A Geek History of Time - Episode 24- Possession is Nine Tenths of Government (Part 1)

Episode Date: August 4, 2019

We find out what possessed Damian to research the zeitgeist of horror movies in the '70s, and why Ed takes a dog with him when he goes house hunting.

And we begin with good day sir! Geeks come in all shapes and sizes and that they come into all kinds of things I was thinking more about the satanic panic by the scholar Gary Guy-Gaxx. Well wait, hold on. I said good day sir, not defending Roman slavery by any stretch. But let him vote, fuck off. When historians, and especially British historians, want to get cute, it's in there. OK. It is not worth the journey.

No. This is a geek history of time. Where we bring nursery into the real world, I'm Ed Blalock, a world history at the 7th grade, a world history teacher, at the 7th grade level, and you are, sir. I'm Damien Harmony, I'm a Latin teacher at the high school level, and I'm also a world history teacher again. Yeah, well you're gonna be. Yeah, yeah, so, welcome to the club.

Yeah, no, it's good to be back. It just wish it was under different auspices I can understand that I'm gonna get to be an English teacher again for one period today Again, yeah next year. So I'm excited about what you've what you've brought Let's tell tell the people what it is. We're gonna be we're gonna be talking about all right Well, I will actually just set the way back between about a year ago. I went and saw the movie hereditary Okay, I don't like horror movies, but a friend of mine does she keeps inviting me to them. Mm-hmm Okay, cool. I'll go out go see a horror movie. I'm watching it. I'm like shit a possession movie like this That's why like that that's so 1970s Like, and then I start thinking about it,

I'm like, why are possession movies popular now? Yeah, well, you know, and it's not just hereditary. No. You know, I made the terrible mistake when it came out of going to see the first conjuring movie. Okay. And I should point out for anybody in our audience who isn't already aware since, you know know nearly all of you were our friends so most

of you already know this. I'm a wimp when it comes to horror movies like I I don't I don't enjoy them. I have never I've never enjoyed the sensation of being scared and I have an obsessive enough imagination that if I see something that freaks me out, I have a hard time letting go of it. And so they'll keep me awake for weeks. You take them home with you. Yeah, and I'm 44 years old, I'm married, I got a kid,

but I still have that part of my brain that is like, okay, when I turn around in dark room and I look through the doorway into the hallway for my bedroom, am I gonna see a shape there? Sure. And like, it's just, it sucks, and I don't like it so I don't like going to see horror movies, but I saw the conjuring.

Okay. I also happen to go see the conjuring, which of course is kind of a possession movie. Okay. And it's also, it's mostly a haunted house movie. And I made the wonderful mistake of going to see that right before Friends of Mine and I were gonna be shopping for a place to move into together.

I actually went to my best friend and his wife and said, I need to borrow your dogs. Oh, to see if these... Because, well, because the first thing that happened, these people move into this house, right? Mm-hmm and they they they show up and it's you know clean cut American family three kids two parents Lapsed Catholics, which is a big deal. Oh, yeah I'll wait until you get into that. Yeah, I know

And and you know and they and they show up and they've got the family dog and they bring the family dog up to the threshold and the dog loses his mind. Refuses to come into the house, snarls barks, and they wind up chaining the dog outside overnight. Stay in the house overnight, they wake up the following morning and the dog has somehow strangled itself on the chain they used to put it to stick it in place.

Here's the deal, folks. If the dog won't go into the house, cancel fucking escrow. Yeah. Like, there's a website out there called Does the Dog Die? Does the Dog Die? Yeah. Yeah. But I'm just saying, it doesn't practical matter in the real world. Yeah. Yeah. When you're buying a home, if you're moving into a home, when you're gonna rent a place. Sure. Like if the dog freaks out, if the cat freaks out, if you're just walking around like, I don't know, man. Yeah. Like, I'm just gonna say, my wife would have to work really hard to convince me not to

listen to that voice in the back of my head. Sure. Sure. Because I'm as rational as the next guy. Until. I'm Catholic, so there's a certain level of, you know, so not as rational as the next guy. Until. I'm Catholic, so there's a certain level of, you know, so not as rational as the next guy. Well, not as rational as all of the next guy is,

but, you know, and most of the time, I'm a scientific, logical, rational individual. But no, if the dog starts freaking out, I'm gonna have a real hard time staying rational like that. Totally fair. So, so Anyway possession movies. Yeah, so I saw this movie and I was thinking to myself, what the shit the last time? I remember possession movie being popular was the 1970s the early 70s. Oh, that's why and So it kind of formed a little hypothesis. I go to genre type movies. Yeah. And I like to look at them as I look at a lot of things,

as a snapshot, what's going on right now? What is this form being used to teach us? Yeah. And in that, I can really intellectually enjoy these movies. Okay. Emotion, I don't really get scared of stuff like that. I get scared of existential threats. Okay.

And also I have a list of very irrational fears that I have. But by and large, movies don't scare me. Jump scenes don't really get me. There have been a few movies where I was just like, wow, this is really cool, but I still end up just a little outside of my own head. So I'm not fully experiencing that. You have a level of detachment that allows you to not to intellectualize the whole experience. Yeah, yeah.

This is Jesus. If you can teach me how to do that, I'd be able to go see so many more movies. Well, as the veteran of two marriages, I would say it doesn't always serve you. Granted. Yeah, so I've had a therapist say, you were treated to the intellect. I was like, yeah, okay. So I started doing some research and kind of poking around and I came up with this hypothesis that possession movies tend to be more popular and do better at

the box office when people don't trust their government. And that's why I've titled this possession movies possession is 9 tenths of the government. Okay. So this will be an exploration of, societally what happens when possession movies are at their apex. Does not necessarily mean that I've covered all the bases. It doesn't mean I've covered all of your favorite possession movies. Okay. Feel free to tell me on the Twitter and anywhere else that you see me around

town that, you know, I got it wrong because I left out fallen with Denzel Washington or something like that. But I looked at the ones that were really heavy hitters, the seminal works as a war, and I found some pretty compelling evidence. Okay, the ones that really grabbed the public consciousness and drove it where they wanted it to go. Yeah, or reflected the public consciousness in such a way

that was artistically and commercially very viable. Okay. So possession movies have actually been a part of our movie catalog from the beginning? Really? Yeah! As best as I can tell, I got all the way back to 1924 and there was a movie called White Shadows is British. It was an 82-minute feature film written by Alfred Hitchcock. It's one of the hundred that he made before he came over.

Taken from a novel by Michael Morton. So that means that there is even further back literature talking about. Well, I mean, you know, possession has been the idea of spiritual possession, demonic possession, has been, you know, a part of cultures all over the world going back and into the beyond. Bronze age, beyond. And beyond. Sure. Yeah.

You know, I mean, if you look hard enough, you can find it in every culture. Yeah. I mean, of course, obviously it's all over the Bible. Uh-huh. We are legion out of the New Testament. Mm-hmm. Jesus casting those demons out as probably the most famous example. So that the ones we sent into the pigs who then ran off the dress.

