I'm
<v Speaker 1>only one change of myself alf away, yeah, from having
<v Speaker 1>no problems, right, I.
<v Speaker 2>Mean, when I was a kid who had to do
<v Speaker 2>therapy on myself of realizing because I got dealing with
<v Speaker 2>bullies because it kept trying to fit in with wanting
<v Speaker 2>to have the things that the cool kids had. But
<v Speaker 2>what I could not see was the the thing was
<v Speaker 2>the exclusivity that they could other be. I didn't have
<v Speaker 2>the Jordans or the right jeans or whatever else. And
<v Speaker 2>it wasn't until therapy had helped me realize, Fuck those people,
<v Speaker 2>They're not going to accept you anyway because you keep trying.
<v Speaker 3>You try, and you get the cool thing.
<v Speaker 2>You beg your parents to do the thing, and then
<v Speaker 2>the one thing or whatever you get them to bend on.
<v Speaker 2>You're like, I have the thing, I can be cool now. Nope,
<v Speaker 2>you're still fuck you. You're still not good enough.
<v Speaker 1>Well, and even like another direction in the similar vein
<v Speaker 1>of that is that you might get that thing and
<v Speaker 1>you won't necessarily feel any different. You probably won't feel different. Nope,
<v Speaker 1>because it's an inside job problem an outside job. It's
<v Speaker 1>both well in how you think about yourself. Also, let's say,
<v Speaker 1>in the example I gave about like being thin enough,
<v Speaker 1>obviously everyone's not meant body wise to be thin. No,
<v Speaker 1>you know that's not how diversity with biology works. For example,
<v Speaker 1>if I were to get as thin as I thought
<v Speaker 1>I should be in my head, that would be my
<v Speaker 1>full time job is being that thin and saying that thin,
<v Speaker 1>I would always be performing thin. It's like there wouldn't
<v Speaker 1>be an end to that game. Whereas in the magical
<v Speaker 1>thinking that I think she has and that a lot
<v Speaker 1>of people have, which is once I get hit this milestone,
<v Speaker 1>then I can finally relax. But because you're trying to
<v Speaker 1>be in an authentic version of yourself, by nature of that,
<v Speaker 1>you're always going to be.
<v Speaker 3>Working a whole.
<v Speaker 1>You're never going to take a fucking break. Especially if
<v Speaker 1>you keep building your life around this trait of yourself
<v Speaker 1>that you've manufactured. Right, then you do get in that
<v Speaker 1>situation like we've been talking about, where to maintain the
<v Speaker 1>life that you feel like you need to feel okay,
<v Speaker 1>you have to keep performing, and so then the risk
<v Speaker 1>of being yourself gets bigger and bigger and bigger and
<v Speaker 1>bigger and bigger. So you have to keep the secretcies
<v Speaker 1>is like horrible cycle.
<v Speaker 2>And the fear grows, and the reactivity to it grows,
<v Speaker 2>and the feeling of being imprisoned and trapped and therefore
<v Speaker 2>in danger. It grows, it grows, and it grows, and
<v Speaker 2>we see that with Roumy and I was so fucking
<v Speaker 2>proud of her. And what this movie is representing is
<v Speaker 2>really like kind of gen Z stepping into the world
<v Speaker 2>and saying, fuck this, we can't win this way.
<v Speaker 3>I am proud to say fuck you.
<v Speaker 2>And of course it's a kid's movie, so she didn't
<v Speaker 2>say it that way, but she said something along lines
<v Speaker 2>of if this is what it takes to keep the
<v Speaker 2>hon moon, I'm proud to watch it get destroyed.
<v Speaker 1>Well, that's a great point too, which I was gonna
<v Speaker 1>I highlight it in my notes, is that also, if
<v Speaker 1>you raise a kid to have very rigid beliefs, then
<v Speaker 1>if when they inevitably freak out about it kind of
<v Speaker 1>we're saying they like reach breaking point, they are then
<v Speaker 1>more susceptible to having a reactive rigid belief a different
<v Speaker 1>rigid belief exact, which for her could be then fuck
<v Speaker 1>you guys. I mean, like in this there's a version
<v Speaker 1>of the story where she's like, you know what, I
<v Speaker 1>will be a demon. You know, if I can't be
<v Speaker 1>a good guy, then I'll be a bad guy. And
<v Speaker 1>I see that a lot with kids too. The reopen
<v Speaker 1>environments where they can't please, they can't fit in to
<v Speaker 1>the rigid ideas within their family or culture that gain
<v Speaker 1>them access to like love and acceptance, then they will
<v Speaker 1>just go the whole opposite direction. Because if you're not
<v Speaker 1>taught nuance in the way that in flexibility, really it's flexibility.
<v Speaker 1>If you're not taught how to be flexible in your thinking,
<v Speaker 1>you have to learn how to be flexible in your thinking,
<v Speaker 1>and you have to you have to make a choice
<v Speaker 1>in like therapy or other things to practice flexibility. You do,
<v Speaker 1>and so you don't just get it one day. And
<v Speaker 1>so in her situation, there is a realistic maybe maybe
<v Speaker 1>even a more realistic version of the story where she
<v Speaker 1>goes full bad well demon because she's like fuck the
<v Speaker 1>hun noon. Then like when she kind of says, like
<v Speaker 1>what good is it? Then yeah, and she goes full
<v Speaker 1>the other way because she only knows how to live
<v Speaker 1>in these rigid ideas.
<v Speaker 2>She right, And in order to live in rigid ideas
<v Speaker 2>like that, you become inflexible because you're trying to fit
<v Speaker 2>the chaos of the world and the changes that happen
<v Speaker 2>into a narrative that no longer applies to it. Because
<v Speaker 2>it's from a previous generation's viewpoint, and sometimes many times
<v Speaker 2>that wisdom can be taken into account, but it does
<v Speaker 2>not always apply to what's happening now. And it's vital
<v Speaker 2>that when working with kids are people of different generational spots,
<v Speaker 2>that you don't try to force them to adapt to
<v Speaker 2>your narrative, but you listen to what their reality is
<v Speaker 2>and help them understand theirs. Having a seven year old daughter,
<v Speaker 2>I know school is different for her than it was
<v Speaker 2>for me. Some things are not different. Kids are still
<v Speaker 2>the way that they were. They're shitty and mean and
<v Speaker 2>trying to figure out who they are and bully each other.
<v Speaker 1>But a lot of things are not the same.
<v Speaker 2>And for me to assume the way things were for
<v Speaker 2>me and how I would have solved problems will work
<v Speaker 2>for her is ignorant and it won't work. And we
<v Speaker 2>see a beautiful moment where instead of going full villain,
<v Speaker 2>we see Roomy going too full acceptance and realize, I
<v Speaker 2>can't win your way. I can't win and keep myself restricted.
<v Speaker 2>If I try and keep doing it this way, it
<v Speaker 2>is going to fail. So she finds that kind of
<v Speaker 2>benefit of nihilism, going like fuck this nothing matters doing
<v Speaker 2>it this way, So why not try another way? Where
<v Speaker 2>she goes, I'm going to try accepting myself. I'm going
<v Speaker 2>to try listening to what Ginu told me. There's a
<v Speaker 2>really powerful statement he made to her that I think
<v Speaker 2>sunk in and prompted this was if hate could have
<v Speaker 2>defeated Guima, I would have done it a long time ago.
<v Speaker 1>Trust he was being authentic there.
<v Speaker 2>Ghama punished him for that, and that's what prompts this
<v Speaker 2>whole sequence. He goes through the free song and then
<v Speaker 2>betrays her in the takedown song.
<v Speaker 3>He orchestrates that. But seeing this is really important.
<v Speaker 2>It is a really powerful scene where we see a
<v Speaker 2>confrontation of what you taught me and held me to
<v Speaker 2>is no longer applicable to reality.
<v Speaker 1>And I also think the sealin thing made me think
<v Speaker 1>about how she is hypervigilant. The existence of roomy probably
<v Speaker 1>really scares her, you know, of course, and how it
<v Speaker 1>challenges her and makes her uncomfortable and all that stuff,
<v Speaker 1>And so she's reacting with hypervigilance as the solution to that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And then how that can create hypervigilance in your kids,
<v Speaker 1>It can create nihilism, it can create this idea that
<v Speaker 1>maybe the like I think in more realistic settings, it
<v Speaker 1>can create this idea within kids that the world is scary,
<v Speaker 1>or that the world's full of people who won't like you,
<v Speaker 1>that you have to protect yourself from the world in
<v Speaker 1>a way that makes the world a very unfriendly place.
<v Speaker 1>And how kids can inherit that level of hypervigilance and
<v Speaker 1>anxiety that isn't I wouldn't say that is a generalized
<v Speaker 1>anxiety sword or something like that in its own right,
<v Speaker 1>Like that's something that it can be very learned, and
<v Speaker 1>how when we are too over the top with trying
<v Speaker 1>to protect our children, we can actually just be passing
<v Speaker 1>down this idea about the world and about other people
<v Speaker 1>that can really lead children to very depressed and secure,
<v Speaker 1>frightened places and keep them trapped.
<v Speaker 2>There would no resources that they can grow or develop
<v Speaker 2>because they are not safe enough to take a chance
<v Speaker 2>to learn the skills to cope and adapt.
