A Geek History of Time - Episode 25- Possession is Nine Tenths of Government (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

Damian continues his analysis of the appeal of possession stories in times of disillusionment with government. Along the way he gives Ed a week's worth of insomnia describing the last third of "Hereditary." #klokk

Like they they advertise one match when crashing a car into one of the wrestlers. Not a total victory of Russia, which now we're seeing. He goes on. He's a gigantic bag of flaccid dicks. Sorry, contidence. Which when you open them up, you find out that they're all cockroaches and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if anybody else is ever going to laugh this hard at anything we say.

We can actually both look out my window right now and see some very pretty yellow flowers that I'm going to be eradicating. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect her to the real world. I'm Ed Blaylock, a world history teacher at the 7th grade level. I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher at a high school and also a soon-to-be-world history teacher again. I'm redesigning my entire curriculum because things have changed in the last 15 years since I taught it last. Wow.

I think I last taught it. It's been a while away. You know what? I taught it 11 years ago. Okay. Yeah, so things have changed. It's okay. And so I have to like really update the creeping rise

of fascism section from the 1930s. Because that's the only time it ever happened. Yeah, ever. Yeah, thank goodness we learned. Yeah, thank goodness that's not happening anywhere. All over the world at once. Traumatically. Yeah. Yeah. And so on a more positive, no demonic possession. Yeah, yeah. So in our last episode, we left off talking about the exorcist and Rosemary's baby and the interplay between the two. Yeah. And what they both had in common was that a woman was the vessel for demonic possession,

which was a normal, normal thing in these kinds of movies. In 1979, another horror movie comes out, another possession movie comes out. And it's called Amityville Horror. Oh yeah. Now this only grossed $108 million, which I say only, that's $423 million in today's money. Sweet baby juices. Yes. Yes. Uh, okay.

Fun fact, trust in the government was down to 28%. In 79. Yeah. It's harder. Yeah, it kept dropping. Because he was the only one to ever say the state of our union is weak. Oh.

We don't like hearing that shit. Well, yeah. Also, I, again, and I pointed this out last time, and I think it's true. After the bloody nose of Nixon Ford. Yeah. The Republicans... How to put.

Guru, way more partisanly, petulant when a Democrat was in office. Okay. And because there it seemed to me and again this might be me theorizing. Yeah. But Carter was way more trustworthy than Nixon. The Carter administration was way more trustworthy than Nixon's administration. The House of Representatives and the Senate were cooperating with Carter in a number of ways and in plenty of ways they weren't as it's supposed to be.

Yeah. But you clearly have a demonstrably more trustworthy administration there. Here's what I'm going to say. Sure. And this is my theory again, being the, you know, raised in a Reagan Household at the table here. Reagan who had run from president twice by this point.

Yeah. He was was was gearing up for a second. He was gearing up for a second round. I think when we're talking about polls, talking about level of trust in the government, I think what you would hear from Reaganites about how they felt about the Carter administration wasn't, I don't trust this guy, this guy is shifty or dishonest, it was, I don't trust this guy, this guy is shifty or dishonest. Right. It was, I don't trust this guy because I don't think this guy is competent to make the hard decisions. I think this guy is a fruit loop. I think

this guy is, you know, because Carter was in a great many way. He was a huge departure. Yeah. On a whole, he ran on that. He ran on what a huge departure he was from from Nixon. Yeah. And he was this very intensely moral, very intensely. Everything was viewed through his very, I'm gonna say black and white moral compass. Yeah. He was also one of the smartest presidents we'd had. Oh yeah. Yeah. And he was, he was also one of the smartest presidents we'd had. Oh, yeah, um, yeah, and and and he he was He was deadly do right to the Mounties. Yes, he was and I think there was a sense amongst Reaganites the people who would who would who would be most that's harder flaco, right?

kind of kind of people who would express that opinion is his virtue signalling to presentize this conversation a bit was not something they trusted. Not that they didn't think it was genuine, but that this isn't the metric we should be using for making these decisions. You know, the kind of draconian things he did in regard to federal buildings and climate controls and federal buildings under his administration were, you know, everything is going to be set at this temperature that's nobody is it's comfortable, nobody is happy, but it's gonna save energy and we're in an oil crisis

and by God, this is what we gotta do. You know, I mean, there's, there's a clear, there's a clear moral imperative. Yes. But nobody liked it. I would, and it was like we were being forced as a nation to eat our weedies. Yes.

And so there was this kind of that social justice warrior jackass hippie dip, you know, kind of emotional reaction from those folks. And I think when you talk about trust declining, when you talk about the partisanship involved in that I think that's what we're what we're talking about. I'm going to either push back or piggyback on that depending on the point of view here yes and I Think good and prof technique. Thank you. I think that it was not Genuine I think those are talking points that were brought up

by people who decided to double down instead of apologize for their fuckery. They see... The highest levels of the party? Yep. I can see that. They seized power under Nixon. Yeah.

They decided to rig the game to make sure that they stayed in power under Nixon. Yeah. They decided to rig the game to make sure that they stayed in power under Nixon. Yeah. And then they lost anyway. Yeah. And they couldn't handle losing. So they were doubling down and they were kind of finding a way to seize power again. And to them, I think it was an existential, they're seizing power. Yeah, and I'm gonna point out here that at this time period, we're talking about very young Rumsfeld,

talking about very young, or comparing very young Cheney, before he actually received the vampire's kiss, but he was working toward it as a Renfield by this point. And at the top of the party, but he was working toward it as a Renfield by this point. And at the top of the party, I'm gonna agree with you. Yep. At the ground level, it really was.

I think it was more tribal. Honestly, I still don't think. I think it was people with, it was almost like they had a solution that they found to a problem they didn't know they had. So they were told that he's incompetent, they were told that he's weak and they're like, yeah, that's why I don't like him. Instead of owning to the fact that I pick this tribe and I'm okay with them cheating like a motherfucker six years ago.

I would, here's the deal. cheating like a motherfucker six years ago. I would, here's the deal. I would have to have a very complicated conversation with members of my family. To get to the bottom of how much of it is what you're saying and how much of it is what I perceived and what I, I going to say feel in a very non-Republicans wishy-feely liberal even though they run entirely on fear now. So, yeah, and I would point out that that is the antecedent to what we see now.

Well, yeah, yeah, I'm certainly not going to argue with that at all. I'm just saying rhymes that far back. Yeah and and and yeah the ground the the groundwork was initially laid for what we're seeing right now way back then. Yeah. That is you know I mean that's that's Bush 2. Mm-hmm. All the way back then because again Cheney Rums fell to bed and all those guys. And and and and and the the moral version of the bush, which again, I will quibble on that as well, but the more moral one lost in the primaries to Ronald Reagan and then was co-opted by Ronald Reagan. And then he happily kissed the ring.

But he was a more moral individual than was Ronald Reagan. He was a more moral individual than were all those guys advising Ford. He was and he lost. And that is very telling to me that that's the direction that party was because victory mattered more than any level of Morality and by the way, I will as much as I agree that he is the more moral of the bushes He's a dirty mother fucker. Yeah, so anyway, so mvville horror. Yeah made 423 million dollars in today's money 108 million back then now popularity not popularity trust in the government,

had been falling steadily from the end of Johnson. Rightly so, dude was lying. Oh yeah. Through Nixon and Ford, and this was lower still than under Watergate. And it's not even like it's a trailing indicator. This is six years later. So yeah, I'm saying it's partisan. It hits its nadeer under Carter. Yeah until Obama Which is another reason why I'm saying this is a holy partisan thing. Yeah, it happens to these guys

Carter got painted up as a wimp pretty quickly, which is easy to do when a guy gets attacked by a swamp rabbit and Can't fight it off. Yeah Republicans painted as a wimp several Democrats didn't like him, didn't like that he'd beaten them, had Kennedy made sure we didn't have health care because of this. Yeah. Some of us had to do with a lot of chickens coming home to roost at the same time for the Republican Party and for the Democrat Party as well in terms of foreign relations. For instance, under Carter, we see the Shah get deposed. Has nothing to do with Carter to be perfectly honest.

No. But he's left-holding the bag. He gets credit rightly so for not launching one missile, one bomb, or one bullet during his presidency. But it ain't for lack of trying. He tried to rescue those guys in Iran, the hostages in Iran, and the wind storm. A sandstorm stopped it. Yeah, well, not only stopped it, but the mission turned into a complete Donnie Brook.

And that is really easy to pin on Carter. Look at that. Yeah. Oh Lord knows my father did. Yeah, tell know, um, Lord knows my father did. Yeah, tell you what. So here in this movie, it's not a young woman being inhabited by a demon or some other mental evidence. Nope, it's a house. Now following these possession movies, it is taken from a book that was written about two years earlier. So far, the three that I've talked about are taken from books that are written shortly before. Yeah.

But it's supposed to be a true story. I never believe, based on a true story, has anything other than like, oh yeah, we read this book that people claimed it is true. So I never put any stock in that at all. But allegedly, it was a family who bought a house where folks were murdered and the house just starts fucking with these people.

