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A podcast that holds horror to standards horror never agreed to. Hosts Jeremy Whitley, Ben Kahn, Emily Martin and guests watch, read, listen to, and check out movies, tv shows, comics, books, art and anything else from the horror genre and discuss it through a progressive lens. We'll talk feminism in horror, LGBTQ+ issues and representation in horror, racial and social justice in horror, disability and mental health/illness in horror, and the work of female and POC directors, writers, and creators in horror.
We're the podcast horror never agreed to take part in.
The Other Black Girl
===
Alicia: [00:00:00] All right. Hi, thanks for coming to, uh, Progressively Horrified this is a podcast where we talk about horror in ways that it really didn't agree with.
Alicia: Agree to.
Jeremy: agree
Alicia: know what the intro is.
Jeremy: like you
Emmanuel: your little podcast, Jeremy.
Emmanuel: Like,
Jeremy: Not like the last hundred episodes.
Alicia: Hey, you're on a, you're listening to a podcast and
Jeremy: This is the Homestar Runner of introductions. I'm Homestar and this is a podcast.
Ben: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, everyone.
Alicia: Yeah, it's not net, it's com. Let's go.
Jeremy: All right, should we, should we jump in here?
Emily: thought we already did.
Jeremy: Okay, sure.
Alicia: I did the intro!
Jeremy: You did something.
Alicia: No!
Emmanuel: V or A?
Emily: Uh, intro.
Amanda: Sounds like we need a clean start.
Jeremy: [00:01:00] Uh, good evening and welcome to Progressively Horrified, the podcast where we hold horror to progressive standards it never agreed to. Tonight we're talking about the Hulu original miniseries about the most terrifying thing there is, publishing. It's the other black girl. I am your host Jeremy Whitley and with me tonight I have a panel of cinephiles and cenobites.
Jeremy: First they're here to challenge the sexy werewolf sexy vampire binary, my co host Ben Kahn. Ben, how are you tonight?
Ben: Really glad that we can talk about something that deals with the important and timely issue of don't trust actors from Riverdale.
Jeremy: Yes, very important.
Ben: If they've been in Riverdale, just run.
Jeremy: Or Will and Grace, for that matter, it's just, and the cinnamon roll of Cenobites, our co host, Emily Martin. How are you tonight, Emily?
Emily: Feeling pretty validated that I haven't watched any Riverdale, so I know not to trust them.
Alicia: Hear, hear.
Jeremy: Very important. And our guest tonight, [00:02:00] first editor, writer, podcaster, and all around renaissance woman, Amanda Meadows. Amanda, so good to have you back!
Amanda: I'm happy to be back. And, uh, it's a shockingly scary accurate one to be here for.
Jeremy: Yeah, not an issue you can relate to at all, huh?
Amanda: not at all mirrors parts of my own real lived experience at all. Uh, yeah I'm excited to be here and break it down.
Jeremy: Also back with us tonight, English educator and friend of the podcast, Emanuel Lipscomb. Emanuel, how are you?
Emmanuel: Doing well, happy to be here. This was, this was wild.
Jeremy: It's a wild one. I think, aside from Evangelion, the, the longest group , of things we've watched. So, it's a watch. Also, with us, PhD student, our podcast editor, and the queen of small screen screams, my wife, Alicia Whitley.
Alicia: Hey, I'm happy to be here.
Ben: that was so sweet.
Ben: My short review of this show is I love it as a thriller [00:03:00] and my thoughts about its politics is pass
Emmanuel: Okay.
Emily: Okay, yeah,
Alicia: I can get behind that. Yeah.
Amanda: yeah,
Amanda: bold to declare a
Amanda: verdict.
Ben: There's a lot going on and I'm not sure what clashes with the other parts
Amanda: That's understandable. I have also read the book it's based on, so maybe we can talk about that.
Alicia: You read the whole thing.
Amanda: Yeah, well,
Emmanuel: that long or that bad?
Alicia: Well, I have thoughts.
Amanda: I have notes. I have notes for the
Alicia: yeah, I wish that the book had had maybe a little bit more editing because it was a slog and I actually did not get through the whole thing well before I even knew there was a Hulu series coming out and then I tried to pick it up again and I still was like, I just, I.
Alicia: So I, I petered out.
Amanda: I started with the Kindle or like with the ebook version on Libby and I switched to the audio book version that made it easier to finish. It felt like I needed [00:04:00] to finish it to complete this tiny, tiny canon part of.
Emmanuel: That is me trying to finish books for book club.
Alicia: I'm excited to hear what you think of the show, given that you did make it to the end of the book and how those two compare.