Yes. Yes. I remember that only because I once had a go back and forth with some friends of mine and I about if you read it backwards what it is. And if you read it backwards, he takes the demons out of pigs that he has resurrected from the river and put them all into one woman's head Okay, then he ruins a wedding by turning the wine into water and then it ends with a bunch of people stealing his gifts on his birthday and on Christmas No less on Christmas. Yeah, but yeah, we are Legion. Yeah, okay So this movie was actually discovered like

God, what was it? Underneath an ice rink in Ottawa or something? I might be blending stories, but only 42 minutes of this movie have survived. Because I mean, these things were written, that were printed on like very flammable film and there's no you know what do you do with it when you're done whatever it was celluloid broke down but it's before celluloid it was the really ugly horrible flammable stuff yeah yeah so the the plot is that there's a woman in Paris she's possessed by her twins ghost the twin who had saved her life but died it's very very melodramatic, it's 1924. It involves a sister going bohemian for a while and the possession not being particularly malicious actually.

Okay. The next one that I could find, because again it's only four two minutes, so it's very fragmented. Next one I could find was from 1933 called Supernatural. I'm sticking largely to English speaking film. Okay, but this is a talkie. And this one actually has the first real hint of menace from a possession. And it involves a black widow murderous whose spirit is inhabiting a young woman to get revenge on a man who himself is a faux spiritualist, who wronged her. Wronged the black widows. Black widows, ghost, yeah. Okay, all right.

What's interesting here to me is that Carol Lombard and Randolph Scott are in it. Oh wow. Carol Lombard is a comic actress largely who took lead in My Man Godfrey. Okay, yeah. Yeah, she got going on the, the, screw ball comedies.

Yeah, quite a bit. You know, I need to do an episode on screw ball comedies. Yes, yeah, I do. on the the Screwball comedies. Yeah, yeah, you know, I need to do an upset on screwball Yeah, yes, yeah, you mentioned it a couple of times Randall's got my mother's middle name is Carol with an e on the end from Carol Lombard. Oh, there you go Porn went out for Carol. Yeah Randall Scott you might recognize as the guy who could ricochet bullets everywhere in a Western yeah So this is so what we're saying is this was a departure for both of them You might recognize as the guy who could ricochet bullets everywhere in a western. Yeah. So what we're saying is this was a departure for both of them.

I think it was before they got to where they were going. Oh, so it was 1933. Okay, so it was a stepping stone. Yes. Also, it was that, you know, secret shame. Right. Or maybe not a really, really shame. Yeah.

This was Denise Richards. Denise Richards. This was Denise Richards being one of the white singing women in loaded weapon, the National Ampune School of lethal weapon. Yeah. It's like that. She was in that. I'd go so far as to say that's, for example,

of a secret shame. Maybe. I don't know. Spoof movies aren't really scary. Well, all right. But. So essentially, possession movies were always around, right? They tended to follow the same basic formula for decades, but then by the 2000s, they're

starting to play within that formula. But they were never really big money makers. They were just something that got made. They never moved the needle very much, culturally. They were just kind of there as a type of horror. They were monster movies that were far more successful, especially in the 1950s and 60s in the atomic era, where everything's radiation. Oh yeah. Well, Creature from the Black Lagoon, talking about monster movies, one of the classic

monster movies. Speaking about, you know, my experience with horror movies being the way it is, my dad grew up in South Florida, as I've mentioned in previous episodes. And so the environs of the creature from the Black Lagoon were just down the street from where he was growing up. And so he went and saw a creature from the Black Lagoon with friends of his, and it kept him awake for weeks. Wow. Because the image of the monster's hand

reaching through the window, the clawed webbed. Oh yeah. Just barely missing the back of the hero's hand reaches through the window, the clawed, webbed. Oh yeah. Just barely missing the back of the hero in his hand. Just like he had to, you know, the stifling hot summers he had to shut the windows to his bedroom. Oh, poor guy. He's not so bad.

Yeah, so it runs in the family. So, yeah, monster movies did better. Yeah. So the standard formula for most possession movies from this time, from the 1930s through the 1970s, is essentially this. There's a woman, pretty woman, usually a young woman with no children,

often blonde, not necessarily, gets possessed. Okay. She's often a child or very new by-all at least. Okay. So very young woman. Okay. Kind of follows the standard pre-auter era, but even the standard author era as well because men, men were the directors and the producers during the author era. So it's still the same. Yeah, the formula doesn't change very much because male gays is male gays. Yeah, you want to have a pretty woman on the screen

because visually that's what gets male eyeballs. Right. And for a long time that was all anybody was thinking about. Thought was the demographic. Yeah, that was the demographic. Which in fairness, that was for, and it was aimed at white male eyes.

Yeah, well, yeah. Because white male eyes. Yeah well yeah. Because white male eyes were the only ones who were assumed to have disposable income. Yes. So the women were essentially plot devices. They were essentially McGuffins and in possession movies. For some dude from most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most movies. For most. For most. For most movies. For most movies. For most. For most movies. dudes to solve. Yeah, it was a problem. You got to rescue rescue the damsel damsel is object. Mm-hmm. Okay. Absolutely.

I'm with you. In possession movies, they stop being plot devices. They start being vessels for plot devices. Okay. Bit of a demotion. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. A little bit.

Now, the interesting point I find, the interesting point of focus I find here in the late 60s early 70s is their use of a vessel Think of what young virginal new-bile girls represent um A lot of things yes, I mean yeah, there's there's every college anthropology course. I took Yes is clamor inside my head to try to, you know, come up with an answer to that. Right.

But yeah, I mean, potential fertility, innocence, purity, as you said that word. That's good. You know, yeah, I mean, yeah, if we're talking about specifically, virginal, then I mean, yeah, by its very nature, virginal, just as a concept, as a construct.

Highly problematic, all of the tropes that are associated with it have some kind of a tie to innocence, purity, lack of worldliness. Very white. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Tolgopura for? Sexist as hell? Creepy and petto as fuck. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Tell me what you see here. Oh dear. Oh yes. Oh Jesus, this one? Yes. Oh god. Go ahead and tell me a audience. Wrap on a cracker. You bring this one.

You got to go to this one. Yeah, yeah. Alright, so it's a cosmetics ad for loves baby soft. Uh-huh. Oh, Jesus. Because innocence is sexier than you think. Yeah. And, you know, I immediately, I, you know,

this is presentism, but John May Ramsey immediately really comes to mind. Yeah. For my brain. Because ladies and gentlemen, the image in this ad is presentism, but John May Ramsey immediately like really comes to mind. Yeah, for for my brain. Yeah. Because ladies and gentlemen, the image in this ad is of a brunette. Interesting. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Girl. Yeah.

Probably no older than seven. Yeah. Um, with, with very heavy lipstick on, artfully styled, curled brown hair, very pale, peaches and cream complexion, blue eyes, should be noted, brunette, but blue eyes. Come, Heather, look. Yeah, it's okay that we're uncomfortable. I don't wanna, I know. I don't, I don't, I don't.