<v Speaker 1>And I think this is a great time to take
<v Speaker 1>another break and be right back. So one thing I
<v Speaker 1>did want to bring up, but then we went another direction,
<v Speaker 1>a good direction with the discussion. But one thing I
<v Speaker 1>did want to make to talk about is how when
<v Speaker 1>you're raised with this rigidity and secret keeping and shame.
<v Speaker 1>How it creates we talked about already like isolation, but
<v Speaker 1>then I think how that isolation can make us very
<v Speaker 1>vulnerable to other people, Yeah, and other messages. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>so it's not even just I might view the world
<v Speaker 1>as scary or I might be very isolated with just myself.
<v Speaker 1>I think it also creates what we see in this movie,
<v Speaker 1>where someone like genew can come in and take advantage
<v Speaker 1>of roomy. I know that it goes to a more authentic, genuine,
<v Speaker 1>healthy place. Yeah, but there's a version of a story
<v Speaker 1>where that doesn't happen. I think also this movie really
<v Speaker 1>demonstrates how if you are in a situation where you're
<v Speaker 1>keeping secrets, either because you've been taught to keep secrets
<v Speaker 1>or you think you're supposed to keep a secret, that
<v Speaker 1>then it just it makes you very vulnerable to someone
<v Speaker 1>coming in and taking advantage of you.
<v Speaker 2>It does, and in a less simple movie, Yeah, there's
<v Speaker 2>way more narrative possibilities and realism that would have hit.
<v Speaker 3>This movie is very idealistic.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean it's a kid's movie. Of course, because
<v Speaker 1>I'm an adult watching it, I was like, what's this
<v Speaker 1>guy's game. I have that adult cynicism where I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>so he's just telling the truth about all this, still right?
<v Speaker 1>And I think he actually was. I remember it's a
<v Speaker 1>kid's movie, so he probably is being very authentic and whatever.
<v Speaker 1>He also could have been saying the very same things,
<v Speaker 1>but in that more like grooming nefarious way. It reminded
<v Speaker 1>me a lot of and you're gonna get kicked out
<v Speaker 1>of this Ben Star Wars and snuck snoke snuk. Oh. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this is very ky janew is very Kylo Rent, very
<v Speaker 1>much in that. And then he tries to then project
<v Speaker 1>that onto like Kylo rendas to write to Ray. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I could talk about that all day, that relationship. How
<v Speaker 1>you know he finds vulnerabilion in her because he's he's
<v Speaker 1>getting the same thing done to him. Guima is his snoke. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>because what is true about someone like Roomy when you're
<v Speaker 1>doing all this secret, keeping all this shame, is that,
<v Speaker 1>like you were saying, Ben, like part of being a
<v Speaker 1>human is wanting to be love and accepted by other people. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>no negotiable, and that isn't something that goes away, no,
<v Speaker 1>as you said. And so then if you are someone
<v Speaker 1>who's very isolated by your shame and feels like no
<v Speaker 1>one will ever love you or no wherever like you.
<v Speaker 1>Then someone comes in, like Genu, who's very cute. All
<v Speaker 1>of a sudden, he's saying all the right things. He's
<v Speaker 1>saying that like kind of scary stuff. Off, no one
<v Speaker 1>understands you like me. Yeah, it's a very scary thing
<v Speaker 1>for someone to say to anyone, because that's that's a
<v Speaker 1>big red flag, y'all if anyone's ever like, no one
<v Speaker 1>gets you like me. Oh, no one understands you like me.
<v Speaker 1>And that's him trying to insert like take well, he's
<v Speaker 1>taking advantage of the fact that that is how she
<v Speaker 1>really feels and she is wanting someone to finally love
<v Speaker 1>her unconditionally, and so there are people in the world
<v Speaker 1>obviously who will take advantage of that. And you see
<v Speaker 1>that in like controlling relationships things like that. Where that
<v Speaker 1>could where this movie could have gone if it was
<v Speaker 1>like a darker adult movie. Is he sweeps in and
<v Speaker 1>he fully like controls her because he has connected unconditional love,
<v Speaker 1>even though it wouldn't be eventually to him creating an
<v Speaker 1>isolation chamber, which is what we see with I'll Go
<v Speaker 1>back to star wars Kyla Ren Snow and then what
<v Speaker 1>he tries to replicate with Ray, which is you're nobody
<v Speaker 1>but not to me right and Gin you kind of
<v Speaker 1>does the same thing to Roomy oh, which is also
<v Speaker 1>so when you engage in shaming your kids or secret
<v Speaker 1>keeping about things, you are opening up the back door
<v Speaker 1>to your kid for someone to sneak in. Who will
<v Speaker 1>tell your kid, oh, no, I love you no matter what,
<v Speaker 1>or actually, like, I really like that about you. And
<v Speaker 1>then if you're already someone who keeps secrets, then you
<v Speaker 1>won't have a problem keeping a secret about this person.
<v Speaker 1>It's just it's a fertile round for a lot of
<v Speaker 1>bad stuff.
<v Speaker 2>And we've been warned about this thing through media since forever.
<v Speaker 2>Even as you're saying this is what's occurring to me,
<v Speaker 2>is Pinocchio?
<v Speaker 1>Hm?
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, honest, Tom red Flag.
<v Speaker 1>You want to come be a donkey son?
<v Speaker 2>No, but he wants them to come perform the donkeys.
<v Speaker 2>I think it's a separate plot line.
<v Speaker 1>I haven't watched Pinocchio in a thousand years.
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, You see it like Pinocchio wants nothing more than
<v Speaker 2>to be like a real boy and to be accepted
<v Speaker 2>into like to be seen, and Geppetto doesn't let him.
<v Speaker 2>So the first person that comes along and it's like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>you want to be seen, he's like go on, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Because basically, you're creating a starvation within yourself, if it's
<v Speaker 1>you that's secret keeping to yourself, or if you the
<v Speaker 1>parent are encouraging secret keeping, like in this movie, you're
<v Speaker 1>creating a stay of a starvation in your child. And
<v Speaker 1>if they get an opportunity to get fed in this area,
<v Speaker 1>they will eat.
<v Speaker 2>And this is what attachment theory is really all about, exactly,
<v Speaker 2>because the more that people have a hunger, the more
<v Speaker 2>they're going to seek and be unable to resist.
<v Speaker 1>They need to get fed in that way. And you
<v Speaker 1>see it, and it doesn't take long for Roomy to
<v Speaker 1>get really sucked into Genu, and I think that's realistic.
<v Speaker 1>It's someone like her who's so isolated.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, but it also remember like with this movie, a
<v Speaker 2>Ginu is just as sucked in by her.
<v Speaker 1>And that's also where I was going to go to,
<v Speaker 1>is that he's his own isolated echo chamber right where
<v Speaker 1>he's only getting this one message that I'm a piece
<v Speaker 1>of and I did something really shitty that's like my
<v Speaker 1>defining event for four hundred years. He starts to get
<v Speaker 1>swayed by that. His feels a little, his feels less
<v Speaker 1>problematic because he's his more feels like he's actually getting
<v Speaker 1>out of his isolation and out of zecho chamber in
<v Speaker 1>that like both being part of the Sondra Boys and
<v Speaker 1>when they're at the publicity thing and she's like, maybe
<v Speaker 1>you should listen to these voices, not the ones in
<v Speaker 1>your head. Like he's getting more exposure to alternative views
<v Speaker 1>of himself.
<v Speaker 2>That's true, but remember his first motivation is to get
<v Speaker 2>the voices to stop.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, And so he's got his own desperation, and then
<v Speaker 1>that gets pulled back in because then Guema like doubles
<v Speaker 1>down and he does the shame secret keeping stuff too,
<v Speaker 1>where he's like, if she knew who you really were,
<v Speaker 1>she'd fucking hate.
<v Speaker 2>You right where And Grimaud at the introduction of Genu,
<v Speaker 2>tells us I've known you for four hundred years.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I really know you.
<v Speaker 2>You've never done a single thing that didn't benefit yourself.
<v Speaker 2>What do you want? Like he clocks him immediately, like
<v Speaker 2>you're full of shit, what do you want?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? But also he's been living in this world for
<v Speaker 1>four hundred years where you weren't encouraged I assume to
<v Speaker 1>do anything but self serving bad things of course.
<v Speaker 2>But then shamed for them. Yes, so that Guema could
<v Speaker 2>maintain control.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so it's a that's a self perpetuating situation.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and you're seeing him kind of break out of it,
<v Speaker 2>so it gets it is complicated in that way. The
<v Speaker 2>best version of it happened where Ginu is struggling to
<v Speaker 2>escape because what you're saying is true, Like he gets
<v Speaker 2>kind of pulled out of it when he sees someone
<v Speaker 2>with pattern living free.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And I think it's part of the thing too.