There's flies, despite it being in winter. There's an urge to go to the boat house around the time that the murders were supposed to have happened. There's a room that scares the dog back to what you had said in the last episode. The kids have weird interactions with imaginary beings on and on and on. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's creepy ass house. Yeah. The house has a pit of black slime. It possesses the dad for a little bit, but everyone gets away. Yeah. It's not two different now that you say I don't allow it from the shining. I mean, that was a hotel.

But it's the malevolence. Similar. it's the malevolence is the place. The malevolence is inhabiting the place. I don't know. I'm gonna, I'm starting to quibble a little bit in my head about whether we're still talking about possession or if we're talking about haunted house movies. Well, I would say this obsession because the dad does get possessed. Okay, yeah, you're right.

And here's the fun part. This book was written in 1977. Do you know what was on a steep rise in 1977 and by 1979 was even steeper? And it would peak in 81? Divorce? No. What?

Interest rates for housing. The house is the malevolence. Okay, all right. So this time it's a house, it's not a little girl. It's not a young woman. It is the symbol of American prosperity. You can't trust anything in the 1970s. No, no, nothing.

It's a house. When inflation rates were treacherous for reasons that people didn't understand, you could see why this movie made so much money. Yes. Here's Roger Eberts's review. He didn't like it Bad guys are great. There's nothing quite like a malevolent presence that implacably wishes evil on everyone in town a guy with a sneer and a mustache and an upset stomach Guy totally unlike the evil entity in the Amityville horror is the story based on fact

I have no way of knowing. I've met George Lutz, that's who it's supposed to be based on. Yeah. I had a couple of beers with him in the Los Angeles airport. I totally believe that because Robert Gerr-Ebert was a fucking party animal. Oh yeah. It's insane. And he seemed to be likable and totally believable person. He told me soberly and earnestly of the terrible things that happened to him and his family that in that haunted house on Ocean Boulevard in Long Island Out there where people move in every expectation of learning Craig Clairborn's New York Times cookbook by heart Was he telling the truth did Greenstein really squirt from the keyholes?

Did a red-eyed pig really glare through through through through the windows? Did a ghostly marching band really parade through the living room? Maybe so. We've all made bad real estate investments. The problem with these folks is that they've moved to Long Island. Such a sin, Chicago. There are lots of neighborhoods in the Chicago area, which they would have made a good investment on. But am I growing facetious?

Not really. In order to be a horror movie, a horror movie needs a real horror. The creature in Alien was truly gruesome. The case of possession in the exorcist was profoundly frightening. The problem with the Amityville Horror is that in a very real sense, there's nothing there. We watch for two hours of people being frightened and dismayed and we ask ourselves, what for? If it's real, let it have happened to them. Too bad, let's us. And if it's made up, make it more entertaining. If they can't make up their minds, why should we?

All right. He didn't like the movie at all. No, I want to point out that the Amityville Corp is the beginning of the career of Ed and Lorraine Warren, who, tell me that's not. So Elizabeth Warren's mom. No, no, no. Ed and Lorraine Warren were paranormal investigators, devout Catholics, like you do, like you do.

And the Annabelle doll is is an artifact of a possession that they supposedly were involved in okay Lorraine Warren has a long running verbal feud with the amazing Randy oh that's right that's where I heard that name yeah okay and And the Amityville Horror, the stories of the Amityville Horror have essentially been proven to be malarkey. One of the writers involved in the novel. You don't have to tell me that a house

being possessed by demons is the whole art. But what I'm saying is the based on a true story part of it is, 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, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Yeah, and then we go completely batten that's crazy with this story and you know, Ed and Lorraine Warren were according to this writer very heavily involved in the crafting of that particular tale and then from there they went on to investigate other events and whatever. Right. And so, yeah. Okay. It's worth noting that this is the beginning of Ed Lorraine Warren's career as, you know,

just those ghost slash demon busters in air quotes. Right. And yeah. Okay. So I just wanted to throw that in. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think he liked it.

No, clearly. Buried in his clear, I wrote this to get a paycheck review, though. Yeah. It is the connection to the malevolence of the movie now being about a structure, a shelter, and not about a single personality. He laments it.

But you see this shift. Yeah. The government was... A rather investment. Yeah, the government was no longer to be trusted. Interest rates, the economy, capitalism itself, were all malevolent. All these systems upon which we used to be... Structures and institutions.

...are malevolent and we're fairly stuck with them. Okay. By the late 1980s, the number of leave-the-rat-race books was overwhelming, by the way. Okay. A lot of people. And it's kind of the last gasp of the baby boomers, like hippies who were like, shit. I ended up in the rat, you know, and then like a lot of them wanted to create self-sustaining farms and got into crystals. Yeah. Crystal. No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Crystal's plural or crystal clear. No, yeah, yeah. Crystal's plural. Crystal is their kids. Okay. On those farms. Okay. Finding a way to make money.

Yeah. And really clean the baseboards with their toothbrushes. Yeah. So then, here's an interesting thing. And I find this intensely ironic. Jimmy Carter is one of the more moral men we've ever had as president. I don't agree with a lot of the morality.

In the Marlottin, the modern era. Yeah, he really was. And you see, trust in him plummeting. And trust in the government under him plummeting. One of the least trustworthy presidents we've ever had follows him. As so often happens, by the way, we have a thoroughly decent human being followed by a thoroughly magnetic personality shit heel. Vinyl. Yes, a Vinyl Curr. Well, so Ronald Reagan, trust in the presidency, trust in the government starts to go up

despite the fact that he's a lying sack of shit. There was all kinds of hinky shit going on under Reagan. We know now. Yeah, but by mid 1986, trust in the government crosses back over the 50% mark. Okay. Despite Iran'sra being highly public, to the point where when I was in sports camp as an eight-year-old, we were discussing Iran Contra while playing kickball. You ran with a very odd crowd. Odd crowd. I agree.

At that age. So there's also it's other shit going on under Reagan as well. But the president was a presidential looking fellow. He put on a good face. He was from Hollywood. He was he was a consummate showman. Yep. And all of his policy statements. All of his, everything he did was clothed in one of two capes. Sometimes both simultaneously. Either we are the bastion of... Or the city on the hill. Well, hold on. That's the sunny optimism side. I'm talking about we are we are the bastion of

free market capitalism freedom of thought freedom of individual expression. We are you know and and American exceptionalism on the one hand and then shining city on a hill optimism. It's morning in America right was it was a brilliantly crafted message. And here's the thing. Everything you're saying about the, you know, completely shady crap going on under, under the Reagan administration is totally correct.

Yes. And I'm not going to take anything away from what you're saying about shady crap going on in the Reagan because those are matters of fact. It intellectual honesty prevents me from being able to say that, but what I will say is I really wish that we as a nation could still hold on to. Maybe not the exceptionalism part,

but certainly we wanna build the shining city on the hill. We wanna be the better nation, we wanna be, you know, it's, you know, things are gonna get better if we put our shoulders to the wheel. I mean, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah.

The message was amazing. Yeah, I mean, Aaron Sorkin is a really good writer and that thing that he had Jeff Daniels do for three minutes at the beginning of newsroom is exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. We, we, this is why Make America Great Again is such an easy thing to tap into.

Yeah. We have this mythological idea of our greatness tied into our potential. Without ever having actually realized it, honestly, because again, for the dominant culture, not even all of them got seeded at the table. But, dammit, we could. Bernie was tapping into that too. AOC is tapping into that too. Well, yeah, that was good. Well, I mean, you know,

AOC is tapping into that now. Yeah, Obama tapped into it. And the thing is, and the thing. Generation we were waiting for, yeah. Yeah, and the thing is that sense of optimism, that sense of, you know, we need to, we need to all of us get together and work on doing this.

The problem, I got sidetracked verbally from what I was trying to say. The problem with make America great again is it is rooted in fear of decline. There is an inherent statement that we were great, we are not great now. And it begs the question, when were we? Right. Vags the questions, when were we? And why aren't we now? Right.

Even before we then beg the question of, okay, how are you gonna do that smart guy? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hey, geek nation, this is Ed. And Damien, hey, what you got there? I got a copy of the stolen by my good friend Bishop O'Connell. He is a Norwegian wedding cake creator. No, he is not. Oh, he is a an urban fantasy writer. Remember the science fiction writers of America? Oh wow. So that's that looks like it says one of three.

Yes, well, it's the first volume of an American fairy tale. The other two volumes are the forgotten and the returned. Nice. What's, it's fairy tales. Does that mean there's a lot of Celtic and Irish folklore in there? A very great deal. Yes. The first novel actually involves the characters traveling to Tier IX.