Also look at, look right here at the Fowlick nature of the item being sold. Yeah, the the whatever the items of cosmetics are that's being sold I want to say probably lipstick, but I could be wrong. I don't know our our cylindrical and they have a dome shaped Top yeah on them. Okay, so and, so I'm sorry, but the line because innocence is sexier than you think, they could've used that as a line without it necessarily being gross. Yeah, if they had, if they'd had an adult model.

An adult model, yeah. Would've been good. Fresh face young woman. Maryland Chamber is okay. Yeah, it would have been good. Fresh face young woman. Maryland Chamber is easy. Yeah, you know, but it put it but it literal child clutching a teddy bear. A white teddy bear. A white teddy bear. Here's another one. Oh God, toddlers and TR is going to like show up at my nightmares for a week. Okay, so this is a serial ad for tricks, this predates tricks for kids. And so there is a mother standing behind a daughter. They're both wearing a very, I would actually say 50s housewife kind of, kind of for

ops, but, but this is early 60's, which is really what we are thinking of when we think of the 50's with what do they call that kind of collar? It's a very high collar. It looks like something that like your mom probably high Peter pan shaped collar. It looks like something your mom would have worn in her prom photo or in her high school yearbook photo. And yeah, well, or in her high school yearbook photo. And yeah, well, maybe earlier in high school yearbook photo, but yes. Yeah, and the mother

is wearing, I'm gonna say that's kind of a pale teal. The daughter is in pink. The mother is smiling very maternally over the child's head as she pours cereal into a bowl. The child over the child's head as she pours cereal into a bowl, the child has what I have to say is a disturbingly blank thousand-yard stair kind of expression. And the tagline makes me want to barf when a woman's five, she needs love, sub-subtitle, and a little applied psychology. Yep. Wow. Yeah, oh, it gets better. Oh God. There's more. Oh, yeah. All right. So now we have

again Cosmetics ad the The title at the top of the page is for bitten fruits. Yes And this this time it is thank God at least a probably 20-something. Yes. Looks 20-something. Anyway, so I'm going to say that to myself, young woman. Of course, very, very perfectly made up. Utilizing a lip gloss called Kissing Slicks from Maybelline. And she is, there's a fruit basket in frame and front,

two fruit baskets in frame and front of her. One of them with citrus and the other one with a watermelon and she's wearing a pink t-shirt with the slogan, I'm not as innocent as I seem across the front of it. Now here's the deal, that's clearly trying to press a set of buttons. Yep. That's not, that's not, I'm gonna say that's creepy,

but that's in a different category of creepy. It is. From, from certainly the first one. That's slimy. This is kind of greasy. Yeah, like oil can, oil can hairy, but it's not disgusting. Okay, now we're getting into the hardcore Massage and this is this is where the sexism you're talking about you know pito is hell. No, there's no pito here

But no sex is not started with the pito shit. Yeah, this is the creepy shit This is this is a cigar ad for for tipped cigars, which are the ones that have a cigarette holder. So you don't have to use a plug cutter or a clipper. So these are weevil cigars, is what we're saying. These are cigars for guys who don't actually want to smoke real cigars. So Nick Fury? Yeah, I forgot he uses it. Yeah, all right. Well, here's the one exception.

But blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere. It is, it is. She got it all over her face. A really, yeah, there is a truly very attractive, interestingly, ethnic, dark, complex, uh, Latina looking

woman, dark hair, very dark eyes. I couldn't find the date on this, but I wouldn't be surprised to know that it probably came out around the same time as West Side Story. Uh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's a good point. And anyway, a man, uh, dark-haired gentleman, uh, can't really see very much about his complexion, but he's a stuncidog.

He's a stand-in, yeah. And he is literally blowing smoke in this woman's face, and the woman's reaction is almost, she's clearly entranced, which making eye contact, which isn't what would happen because having accidentally had cigar smoke blow into my own face, it hurts. Okay, that's not really what's being blown in her face. I know. Okay. I understand that.

I just, I get it. I know. Okay. And I contact is a wonderful thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. The Freudian imagery is obvious. I am going to say, though, sometimes the cigar is just a cigar, but not right there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, probably leaning into the microphone that probably completely blew the levels out right there. But anyway, yeah, I've seen this one before. It's an ad for men's pants. It's, yes, it's for men's slacks. Specifically ones made out of dacron.

So this dates it, they make a point of saying their dacron uh... which i don't think anybody actually uses anymore uh... because it there better materials now uh... and so it was a slacks add so the the male figure in this ad is only viewed from about the navel that slightly slightly above the naval down.

And he does have a, we can see a neck tie that is properly worn with the end of the tie down at his belt buckle. And there is a tiger skin rug underneath him and he is resting his foot on the head of the tiger skin rug as one would do in a manful victory tie. and he is resting his foot on the head of the tiger skin rug as no problem whatsoever. As one would do in a manful victory kind of confidence pose, super hero pose kind of thing. However, the head of this particular tiger is not a tiger's head, it is a woman's head with a rather bemused expression

on her face. And the tagline is, it's nice to have a girl around the house. She does nothing to the tone. The tone of conquest is unmistakable here. Mm-hmm. And yeah, there, I mean, that's dominance. Dominance, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So where are pants you'll get you'll get the girl right? Yeah So so what we're saying here is big surprise right the 60s and early 70s were a time of rampant blatant sexism That was just so you bickwoodist nobody realized it was sexism. Yeah It was the way things were yeah, and so having women as the vessel for your plot device was not that big a deal. Okay. Yeah. So here's the formula, right? Right. Yeah. Pretty young white girl gets possessed. Yes. Does things that we as men would find uncomfortable for her doing for herself. Okay. But we have far less problem with her allowing it to be done to her by an older white man

in a position of authority. The girl in the actresses uses the crucifix to masturbate. She uses several sexual terms to unsettle the older men. Now her agency in that. It. Now, her agency in that, it's not really her agency because she's possessed. Because she's possessed. But she's still using the words and it's still very unsettling, despite ads like that.

Yeah. Eventually an older man, that's what's side out here, typically one who waves off her sexual aggression and her advances at some point, he saves her and rescues the world from her and whatever possessed her. Yeah, that's your formula. Yeah.

Really that formula is a reassertion of male hierarchical patriarchal power, Papano's best, right? Well, yeah. White males in authority, older white males in authority, older white males in institutional authority, older white males in institutional religious authority. Yep. More authority. Boulder White Males in institutional religious authority. Yep. And we're gonna do the layer cake. Yeah.

Yeah. It's still interesting that which we found previously innocent, even as we fetishized it and sexualized it, is now a source of scary. I really don't like we there. Yeah, as a culture. I want to, I want to. I wouldn't even lie, man.