<v Speaker 1>We've been talking about where to open up and to
<v Speaker 1>trust others, you have to take risks, whether it's like
<v Speaker 1>actual risks or more just emotional risks, risks against maybe
<v Speaker 1>the belief system you have, So you're taking some form
<v Speaker 1>of risk yep, even when she's saying things like maybe
<v Speaker 1>you should listen to those voices not the ones in
<v Speaker 1>your head, kind of pulling him out a bit. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you can feel him acknowledging that he's taking a risk
<v Speaker 1>and that that's like ooh scary obviously, And so he's
<v Speaker 1>in that moment where he is also very vulnerable in
<v Speaker 1>terms of like do I take a risk and really
<v Speaker 1>go for it and be brave, yeah, or do I
<v Speaker 1>go back to what I know? And unfortunately Weima grabs
<v Speaker 1>him during that very trepidacious period. Yep, unfortunately does that
<v Speaker 1>thing that does happen in real life, which is you
<v Speaker 1>can't do that. If they only knew the real you,
<v Speaker 1>they'd hate you, and just reaffirms the things that scare him,
<v Speaker 1>just scares him back into his hole. Correct. Yeah, he's
<v Speaker 1>popping his head out. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I think the whole point of his interactions and sneaking
<v Speaker 2>off them, sneaking off to meet each other in very
<v Speaker 2>geen romance thing is like trying to figure out and
<v Speaker 2>find your way, and yeah, have somebody else that sees
<v Speaker 2>you and it actually be like a moment that their
<v Speaker 2>mask is down mm hm and they're telling you the
<v Speaker 2>truth and they're letting you in and it feels really intimate.
<v Speaker 2>But you, unfortunately, when we're young and blinded by love
<v Speaker 2>and lust, we like you before, get a little stupid
<v Speaker 2>that we can't see even sometimes when people are being
<v Speaker 2>genuine with us, that they may not being genuine with themselves,
<v Speaker 2>or they may be being genuine to the degree that
<v Speaker 2>they are capable of, but it may not be their
<v Speaker 2>entire motivation.
<v Speaker 1>Well. Yeah, and even from the sense of protectiveness to
<v Speaker 1>in guardedness, like the hypervigilance we mentioned earlier that it's
<v Speaker 1>so hard to break out of that. And also part
<v Speaker 1>of that hypervigilance and part of when you're in your
<v Speaker 1>own like shame spiral, is that you can assume that
<v Speaker 1>other people think the way that you do, or that
<v Speaker 1>other people can't like you like you're trying to, like
<v Speaker 1>cognitive dissonance wise, you're trying to make the external stimuli
<v Speaker 1>match your internal beliefs. And so how that can look
<v Speaker 1>too is you're being really nice to me, But are
<v Speaker 1>you being nice to me because you want something from me?
<v Speaker 1>Are you being nice to me because YadA YadA, YadA,
<v Speaker 1>YadA YadA, you know, poking holes in it? Yeah, which
<v Speaker 1>allows us to stay in our little bubble of security,
<v Speaker 1>even though the security can feel hellish in nature. And
<v Speaker 1>I think that's part of it too, even with Genu
<v Speaker 1>trusting Roomy well and vice versa. But I think more
<v Speaker 1>Genu trusting Roomy is that he's coming from such a
<v Speaker 1>place that has well in the hell world he's in.
<v Speaker 1>It's like such a place of everyone's out for themselves,
<v Speaker 1>everyone's intentions are bad. And if that's the belief system
<v Speaker 1>you have, not necessarily about yourself, but about everyone around you,
<v Speaker 1>then it's hard not to assume those things are true
<v Speaker 1>when other people with other people, even if they're showing
<v Speaker 1>you contradictory information, so then your brain will warp that
<v Speaker 1>information to fit here a narrative. I think that's what
<v Speaker 1>happens a lot actually, people that struggle with personality disorders
<v Speaker 1>as much as they get a very bad rap in
<v Speaker 1>our society and a lot of really mean, awful over simplifications,
<v Speaker 1>very much of those diagnoses. When I've worked with people
<v Speaker 1>that have those some version of those diagnoses, it's really
<v Speaker 1>more that they have such a deep feeling of shame
<v Speaker 1>with them themselves, and so whenever other people are interacting
<v Speaker 1>with them, they're like contorting those experiences to match their insides. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>you can't be open other people. You have to be
<v Speaker 1>on your guard. And a lot of people with personal
<v Speaker 1>disorders come from trauma. So like with someone like gen
<v Speaker 1>knew like in that by environment, he didn't just come
<v Speaker 1>up with those ideas on his own Nope, they're reinforced
<v Speaker 1>by life experience unfortunately.
<v Speaker 2>Right, And he is taking risks to be vulnerable and
<v Speaker 2>explore that trust, but getting pulled back in and it's
<v Speaker 2>a struggle.
<v Speaker 3>He actually, you know, reminds me a lot.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, besides Kylo Rn is the brother from slum
<v Speaker 2>Dog Millionaire.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, I haven't seen that movie since, like it first
<v Speaker 1>came out probably twenty years ago. It's wow, So I couldn't.
<v Speaker 1>I can't grab for that reference for you.
<v Speaker 2>So the brother kind of falls into the gang world
<v Speaker 2>more or less and realizes he can you know, he
<v Speaker 2>kind of has like a mean streak and manipulate and
<v Speaker 2>kind of fawns when they're going to blind him, and
<v Speaker 2>he starts tricking some of the other people into being blinded,
<v Speaker 2>and they realize that he's kind of he could be
<v Speaker 2>like a you know, part of this is workable.
<v Speaker 1>He's workable and.
<v Speaker 2>Kind of falls into that like unethical side of things
<v Speaker 2>the whole way. And then he's part of the reason
<v Speaker 2>that the brother gets rescued and it's him turning back
<v Speaker 2>on the voices. But they struggle in a similar way,
<v Speaker 2>and it's a it's a common trope that we see
<v Speaker 2>of this person who's conflicted, but maybe they're not really bad.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, it's it's Darth Vader, it's Kyla Ren.
<v Speaker 1>And for someone like Guema, it's more about control right
<v Speaker 1>of him. Where was Selene? Like we were saying her
<v Speaker 1>thing is more about fear and genuine anxiety that springs
<v Speaker 1>from these generational ideas.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Guema seems to represent the kind of inherent struggle
<v Speaker 2>with good and evil and Selene represents the societal conformity.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, both have their their places.
<v Speaker 2>And I think this movie did a beautiful job of
<v Speaker 2>showing that both can be villainous, even if one is unintentional.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, let's take a break here and then we'll be
<v Speaker 1>back with talking about sort of I guess the antidote,
<v Speaker 1>if you will, to what we've been talking about so far.
<v Speaker 1>What do they say like shame grows in darkness? Yep?
<v Speaker 1>How do you fight it? As you bring in the light?
<v Speaker 1>And how do you do that? Is what we see
<v Speaker 1>in this movie, which is you have to get to
<v Speaker 1>a point where you can feel ready to take the
<v Speaker 1>risk we've been talking about, which is can I tell someone, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>one person, one person, some part of what's going on.
<v Speaker 1>What she said in the movie that I wrote down. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>how like she gets her voice back when she starts
<v Speaker 1>to talk to Ginu about her shame. Yep, which is
<v Speaker 1>if I haven't heard the most simplistic way to talk
<v Speaker 1>about therapy. I was kind of like Yanoda, but I said,
<v Speaker 1>thought that because I'm a therapist. What what if you
<v Speaker 1>talk to someone about what's going on with you? You'll
<v Speaker 1>feel better and not as full of shame. What a
<v Speaker 1>crazy idea.
<v Speaker 2>You'll be lighter and more functional and not feel so
<v Speaker 2>comps pressed.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, wild, and you'll feel like able to do the
<v Speaker 1>things that you love. Crazy. That's such a I mean
<v Speaker 1>that's a very simplistic example. I mean, luckily, like we
<v Speaker 1>were saying, luckily Genos gene Genu. Luckily Genu turned out
<v Speaker 1>to be someone that didn't totally fucker over and take
<v Speaker 1>advantage of her. No, and the end he sacrifices himself. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>because and everyone, because it is Harry that the person
<v Speaker 1>that she experiences is with is also the person who
<v Speaker 1>is taking advantage of her isolation. Yeah, that's that's a
<v Speaker 1>scary version of this.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, there's like there's there's parts of him that are
<v Speaker 2>at war. He's at war with himself.
<v Speaker 1>He does.
<v Speaker 2>He loses that battles, but he doesn't lose the war.
<v Speaker 2>But in real life it's you know, it's quite rare.
<v Speaker 1>And also in real life it's not as easy as
<v Speaker 1>someone in your life saying I love you, Can you
<v Speaker 1>tell me what's going on? Obviously that will help tremendously,
<v Speaker 1>but it still requires you as the individual to take
<v Speaker 1>the very scary and I always want to acknowledge every
<v Speaker 1>people the very scary risk of and I let someone
<v Speaker 1>see me. Can I tell someone my secret? And I
<v Speaker 1>can't control the outcome of that. I can't control how
<v Speaker 1>they'll respond. I can make an educated guess, like I
<v Speaker 1>can definitely be thoughtful about who I choose to talk to,
<v Speaker 1>how I choose to tell them, and YadA, YadA. It's
<v Speaker 1>still a risk in the sense that there's uncertainty there.
<v Speaker 2>It's a huge risk. I've been watching Yellow Jackets thinking
<v Speaker 2>about that show. Even the scene where Misty makes a friend.
<v Speaker 2>I forgot that girl's name, but Misty makes a friend.
<v Speaker 1>Is actually a spoiler alert. I mean it's three seasons in,
<v Speaker 1>so what still just watching Yellow spoiler alert?
<v Speaker 3>If you start watching Yellow Jackets in.
<v Speaker 1>A streaming society, Missy, I mean.
<v Speaker 2>Misty makes a friend and then tells her the truth
<v Speaker 2>about the bananas, saying that Misty did it cause all
<v Speaker 2>of them to be stuck there.