No kidding. Yeah. Wow, I remember that from Titanic. Yeah, you. Yeah. Good, I remember that from Titanic. Yeah, you Good day, sir With that back to the show Which you know

We still haven't really gotten an answer But you know, David he's gonna do it if if you know, everybody else would just shut up and let him become dictator for life. Um, you know, he'd fix all our problems like every demagogue ever has told anybody throughout history, which is why all of this so frustrating for both of us to be watching in real time. Yeah. But, you know, there, there is a fundamental difference between MAGA and Morning in America. And they're both Republican slogans. But the difference is between them that sunny, yeah, uptimist, you know, I mean, like the man was a Pollett Reagan, I'm talking about was a Pollyanna. Yeah. I mean, you know, in a prior episode, the guy turned the Cold War into a joke.

Right. You know, bombing began, you know, I've outlawed the Soviet Union bombing begins in 15 minutes, which, you know, is my favorite Cold War anecdote ever. But the underlying takeaway is the dude was making a joke about that. Right. Like, even our existential dread was, you know, capable of being made funny. Yeah.

And while there's all kinds of problems with that, I think for everybody in the country who had been through the ringer. For the dominant culture. Well, for the dominant culture, for the folks who showed up and voted for him, having gone through the ringer like they had for the last decade plus,

having that guy, yeah, having that guy, as the standard bearer for the country was something because, you know, you talk about partisanship and what's interesting, and we can talk about, at some point when we have time in another episode, we can talk about why this partisanship isn't something that Democrats do to the same extent

Republicans do, talk about, well, I don't trust that, an effort, you know, just because these were in the wrong color jersey, you know, we are, I think beginning to see that as a reaction to that being a thing. But for the longest time, like Reagan wouldn't have been able to get the numbers that he got if it weren't for Democrats also being, you know, yeah, I mean, he damn your swept the country. I mean, you got 49 out of 50 states. Yeah. Yeah, I think yeah, yeah, he did and And there were yeah, and there were Reagan Democrats. Yes, there were lots of them. So, you know, and I mean we can always trust the guy who was in bedtime for Bonzo.

Well, I mean how could you? Right. It's it's a monkey movie for God's sake. There you go. And technically chip movie, but yeah, so the next monkey is the inherently funnier word. That's true. The next time that trust begins to plummet by the way, yeah, it starts to job off as 87 when the stock market begins to crash. Oh, yeah. Then it never really recovered. It dipped quite a bit under Bush 1 and then for partisan reasons stayed really low in the 90s. Yeah. For similarly partisan reasons and for 9-11 it came back up in the early 2000s. And then the wars dragged on, it goes back down and just before Obama takes another dip because the economy collapsed on itself. It's lately tanked, yeah.

For the worst reasons. And under Obama, again, partisanship kept it depressed despite the economic upturn and the fix. Yeah. And it's been pretty dang low ever since. So in the 80s, there's a few sequels. Yeah. To Ami Villor.

Ami Villor. There's all several Ami Villemovies. There's several um there's poltergeist which is basically a bigger budget version of amity villor i would say is not a possession movie because nobody gets possessed nobody gets possessed in it but now the structure is moving more toward haunted houses yeah there's sequels galore to that one as well um Arnold Schwarzenegger tries his hand in the devil possession movie genre in 1999. Oh, oh, oh.

End of this. Yeah, I saw that in the theater. Wow. I actually saw that one in the theater. They're in the thing is I was able to handle that one because more than being a horror film, it was a Schwarzenegger movie. Yep, that's true. And so if it's tinged with corporate traffic,

I can hack it. Sure. But it was basically a cop action movie. It was. And it cost $100 million to make. Yeah. But it only made $66 million domestically. Worldwide, it made $211.

It was one of those movies that was kind of the the indication that his career was on a On its down slow down slow in today's dollars. It made a profit about of about a hundred seventy five million dollars So it's doing right. It's not that much of a turnaround not like we saw with other horror movies And and that's the thing a lot of these movies don't make much money Possession movies people aren't going to see possession movies. They're still being made, but there's more writing sequel crests than anything else. Yeah. It's not as many, oh my god hits. And the 90s, despite the low trust in the government, isn't requiring movies to show possession

as an explanation for their anxiety anymore. That's the real shift. explanation for their anxiety anymore. That's the real shift. Our anxiety escapism, our fixing everything the right way, that's forgive the pun, is the crux of it. The partisanship, thank you. The partisanship that I discussed earlier, Clinton is president at the time. There's a lot of anxiety. What exactly is the anxiety about? There's not a malevolence in the government. No. There's a lot of anxiety. What exactly is the anxiety about? There's not a malevolence in the government. No. There is a, he doesn't deserve it in the government. Yeah.

That's the sentiment. He is a usurper. Right. I mean, I've mentioned that before, but that was the emotional reaction from my family. Sure. Me. I'm going to cop to it. It was as a 17-year-old beginning my senior year of high school. That was my emotional response. He shouldn't

be there. He doesn't deserve it. The only reason he's there is because Ross fucking per row split the party. Right. You know. And that doesn't sound too different than the echo that you hear in 2008 of people, not my president. Yeah. Well, you know, no indeed. Sentimentally, it's similar. Now, he wasn't this existential threat to democracy that Nixon was. No. He wasn't this existential threat to our lives that a dottering old Reagan was. No. And and threat to democracy with all of his Yankee shit. He got a blow job. Yeah. He won an office that Republican thought was theirs. Twice. Yes. Handedly. The second time. Oh, yeah. Although usually a second time around you when you win it, you win it it bigger Because you look presidential because you look well because the incumbent has all all kinds of advantages

Which was which was also by the way part of the reason that the Republican emotional reaction to his Function was what it was was like well wait hold on wait our guy only got one term. Yeah and the guy only got one term. Oh guy, our guy, yeah. And the, the, go, go ahead. I was, I was going to say, what is the thought I had? Yeah. Came in one. Now, the lack of trust that they have is similar, I think. And this is purely speculation on my part. There were polls that went around when George W. Bush was president, asking and forgive the term, but this was the early 2000s, do you think that George W. Bush is mentally retarded? A lot of people said yes on the left. They didn't really think he was. They really did. They answered yes in a poll, but they didn't really think

he was. I think that's similar in the beginning at least to people who were asked if they thought Obama was an American citizen. They didn't really mean it, but what we pretend to be, we become. Yeah. So people on the right really thought that Clinton was immoral and that his,

I mean, did they really think his blow job ruined the country? No. But in polls, they were, oh, of course, of course. Now we're finding out that they're full of shit. But it becomes more political outrage theater than it is honest sentiment. Whereas people under Nixon and Ford are like, no, that shit is bad for us.

Yeah. Whereas now it's like, well, I'm saying that because I'm rooting against, you know it's like when when run our test came to the kings, suddenly he was forgiven all his sins. Yeah. Well why? Well yeah it's where he's in the city. It's where he's in the city. It's different.

Yeah it's the paradigm of party politics is team sports. Right. So your possession movies aren't that successful during these times. Okay, because the anxiety is not... The anxiety is not saying level of anxiety. It's not actually anxiety. Right. Now, it's rooted in some other emotional,

I don't know what it's, what. It's petulous. Yeah. It is. That's a good term for it. So several Exorcist movies come out in the early 2000s. Clones of Exorcist movies come out. But they disappear until the war starts going badly.

Now we have an existential threat to our democracy again. The genre starts getting much more original and more money gets poured into it. And as it proves to be more profitable, there were some starts and fits and they made little money very little money until 2005 2005 you see constantine step onto the field it didn't make much money by the way it cost about a hundred million dollars to make worldwide it grossed $230.8 million. Decent return, not exorcist return, but it's still doing well enough to not be prohibitive. It starts Kiana Reeves, who is still kind of blessed by his matrix drawing power.

And it's a hell of a supporting cast actually. But it didn't fit the normal formula for possession movies. And that's the thing, they strayed from the formula for this. Well, they strayed for the formula because it's based on the Hellblazer comic series. John Constantine is a demon hunter. Well, as a, in the comics, he's a wizard. Oh, okay. He's a, I mean, he hunts demons.

But the defining trait is he is a trench coat wearing foul mouthed Cockney accented wizard. Yeah, well in this one. It's it's Keanu Reeves in an overcoat Smoking a lot and he has to kill demons Sigerah's right. Okay. Yeah, it it he fights Satan and he chops them from invading Yeah, which is kind of important actually if you think about it It's it's reflecting the time that is he is the story is about a man protecting us from hordes of demons coming into our world. And that's not a sustainably popular narrative

in 2005 because it was proven false. Ebert pan the shit out of it by the way. Well, the parts of it I've seen, deserve panic. It was not a great movie. Yeah, neither was I. There were some moments in it that were knocked out of the park. Sure.

But overall, it was kind of a, hey, we have the rights to this comic property. Let's do something with it. You know, the other thing is though also, you're not feeling. I'm saying of Hellblazer, by the way. Cool. As much as it is essentially, in many ways, a horror comic.

Yeah. I'm a fan of it and I was disappointed. Was disappointed in Constantine didn't do better and I was disappointed that Constantine wasn't done better. Yeah, that's fair. Well, and keep in mind, when you're making movies and you're not believing in the emotions you want to elicit, it's going to be harder to make that movie elicit those emotions.