Ah, quick, but yes, I get what you're saying. Yeah, it's the vessel of scary. And it's the whole reason that these movies are scary. And here's why, the government, our democracy is filled with white men in power with moral authority. And it was no longer an institution that we could reliably trust. As such, our anxiety rose and we needed a safe way to express that. And since it was

the white men in power whom we had always trusted, whom we had elected to steward us, the blame could not be laid at their feet, it had to be something that we could still save using them. Okay, it had to be something that we could still save using them. Okay. It had to be something that could be easily reversed. Okay. Utilizing those same tools of hierarchical... The patriarchal authority.

Reasserting its goodness at a time where its goodness was highly suspect. And we couldn't not face it. Okay. Now this is not unlike ancient Rome, by the way. Slaves upsetting the natural order of things was always scary to the masters. And because slaves were in very trusted positions, they handled your food, they took care of your children, they put you in a bed.

You would create many of them were government officials towards the later empire. Yeah. There's a whole reason their economy turned into a complete joke. Yes. Yeah. It's easy to outsmart an inattentive master. It's easy to throw and to escape.

So plays in the early republic were often just lifted from Greek plays, by the way. They were almost in nothing original. They would reflect this. Soudalus, upon which a funny thing happened on the way the forum was based, does this... Plade Seneca's in that in high school. Oh nice! It's time round. Played by Buster Keaton in the movie, and he actually spoke. But Sudalus does this

masterfully, so you've got this slave spending the whole play outsmarting his master, using his cunning and his intelligence in a way that threatens to deprive the master of the master's property himself. And ultimately he makes a deal, says, if I do this, you'll give me my freedom, or you'll give me 20 silver pieces, and I can buy my freedom, and if I fail, then you can still beat me, which he could have done anyway. The master goes for it and ultimately it ends with his plans, not quite coming to fruition. And so we start the next day anew with the slave rightfully back into his place. Everybody's relieved.

Yeah. That's the tension that builds the humor, right? Yeah. Well, and a moment to talk about the difference between drama and comedy. Yes. It is a comedy. So at the end of a comedy, status quo anti is restored. Yes. Whereas at the end of a tragedy, status quo anti is utterly shattered. Everybody dies. Mass panic is in the area. Yeah. Now the Romans couldn't really conceive of a world without slaves, where the masters didn't rightfully own their slaves.

So as such, there wasn't any need for a play criticizing the very unstable practice of slavery itself. You're not going to see an Uncle Tom's cabin in ancient Rome. No, no. Well, because the institution was in many ways, as we've spoken about it was, in many ways, fundamentally different.

But yeah, the limitations of the classical mindset in regard to the possibility of there being some other, right, something because slavery had always existed in every civilization ever up to that point. Yeah. So what? Yeah, it's normal. Yeah.

So, I just point that out to point out that like regularly society will challenge itself to a point and then the end of the movie Return to Coda. Yeah, well, Apollonian. Yeah, exactly. It's it is we want to see we want to see our our fears Expressed and ultimately overcome exactly Hey, Ignatian, it's Damien and, and we're here to pitch a book at you. It's from a good friend of mine and a good friend of the show, Bishop O'Connell. The books are the American Fairytale trilogy. The stolen, the forgotten, the return.

If you're a fan of urban fantasy, you're going to love these. If you're a fan of Celtic folklore, you're going to love these. Even more, they're very well researched in terms of the stories and everything they tie into. And he's a very good guy, and like I said, a good friend to the show. So go out, pick him up, read him, and now back to us being smart, Alex.

Exactly. So back to the 60s and 70s. Yes. Rosemary's Baby. Yes. 1968. Okay. Grossed. 33 million. 395 thousand dollars. Big, big bucks. Do you have the figure on what the budget for the film was? I don't. I don't. I don't. I I was really curious to see in in right. like, I was like, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like,

I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like,

I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like,

I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't, I was like, I'm gonna ask this and I'm just gonna ask the question for now Did you in the process of researching this did you get into the relationship between Rosemary's baby and the author of Rosemary's baby and the exorcist and the author of the exorcist not so much because I was Mostly looking at the the correlation between this and trust in the government. Okay Because there's there's a point, once we've gotten a little farther, there's a point I do wanna come back to talk about it

because the one of them, the exercise was a reaction to Rosemary's face. Yes, that, okay. And I get into that when I read some of the reviews. Okay, all right, all right. So trust in the government in 1968 was 55%, okay. And it's on a downward trend. Yeah Steve declined from 1964 by the way

Okay, in 1968 president Johnson was a proven liar Yes Humphrey was accusing protesters of starting police riots in Chicago During the convention Robert Kennedy is killed yeah Martin Luther King is dead. Malcolm X is dead. Watts, Detroit, Harlem, all of them had been on fire by this point. Our social fabric wasn't just unraveling, it was breaking down at the basic molecular level. Richard Nixon got elected president with a secret plan to get us out of a war that was increasingly unpopular. It was still more popular than it was unpopular though. We're still two years out from Kent State where people,

majority of Americans supported killing those kids. Now this war, the Vietnam War, was a war that we got into under false pretenses from prior leaders whom we trusted quite a bit. Truman, Ike, JFK, all had well above 60% trust. That's a whole, a pretty common trust region. The general Zeitgeist was beginning to fracture even more and more. The government wasn't something that we could exactly trust anymore, and our innocence as a democracy wasn't as easy to point to. There's blood on everyone's hands. Yeah. It wasn't an extent innocence. It's as though some sort of malevolence was in our country and we were unable to figure it out or even face what had gotten it there. It couldn't

be the white men who were in power. It had to be something else. Yeah. And eventually we could be saved if we just elected the right white man to power. And everybody picked Nixon. Whoops. But. Well, you know, it's an interesting lesson

in what it is that looks like the right answer when you're in those kinds of circumstances. And what looks like the right answer absentee a right or answer? I mean, Robert Kennedy got shot in the head while he was in LA. That really changed things. It made home free the front runner. He was the centrist establishment candidate. This should sound familiar.

So, you know, and RFK was killed a scant five years later after JFK, and he was killed within months of Martin Luther King. I mean, there were a lot of like... There's a lot of... There's a lot of... Yeah, a lot of a lot of societal level. A lot of luminaries who look like they could actually take the ball and run with it and bring us back to where a lot of societal level. A lot of luminaries who look like they could actually take the ball and run with it and bring us back to where a lot of hinge points in history swung the wrong way

because people kept getting killed. What Herbert and Dune referred to as cusps? Yes. And if you look at the political landscape, the advertisements, as I just showed you, they got to be much more about the personality of the one running and how he would write the ship, whichever way you leaned. So you remember when Johnson runs against goldwater? Oh my God. Yeah. Do I remember? Yeah. The flower, the flower, the flower is at. And then the countdown and yeah, and the nuclear bomb exploding yeah Zooming in on the girls slang. I'm trying to remember what the slang term or the the nickname is for that ad But the other one the other one that really caught my attention In in you know reading about that time period was