<v Speaker 3>And she reveals that secret.
<v Speaker 2>He's like the relief on her, But that girl's face
<v Speaker 2>goes from like they're telling each other benign secrets and
<v Speaker 2>Misty being no why she just doesn't understand it, Like
<v Speaker 2>this secret resulted in everybody being super fucked and people dying.
<v Speaker 1>Not the same.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but that girl immediately turns on it, and it's
<v Speaker 2>like that moment of shame that everyone fears, yeah, well happened,
<v Speaker 2>that people will reject you because of these shameful things
<v Speaker 2>that you did. But there's only some things like what
<v Speaker 2>Missy did that might actually cause that reaction. And most
<v Speaker 2>of the time it's a it's a dark fantasy we
<v Speaker 2>entertain of if I say this, I'm going to be
<v Speaker 2>rejected just like that, where someone's like, you fucking freak,
<v Speaker 2>I can't believe you are losing all of the love
<v Speaker 2>that I ever gave you.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And also part of the Misty thing is that
<v Speaker 1>what she confesses to is also a bit of an outlier.
<v Speaker 1>Right if Rumy had said to her friends. Hey, guess what,
<v Speaker 1>I'm happy to give it. And also I have been
<v Speaker 1>killing our loved ones and I've been sabotaging all of
<v Speaker 1>our plans behind your back. Hah. That's not really so
<v Speaker 1>much as telling a secret as confessing yeah, differently something bad,
<v Speaker 1>something hurtful. And also, so I think bridging off of
<v Speaker 1>that example is when I work with people and honestly
<v Speaker 1>actually me as the therapist, a lot of times we
<v Speaker 1>are obviously the first person that someone will tell a
<v Speaker 1>secret to. Sometimes I joke that I'm a professional secret keeper.
<v Speaker 1>The reason why people will tell a therapist is because
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of ethical, expensive consequences that a therapist
<v Speaker 1>will face if they don't keep your secret. Yep. So
<v Speaker 1>it's a very very very safe thing. And also, as
<v Speaker 1>we've talked about before, more often than nine nine nine
<v Speaker 1>percent of the time, you don't know your therapist outside
<v Speaker 1>of the therapy's relationship. Nope. So also, I have no
<v Speaker 1>personal interest in whatever the person in front of me
<v Speaker 1>is telling me. Secret wise, Yep, it doesn't impact me
<v Speaker 1>at all. It do won't hurt my feelings. Even if
<v Speaker 1>they were saying my secret is I hate your guts,
<v Speaker 1>I'd be like, Okay, well after this, I only see
<v Speaker 1>you an hour week professionally, so I'm a safe person
<v Speaker 1>to tell a secret too, right, And so sometimes and
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure you know that to Ben, because I'm sure
<v Speaker 1>you have the same experience. We are the first people.
<v Speaker 1>And then we can help that person through like coaching,
<v Speaker 1>discussing processing how and when, well when if when, how
<v Speaker 1>they feel ready to share that more with other people
<v Speaker 1>in their life. Right, kind of going off the misty
<v Speaker 1>example is something I will tell people, especially if the
<v Speaker 1>secret's pretty hardcore, which and it might be something like
<v Speaker 1>I have to tell you I've been lying to you,
<v Speaker 1>or I'm having an affair or something really bleak. And
<v Speaker 1>if it's directly impacting the person you're going to tell,
<v Speaker 1>then I do tell them. You have to be ready.
<v Speaker 1>Part of the preparing is preparing for the potential ballout
<v Speaker 1>and the outcome. And I think with someone like Roomy, though,
<v Speaker 1>it's more who are people in your life that feel
<v Speaker 1>the most able to encourage you if you tell them? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>like Selene, she knows the secret, so she wouldn't be
<v Speaker 1>a good person to tell, But I mean that'd be moot.
<v Speaker 1>So basically, like let's say if it was more that
<v Speaker 1>Slee she was part of a family and maybe like
<v Speaker 1>her parents are the most rigid, maybe she's a sibling.
<v Speaker 1>That's not right. I'd be like, what, who in your
<v Speaker 1>life is the person that you think might have the
<v Speaker 1>most ideal response? Sure, oh the manager, Yeah, I forgot
<v Speaker 1>his name. Yeah, that most ideal response to what you
<v Speaker 1>would share, Because you kind of want to warm them
<v Speaker 1>up too, because because it's such a risky thing that
<v Speaker 1>in such a scary thing people are doing, obviously I
<v Speaker 1>want them to feel as encouraged as possible, and well,
<v Speaker 1>at least as less discouraged. Maybe it's more like as
<v Speaker 1>minimally discouraged as possible. So a lot of it can
<v Speaker 1>be really thinking over who's the safest person you can tell,
<v Speaker 1>who think will have the best reaction or the closest
<v Speaker 1>reaction to you want to have them to have doctor Hutt.
<v Speaker 1>And then we would talk about oh no, And then
<v Speaker 1>we would talk about how you would want to actually
<v Speaker 1>say that secret. What's the context, what's the setting, all
<v Speaker 1>that kind of stuff, because also you don't want a
<v Speaker 1>secret to just be blurted out. You don't want to
<v Speaker 1>be telling a secret when the person isn't giving you
<v Speaker 1>the full attention or doesn't know that you're about to
<v Speaker 1>have a capital C conversation. Nope, And you don't want
<v Speaker 1>to tell maybe the highest risk person or like the
<v Speaker 1>highest risk high reward person either. No, you want to
<v Speaker 1>ease maybe ease into it.
<v Speaker 2>It's important that you do that because people need to
<v Speaker 2>see that. But what I think of the fantasy thing
<v Speaker 2>of the dark fantasy that people have, is they need
<v Speaker 2>to see and feel in their body that when they
<v Speaker 2>choose to tell that safe person, that that person does
<v Speaker 2>the opposite of that dark fantasy where they give them
<v Speaker 2>love and acceptance. And have some clients who are entering
<v Speaker 2>their sixties mid sixties and feel shame for things that
<v Speaker 2>happened when they were teenagers or before. Thinking people in
<v Speaker 2>their life will still see them, yeah, with the shame
<v Speaker 2>that they see themselves and may even reject them because
<v Speaker 2>most people have worked really hard to not be the
<v Speaker 2>shittiest version of themselves. But sometimes people hold that shame
<v Speaker 2>over themselves for their whole life, and it almost blocks
<v Speaker 2>them from being able to love themselves, let alone some
<v Speaker 2>in particular, let someone else love them, which is kind
<v Speaker 2>of the importance of this therapy relationship where you help
<v Speaker 2>them build practice at telling the safest person possible the
<v Speaker 2>deepest secret and getting a non reaction yeah, to a
<v Speaker 2>compassionate reaction of you were a kid.
<v Speaker 1>Well, yeah, I will tell you this when it's a
<v Speaker 1>very specific feeling when a client starts to prep you
<v Speaker 1>for a secret, yep, as if they're about to tell
<v Speaker 1>you the worst thing you've ever heard. And so then
<v Speaker 1>in my brain, so then my brains are doing the
<v Speaker 1>whole like make sure your faceless neutral, Yeah, make sure
<v Speaker 1>your face is neutral. Like a lot of being a
<v Speaker 1>therapist is actually like what did my face look like
<v Speaker 1>in your own head? Do I look calm? And then
<v Speaker 1>they'll tell me something that's so in my experience so
<v Speaker 1>benign usually or just not as like I'm ready for
<v Speaker 1>a ten secret, and usually it's more like a four.
<v Speaker 1>I remember one time you got a ten. Oh, that
<v Speaker 1>is true, I have got but like more often than not,
<v Speaker 1>it's like a four or five. But because also we
<v Speaker 1>are so isolated within ourselves about things that we feel
<v Speaker 1>shameful about, it becomes a boogeyman in our head. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And then this also can be really true. More often
<v Speaker 1>than not, you finally tell someone let the boogeyman out,
<v Speaker 1>and the usually the reactions more like oh okay, or
<v Speaker 1>kind of what these girls like mirran Zobe is like
<v Speaker 1>yeah I knew something was up, you know shit, or
<v Speaker 1>even like when people come out as gay and their
<v Speaker 1>family's like, yeah, we knew, like I said, Like, more often,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if this will help anybody feel better,
<v Speaker 1>but more often than not, when a client finally tells
<v Speaker 1>me something they've been really front loading, yeah, I'm like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>it's almost like I have to make sure not to
<v Speaker 1>like laugh or smile because I'm like, oh, okay, you
<v Speaker 1>you can't invalidate. But it's like I'm so prepared for
<v Speaker 1>something huge that usually when I get told, I'm like, oh, okay,
<v Speaker 1>let's talk about that more. We do think we can tell,
<v Speaker 1>and you're right, like, if nothing else, we give them
<v Speaker 1>the experience of telling someone of them doing the scariest thing,
<v Speaker 1>finally saying the worst thing they could about themselves, and
<v Speaker 1>getting usually probably a pretty neutral response. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, at therapists, we're largely supposed to have a
<v Speaker 2>neutrally compassionate response, but not too compassionate, because too compassionate
<v Speaker 2>for those secrets can be invalidating.