This is true. And 73, everybody's feeling that. And it comes through. In 2005, not so much. And frankly, the idea of one man will stand, you know, we hear you and pretty soon the people who knock down these buildings will hear you. Yeah. Turns out we got in there for the wrong reasons. We went to Iraq for some reason. Bush got reelected by 2005, but it was obvious that the government had lied about WMDs in Iraq by this point.

It was, I mean, his slogan, it wasn't a slogan, but one of the things I remember was, do you really, yeah, I've taken a strong way, but do you really want to change horses in the middle of this river? And I was like, well, yeah, we're drowning in it. Which is so- Yeah, in World War II. But if the R actually made sense, it was's taking us the right way fighting fascism and all so is a great

I want to say Pete Seeger song And I can't remember the title now, but I'll okay, so anyway, so yeah It was also pretty obvious that even though the issues started about military strength in the current war, Bush preferred to campaign for the presidency based on the Vietnam War, which is fine, except he didn't fight in it and the guy he was running against did and served in Vietnam and ended up opposing that war on moral grounds, having earned numerous commendations along the way for his service. This is John Kerry. Bush got out of his service and then supported the Vietnam War

from America and partied the whole time as the sign of a powerful military political family. And here's the kicker. Bush came off, seeming like the hero, and managed to make it seem like the opposite was true about Kerry. Yeah, which is just, I mean, really? Well, it's a remarkable act of political agitimate. Yeah. And the song by the way, is Waste Deep in the Big Money by Pete Seeger, 1967. Made famous because of its censorship from the Smothers Brothers comedy hour. And they don't have the lyrics here. But in the story is that in 1942,

during World War II, a platoon is on a practice patrol in Louisiana. Okay. And the captain leading the patrol insists. I know what we're doing. Follow me. We just got a we just got a forge on ahead across the river and we'll get to the other side. And over the course of several stanzas, the sergeant tells him, you know, sir, the water is too deep. We can't do it. The captain says, no, we got a trudge on. And we were waist deep at the big muddy. And the captain said, push on, we were neck deep. In the big muddy, the captain said, push on. And then it's implied that the sergeant shoves the captain under the water and tells everybody to turn around and go back.

You know, turns out, you know, and they found the captain's body, you know, a mile away from where we were, turns out from the last time he'd been there and he'd revert, joined the big muddy and all that's true. But the overarching theme is... Fragging. Well, and, and, you know, we just, we got to press on. Right. You know, Captain said press on is one of the refrain lines, and this whole idea about, you know, changing, changing

courses in the middle of the stream. Well, yeah. Yeah. So, and... Look at the land around you and see what's up. Yeah, and and the my my first exposure to that song was from a Scottish folk singer on a tribute album to Pete Seager that we've done where where that came out during the Iraq war and bushes. Sure. Bush the Leicesters. I like that. I like that. Tenier. So, anyway.

This campaign that he ran where he managed to paint the guy who was in Vietnam as a coward and he is a hero despite getting out of Vietnam. Meanwhile, we're in another war that echoes Vietnam. Yeah. we're in another war that echoes Vietnam. Yeah. Like just the amount of like meta twisting that needs to happen, it allowed most of America to conflate Southeast Asia in 1970s with Southwest Asia 2000s.

Well, you know, and the conflation is not entirely flawed. I mean, everybody who's spent any time in the game. Yeah, but they came to the wrong God's name. Conclusion about it. No, I'm not saying. That's the part that got me. Yeah. And everybody seemed to forget that both wars were started under false pretenses, and maybe we should stop and push on. We're in the good money. Yeah, because, you know, after the sunk cost fallacy. Yes.

Too many, too many of our boys have died. Well, if we give up, we're, we're, we're dishonoring their memory. We're dishonoring their memory. Right. Disonnering their memory. Yep. You know, meanwhile, all of their buddies

who were there with them are saying, no, it's cool. He would have, yeah, he would have said, let's, let's all go home. Hey, by the way, Pat Tillman. Yeah. So all this shit is coming out. Yeah.

It's 2005, right? Tillman stuff comes out, I think, in the next year. But after the election, Bush is reelected legitimately this time. Trust in the government is approaching 24%. It's dropping. By June of 2005, even amongst the Republicans. It's only 36% There's a growing sense that the government is going to do whatever it wants whenever it wants and our opinions is the public only

nominally matter and this This sentiment seems to have been growing since the 60s. Yeah enter the exorcism of Emily Rose Okay, it comes in after Constantine. Constantine showed that you could make money but not much with demons in your movies. But the exorcism Emily Rose was like, Hey, young girl carries demons in her. Let's go back to that formula. So they do, kinda. So there's a young white girl who's possessed by a demon and a priest has to rescue her. But here's the twist in the 2000s. It's not about the possession per se. It's about the aftermath of the possession. It's about

questioning the legitimacy of what really happened. the priest who performed the exorcism to save the girl has been put on trial for her murder. Yes. Now, this is based on true story too. Yeah. He's a true... And these events actually happened. There was, there wasn't an exorcism the girl did die.

Yes. So, he's a true believer, but the woman defending him in court is not a true believer. The story is told through flashbacks, the narrator is speaking for the dead girl's experiences without actually being the dead girl. Her family seeks the help for her, it's convinced that she has a demon. It's entirely possible she had epilepsy and a few other things. Given that a demon isn't really a legal thing, and that medically she had epilepsy, she still died for reasons that were never fully explained

because the doctor gets hit by a car after admitting that he believes in demons in the movie at least. The defense calls anthropologists to the stand, which I found fascinating. They never get a medical professional to actually testify. They get culturalists in there, which is an interesting development that's happening. Yeah. Eventually the priest gets found guilty but let off with time served. The lawyer quits being a lawyer and it turns out the girl was actually possessed by six

different demons, not just one and what a twist. And she saw the Virgin Mary and a bunch of other cataclysm, cataclysm, cataclysm, cataclysm, cataclysm, two, three different different. No, but I wrote them down next to each other because it's kind of true. It's a cataclysm, cataclysm. That's what it is. Catechistic cataclysm. That's not That's what it is. Catechistic. Catechism. That's not, that doesn't confuse the tongue as much. Yeah. I would have been able to say that.

Yeah. Here's Roger Debert's review. Okay. The Church is curiously ambivalent about exorcism. It believes that the devil and his agents can be active in the world and has a right of exorcism and it has exorcists. On the other hand, it is reluctant to certify possessions and authorize exorcisms, and it avoids publicity on the issue.

It's like those supporters of intelligent design who privately believe that an alliteral interpretation of Genesis, but publicly distance themselves from it because that would undermine the plausibility in the wider world. The key relationship between the priest and his defense attorney, Aaron Bruner, the defense attorney, does not believe in the devils, but she believes in Father Moore, the priest, and she believes that he believes in them. Quote, there are dark forces surrounding this trial,

he warns her, suggesting that she herself might be the target of demons. In this and other scenes, the movie is studiously neutral on the subject of the priest. So previous movies took the point of view that, yeah, that's a thing. And maybe threw in a little bit about, like, oh, he's shared other problems too.

But yeah, that's the thing. This movie, as he says, is studiously neutral. The film is fascinating in the way it makes legal and ethical issues seem as suspenseful as possession and exorcism. Somehow, the movie never really takes off into the riveting fascination we expect in the opening scenes. Maybe it cannot, maybe it is too faithful to the issues it raises to exploit them.

A movie like The Exorcist is a better film because it's a more limited one, which accepts demons and exorcists' lock, stock, and barrel as its starting point. Certainly, they're good showbiz, a film that keeps an open mind must necessarily lack slam dunk conclusions. OK. So we have a movie that knows the reality, an innocent person was possessed by a malevolence. That was questioned by a faulty system,

shown to be problematic. And then we went on about our day anyway, causing those who are invested in the system to stop believing in the system that they have pulled and participated in. I'm talking about the lawyers not the priests. Okay. Okay. So the lawyer loses her faith in the law. Okay. It's getting much more bold. Yeah. Okay. Well the subtext is starting to become text. Yes. Yeah, and it's not so much about evil versus good as in do we believe the shit that we're hearing? And I don't mean shit as a Pajorative. I mean do we believe what we're hearing? Yeah. Yeah. No, I know that's the point of the movie. Yeah, I think it's it's

Levin's revenge. To the extent that Levin was Rezbaby was trying to make a secular horror film. The movie winds up with the conclusion that no, no, they're word demons, they were singing whatever. But all of the focus is on secular. The secular questions. Absolutely right. How is this, you know, and again, as, as Ebert points out, you know, the take on the priest is completely neutral. Yeah. He's not the savior figure. He's not, he's not portrayed as that. He's not a reliable narrator. He's not a reliable, nobody is a reliable narrator. He's also an important point based on the time period you're talking about. So yeah. Yeah. Also, the

possession becomes the vessel for the moral question. It's no longer about the real. We're getting doubly meta. Yeah. It's the girl is not the vessel for the possession which is the McGuffin. It is now the possession itself. Is the McGuffin for the... It's the launch point for the movie now. Yeah. Not this girl is suffering. So we have a movie that, yeah, that now is a possession movie, but it's so clearly a 2000's possession movie. And it made bank. And it's first week and alone.