The long form, three or four or five minute long advertisement in which an actor read and an interview with a Republican, essentially Republican against Goldwater, a Republican for Johnson. Okay. Saying, you know, I'm a Republican for Johnson, okay? Saying you know, I'm a Republican my whole family We've been Republicans forever and this guy this guy goldwater is nuts Well goldwater can't we can't we can't trust him. He's unhinged

you know and you know, I'd you know, I'm gonna I can't I can't vote for this guy I have to vote for I have to vote for Johnson for the good of the country right vote for this guy. I have to vote for, I have to vote for Johnson for the good of the country. Right. For the good of the country. Even though you disagree with him. Even though you disagree with him and a lot of things. Even though you know our team, their team for the good of the country. Just saying. What's a good thing we learn from that. Um, so the, the, the guy in the ad is going to stand as a bulwark and protect you from the misguided ideology of the other side, not from the other guy, but from the misguided ideology. So yes, Goldwater is a personality that you're running against, but he represents this darker,

more damaging version of Republicans than ever before. This is darker malevolent in corporeal. It's an ideology. It's a spirit. It's not a person you can touch. Right. I mean, if Goldwater wins, if you get a metaphor here, yeah, if Goldwater wins, there will be nuclear war. That little girl will get blown up.

Think of the children. Think of the children. By the way, that little innocent girl playing with flowers. Blond hair. Right, girl. Stand in for our country. Yeah. Innocence, y'all. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. So by 1968, this war that we had started, damn near 20 years earlier, by starts and fits, these social issues that we began trying to fix, well not really a bit sort of it not really. Yeah, yeah. There were attempts, but not really a bit sort of it not really. Yeah, yeah. There were attempts, but not really, but sort of it not really. Yeah.

They were both growing way beyond what felt safe and controllable. Nothing was going as promised, and it was getting more and more uncomfortable. Rosemary's baby, here's the plot. A young couple moves into an urban environment which they're immediately warned against because cannibalism and murder. I forgot the cannibalism part, but yes. Cannibalism. Yeah.

Rosemary meets a young drug addict in the city like you do. Yeah. Heroine's starting to come back to America from Vietnam. All right. It's invading the urban centers because that's where the poor are. That's also where a lot of African Americans are and Nixon did a really good job of painting heroin as a black people drug. And pot as a black people drug.

As a black people drug. Yeah, that silent majority racist bullshit. So we're already reinforcing as much as we can here in this movie. We're pulling on tropes Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby Okay, just what you do like you do and there's a scene where she's possibly drugged and then raped by a demon What with a cult of naked people watching? The next morning she has scratches on her body and she asked her husband what happened and he informs her that Well, you fell asleep, but I had sex with you anyway

because I know that we were trying to conceive and I didn't want to deprive you of that. Is it real team player? Real team player and just, yeah, the how times change in terms of norms and... Spell-so-rate wasn't a crime back then. Did it? Did it? Did your idea was a contradiction in terms?

Yeah. Yeah. So it comes out that the building used to be a place for a bunch of Satanists like you do, like you see in Soho in the late 1960s. Yeah. You know, there's the village, I mean, they're kind of weird, but in Soho, you got Satan. You got to say just, it's how it goes. It turns out that she ends up giving birth to Satan and she accepts it the end. Yeah. She gives birth to Satan and it accepts it. And she rocks the cradle at the end. She's shaking the bass and at. Nixon.

Oh, you're okay. Potentially. Now this comes out during the election year. So yeah. Now here's what Roger Ebert said in 1968. Quote and I'm pulling quotes from his review. When the conclusion comes it works not because it is a surprise but because it is horrifyingly inevitable. Rosemary makes her dreadful discovery and we are wrenched because we know what was going to happen and couldn't help her. This is why the movie is so good. Both Rosemary's Baby and Hitchcock's classic suspicion

are about wives. Suspicion came out at the same time. He often would set movies against each other to explain them both. They're about wives, deeply in love, who are gradually forced to suspect the most sinister and improbable things about their husbands.

But Carrie Grant in suspicion was only a bounder and perhaps a murderer. Only. Only. The husband in this one is an agent of Satan himself. Yeah, an unwitting agent, by the way. Okay. And we didn't even really believe that since he was Carrie Grant. Rosemary, on the other hand, is forced into the most bizarre suspicion about her husband

and we share them right up, we share them and believe them. Because Polanski, oh yeah it's a little problematic. Yeah. Because Polanski exercises his craft so well, we follow him right up to the end and stand there rocking that dreadful cradle. That baby is the Vietnam War. We're now rocking that cradle. Okay. Remember how our trusted leaders got us into that late 1940s and early 1950s war. Remember what social ills our trusted leaders ignored and let metastasize at home because of that war. Yeah. Okay. Remember why the US government got the United States into it and the first place to prop up the French Empire and avert a communist domino effect that ultimately didn't happen.

Yeah. Meanwhile, the French got out and our government ended up holding the bag and then propping up a known to be failing dictatorship in South Vietnam, violating the Geneva Convention, stopping democratic elections from happening, and further investing in a war that didn't impact us all. Yeah, all of that. Yep, yep. So by 1968, over 20,000 Americans had died over there,

and there was no end in sight. A presidential candidate was in secret talks with the other side to stall negotiations at the end of the war so that he could win the election. And simultaneously, there's a draft going on, killing those who are loyal, and radicalizing those who are loyal to the point of having to leave the

country. Yeah. Or, you know, going to know it from a doctor indicating you have bone spurs. Well, yeah, or get five deferments because, you know, your dad helps the department defense, whatever, you know, what, yeah, you know, like you do. Yeah. Join the National Guard. Yeah, man, those Democrats are cowards of international, international guard. Yeah. Oh, wait, no, no Yeah, join the National Guard. Yeah, man those Democrats are cowards of the National

International Guard. Yeah. Yeah. Oh wait, no, no, that's the other guys. Yeah. The baby rosemary is rocking and the cradle is the Vietnam War and or potentially Nixon's presidency. Okay. So in the late 1960s a lot of people were taking Timothy Larry's advice. Turn on, tune in and drop out. Yes. Okay. A lot more people are doing more than just communal drugs. Barbitiwits are on the rise. The kind we just melt away. So we're other escapes, like cults. You might remember Charles Manson, the failed Beach Boy.

Yeah, well, Charles Manson, the failed Beach Boy, also, Jim Jones. Yep. Well, that's late 70s. But Jim Jones gets started in really 60s. But I was getting started in the early 60s. And by 71, he is big in Oakland. Really big in Oakland, and his church and movement

are really starting to look really culty. Which sucks. By that point. Because he, like, on the one hand, he had such a wonderfully progressive platform. This is how cults work though. Yeah. I mean, he was incredibly multi-racial. Oh yeah.

I mean, he really, he, he was the one, the one thing that can really be said positively about him was that he really did believe that a utopian ideal would be one in you know that was post-racial that you know the problem was he had that great idea married to inherent megalomania and possibly bipolar you know tendencies that led to him being pardoned by French, but bug fuck crazy. A little bit nuts. And, and, and paranoid.