<v Speaker 1>For sure, And also I think it can be helpful
<v Speaker 1>for clients to be honest with them in the context
<v Speaker 1>of that's tough. It sounds like you made a bad
<v Speaker 1>choice at a certain point in your life, So it's
<v Speaker 1>like it can and sometimes it can be more contextualizing it.
<v Speaker 2>Also, Yeah, what I like to do with those It
<v Speaker 2>sounds like it really hurts you still, Yeah, that that
<v Speaker 2>was a true thing that happened, and that that doesn't
<v Speaker 2>feel like the you you want to be or have become, or.
<v Speaker 1>Even like the fact that it's bothering you so fucking
<v Speaker 1>much means a lot about the fact that you are
<v Speaker 1>a person who wants to be kind or nice or thoughtful.
<v Speaker 1>You know, right, if you are really a monster, you
<v Speaker 1>wouldn't give a shit, not one about this thing you're
<v Speaker 1>carrying within you. Oh shit right, that's the irony of it.
<v Speaker 2>And helping people reach that point of trust and acceptance
<v Speaker 2>where you are choosing to love you, all of you,
<v Speaker 2>and then allowing other people to see you and seeing
<v Speaker 2>that they can.
<v Speaker 3>And that you are lovable.
<v Speaker 2>That's what this is, what it sounds like, which is
<v Speaker 2>ironically my daughter's favorite. But hearing and seeing the way
<v Speaker 2>that there's this huge battle unfolding, and Roomy's showing up
<v Speaker 2>in front of everyone in her half demon form, and
<v Speaker 2>she's singing that this is who I am, nothing but
<v Speaker 2>the truth, nothing but the truth now, and you see
<v Speaker 2>her kind of shattering that idea that I can only
<v Speaker 2>be good enough, like the cultural idea, and God can
<v Speaker 2>only be good enough by being perfect, by conforming to
<v Speaker 2>this ideal that isn't possible. It's unachievable, it's unattainable, it's
<v Speaker 2>not real.
<v Speaker 1>Nobody can do it.
<v Speaker 2>Instead of being the one example that can, I'm going
<v Speaker 2>to be an example of somebody who has tried really
<v Speaker 2>hard and decides to stop masking and show you the
<v Speaker 2>real person underneath, not the fantasy that exists, but be
<v Speaker 2>the real person. And through that I can myself enough
<v Speaker 2>to be loved.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and I mean because this is a kid's movie
<v Speaker 1>and they want a kid to kids who get a
<v Speaker 1>very specific message from it. It does work out in
<v Speaker 1>that she accepts herself and she walks back into that
<v Speaker 1>arena and her two friends find her. They go to her,
<v Speaker 1>and then they work together. They have a kind of
<v Speaker 1>like an ideal response. They have an ideal secondary response.
<v Speaker 2>Right, and it took me many times of watching it
<v Speaker 2>to catch the Grima was hypnotizing more or less. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>the crowd, right, Like the girls are all stuck in
<v Speaker 2>their shit.
<v Speaker 1>With those little thingies too, right.
<v Speaker 2>And they're kind of they're just walking with the crowd,
<v Speaker 2>both Mira and Zoi separately.
<v Speaker 1>Well, because that whole thing too, which we haven't even
<v Speaker 1>talked about, is also how someone like Wima, a predator yep,
<v Speaker 1>I guess, can take advantage of people when they're feeling
<v Speaker 1>vulnerable it. Yeah, so like those two, the two girls
<v Speaker 1>are very vulnerable because their life has been exploded yep,
<v Speaker 1>because of what's going on with Rumy, and so they
<v Speaker 1>are prepped for someone like Wema to just like find
<v Speaker 1>those cracks and just like sink their teeth into it. Correct.
<v Speaker 2>And as we see that as it's happening, those shame
<v Speaker 2>voices are coming through and hitting everyone, but they're all
<v Speaker 2>just walking like little moths into flame at that point. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And it's not until Droomy steps out and starts revealing
<v Speaker 2>her shame and her vulnerabilities instead of trying to be
<v Speaker 2>this like perfect ideal thing that they can be drawn
<v Speaker 2>to to try to be what she's displaying which isn't
<v Speaker 2>real for her either, yea. But by dropping all of
<v Speaker 2>that and being real and vulnerable and showing her scars,
<v Speaker 2>the girls also come out of their dissociation and realize
<v Speaker 2>who they are all together. It's a super powerful positive
<v Speaker 2>message of accept yourself, accept your flaws, and people can
<v Speaker 2>love the real you in the way that you've always
<v Speaker 2>needed to be loved, but you can't attain it without
<v Speaker 2>letting people in well.
<v Speaker 1>And then also, like you're saying, it can be very
<v Speaker 1>inspirational and aspirational yep, And it does inspire, like Mira
<v Speaker 1>specifically says, she says it once in the beginning, but
<v Speaker 1>then she says it again at the end, which is
<v Speaker 1>that we are part of our like mantra that we're
<v Speaker 1>taught by like Selene yep, and she was taught to
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure that we can't have any what do they say, Like,
<v Speaker 1>we can't have any like mistakes or we know we
<v Speaker 1>can't have any We have to be perfect basically is
<v Speaker 1>what she says. We're not allowed to show any weaknesses
<v Speaker 1>or vulnerabilities. That Mirror is feeling that pressure too, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure and Zoe is as well, Like how Zoe's
<v Speaker 1>dealing is by people pleasing, and how Mira's dealing is
<v Speaker 1>by being like that kind of guarded. I don't care.
<v Speaker 3>I do care, vibe.
<v Speaker 1>You know I'm conforming to not conforming, okay, Hannah, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm Zoe. Unfortunately, I'm working on it. I joke
<v Speaker 1>with my clients that I'm a recovering people pleaser when
<v Speaker 1>I'm teaching my clients how to be less people pleasy,
<v Speaker 1>and it is active work. I have to sit with
<v Speaker 1>my anxiety all the time, be like, girl, don't do it.
<v Speaker 1>I know you want to do it, but it's not
<v Speaker 1>going to work. It's not gonna bebe a letter and
<v Speaker 1>not everyone's mad at you, and even if people are
<v Speaker 1>frushraer with you, and that's okay. This is the what
<v Speaker 1>I tell myself. But also something you're saying to remind
<v Speaker 1>me of something I say to clients all the time.
<v Speaker 1>And I do believe this because something that is corny
<v Speaker 1>but true about me is I do think I am
<v Speaker 1>a optimist. I think part of that is I try
<v Speaker 1>to model vulnerability a lot. I think that's important to
<v Speaker 1>me ethically, and being a therapist actually is being one
<v Speaker 1>a good communicator and two being vulnerable, and the more
<v Speaker 1>vulnerable I am, the easier it is to be vulnerable.
<v Speaker 1>Because what I typically say to people is my working
<v Speaker 1>theory is that everyone wants to be vulnerable, but we're
<v Speaker 1>all kind of playing like vulnerability chicken with each other. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>which is who's going to be vulnerable first? Because in
<v Speaker 1>my experience, as soon as I'm vulnerable with someone, they
<v Speaker 1>tend to be vulnerable back. It's almost like they're weight
<v Speaker 1>They like, oh okay, fine. And I wonder with like
<v Speaker 1>Mira specifically, because she's the one that says that if
<v Speaker 1>like roomy going through this, it's like that she finally
<v Speaker 1>gets the permission herself to take a fucking breath and
<v Speaker 1>cannot be her version of perfect right.
<v Speaker 2>And even the lyrics that the two characters say as
<v Speaker 2>they're coming off, I think Mira says something white, I
<v Speaker 2>try to keep the colors stuck inside my head.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, I think says that because she's more bubbly, and.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah it, Zowais says that, and then Mira says instead
<v Speaker 2>of seeing something other like the colors shining off the
<v Speaker 2>broken glass, and you can tell, like, yeah, that the
<v Speaker 2>two kind of opposite.
<v Speaker 1>They're seeing themselves and what's happening.
<v Speaker 2>They're seeing themselves, and they are only doing that once
<v Speaker 2>Rumy's vulnerability is revealed and she shows it, and then
<v Speaker 2>it does inspire them to do the same and accept
<v Speaker 2>themselves and kind of reveal the things that make them
<v Speaker 2>and they apologize to each other kind of through this
<v Speaker 2>song for walling each other off, because yet again, nothing
<v Speaker 2>in this movie is an accident. In the scenes with
<v Speaker 2>doctor Han where he points out each.
<v Speaker 1>Of their shit, it's a good exposition scene.
<v Speaker 2>Totally foreshadowing, Yeah, that it is going to take even.
<v Speaker 3>Though I'm full of shit. Is I'm not full of shit.
<v Speaker 1>About what I see, but the grape juice I'm selling,
<v Speaker 1>the grape.
<v Speaker 2>Juice of selling, you know, is bullshit. But the points
<v Speaker 2>that he was making were all spot on for each
<v Speaker 2>of them. That you have to lower your walls. You
<v Speaker 2>have to stop trying to be so scary and like
<v Speaker 2>keeping people out, and you have to stop people pleasing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And a part of this, too, of like the
<v Speaker 1>dominoes of being vulnerable, is that a lot of this
<v Speaker 1>rigidity and perfectionism is self perpetuating in the group, right yep.
<v Speaker 1>And so I think the pressure of me to be
<v Speaker 1>perfect as Roomy is because Mirror is perfect. It is
<v Speaker 1>always perfect because that's we're all performing perfection for each other.