It made 150% of its budget back. It cost 20 million to make. It ended up taking home 75 million domestically. Wow. Almost double that worldwide. People like these conundrum questions, probably because they're living through them in 2005. You've got to tiger by the tail.

Yeah. If you're against the war, you aren't against the troops. You want the troops to have what they need to be safe, which means continuing the war. Yeah. So if you're for the war, you're for the troops. But if you're for the war, do you really want it to end? Yeah. So if you're for the war, you're for the troops. But if you're for the war, do you really want it to end? Yeah.

Other movies come out cloning off of that, by the way. And that's what often happens. Another one hits really well in 2010, though. The last exorcism. The poster of which features a possessed person floating and leaning against the upper corner, sealing, and the walls. I bring that up because it will come in later. Okay. I... I have to put, it costs 1.8 million dollars to make. That's it. Okay. Yeah. Well, horror movies as a genre are generally inexpensive. In the opening

weekend, it made 18 million. Holy crap. Domestically, it made 44 million worldwide and made $67 million. Again, this is piddens in a lot of ways, but... As a... Return on investment. It's not a million measurement. Woo! The plot is again a more postmodernist approach to possession, by the way. A possession is still at the heart of it, and it's a girl from a tremendously dysfunctional

family. She gets possessed. There's this priest, god damn it's a girl from a tremendously dysfunctional family she gets possessed. There's this priest, god damn it's weird. There's this priest who doesn't believe in exorcism and he's taking a camera crew around to show it as a fraud. It's 2005. The surreal life has been out for a bit. Reality TV is starting to pick up. He's pontificating on the value of letting others believe in the fraud because it helps them psychosomatically. So it's that priest who goes to the Vatican and tells the Pope I've lost the faith and the Pope just fake it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's for their own plebeian good. Yeah. Eventually he has to evaluate whether or not to perform the exorcism. I guess there's this whole evaluation process you go through. He examines her, he asks her questions while she's possessed. And he finds her to be a fraud. There's a line in there about she offers him a blowing job and he's like, I'm sorry now, you're not possessed.

You don't know what you're talking about. A demon would know what a good solid blow job was. And he had the nomenclature to be shocking, right? And she admits to being a fraud. Still turns out that her family is the victim of a local Protestant occultist minister. It's always the way. Uh, well, you know, as, know, as the Romanists at the table, well, duh. Yeah, I figured you know, I mean, come on.

Yeah. You can't trust those prodigers as far as you can fucking throw them. I threw that in their own place. Yeah, yeah. Their intent on bringing a demon through the girl into this world, and they do exactly that. The priest figures it out, grabs his cross, and goes to fight the devil during their sacrifice and then the cultists kill the camera crew that's been filming them.

Wow. It's very calm. It's very just that's it's also very 70s. Yeah, you're right. It's it's the same, you know, the classic example that my family always talks about, why 70s movies sucked from my family's point of view. Sure. Is my folks, I think went to a drive-in to seek out Yorga Vampire. Okay. And it was a schlocky, semi-hammer film style, vampire flick, right?

Young man and his girlfriend wind up trapped in a castle full of vampires since his survival but essentially survival horror movie trying to escape from count New York and insurance and at the very end of the movie they they get separated but they they you know find each other they get back together and as they're about to escape the son is coming up and the hero is about to head out into the light he turns around to his girlfriend and she grins at him and has fans. Right.

It's that. Yeah, that's it. Well, here's why. That's right there. Here's why. Bad Guys win in the 1970s. And guess what? Bad Guys win in the 2000s.

So here's a review from Sci-Fi now. Roger Ebert didn't write a review on this movie. I couldn't find one on his website. He was going through throat cancer and mouth cancer and a lot of shit. Yeah, he had to do all kind of bad stuff. So here's Sci-Fi now. The film is at its most chilling though when considering the possibility for cruelty that is created when powerful emotions, grief and guilt, are coupled with devout belief.

Okay. Interesting. It's a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more.

Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more.

Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. Interesting, a little more. to a quite shocking conclusion. Okay. Again, I just take that lens and put it on our government at that time with the Iraq War as a backdrop and the Patriot Act. Okay. Here's one from something called the Age in Australia. It's a publication in Australia. Hardcore horror movie buffs will no doubt be annoyed at the stylistic gear shift for

even the powerful or even the awful paranormal activity films which I didn't put into this because they're not really possession, they're haunted houses. The paranormal activity films remain true to their rules of engagement. They might also be getting a little tired of the possession theme. So person gets possessed by a demon. Haven't we seen this before a lot? We had three extra systems films. With the first still standing as an unassailable horror classic. All those Omen movies, I don't think that's possessed.

That's not possession. But the Poltergeist flicks. That's a different thing. Right. The Shining movie. Okay. And TV miniseries, he gets possessed. Yeah.

Yeah. And the very good 2005 shocker, the exorcism of Emily Rose. One wonders while watching the second half of this proficient card pleaser, whether there might be something else that Satan could do with the human victim other than simply inhabiting their soul. It's been done. Couldn't he think of something else? After all, it's not as though Satan would have access to a lot of ideas given how hell

is packed full of spin doctors, PR executives, and people who have worked in advertising. A little on the nose there. So the thing about this movie, the last exorcism, is that it's in 2010. Obama has been elected largely partly at least in no small part as an program against the Bush presidency. Yeah, partly is an expression of hope by the youth. Yeah, he steps into a huge economic crash, an unending war, remember the surge of 2007, which he even admitted worked. The promises he was, which is again, you got the tiger by the tail there. Yeah. Right? The promises that he made and got elected under had yet to be enacted. Those several steps were being made. Yeah.

However, a lot of it did go unfulfilled or they were a lot slower going than people it hoped. The Tea Party got co-opted by the Koch brothers. The Occupy movement collapsed in on itself, basically attacked by the Koch brothers. And reality TV is huge, which means you don't need creativity anymore, except in editing. Oh my God, there are amazing editors. Living a life matters more when it's documented

and commodified. Yes. By this point, I was on Facebook. 2010. Yes. By this point, I was on Facebook. 2010. Yeah. Yeah. I had been for a year. The shifts in the possession movies is a bit of an aesthetic shift. It's less about possession itself, like I said, more about the background of the exorcism. Okay. So it's more about the performance of the thing than it is about the thing. Okay, much like social media. Exactly.

Much like democracy by this point. Much like opposing a war or even giving any lip service to it. Now it's just part of the background noise. It's less about the extra system than the assumptions leading into the extra system. It's less about the possession than it about the documenting of the skepticism around it and other movies try the same tack and they fail miserably or they just don't do as well. In 2012 there's another sleeper possession movie that made a mint. Okay. But it's oh man. Before we get to that one. Yeah. You mentioned the poster.

Yes. For the last extra. It's gonna come in with the last movie. I like it. So in 2012, the devil inside is made. Wait, the devil inside. Devil inside. Yeah. That's that's a song. There's a lady from the 80s. Oh, maybe where they got the title. And I wanna say it's in excess. Number one. Yeah. Number one in excess song number two, sounds like what I've heard from friends

who know more about it than I do, what a porn title would sound. No, it's a devil and misjones. That was the porn title. Okay, yeah. Okay. I know plenty about this thing. But I'm just saying still, kind of. Oh, I'm sure that there's, you know,

there's like, you know, devil inside volume 18. Yeah, yeah. So, but anyway. So it's another skeptic visiting the Vatican this time. Okay. With a film crew. Yeah. To show that exorcisms are fraud

because her mother killed three clergymen while being exorcised. Okay turns out the filmmaker's mom was possessed by a multitude of demons. So we're back to Emily Rose. Right. Okay it's not just one problem that you're afraid of. It's multiple things all at once. And they take over bunches of people, killing them off. It was very poorly reviewed. But it's not always good movies that excite the public, especially when the public is getting less and less vulgar,

and while getting more and more vulgar. Here's a review from Rolling Stone. The worst movie of the year of this very new year has a good chance to retain the title for all of 2012. Ripping off the extra-sist while adding to the, quote, found footage scam from the paranormal activity franchise, the devil inside manages not only to scrape the barrel's bottom, but to drill a hole and said bottom and funnel deeper into the scum.