Yeah. So, I mean, just, yeah. So, you've got all these things happening, and, and, and, there's symptomatic of not being able to trust a system that here to for had been fairly reliable, dependable and accessible for mainstream America. I do not want to speak for the marginalized groups back then, because I'm pretty damn sure all the anti-gay laws, all of the anti-racemixing laws, all of the anti-black people laws, all of the anti-exclusion act laws, all of those things.

All that stuff. But for like middle America, for the majority culture. Right. For the dominant culture. For the dominant. Even they're starting to unravel. Because now the US government is run by people who look just like the ones that they used to trust.

Yeah. But they're not trustworthy. Yeah. It's like something has invaded them. Something has happened to trust. Yeah, but they're not trustworthy. Yeah, it's like something has invaded something something has happened to their not like they used to be the desire to disengage and just accept it was pretty overwhelming and fewer and fewer folks were voting to for instance in 1968 60.9% of eligible voters voted that was down 1% from the previous election. Oh well. In 1972, that number drops to 55.2. Now that's a big fucking drop. That's 5.7%.

Big drop. More importantly, the voting age got lowered in 1971 by constitutional amendment. Yes. That should have added 10 million to the rolls. It should have. And it still dropped. Despite that, it still dropped by 5.5%. Especially in light of the fact that the youth could now vote on whether or not to continue the war that was killing them. Well, by that same point, most of that demographic had been so completely turned off by the figures that were then in power. But they literally are facing an existential threat that a vote could help solve. And they were like, no, it's not worth it.

This is a bullshit system. They are turned off. They were pushed away. Yeah, well, yeah. By the people who are killing them. Yes. And that's, you know, the perennial problem with you know younger generation voters is there still Yep hunting unicorns

You know to to borrow a phrase from and bless them for it people. Yeah, but you know after a certain point if if it's between you know Sour on yeah, and somebody who's not and you know, Sauron and somebody who's not sound- And a donkey. Yeah, like, it's not a unicorn. I'm gonna vote for the horse here. I'm not gonna take positive action to make sure the lord of darkness doesn't wind up,

you know, taking over. Oh yeah. So, that drop in voting roles is commensurate with the loss of faith in the US government. I stuck to, I believe, the Coenipiac polls going all the way back so I was comparing apples to apples. From 1968 to 1972, trust in the government drops by about 4%. That's pretty close to the drop in voting roll too. From 72 to 74, it drops by another 16%. Holy crap. Well, and think about what's happening. Now that's huge and it continues to plummet after that fact,

which I found fascinating. You know what else was on the rise though? What? Possession movies. 1973, Exorcist. Yes. It grossed $444 million. That is the equivalent to $2.5 billion today. Oh yeah, it was one that it was runaway, huge runaway success.

For an idea of scale. Huge, yeah. It made about as much money as Avengers Endgame has made. Oh wow. Yeah. Wow. It was that quint wow. Yeah. Wow. It was that quintessential. Yeah.

It was the measuring stick against which all others would measure. This is before blockbusters existed, by the way. This is before jaws. This is before Star Wars, before jaws. It come in any of those. And it came out. It came out full movies.

It came out during Watergate. Trust in the government was below 46% and continuing to drop. The figures that I have are for the year before and after, oddly enough, it doesn't actually measure 73, it measures 72 and 74. Okay. It goes from just over 50 to the mid 30s. It's insane how quickly it drops. I mean, it makes sense given what's going on. Well, yeah.

Well, that is a huge goddamn drop. Oh, yeah. I would say it's the only time what's going on. Well, yeah. But that is a huge goddamn drop. Oh, yeah. I would say it's the only time such a dip has been for justified reasons, because we have seen similar dips, but it's so obviously partisan. Oh, well, yeah. It's Republicans being pissed that a Democrats in charge.

Yeah. And it's Democrats being pulled further to the right. People can't point to a real and legitimate reason when that happens. It's just a personality-based argument. I don't point to a real and legitimate reason when that happens. It's just a personality-based argument. I don't need to discuss Excesses too much. I mean, it's a well-known plot.

It's part of our social fabric. Yeah, shit, a couple of years later, Saturn and I have had a skit with Richard Pryor on it. Yeah. And I just recently, like a week ago, realized that there was a brilliant rhyme in it. So have you seen the skit with Richard Pryor? No.

Okay, so not Jane Curtain, Lorraine Newman. Lorraine Newman playing the little girl. Richard Pryor and I forget, I think it's probably Richard Pryor and Garrett Morris. Okay. Are the priests. And, yeah, that's a departure. Yeah, well, and it's very much a a this is what would happen if they were black priests Okay, skip all right, so the rain Newman's saying all kinds of terrible things and they're like, oh, I don't believe you blah blah blah

And then the rain Newman says yo mama so socks that smell Throws a yo mama joke in there. It's 1975. Yeah It Richard prior affects this stance where he stands back on one leg and shakes his head Like kind of looks at I said, what'd you call my mama? Yomama so socks that smell and I was like, oh, that's funny Ha ha and then he's like trying to choke her and then they're like pulling him off Her and she like that and she calls him a jive turkey at one point. Yeah But the Yomama so socks that smell line is a rhyme to the actual line in the movie.

Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't catch that until this year, until like three weeks ago. Yeah, well, you know, we, we are a long, long since post-exorcist generation, We were born two years after the movie came out. No, it's time we were going to have to have nearly three years after that. So here's what Roger Ebert had to say. He didn't like the movie, although his criticism and his distaste peel back at what's really happening in American culture. He says, the year 1973 began and ended with cries of pain. It began with Ingmar Bergman's cries and whispers and it closed with William Friedkins the exorcist.

Both films are about the weather of the human soul and no two films could be more different. Yet each in its own way forces us to look inside, to experience horror and to confront the reality of human suffering. I skip around a bit. Friedkin's film is about a 12-year-old girl who is either suffering from a severe neurological disorder or perhaps has been possessed by an evil spirit. Friedkin has the answers, the problem is that we doubt he believes them. We don't necessarily believe them ourselves, but that hardly matters during the film's two hours. If movies are, among other things, opportunities for escapism, then the exorcist is one of the most powerful ever made.

Our objections, our questions, occur in an intellectual context after the movie has ended. During the movie, there are no reservations, but only experiences. We feel shock, horror, nausea, fear, and some small measure of doggy'd hope. This movie doesn't rest on the screen, it's a frontal assault. It may be that the times we live in have prepared us for this movie, and Friedkin has admittedly given us a good one. I've always preferred a generic approach to film criticism, I ask myself how good a movie is of its type.

The exorcist is one of the best movies of its type ever made. It not only transcends the genre of terror horror and the supernatural, but it transcends such serious ambitious efforts in the same direction as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's baby. I am not sure exactly what reasons people will have for seeing this movie. Surely enjoyment won't be one. Again, we're going there to traumatize ourselves to the tune of $444 million, the equivalent of $2.5 billion. Surely enjoyment won't be one, because what we get here aren't the delicious chills of a Vincent Price thriller, but raw and painful experience.