<v Speaker 1>And so then also when someone finally has a vulnerability
<v Speaker 1>to be messy, I'll put it like that, not even
<v Speaker 1>a sort of secretkeeping would just be messy. And the
<v Speaker 1>other people are like, oh, I actually am messy too
<v Speaker 1>in my own way, and they're like, oh shit, maybe
<v Speaker 1>everyone wasn't perfect and I was the only fuck up.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe we've all just been waiting, or maybe we've all
<v Speaker 1>just been performing perfection because we're assuming everybody else is perfect.
<v Speaker 2>Correct, which is like exactly what the cultural narrative is
<v Speaker 2>of this film. It's like everyone's trying to be something
<v Speaker 2>that they can't be, but everyone's got shit. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>breaking free from that is the way forward. I think
<v Speaker 2>that's why it's resonating so hard. Do you feel like
<v Speaker 2>there's anything else we want to say on that? Or
<v Speaker 2>we kind of covered it all, right, So let's take
<v Speaker 2>a break there and move into truth month.
<v Speaker 1>I hear first, So I really just thought for I
<v Speaker 1>would do family therapy with Selene and Roomy. They're obviously
<v Speaker 1>gonna need it after this event. Oh, they're gonna need
<v Speaker 1>it because I think they're still gonna I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>They left it very open ended.
<v Speaker 2>Their relationship, yeah, roomy, just like aperated like it was
<v Speaker 2>Harry Potter's.
<v Speaker 1>There's no resolution to that relationship. No, So they would
<v Speaker 1>need family therapy, and what I would want to do
<v Speaker 1>with them is repair work. Repair work is this idea
<v Speaker 1>where you walk people through or walk people from a relationship,
<v Speaker 1>whether it's a couple or a family relationship with someone
<v Speaker 1>or even friends, maybe walk them through how to process
<v Speaker 1>something that's already happened. A lot of times with repair work.
<v Speaker 1>You can even google repair work and find very specific
<v Speaker 1>questions and exercises. I use very specific questions when I
<v Speaker 1>do it. Actually just four questions I'm try to remember
<v Speaker 1>on the top of my head, But basically I asked
<v Speaker 1>people to write out what happened. Can you just tell
<v Speaker 1>the story of what happened? What's the story that I heard,
<v Speaker 1>What's the story that I took from that? Basically, what
<v Speaker 1>did I what was the meaning of it, how did
<v Speaker 1>I interpret that, what was the like the subtext of
<v Speaker 1>what happened? How did it make me feel? And then
<v Speaker 1>what do I need now from this other person to
<v Speaker 1>feel better? To and it says feel better and the
<v Speaker 1>exercise just feel better. And I think with Selene and Rumy,
<v Speaker 1>if they want to stay in a relationship of some
<v Speaker 1>sort of rental child relationship or even just be close
<v Speaker 1>at all, Roomy, it deserves and will need repair work
<v Speaker 1>from Selene yep, because what it's going to require when
<v Speaker 1>you do prepare work. And I really have to think
<v Speaker 1>that the two people I'm doing with can hang to
<v Speaker 1>do it, because you may get really brutal information yea
<v Speaker 1>from the will Yeah, like you did this to me
<v Speaker 1>you and what I heard from that is that I'm
<v Speaker 1>a piece of shit or that you don't care about me.
<v Speaker 1>Like it's pretty brutal stuff all the times. And also
<v Speaker 1>it could definitely be like a misunderstanding too. And so
<v Speaker 1>what the other what I really will do to prep
<v Speaker 1>people is you have to just sit there and listen.
<v Speaker 1>Do not defend yourself, Do not try to make sense
<v Speaker 1>of it what they're saying, because this is how they
<v Speaker 1>feel and that's real and reality is subjective. This shit
<v Speaker 1>going on usually and especially when I do with couples,
<v Speaker 1>is building on that moment. If I'm getting every time
<v Speaker 1>you do this X to every time you do X
<v Speaker 1>to me, and I react why and that doesn't make
<v Speaker 1>sense to you? More often than not, you can connect
<v Speaker 1>that reaction to a moment like this where they're like,
<v Speaker 1>it's put a filter on the relationship.
<v Speaker 3>Yep, because I could no longer.
<v Speaker 2>I realized that by the thing you said, you were
<v Speaker 2>showing a lack of openness to understanding that what you're
<v Speaker 2>doing is hurting me.
<v Speaker 1>And also, repair work is very vulnerable, like with the
<v Speaker 1>person that is sharing that with the other person. So
<v Speaker 1>with this situation where I'm not sure where Selene's at,
<v Speaker 1>I would first want to assess that Selene can tolerate
<v Speaker 1>and be encouraging to Ruemy's openness. Because the idea of
<v Speaker 1>doing this and why you put yourself through something like
<v Speaker 1>repair work, is because there's a reward on the other side,
<v Speaker 1>which is our relationship.
<v Speaker 2>Correct, But the relationship has to be real, because people
<v Speaker 2>will not suffer for no reason.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and so both parties have to be committed to
<v Speaker 1>this idea and they have to be able to tolerate it.
<v Speaker 1>I would have to make sure that Selene is ready
<v Speaker 1>to hear whatever Roomy says, and that she's probably needs
<v Speaker 1>to do her own work to be flexible enough in
<v Speaker 1>her own thinking to not push back on what room
<v Speaker 1>we might say, you know, because it would be like
<v Speaker 1>all the messages you sent me about demons growing up
<v Speaker 1>that made me feel like this, that and the other.
<v Speaker 1>What I need from now on is to be more accepting,
<v Speaker 1>to embrace this part of me. Part of what I'm
<v Speaker 1>assessing is how likely is the person going to be
<v Speaker 1>cool about that ask? Because I don't want to put
<v Speaker 1>someone like Rooming in a position where they're being so
<v Speaker 1>vulnerable and asking something like this, so like sincerely to
<v Speaker 1>this love one, and for the loved one to be
<v Speaker 1>like absolutely fucking not, you know, I mean that might
<v Speaker 1>happen no matter what, yep, but you do try to Like.
<v Speaker 1>Repair work is something I would do, like many sessions
<v Speaker 1>into working with someone working with a relationship because it
<v Speaker 1>is such a vulnerable thing. It requires them trusting me
<v Speaker 1>to and I'm asking them to do something that has
<v Speaker 1>value and not is not just a torture exercise for them.
<v Speaker 2>Both right, right, And it's it's vital that understanding getting
<v Speaker 2>into a repair session that the shitty things are going
<v Speaker 2>to be sett you need to weather them.
<v Speaker 1>You're gonna you're about to get you're in the hot seat. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>you gotta fucking take it.
<v Speaker 2>And the one thing you can't do is say the
<v Speaker 2>one fucking thing you know you can't say. So many
<v Speaker 2>times this process gets blown up, just like Selene fucked
<v Speaker 2>it up by saying the one thing you know you
<v Speaker 2>can't say, or you don't know you can't say and
<v Speaker 2>haven't refused to learn, can't do that one.
<v Speaker 3>We just need to cover you back up.
<v Speaker 1>Oh nope, or even just I'm sorry you felt that way,
<v Speaker 1>or you don't understand ye.
<v Speaker 2>All those things are things that like you get that
<v Speaker 2>look where somebody like chucks their offer lip onto their
<v Speaker 2>lower lip and looked well.
<v Speaker 1>Well. Also, what I would want to do to give
<v Speaker 1>Selene some agency and because obviously if you're doing family therapy,
<v Speaker 1>you want both people to feel like they have space. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>is I think it also could be helpful to kind
<v Speaker 1>of process altogether and where Selene's coming from, not in
<v Speaker 1>the sense of like validating the rigid messages that are
<v Speaker 1>hurting roomy, but more like kind of what we've been
<v Speaker 1>talking about, which is coming to an understanding of like
<v Speaker 1>where why did Selene feel like she had to have
<v Speaker 1>such rigid beliefs and in a way to hopefully make
<v Speaker 1>someone like Roomly understand that it's not about you actually
<v Speaker 1>like that. Selene has her own stuff that spilled onto
<v Speaker 1>you right as her child.
<v Speaker 2>Which she was able to do with Genu connecting to
<v Speaker 2>that empathy. But she will likely struggle to connect to
<v Speaker 2>that for Selene, and that will require this repair work.
<v Speaker 1>It would probably have to involve Yeah, like the repair
<v Speaker 1>work allows Selene to also demonstrate change. I do repair work,
<v Speaker 1>you're also giving someone the opportunity to hear concretely what
<v Speaker 1>the other person needs and to give that to them
<v Speaker 1>in a way. It's like a like you know, a
<v Speaker 1>what's the word I'm looking for? Like an alive branch
<v Speaker 1>Like Also it's like, here's an olive branch, like I
<v Speaker 1>recognize and I and I want to meet you where
<v Speaker 1>you're at. I want to give you what you're saying
<v Speaker 1>you need. I want to repair and I'm willing to
<v Speaker 1>do that. I'm going to suck up. I'm going to
<v Speaker 1>take what you're telling me. I'm going to suck it
<v Speaker 1>up and just say I hear you, I understand, even
<v Speaker 1>if I don't quite understand, and then I'm going to
<v Speaker 1>accept what you're telling me you need and then that
<v Speaker 1>can give enough goodwill that there might be wiggle room
<v Speaker 1>to then talk through like Selene, can you help us
<v Speaker 1>understand where you were coming from? And not like I said,
<v Speaker 1>not in a way to like like if this was
<v Speaker 1>more of like a gay client and a parent who
<v Speaker 1>is from a you know, a non gay accepting culture,
<v Speaker 1>me saying this wouldn't be now explain why gay people
<v Speaker 1>are bad or why you think that. It would be
<v Speaker 1>more like, can you help us understand where you got
<v Speaker 1>this belief from and why this belief also important for
<v Speaker 1>you to hold on to to get some understanding where
<v Speaker 1>she's coming from, like I said, And also it can
<v Speaker 1>help hopefully helprew me feel less like it's about me, well,
<v Speaker 1>my parent and their stuff that they got that they
<v Speaker 1>passed down.