And yet this bilge took in a whopping $35 million on its opening weekend. Showing the public's appetite for scares. So why couldn't the devil inside deliver better on its promise? The simple answer is it doesn't have to. Audiences are so primed for horror that they fall for flashy marketing. After seeing this crap movie we're already to scream our rage at the screen. Wow. After seeing this crap movie, we're already to scream our rage at the screen. Wow! Now that last sentence is especially telling to me

because it taps into our more basic anxieties and anger as well offering us very little in return. This is a movie that is very bad and it's garbage, but we want garbage because it validates the cultural rage of the dominant culture because people are mad that a black guy's president. Okay. And he's probably gonna get elected again in 2012

when this movie comes out against that Mormon guy who's not a real Christian because he's a Mormon. Okay. If only there was a guy. Certainly never a woman, but if only there was a guy who would embody all that rage in those lazy instincts that I have. How long must I wait? Is there a group that I can join that feels the same way?

My kids block me on Facebook and Instagram. Where do I go next? Okay. MULTA in Parbo. Yeah. Now the problem isn't a single-man level, and it's many. It's not just one face to the horror, it's many who are chaos incarnate.

The movie costs $750,000 to make. It made 33 million in the first weekend alone. That's a return of 44 times as much in the first weekend. Made over 100 million worldwide. Jiminy Crickets. By 2012, the amount of much in the first weekend, made over 100 million worldwide. Jiminy Crickets. By 2012, the amount of trust in the government is now down to 15%. I'm telling you, it's partisan. Among Democrats, it's double that, which is still Democrats are weird.

They get pulled to the right all the time. They do well, yeah. They try to be the reasonable person in the room instead of standing for reason. It's not just who's president though It's also there's this fracturing political landscape. I mean Fox News is ascendant Yeah, well, yeah, well Fox News is ascendant and and the less reaction by the way is snark. Yeah, it really is It's really great. Oh, yeah, well, you know, and and that that there is there is something to be said for that. But it doesn't get shit done. Right. If that's if that's all you have,

yeah, that doesn't get anything done. Yeah. Um, I am a huge fan of Steven Colbert. Mm-hmm. I'm a huge fan of John Stewart. I love good Art. But with that being said, if that's all we've got, then we deserve to get our asses kicked because it's really easy to stand back and- Yeah, well that's all we've got and we're being really lazy. Yeah, well that's kind of what I mean.

Now there's an increase in 2007, this number was 667, that was the election of George W. Bush. In 2009, the election of Barack Obama, this number is 932. Would you like to take a guess as to what the number is of? 932. Different hate groups in America. Oh, Lord.

667 to 932. Yeah. A large part of that can be attributed quite accurately to the gross fucking reaction of the election of an African-American male to the presidency. Oh yeah. But it can also be attributed to a growing distrust of public institutions and the distrust of public institutions can be attributed to the growth of hate groups that feed itself. Yeah, no, yeah, cyclical. In 2012, there were 1,000 and seven hate groups. Lots of demons when you just expect one.

Lots of hate groups and not just single talk radio hosts. But also it's about skepticism being shown is unwarranted now. We're skeptical about the skepticism. It's where you get into that meta. What's the real racism kind of bullshit, right? Oh, well, you're being skeptical. Well, that's just as bad as if you're not skeptical. You know, it's that false equivalent. She shit. And when the truth is shown, it's way, way

worse. Yeah. Lots of social media, reality, television, connections, too, to this, right? By the way, the number of hate groups fell from 2012 to 2014 because under President Obama there was a lot of pushes to look at hate groups because they were getting really loud. But then it started growing steadily again after 2014, because I was a midterm election year. I guess what grew in power. And then it spiked again in 2018, because then guess who felt legitimized

by a certain rage bag. From 2012 until 2017, most possession movies were largely knockoffs, clones, trying to make money based on the success of the predecessors. That's a normal thing that happens. No real money makers, no real trailblazers. Yeah. But then we come to the movie that made me think of this whole thesis, the whole thing,

hereditary. 2018, it was made for $10 million. And in two months, it made $44 million domestically. It grossed $79 million worldwide. So it's an eight times investment return. Trust in the government was down to 17%. Okay. Okay. Way low. Uh-huh. Uh, here. I don't know if you've seen this movie. It's disturbing as fuck. I'm I'm I'm okay. Oh, well. Okay. I don't see it. It is scary. I read a

read synopsis of it. There are scenes where I'm just like, oh my God, like well done, like that scene will stick with me for a while. And I don't get scaredy by these things, right? So there's this little girl who's a child with autism who gets possessed. And she also has allergies and she also is not cute at all. But I remember the ads, the one what they were. Yeah. And the demon doesn't

actually want to stay in her body. It wants her older brother. And their grandmother was a cultist who worshiped this demon or this devil or this other guy. Yeah, Pymon. Yeah. So she gets to capitated in a car accident. Yeah. Yeah. And that her brother causes, allowing a demon to freely travel from its vessel. You have to take off the head for that to happen. Meanwhile, the family dynamic is all kind of fucked up. The mother blames the son for her daughter's death, which is fair, good shit.

But the death is so goddamn gruesome. And she finds it off camera, but we are in the house. So the brother refuses to look in the back. Like he, he, sideswipes a telephone pole, knocks her head off. Grizzly, he stops hearing her freaking out and refuses to look in the rear mirror because he just tore his sister's head off, swarving to miss an animal. He drives home, gets out, goes inside and goes to sleep. I mean he is tremendously traumatized by this. Yeah, obviously. He has a reaction that is completely

completely shell-shot. Yes, thoroughly understandable. Mom finds it the next morning. The blood all over the side of the car and all that. With her daughters, headless corpse in the car. You only hear her screaming. You don't follow her. It's... The further the mother descends into madness, the more awful it becomes for her son, who's really suffering.

And it's just marked with so much silence this movie. I mean, it's really well done. It's just this tense silence. The father played by Gabriel Bern, whom I love, he is emotionally inept, feels deeply. The mother is a professional miniature's maker, by the way. And one of the ways that she copes is that she rebuilds the scene of her daughter being decapitated and The dad comes in and yells at her is like how do you think our son's gonna feel if he ever sees you doing this? She's like what this is you know and she's numb. It's all kinds of fucked up Wolf she creates yeah artificial representations of real things as a job

Including that scene eventually the mother realizes that her mother, the grandmother, was involved in an awful cult, which was using her children as the vessel for the demon, for the Prince of demons, I guess. Yeah. And Prince of hell. Prince of hell. And she seeks help from witchy people, essentially,

including cult members that she doesn't realize are cult members. So you're going to people who you can tell You can't tell who the good Wikens are as opposed to the evil Because you know as I'm just gonna say yeah There there are an awful lot of problems with the way Catholicism is portrayed by Hollywood when they don't do their research There's even more trouble with the way Wicca and

Pagans get portrayed by Hollywood because they never bother to do their research or almost I mean, vanishingly rarely.agerness, yeah, to equate wica and paganism with, um, uh, uh, Anton Levein Satanism. Mm-hmm. When the two are, I'm not going to say they're diametrically opposed, but they are entirely different. Right. Um, and, and entirely unrelated to one another. Yeah.

And that they're getting them both horribly wrong. Yeah, and so, yeah, that error on the part of the main character is on the part of the mother, I don't know who the main character could really be said to be, but that error... Yeah, it's the mother. Okay, that error on the part of the protagonist is kind of a mirror of the error made by all of us as a society when dealing with as you said witchy people.

Well, and the movie really centers itself around the trauma that these families going through. We follow her into madness. The sun we follow in his pain, in his anguish. The father we follow in his suffering, which is different. So, earlier in the movie, the movie starts with her mom dying, the grandmother dying. And there's some interesting telltale conversations about, well, my mom kept things private. And there's interesting interaction with how the child will thought to react to a dead body

and stuff like that, right? So, and reacts to, did grandma actually love me, et cetera. Which some very telling stuff. You got to watch it twice to really appreciate it. Okay. But then, no, it's just fine. It's fine. But there's a great scene like they get home a couple days later the sun picks up the

phone. Dad, it's the cemetery. Like what a great line. Well, it turns out the mother's, the grandmother, you know, who's just got buried, her grave had been desecrated. Okay. So the mom goes back up to her attic and finds her mother's decapitated corpse. Yada, yada, yada.

She eventually causes her own husband to be burned to death because she takes her spell book magic if I fly in the daughter's her daughter's sketchbook the daughter's sketched things but while she was possessed by the demon and so she goes to throw that in it It causes him to be on fire. He dies in a position looking like he's praying Yeah, the mother finally gets possessed. For reasons I didn't quite understand. Then she floats, she climbs the walls, and she's chasing after her son,

her husband is dead. She's possessed, and this actress is haunting with how good she does it. She's clearly possessed. He runs up to the attic because it's a horror movie. He runs up to the attic, closes the trap door, you know, and she floats up there and uses her head and she's banging it at a level, at a frequency that is disturbing when it's a human head. Like, imagine like, those like, like, imagine a porn movie where he's just driving at home on our, slap, slap, slap,

that's her head on the attic door. It's the most disturbing scene of the whole movie until three minutes later. I just want to point out for the benefit of it. You don't like this. You all listening to this cannot see the expression on my face as Damien is describing this. Yeah, just imagining this scene may wind up giving me trouble after I get home tonight getting to sleep because holy crap. How the look the look of yeah, oh god. Yeah, it's really hard hard to describe.