Are people so numb they need movies of this intensity in order to feel anything at all? It's hard to say. I would say it's not. I would say he's begging the question there to be honest. Even in the extremes of Friedkins vision there is still a feeling that this is after all a cinematic escapism and not a confrontation with real life. There is a fine line to be drawn there and the actresses finds it and stays a millimeter on this side. This review is contemporaneous with the movie. He's talking about the times he's living through and it's clear that the times he's

living through fit this movie. Okay. And now I'm going gonna jump in about the relationship between those two films. Cool. So Rosemary's Baby was written by a guy who got his bones as a screenwriter named Iroh 11. Okay.

And Iroh 11 basically wrote it to be a very secular possession film. Okay, so she winds up, she carries the Spawn of Satan, and the help that she receives is not from any kind of religious authority. Right. It's from a neighbor, I don't remember enough the details about the story, but it's from a neighbor. It's a neighbor neighbor, I don't remember enough to detail about the story, but it's from a neighbor couple, yeah. A neighbor couple who goes to the public library and looks up all the books and all the information and all the lore. And then in the end, I mean, all of that winds up failing and it winds up having this

very dionizing and ending where chaos wins. Yep. You know, and the, the, one of the descriptions I've heard about her, her reaction at the end of the film isn't, isn't like, well, this is what it is, I have to, I have to live with it kind of acceptance so much as it is, she's so thoroughly traumatized and so terribly shocked. That's the only response that she could have is to sit and rock the crib because she's not there anymore. She's stunned in the complicit. She has been, you could say, stunned in the complicity or she has been ground down to non-agency.

If that makes sense. or she has been ground down to non-agency. If that makes sense. That 100% does, given what I'm seeing historically. Now, so that's where I was made as a baby. Okay. And that was written by this guy, I wrote 11, who specifically wrote it to be anti-religious authority, anti-religious hierarchy, hierarchy anti all of that stuff now

Blattie is the author of the novel of the exercise. Okay, and I got to find his first name here. I apologize here But anyway, Blattie's the last name. We're to go with that for the moment. The novel came out in 71 and Blattie was a devout Catholic. That seems obvious. Who wrote his novel as a response to what he saw as an assault on the church by Rosemary's baby. So Rosemary's baby is the church is never even answers into it. They never go into a church. They never talk to a priest. They never talk to any of these people. Yeah. Glad he literally believed that that was putting people in spiritual peril. Oh wow. Like he was a committed believer and he believed that that message was dangerous. I mean like in the sense of the counter-reformation Happening because the church was convinced that Luther and Calvin and all those guys were imparalling the souls of the followers. And so he wrote Rosemary's baby William Peter Blattie is his name. He wrote the exorcist. Sorry.

Blattie wrote the exorcist specifically to bolster the role of the old priest and the young priest and the church and the institution. And these are the people who know how to protect us from. They're going to save us. They are going gonna save us. Right. It's important to note that it was in the late 60s, early 70s, that a rapid and dramatic decline in the number of new priests was a big deal. Right.

It was a crisis within the church. In Jesus' crisis. Because, well, yes. He didn't. the church because because well yes and and we begin with good days so yeah that one did you're slipping got a nail that down better I'm going to help for that one but well yeah because you're not even a believer, but but So Blattie wrote the book Mm-hmm as a response to this crisis in in the declining number of new vocations for priests as a and also as a response to leaven he basically was like this this thing by Levin is garbage. Right. And you hippies are fucking out. You hippies are yes. Yes.

Yes. He is fucking everything out. Yeah. Interestingly, Levin basically wrote the exercise stuff as a bad copy of his own work. So these two guys wound up having a literary feud for years. That's like Gorg Vidal and what's his face? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but also soon. Yeah, or Freddie and Jason, right, within the genre. And so there was a whole article that a Facebook friend of mine who is a horror author. Well, he would call, he properly, he's a weird fiction author and that slides into horror slithers into horror. And so he hates the fact that Blattie won because the excerpts just wound up becoming the template for all of the possession films going forward. And Dwayne, if you're listening, hi. Being a weird fiction author and being a committed non-believer really hates the fact that Hollywood has basically been obsessed with hell and demonic forces

forever. He thinks it dumbs down the entire genre. He could spout very, very well-written, screed about it for a long time. But I think while we're talking about these two movies and we're talking about them as a reaction to the moment in which they happened, it's also important to note their relationship to each other. Yeah. That literally the exercise that was written as a, like you're talking about, as a, we have

to find the right white guy in a position of authority to save us. That's literally what the exercise was written as an exhortation to do. Right. Because Rosemary's baby is subversive to the extent that it's entirely secular, and that it ends on a deeply Dionysian note, whereas there is the still there Dionysian note of the fact that the priest has essentially taken the demon into himself in an act of Christian self sacrifice for Regan, you know, at the end of the film. But he is still victorious in saving the poor innocent little girl through and act, God,

this just struck me through an act ofrifice because that's what we would want our people in positions of authority to ultimately be willing to do. Well, and frankly, that's what we'd seen them doing for the last decade. JFK gets shot in the head. RFK gets shot in the head. Martin Luther King gets shot in the back of the neck. Malcolm X gets shot all throughout his torso. True, yeah. Full of holes. Yes. Like a lot of people get shot. A lot of people dying for their causes.

A lot of people being martyrs. Yes. Yes. So yeah. So yeah, I want it because the funny thing is you were we we we outside of recording. We were talking about, you know, you, you had mentioned that, well, you know, I wasn't really feeling this one until I figured out what my thesis was, and then it really all clicked and everything on the place. And about the same time we had that conversation, my friend Duane shared, oh, that's funny. This article from Diaballique magazine about Blattigan 11 and their feud, and it was like, well, it's a kismet. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think that's an important note in the midst of the rest of your thesis. So, I'm going to stop in just a little bit because we're at the end of this episode. Okay. But I do want to piggyback on what you said. Extraces set the formula. It really did set the formula.

In many ways it followed a formula that was already there, but it also crystallized it. What TV trims would refer to as the trope codifier? Yes. And by this time, it involved, the formula now involves good triumphant over evil, an evil that had snuck into its innocent vessel. Yes.

Rosemary's baby didn't do that. No. The Vietnam War was ending in 1973 under Nixon. We had something called peace with honor. Yes. Watergate was also underway. Yes. You have this dovetailing of things. It looked as though someone did care about justice and governance. Maybe not the guy in charge.

But people in positions of authority were doing what needed to be done in order to write the ship and save us from, you know, setting our entire country on fire. So and save us from setting our entire country on fire. So the American psyche was so damaged by this point that just as in governance, we're kind of hollow shadows of the bullworks that they once were. Now again, for dominant culture. Yeah.