<v Speaker 2>To me yep, and society then the pressure of being
<v Speaker 2>hunters and all of these things that we're a really
<v Speaker 2>small population of people within a population of people, so
<v Speaker 2>the ability for us to be understood is quite tiny.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And then also as a therapist is a time
<v Speaker 1>when you can give psychoed too of like this is
<v Speaker 1>why people do the things they do, Like all this
<v Speaker 1>stuff we've been talking about so far, so I would
<v Speaker 1>want to do family therapy with them. They're going to
<v Speaker 1>need it if they're going to have a positive relationship.
<v Speaker 1>It's very contingent upon how Salne reacts to the end
<v Speaker 1>of this movie, which.
<v Speaker 2>If I'm going to put on my hat of writer,
<v Speaker 2>it seems like the story left to tell is the
<v Speaker 2>backwards one.
<v Speaker 1>It's very open ended that part.
<v Speaker 2>And I think what we're describing would make for a
<v Speaker 2>compelling and natural building point to have a story that
<v Speaker 2>kind of shows the repair work between them, yeah, also
<v Speaker 2>tells us the story we don't know, which is what
<v Speaker 2>happened before exactly, And I think that would be a
<v Speaker 2>powerful storytelling arc, and I hope that's what they do
<v Speaker 2>for me. I think I'm going to build on a
<v Speaker 2>similar idea. I don't think I think there's more than
<v Speaker 2>one family here. And having done a lot of work
<v Speaker 2>like this with teams of police officers in my case,
<v Speaker 2>particularly people who do more risky undercover or swat or
<v Speaker 2>that kind of stuff. I've had clients that do all
<v Speaker 2>kinds of these really niche things that require trust and
<v Speaker 2>putting yourself out there a lot of risk and things
<v Speaker 2>like that, and when something happens that damages the trust
<v Speaker 2>in that team or a response. It's vitally important that
<v Speaker 2>the team gets a chance to process that as a whole.
<v Speaker 2>A person who's stuck individually may need more work, but
<v Speaker 2>if you don't process it as a team and handle
<v Speaker 2>that thing, they won't get very far in the individual
<v Speaker 2>work and will probably leave the team. And I think
<v Speaker 2>for are lovely K pop demon hunters, for them to
<v Speaker 2>stay hun tricks and not have Roomy goll Beyonce on
<v Speaker 2>them is I think we'd need to see the three
<v Speaker 2>of them do very similar repair work, but also processing.
<v Speaker 2>There need to be a lot of processing what happened
<v Speaker 2>during the time when they were apart together, because Mira
<v Speaker 2>and Zoe don't have any idea of what actually went
<v Speaker 2>on for Roomy all those years, and they will need
<v Speaker 2>to hear that to form empathy for her and understanding
<v Speaker 2>how did you get to the point where you betray us?
<v Speaker 2>We're like literally trapesing the world in private planes and
<v Speaker 2>like so intimateously close, but yet you still wall us
<v Speaker 2>off and.
<v Speaker 1>We knew it. Han knew it. The fucking scammy guy
<v Speaker 1>knew it.
<v Speaker 2>Because I mean, their grifters are good at that of
<v Speaker 2>being people readers, but man, everybody who knows you knows
<v Speaker 2>you're not.
<v Speaker 1>You're walling us off. And also to not create a
<v Speaker 1>pattern then where they're all second guessing her, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like this is going to leave a mark.
<v Speaker 2>Correct, However, there being a reason for that, an explanation
<v Speaker 2>and ability for them to connect to her story, her
<v Speaker 2>experience and demonstrate empathy will vastly decrease the time it
<v Speaker 2>takes to heal from that. But she is also going
<v Speaker 2>to at the same time need to hear why it
<v Speaker 2>hurt them so bad.
<v Speaker 1>That's true too, there's consequences for yep. Is that even
<v Speaker 1>if you made these choices or kept these secrets of
<v Speaker 1>very understandable reasons, other people are allowed to have their
<v Speaker 1>own feelings about how your actions also impacted them.
<v Speaker 2>And that's the top mistake people make when trying to
<v Speaker 2>get through these discussions is that no, I told you why,
<v Speaker 2>so it should be fine.
<v Speaker 1>Now, Like I want one hundred percent blanket validation forgiveness
<v Speaker 1>because I was hurting when I did that thing.
<v Speaker 3>Right, and I see it with couples all the time.
<v Speaker 1>Well, and then then that becomes like who's got hurt
<v Speaker 1>the worst? Olympics correct receipts.
<v Speaker 2>Move's the most right, and then we're layering each other
<v Speaker 2>and it goes poor Lee because it takes recognition that
<v Speaker 2>everybody got hurt by this and everybody wants the same things,
<v Speaker 2>which is to be heard, to feel safe, and to
<v Speaker 2>feel like whatever happened doesn't happen again.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so there's a lot of repair work. Yeah, that
<v Speaker 1>Roomy will have to do with them, Like they might
<v Speaker 1>need over the top transparency.
<v Speaker 2>For a while, they might, but what they're going to
<v Speaker 2>need before that is for Roumy to witness their pain
<v Speaker 2>and what those little scepters Guima was using to the
<v Speaker 2>little fan things, Yeah, the little fan light things or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>Only a word for it that we don't know because
<v Speaker 1>we don't listen to K pop music, the word like wands.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm sure it's clearly a whole thing. Yeah, as
<v Speaker 2>I'm not a K pop fan. And they felt weak
<v Speaker 2>and vulnerable when they're used to throwing daggers and swinging
<v Speaker 2>glaves at these things and fighting as a trio that
<v Speaker 2>can take on anything and all of a sudd and
<v Speaker 2>they're vulnerable.
<v Speaker 3>That's going to be a wound that takes all while
<v Speaker 3>to heal.
<v Speaker 1>That's very healthy for Roomy too, because you don't want
<v Speaker 1>to create this inverse situation where she can only feel
<v Speaker 1>good if everyone is like super nice and accepting of her. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>that she also has to get comfortable or more be
<v Speaker 1>able to tolerate the discomfort of people can be mad
<v Speaker 1>at you and still love you. They can. You can
<v Speaker 1>be fighting with people and still love each other. You can,
<v Speaker 1>and it doesn't have to be this all or nothing
<v Speaker 1>thing in either direction. So it's good for people like
<v Speaker 1>Roomy to also sit in the discomfort of people being
<v Speaker 1>upset with them and hearing that out.
<v Speaker 3>It does.
<v Speaker 2>And I think the one last thing I want to
<v Speaker 2>add to this is because they are a functional team
<v Speaker 2>that actually deals with real danger.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they have to really trust each other.
<v Speaker 2>They are going to need not only they're interpersonal, but
<v Speaker 2>they're professional. It's their physical side. I guess the way
<v Speaker 2>I want to put it reassured. Because they went through
<v Speaker 2>some fights where one of them fucked off, Yeah what rogue,
<v Speaker 2>and all of a sudden, they weren't functioning all three together,
<v Speaker 2>kind of knowing each other's moves. They were roomies off
<v Speaker 2>by yourself, and you can see Mira and Zobe getting
<v Speaker 2>overwhelmed when they're in the bathhouse.
<v Speaker 3>Oh mh, they're like, roomy, where are you? We need you.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they're going to need to.
<v Speaker 2>Work through those moments of kind of like scuba divers
<v Speaker 2>have to take their mask off and have somebody else
<v Speaker 2>give them air to pass their tests because shit happens,
<v Speaker 2>and you need to have training to train through those moments.
<v Speaker 2>And they're going to need to work through building trust
<v Speaker 2>with each other again in a functional, stressed space. And
<v Speaker 2>you have to do that with sports teams, you have
<v Speaker 2>to do that with tactical environments, you have to do
<v Speaker 2>that with medical environments. People that are under stressed like
<v Speaker 2>that need to be able to repair and refunction and
<v Speaker 2>they're going to need some training to address that.
<v Speaker 1>I guess kinetic.
<v Speaker 2>Side, kisthetic learning side for sure said that's all I
<v Speaker 2>have on that.
<v Speaker 1>I think it kind of covers it all. Right, let's
<v Speaker 1>take our last break care and be back with final thoughts.