Have a bottle of starch. See you. You know, we're on the whole 30 diet. I can't. Got you. Damn it. I'm going to need to. So. All right. Bags are head on the attic door.

Chasing her son, which is the one that the demon always wanted in the first place. Want it first place. At one point, mildly possessed him. He slaps his head on the desk and bleeds his face. After his sister. Yeah, that was in the ass. It's working. It's working. Yeah. At one point mildly possessed him he slaps his head on the desk and bleeds his face after his So yeah, that was in the ads. It's yeah, it's working him. Yeah Tracking this head on the desk. I remember quite God himself a paroling. Yeah, it's weird

So he ends up in the attic and sees a bunch of naked cult members Like you do and suddenly his mom floats into the attic I don't quite now how she got there. This part's disturbing. More so than the head banging. She's got a piano wire wrapped around her head. Zit-zoo, zit-zoo, zit-zoo, with this haunting-ass smile on her face. Until her head falls off.

Yeah! Then he jumps out the window. Dies. still her head falls off. Yeah. Then he jumps out the window, dies. Yeah. And then the demon that was in her gets out because the head is off. Yeah. And possesses him. He reanimates, climbs up into a tree house, which was in the movie earlier.

Yeah. And the cultists do their cult thing with these two headless corpses in the movie earlier. Yeah. And the cultists do their cult thing with these two headless corpses in the tree house and his reanimated body. Everyone wins. That's the end of the movie. Well, you know, accept humanity because of Prince of Hell has now been unleashed amongst us.

It picked, it picked, it picked. It picked, it picked, it picked. It picked, it picked. Yeah, now, sorry, sorry, sorry. Go to church it picked it picked it picked it. Yeah. No. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Go to church. Holy water. Yeah. Broad sword. Yeah. I'm done. Yeah, like no, no, no. Oh, yeah. So here's the thing. We went to call us to win. We all lose right. You know, so the movie wasn't popular like the others. It was successful financially. Yeah, yeah. And the critics loved it. Here's Matt Zoller. Matt Zoller's Zeats sites.

He writes on Roger Eber's website. Yeah. It's a long review. But the film owes just as much to the intense family psychodromas of Mike Lee and John Cassavetes, which play strong willed but deeply damaged people in close proximity, and look on as they suffer barely concealed torment from sitting in on their rage.

Then finally lash out in displays of emotional violence that are as intense in their own way as the bloodletting and surrealism. Unspeakable things happen to the family throughout. Every time they experience new trauma, it cracks their controlling sods a bit more. Exposes emotional fishers in the family as a whole and makes you wonder if perhaps the social institutions surrounding us

and the intricate practices of language, science and literature aren't just a labrit means of holding back fear of death and random misfortune. Aster and the cast, yeah? Wow, yeah. Heavy. Aster and the cast make you care about these disturbed people and fear what they might do to one another themselves and strangers. When something awful and variably does happen, you feel sadness as well as shock because

now it's going to be even harder for the grams, to climb out of the pit of sadness that the grandmother's death has cast them into, and then finally address the past traumas that they've been ignoring or covering up. Astor keeps intimating that something horrible could occur at any moment, notice how every sharp object used for any reason gets its own ominous close-up. But when something horrible does happen, it's usually far worse than whatever you had envisioned. Not just because of the incidents themselves, but because hereditary is a rare horror movie that pays proper real-world attention to how individuals deal with trauma.

I'm just going to break away for a second. Trauma has been mentioned a couple times here. Yeah. This is 2018. We're awareness of trauma. The ever presence of trauma. Yeah, and now going into, I don't even know how to talk to my head, 15 years of war with PTSD being something that we all just now know about. Yeah.

Just speaking of trauma, you know. We see the grams lying in bed, depressed to the point of paralysis. We see them nipping and snapping at each other, hiding inside themselves, hurting themselves, and others. Doesn't this sound like Facebook snark? A lot. There are scenes in this film that brought me to the edge of tears because how brutally people speak to each other,

saying profoundly hurtful things that are as petty and self-serving as they are true. Whoa. Inflicting damage that can never be undone, all because they're in such pain that they need to see someone else hurting even worse. Huh. The movie's final act raises questions about the verifiable reality of anything you've

just seen, but it seems appropriate considering all the attention that the script paid to the idea of inexplicable. Of the inexplicable. Mm-hmm. Just point out how many times have we said it can't get worse and then the next day's news cycle. Mm-hmm. Here's Anthony Lane of the New Yorker. Most of the folks in the film which is written and directed by Ari Astor don't quite know what to believe or how much they should trust their eyes and ears. The children's mother Annie

played by Tony Colette. Oh my god she's amazing. Can't tell if her own emotions are correct. Her mother just passed away. She Can't tell if her own emotions are correct. Her mother just passed away. She can't tell if her own emotions are correct. Yeah, she's ghastlet. And her mother just passed away, and Annie is bemused or half ashamed at feeling insufficiently sad. But then, as she admits at the funeral,

her mother was a secretive person possessed of private rituals. The phrase echoes her, the phrase, yeah, on the nose, yeah, it just denoses across the room from the rest of the body. That phrase echoes around the story like a whisper in a cave. Scene after scene bears the hermetic rigor of a right, one that outsiders or even other members of the household may struggle to understand. Here's the thing though, hereditary is far more upsetting than it is frightening, and I would hesitate to recommend it to the readily traumatized. The movie haunts us when it isn't even when it isn't making us jump. So intently are the characters be deviled by the specters of their past. so intently are the characters bedeviled by the specters of their past. Quote, I'm not to be blamed, Annie says in therapy, as she describes her mother's

legacy before adding in despair, I am blamed. Wow. It has the nerve to suggest that the social unit is by definition self-medicing and that the home is no longer a sanctuary but a crumbling fortress under siege from within. That is why there are no doctors in Astros film and no detectives either. Urgently though they're both are required. Nor does a man of God arrive as he does in the exorcist. To lay the anguish to rest. Nothing in short can help Annie, Steve, and the kids. And they sure can't help themselves.

Stationed as they are inside their delicate doll's house of a world. There's no family curse in this remarkable movie. The family is the curse. Woof! Now that sound is because that was, it's tied to Pymin. There's a certain sound of madness that happens. And the uh, the daughter made that sound regularly. I thought it was a soothing sound.

No, it's haunting as fuck in the movie. So, here's where, it gets sad. Charlottesville was in August of 2017. This movie came out in January of 2018. Got good reviews and was released in US and June of the same year. Okay. Fun little story. It's trailer released during a showing of Peter Rabbit.

Oh yeah, I heard about this. Understandably upsetting. Yeah, it was the theater in Australia. I can't remember correctly. It was not good. Yeah, no, they mixed up the reels and thoroughly screwed up at a theater full of five and six year olds. Yeah, I bring up Charlottesville because prior to Charlottesville,

we really didn't know how widespread white supremacy was unless we listened to our friends who were marginalized. And most of us didn't. Yes. It was impossible to not know after that. Concentration camps are currently operating in this country on the same grounds that were used for internment camps for Japanese, Americans and Japanese expats in America during World War II. It's becoming impossible to ignore.

Currently 24 people have died in custody. No trial, no due process, just rounded up, and our Supreme Court said it's okay. Again. Our current president has been floating the weather balloons, talking about going beyond his term, and people are refusing to confront that, too. Here's Trump from March of 2018.

Talking about President of China. So you, Jim, can. Yeah. He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great.

Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday. Here he is in April of 2018. We're cutting record numbers of regulations. We've cut more regulations in a year and a quarter than any administration, whether it's four years, eight years, or in one case, 16 years. Should we go back to 16 years? Should we do that? Congressman, can we do that?

6... FDR. Prior to the agreement. I'm trying to remember whether he was... Yeah, but I'm trying to remember whether he was actually a full state. He was elected. He served for just over 12. OK.

Trump from the same month when he got called on the carpet for this. You know, the last time I jokingly said that the papers start saying he's got despotic tendencies. No, I'm not looking to do it. Go on for 16 years. Unless you want to do it.

That's okay. Uh-huh. Trump from the spring of 2019. This, he's holding a trophy, given to him by the Wounded Warriors organization. Now, the Wounded Warriors organization has to do with traumatic brain injury. There's been some problems dealing with this organization.

Oh, yeah. So, of course, they're tied to Trump. But, ostensibly, they're dare to address the trauma of the soldiers that we keep sending into a meat grinder. This will find a permanent place at least for six years in the Oval Office. Is that okay? I was going to joke general and say at least for 10 or 14 years, but we would cause bedlam if I said that. So we'll say six. There's an opposition party, too impudent to stop this, just like the father in the movie.

Yeah. The Democratic Party recently offered a downloaded wallpaper with Trump's face on it saying, buy boy. The official Democrat Party, they're like, hey, you could get this official wallpaper and it's got his face and says, buy boy on the top of it. That's how they're fighting fascism. Like, that's going to do it. Like laughing at creeping fascism is going to defeat creeping fascism. Like, it's like they listen to Mel Brooks about, yeah, I got him off this guy without realizing that he was trained to use a rifle too.