I'm answering, I'm talking for white middle America. Yeah. They're more impressions than they are the things that they have come merely to offer a silhouette of. And while Friedkin couldn't know that Ford would ultimately pardon Nixon, and Kissinger would never be put on trial for war crimes all over the world, the scent was in the wind that there was a group of people whom justice just didn't touch. Yeah. And if not, then during Watergate, trust in the government would be on the rise, because we'd be seeing the process. We did see the process. We saw that justice

was revealing. It didn't matter for shit. It continued to plummet. Because we saw the process and nothing was ultimately happening. Yeah, well we got the devil out of Regan and it wound up moving into a different vessel. So did we really fix anything? Yeah. And we lost our priest. Yeah. So we lost the old priest. Right, he had true.

It still has a young priest. Yeah, but now he's dead. But he didn't know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that I'm so fond of saying. What have you gleaned so far? Well, I think it's it's reinforcement of the theme that keeps coming up for everyone we do this and is essentially the central thesis of of what we're doing, which is every whatever whatever you set out to write, you're writing about now. Yeah. And whether you are doing it consciously or not, that's what winds up coming out the beginning of the 70s. I think is a point that doesn't get a lot of play. I think it will now, given that our current crop of historians, though they've dwindled a number by three quarters as much as far as people having a vocation to the field, they are looking at memory as

a part of what creates the historical record. That's in the historiography now, as a school of thought. And this emphasis on trauma in the last five years has really, I mean, it's in psychology, but it's informing. Well, it's in psychology, it's something we everything. And interestingly, it's been, it's become a very big thing in education. You know, we spent a whole year at my site

talking about how are we gonna, we have to take into account that we're dealing with kids who are coming from backgrounds, which are in form practices. Trauma-informed practices. Trauma-informed practices. Yeah. So we're seeing trauma-informed history starting to come out.

And so that, I see what you're saying, but that's gonna be part of the history of your art, if you know. But the depiction of the 1970s in popular culture has not taken that into account. It's tie-dye and hippies in the early 70s and it's, you know, disco. Right. And, and bell bottom pants. Right. And, you know, all that kind of stuff in the late 70s. It's all the affect. It's all the affect. It's all the surface, you know, oh, hey, do you remember or everything was olive and, you know, how tacky were the colors and all that kind of stuff. If,

know how tacky were the colors and all that kind of stuff. If last year, it was either last year or year before, on Netflix, my wife and I wound up binge watching our way through that 70s show. Oh, okay. And that did a really good job at highlighting how social more is have changed. Yes. It did a really great job, illuminating the ways in which social ideas were changing. You know, the mom of the primary care whose family goes out and gets a job. Right. Dad is really not happy about that. Doesn't like the fact that that's necessary.

It's the bread winner. He shouldn't have to do that. He's still wears a hat. He's still wears a hat. He's still wears a hat. You know, it's all of this transitional stuff that was going on gets illuminated really well. And there is a brilliant moment where they talk about the 76 election, where Red stands up and says,

you pardoned Nixon in this tone of indignation. Like how could you do that? Wow, and I guarantee you Red voted Nixon. Oh, yeah. Because that was the character. Yeah. But yeah, and the fact that he stood up and was like, you know, how that is the tip of the iceberg as far as recognition of the moral trauma

that everybody had been put through by that point. And that's the extent to which we get it. Yeah. And it's just not something that comes up. You know, it's a sitcom, it's in popular culture. It came out after friends. It was a friends clone set in the 70s. And a lot of us, six people.

I get what you're saying. I'm using that as a specific kind of stand-in for the way the sevenies get portrayed kind of everywhere else. Unless you're talking about something really gritty, stand in for the way the sevenies get portrayed kind of everywhere else. Yeah. You know, unless you're talking about something really gritty, you know, like if you do a police procedural set in that period, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be grimmer. It's not going to be ha-ha, but still not really going to talk about.

That's true. It's going to talk about how life on Mars, talking about detective show, police procedural in the 70s, life on Mars, shows how police brutality was a matter of course in a lot of departments, and how just the police culture, and our expectations of law enforcement have changed since then. And it was pretty grim in a lot of places, and very gritty, but it was still the surface of an impression of, look how different times were back then,

and it didn't actually go into, yeah, look how really deeply fucked up everybody was by the times they were living in. Yeah, it's kind of like learning history by reading a school textbook versus looking at the primary source. Yeah, versus it's like reading a book about Uncle Tom's cabin instead of reading Uncle Tom's cabin. Yes. So, yeah.

So that's what sticks with me. Yeah. Alright, well, next episode I will get into 1979. Uh, and then I'll, I'll go a little farther. Hopefully. Yeah. Um, and we'll discuss further possession movies. Okay. Uh, but for right now, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Um, and, uh, what, uh, what books do you have that you could recommend? Um, let's see. I was just trying to sit down and read one. Oh, orthodoxy.

Oh, orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, speaking of Catholicism. It is a Christian apologetics, so not for everybody. But I find that the older I get and the more life experience I get, the more I can identify with Chesterton's view of the world and of faith. Okay. And I find it comforting and his language is simultaneously very kind of homey and very articulate. Nice. So how about you? There is a book, it's a self-help book.

I don't normally go for self-help books by Hero Yuki Nishikaki. Nishigaki. Okay. Called How to Goodbye Depression. If you constrict to anus one hundred times every day. Well, Larky or effective way. My God, it actually did it. It is on Amazon for $16. And I would just like to read you a description. Product description. I think constricting A-N-S 100 times and denting naval 100 times in succession every day is effective to goodbye depression

and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years as a result. He has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle, he is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor borne a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make fuck three times in succession without drawing out. In addition, he also can have burned a strong, beautiful fire within his abdomen. It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body releases a material fiber or third attention,

which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration. If you don't know concentration which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like a hell. Wow. I think I really used to hire a better translator. Oh, I thought he was a native speaker. Book length of 252 pages. Sweet mother of God. And here's the review. The first 90 pages are literally just copy-pasted from forum chat where people are making fun of the author while the author drops. Does exactly as advertised in aiding you in good buying depression, albeit not at all how the author intended speaking off of

Authorial intent. Yeah, just to taste it with this book includes the first 90 pages are literally just a copy-pasted form chat Where people are making fun of the author while the author drops by completely unaware that he is the butt of the joke and lands a few more gems for the form crowd to rip apart Anyway, I you know, I don't normally go for self-help books, but any kind of self-help book where you can good buy depression, I don't think is Malarkey. So yeah, are you going to give credit for where you got the recommendation for that? I will, and I feel a little bad telling tales out of school because she didn't give me permission to do this But my good friend Julie found this gem and Turned me on to it and I tell you my life is better. My life is no longer living a hell. Okay. There you go

I'm very glad to hear that for you. Yes. Depression goodbye. Bye. Goodbye. I've dented my naval 100 times just during this very podcast. I didn't need to know that. So, uh, for Geek. Why? Why? I was having a good night. We were all having such a good night. So, for Geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock and keep your rosary handy. And constrict your heinous 100 times. Or don't.