<v Speaker 1>So I go first, and because just because in our
<v Speaker 1>tradition where the people who like it the most tend
<v Speaker 1>to go last. If people haven't picked up on that
<v Speaker 1>with final thoughts, so I this movie is fun, it's cute.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not a parent. I'm a child free by choice,
<v Speaker 1>and so I don't think it's a movie I would
<v Speaker 1>have watched necessarily if it wasn't for the podcast, and
<v Speaker 1>it was a cute movie to watch. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if I'll watch it again unless there's like a child
<v Speaker 1>in my life who wants to watch it. But I
<v Speaker 1>don't have any. I would say my feelings on it
<v Speaker 1>are very neutral. I like all the stuff we've talked
<v Speaker 1>about today. I think it's a great movie for kids
<v Speaker 1>to have. I like the message. I think it's visually
<v Speaker 1>very beautiful. Even that alone, I can see why people
<v Speaker 1>are gravitating towards it. Like even the thumbnail on Netflix
<v Speaker 1>is very like, hey watch me. So I've just seen
<v Speaker 1>the name a lot, and I like that they include
<v Speaker 1>so much Korean, and like the dialogue, not just in
<v Speaker 1>the songs, but also in how they talk to each other.
<v Speaker 1>I like that that's a nice little like we're not
<v Speaker 1>totally centering Western American English in this story, like we're
<v Speaker 1>gonna include like the I guess the Korean version of
<v Speaker 1>Spanglish into the situation. And I like how much the
<v Speaker 1>girls eat, you know, given how active they are. I
<v Speaker 1>think that's how they're introduced. They are very skinny still, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>but I can accept that because they're so active as
<v Speaker 1>both like dancers, performers and demon hunterrews that. But I
<v Speaker 1>do like to the acknowledge that they carbo load and
<v Speaker 1>eat all this stuff as a response to that, because
<v Speaker 1>they probably be hella hungry after all that work they do. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>And like I said, my favorite song is though what
<v Speaker 1>it sounds like song, I feel like it's very catchy.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if I'll listen to a lot of
<v Speaker 1>the music though in my free time, But I also
<v Speaker 1>don't listen to a lot of K pop, Like I
<v Speaker 1>could definitely hear like the influence of the K pop
<v Speaker 1>I am familiar with, like in osmosis, like BTS songs
<v Speaker 1>and Catie songs and stuff like that. It's not quite
<v Speaker 1>my genre, so I don't know if I'll visit it
<v Speaker 1>in my life outside of the podcast. But like I said,
<v Speaker 1>like I don't really have any problems with this movie.
<v Speaker 1>I just don't think I would seek it out on
<v Speaker 1>my own volition, but not because it's a bad movie,
<v Speaker 1>just because it's not a movie for like my age,
<v Speaker 1>demographic or my personal preferences and Like I said before,
<v Speaker 1>I would have liked more backstory on the roommate parents situation.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe I will watch whatever sequel comes out after this
<v Speaker 1>to just see what happens. Maybe I'll read the Wikipedia page,
<v Speaker 1>but I'll give the movie a look. And I would
<v Speaker 1>say my favorite part actually was the big tiger with
<v Speaker 1>the little hat, Derby Tiger Bird. That did crack me out.
<v Speaker 1>Derby Bird. Yeah, when he was like going down, I
<v Speaker 1>had to knock things over and then couldn't stop like
<v Speaker 1>a big cat. That was very funny and that did
<v Speaker 1>make me laugh a lot. That and when the idea
<v Speaker 1>of the songa boys are being introduced and they do
<v Speaker 1>the whole like the swishy hair thing and like ummu
<v Speaker 1>Like that was very funny too. I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>got them.
<v Speaker 3>So the girl's eyes like popping corn. That was hilarious.
<v Speaker 1>And I will say, if I had to like put
<v Speaker 1>this movie against a lot of Disney movies or like
<v Speaker 1>Disney Channel movies, I can see why parents love this movie. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>because this is far and above those movies like a
<v Speaker 1>Breath of fresh Air, and I don't have to watch
<v Speaker 1>any of those kind of movies in my personal life,
<v Speaker 1>so I think that's also why I'm a bit of
<v Speaker 1>a skewed perspective and I've really like not encountered the
<v Speaker 1>phenomenon you're experiencing, ben Like, not even in like I'm
<v Speaker 1>not saying this in like an edge lord way, like
<v Speaker 1>I'm so cool, I don't know anything about this. But really,
<v Speaker 1>what you've told me about how pervasive it is in
<v Speaker 1>your life, I think is such a telling difference between
<v Speaker 1>having kids and not having kids, and being around people
<v Speaker 1>that have kids versus being around people that don't have kids,
<v Speaker 1>Like I don't have any friends really with kids besides you,
<v Speaker 1>And so if I didn't hear this from you, I
<v Speaker 1>wouldn't have realized how pervasive this movie is.
<v Speaker 2>Oh got so parents are all talking about how much
<v Speaker 2>their kids love it and it's wait till Halloween.
<v Speaker 1>Oh for sure. So those are my final thoughts, Benjamin,
<v Speaker 1>I feel like we've heard yours kind of, but go ahead.
<v Speaker 2>So my final thoughts are, I love this movie.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's fine.
<v Speaker 2>I get is it the best most amazing film that's
<v Speaker 2>ever existed?
<v Speaker 1>No?
<v Speaker 3>Does anything mind blowing happen in it?
<v Speaker 1>No?
<v Speaker 2>But what I think is perfect about the way it
<v Speaker 2>hit and when it hit? Is it hit? All of
<v Speaker 2>us at a time where I think we needed something simpler,
<v Speaker 2>and I think this movie hit at a time where
<v Speaker 2>everything else is so fucking complicated and we're watching what
<v Speaker 2>feels like the world going to shit. I was just
<v Speaker 2>reading articles about that kind of how millennials in particular
<v Speaker 2>are struggling to be motivated at work as well as
<v Speaker 2>these where the one thing that exers had that we
<v Speaker 2>don't is hope that hard work will go somewhere, it'll matter.
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of nihilism out there right now.
<v Speaker 3>Well it's earned.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, I mean understand, I'm not making fun of that,
<v Speaker 1>Like I there is it, just there is.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and it's this movie kind of creates some hope
<v Speaker 2>and recognition that. At least what it did for me
<v Speaker 2>is looking at it and being reminded that, you know,
<v Speaker 2>when generations take on the world in their own way
<v Speaker 2>from the perspective of what their problems actually are, not
<v Speaker 2>trying to fit it into the narrative what they're told
<v Speaker 2>problems are and how you solve them, but by approaching
<v Speaker 2>them with that natural flexibility and recognition of like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that's nice that we know that, but this is what's
<v Speaker 2>actually happening, and even when it was an Army rotc
<v Speaker 2>in college for a couple of years. Well, it's considering
<v Speaker 2>that path of life. One of the things in the
<v Speaker 2>Army Field Training Manual is literally a message from Colin
<v Speaker 2>Powell or Normous Swartzkoff, one of those two who are
<v Speaker 2>generals in Desert Storm is no battle plan survives contact
<v Speaker 2>with the enemy. Powerful fucking statement understanding that the world
<v Speaker 2>is whatever is gonna happen is gonna happen, and you
<v Speaker 2>have to adjust to it, and you can't defeat it
<v Speaker 2>by confining it to a simple narrative.
<v Speaker 3>Well it's this, so you do this. That shit doesn't work,
<v Speaker 3>It never has.
<v Speaker 2>But looking at something so simple, so pure, so full
<v Speaker 2>of like a simple clean message that you can encounter
<v Speaker 2>a bad thing and you can not only band together
<v Speaker 2>but be seen for who you are and have that
<v Speaker 2>be the actual thing that beats it. Not what somebody
<v Speaker 2>else says you're supposed to be, but who you are
<v Speaker 2>be enough is of very powerful message.
<v Speaker 1>Right about now.
<v Speaker 2>The fact that the songs are catchy as shit, and
<v Speaker 2>that they are bangers, and that they keep getting covered
<v Speaker 2>and redone and people are just really attaching to this
<v Speaker 2>and each one means something a little bit different to
<v Speaker 2>people because in addition to being K pop, they worked
<v Speaker 2>in a bunch of different genres to stuff to appeal
<v Speaker 2>to a larger audience and kind of convey the message
<v Speaker 2>like be your idol. There's a significant component of metal
<v Speaker 2>to that, so it appeals to me. Where some are
<v Speaker 2>like bubblegum pop and some are more rap focused, and
<v Speaker 2>some are more like fight songs and others are more vulnerable.
<v Speaker 2>It just it covers a full emotional gamut of being
<v Speaker 2>a real fucking person and how to use that in
<v Speaker 2>your way to defeat evil.
<v Speaker 3>And I think all of us are feeling.
<v Speaker 2>A little bit like we'd like eeple to be a
<v Speaker 2>bit defeated more than it is right now.
<v Speaker 1>My approach is more almost like spiteful optimism, like you're
<v Speaker 1>not gonna kill my heart. That's my approach to the
<v Speaker 1>nihilism of world well, or how scary things feel right now,
<v Speaker 1>is you're not going to kill my heart. That would
<v Speaker 1>be a good title for a K pop song, could
<v Speaker 1>be a good title fo metal song. Maybe I'll write
<v Speaker 1>it anyway.
<v Speaker 2>I think I am thrilled with the way that this
<v Speaker 2>is perming culture and creating hope, and I hope it
<v Speaker 2>becomes a vehicle for more because I think we need
<v Speaker 2>it and we all need to find a little bit
<v Speaker 2>of fight for the darkness and break some light to it.
<v Speaker 1>Well, on that note, we will wrap up here. As always,
<v Speaker 1>you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook at pop
<v Speaker 1>porn Psychology. You can always email us at pop porn
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