They fumbled big time, time and again, divorce, Carson, Kavanaugh. Their impudence in the face of refusing to even hold a hearing from Merrick Garland. On and on. That's the dad. Okay. Where the son? Trump is the mother having been possessed. Reagan. Okay. Reagan. Interesting. Interesting parallel. All right. Reagan is finally right. Government is no longer the solution to the problem. Government is the problem. The father who is supposed to protect us is incapable. The mother who is supposed to protect us is incapable. The mother who is supposed to protect us is to be blamed for her complicity in a system that is choking us to death until our head

falls off. Do you remember what the most shocking number of people voting for Trump was? White women. The son and his mother had no idea how far reaching this cult of Pymon was, how far it stretched into their home and family, and then it destroyed them all. So, possession movies have become a cinematic tradition, a cinematic reaction to when you have a fissure between the expected stewardship of your leaders and their actions. Okay. As those fissures grow, these movies... Possession movies become a bigger thing.

Mm-hmm. Have more success. All right. So. It's a very clear correlation. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I...

Grim. D-P-E-D-E-D-E-D-E. Yeah, well. I think that's why I was initially resistant to it when I started writing it up. Yeah. Because I don't like writing sad shit. No, well. Yeah.

But so the question is, did the anger then propel you? I think it was... The power of rage compels you. Yeah, no kidding. The power of rage compels you. Yeah, no kidding. The power of rage compels you. It might have been. It might have been. It might have just been. It started stacking on itself.

And I was compelled. I really was compelled to keep going. Yeah, well, yeah. And it... It possessed, if you will. If you will. Well, and, you know, I think you make an important point. You made an important point in the first episode about the role of women

in the narrative and with your masters being... Women's history? What it was, what it is, that it makes sense there. I think it's interesting that in the very last example, or in a couple of, in the last few examples, the role of women in the story shifts. Very much so. To the extent that it does.

There's a lot more agency, and yet at the same time, harm comes with agencies. Yeah, well, you know, agency comes with culpability. In responsibility. In responsibility. And I find it interesting that, agency's, you know, well, you know, agency comes with culpability and responsibility and I find it into I find it really interesting that the last film, hereditary. Yeah. The ultimate target is a male figure, a young male figure, not an entirely innocent, virginal male figure. A young male figure. Not an entirely innocent, virginal male figure.

No. Because part of the whole reason the little sister is in the car, if I remember the synopsis I read correctly, little sister is in the car because he headed out to a party, but he was supposed to be looking after his sister, he took her along with him. Right, and she ate something with walnuts.

Oh, and she was in an afflaxis. Okay. So he's driving her down a country road to get to and by the way He left her alone so he could go smoke some pot But then he's driving her down a country road to get her to a hospital. She can't breathe So she's leaning her head out the window to get some cool air in her. Mm-hmm. That's when that's when that happens Oh And so there's there's also a metaphor for the complicity

of the ultimate victim of the possession in all of it. Yeah, that's true. You know, nobody gets away as the, as the, you know, a virginal gotta be protected. Not anymore. Figure. Nope.

We're all in this together. Yeah. Well, we're all, we're all, not only are we all in this together. I mean, it's one thing to say that we're all in this. We're all, we're all, we're all, we're all, not only are we all in this together. I mean, it's one thing to say that we're all in this together. It's another thing to say that, hey, we're all responsible. And we're all traumatized. And we're all, yeah, everybody involved is traumatized. Everybody, everybody, from, you know, everybody in the Castro district this month flying rainbow flags to everybody with red Maga trucker hats. Mm-hmm. We're all of us Suffering for one reason or another. Mm-hmm. We're all suffering and we all have a vision in our heads of

Right our selves. We all identify with the father Mm-hmm father as being suffering figures. Yes. We all identify with the mother as I am not to blame, I am blamed. I think what you pointed out about, you know, white women and white people voting for Trump. Yeah. In the context of the symbolism there, I think is notable, certainly, because I mean, the theme that you get out of that over and over and over again is they feel aggrieved. Yeah. For, you know, everybody blames us for being the source of all the problems in the world and, you know, we're not responsible.

And... Instead of actually listening to what's being said, it's just you go straight to that. Well, it's knee jerk. It's knee jerk defensiveness, which, you know, I mean, that's a human reaction. It is. But, you know, as a society, that's not the way you solve things. No. Also, it's a knee jerk reaction, but I don't know that it's necessarily warranted to jerk that knee.

You know, it's a brittleness of fragility that leads to that. Yeah, well, yeah. It's a luxury that other groups don't have. Definitely. That's not. Didn't really. And there's, I mean, there are such tense Discussions where the dad is trying to moderate between the mom she finally blows up at her son And she goes way overboard

And you get why she does and she's not wrong, but she's so wrong and the son is like You know basically how dare you put that on me like hey, hey, I'm suffering here too. Like, I killed my sister. And she can't let up. And at the same time, she's finally letting out. And the dad is like, well, you can't do that to him. And you can't talk to her. And it's just, I mean, it's so, and the sister should be sitting there.

And she's, nah, I mean, it's just so sad. It's such a traumatic movie. So, so that's what possession movies are now. Yeah. Because that's what we are now. Over trauma. That's what we are now. And, and Pymon wins.

Yeah. Get well. Yeah. Yeah. Because we don't act healthily. Yeah, yeah, we don't. We isolate and, yeah, we don't we isolate and we get brittle Yeah, we isolate we get brittle and we I'm I'm going to say we don't seek help Yeah

Because again in a huge departure from the formula there is no priest there is no Neighbor going to library right there. There is no you know going to no neighbor going to the library. There is no going to the witchy neighbors who turn out to be part of the cult. There is just us wallowing on our Facebook pages over how angry we are and, you know, and nothing, and nothing getting done. Right. Like, they don't, nobody, nobody in that story takes any kind of action. Right.

To, to try to fix the, the sun doesn't say, you know what, screw this, I'm going to get myself emancipated. I'm moving out of here. Right. I got to find my way. She goes to therapy and she also joins a few grief groups. Okay. But those grief groups were actually the cult people. She just didn't know it. So the attempts at helping herself. Yeah.

And she, by the way, lies to her husband about going. Yeah. So she's like, I'm gonna go see a movie and she takes herself to a grief processing group. But they're the cultists. And so there's a layer of like even when we reach out to get the help that we need. I'm gonna go see a movie and she takes herself to a grief processing group, but they're the cultists and so There's a layer of like even when we reach out to get the help that we need We don't do it in a healthy way and we inevitably harm ourselves farther. Okay, so yeah, and we can't believe the people that we're going to get the help Yeah, ultimately they're not we trusted yeah

to get the help. Yeah, ultimately, they're not too trusted. Yeah. Focke. We have no way of knowing what they're secretly cultists. Yeah. Yep.

Well, so, well, this was a delightful episode. You're welcome. Yeah. Thank you. So much for me. I recommend strongly, instead of a book, I'm not going to recommend this time. I'm going to recommend you go eat a half a gallon of ice cream.

Because that is a healthy coping mechanism. It is. Right there. You know, if nothing else, it'll buy you a couple hours of reflection time on the toilet the next day. But in the meantime, you'll at least get some joy in your life. It did out of life. Yes.

So that's my recommendation for your podcast. Okay. How about you? I think I think I'm torn about what direction I want to go with my advice. I am going to remind our audience that the Second Amendment applies to all citizens equally across the political spectrum, also the racial and sexual orientation spectrum. For no reason at all, I'm just going to point that out. You know, fairer doesn't have anything to do with the shape of the universe right now, but, you know, I will say that if you choose to go target shooting it

can be therapeutic to put holes in paper. Find your local John Brown society. Yeah, John Brown society redneck revolt. I'm going to cope by spending some time snuggling my little boy. And I'm going to also go to sword practice because again, holy water in a broad sword, just saying, and swords don't run out of ammo. Swords do not in fact run out of ammo. And in another episode, we can actually talk about issues within historic European martial

arts related to what we're talking about in our grim dark right now. But what I would ask at this point now, what is your parting thought? Maybe not your parting advice, because I'd get behind the ice cream idea and get where I nod on hole 30. But what is your parting thought? Oh, Lord. I think the thing that's missing from a lot of these possessions, movies, is agency. I mean, by definition, if you get the best,

you're not your own agent, I think that the responsibility of existential dread is often lost in the feeling of existential dread. Okay. I think the grim or no, the stern optimism of existential dread needs to be relived. We still are the generation that we've been waiting for. Yeah. We'd better do something about it before it's too late. Yeah. That would be about it.

Okay. So for a geek history of time, I'm very depressed, Damien Harmony. And I'm a stoically determined Ed Blalock. And until next time, clutch your rosary tightly. And yeah, just keep your eyes open for pigs with red eyes.