Jeremy: yeah so before we dive too deep into that, let's talk a little bit about who made this. The original book was written by, uh, Zakiya Delilah Harris. the show is created by her and Rashida Jones it is then show run by writer pair, Gus Hickey and Jordan Redoubt and then it is also written by, the four of them, and Cara Brown, Angela Nassell, and Janelle Spencer and just to talk a little bit about the directors aside from Todd Bierman, who directs a couple of the, the first few episodes we do also have Mary Amidialo
Jeremy: nguvu Naimo Ramos [00:05:00] Chapman, and Aurora Guerrero. As far as the stars, we have, Sinclair Daniel, Ashley Murray, Brittany Adebimola, Bellamy Young, Eric McCormack, and Garcelle Beauvais. On the plus side, as compared to some TV shows that we've watched that want to delve a lot into racial politics, there are a lot of people of color involved in making this show, which is, obviously an immediate plus, and I think something that reads very clearly as you're watching the show and the way people talk and The way the show put together.
Ben: Yeah, I
Emily: Yes.
Jeremy: We are talking about a whole, uh, I guess, what, 12 episode miniseries?
Emily: Uh, ten episodes. Yeah.
Ben: The old, the old streaming 10. I did get to episode 8. I'm like, I don't know how they're wrapping this up in 12 minutes, and
Amanda: Yeah, I love it. The streamers love a tight 10.
Alicia: are we gonna talk about the entire series today or are we just talking about the first part?
Ben: everyone here watch the whole series?
Emmanuel: Yeah,[00:06:00]
Emily: All ten episodes I watched. Was
Ben: Yeah, let's, let's dive, let's dive into it. I mean, it feels hard to get into without talking about, like, the ending and who the villain is, because that is an example of, like, yeah, agency. Wait, I don't know what the themes are anymore.
Emily: Yeah.
Jeremy: not to be, catty about it, but if we did just recap the first, like, three episodes, there's not much that happens in the
Jeremy: first few
Jeremy: episodes. Like, there's a lot of A lot of setting things up that,
Amanda: Very lopsided story
Emmanuel: there's a lot of,
Amanda: I
Emmanuel: what was that?
Amanda: so much was packed in the last three episodes.
Alicia: I know.
Alicia: But similar to the book, it felt like nothing was happening and nothing was happening and then stuff happened.
Jeremy: I will say after having watched the, having watched the whole series and going back and watching the first couple episodes again, It's weird that like it feels like a whole different series those first couple episodes because there's like [00:07:00] they're really leaning into the hauntedness of it and It really seems like there's a ghost involved.
Jeremy: But by the end of this story, there will be no ghost Like
Emmanuel: doesn't explain the premonitions and the visions that she's getting,
Ben: more explicitly supernatural in, like, the first two episodes and then takes, like, a pivot from there into more just, like, a thriller territory
Alicia: It's like, ha ha, there was no supernature.
Emily: Yeah,
Alicia: There were, it was sci
Alicia: fi.
Emily: it was two
Emily: different, like, styles.
Alicia: Who's doing the recap?
Jeremy: do you want to do the recap?
Alicia: Oh, wow, I hadn't really prepared to do the recap.
Jeremy: think anybody did
Emily: I, I'm
Alicia: Okay,
Ben: I mean
Jeremy: They said I don't want to do too thorough of a recap because there's
Alicia: Okay, that's good, because I can't. So, The story starts with Nella, who is working for her dream publishing company. She has been wanting to work here ever since she read her favorite book, I think it's called The Burning Heart that was written by a Black author [00:08:00] and edited by a Black author named Kendra.
Alicia: And she has been wanting to work at this company. So she's been working there and she finds herself the lone black girl in a sea of white faces when another black girl starts working there.
Ben: Was the implication also that that was the only black book Wagner had put out in that 35 years?
Alicia: And not only that, by the only, that editor was only there for what, four years, five years or something, but
Emily: Yeah.
Jeremy: because it seems that this author that she loves so much has had an entire career, and we don't really know anything about any other books that she may have made or not made. It's sort of, I don't know if she's like a
Alicia: she was on the of Ebony and Jet magazine. So
Amanda: Yeah, there's a lot to be said about the hyper visibility slash erasure themes in the book and how they don't pay off
Amanda: fully.[00:09:00]
Amanda: You know, it's like, there's an interesting thing to be said about that. There are a lot of black people. Professionals, we're seeing this right now at Harvard, where like someone's entire career is about to be disappeared in front of them.
Amanda: It happens all the time and no one will ever know that it happened, so of course it's very easy to question. And it's like part of what makes all of it feel crazy making, but , they just don't execute it in a way that felt resonant at all to like how it really is.
Ben: this is where I feel like the thriller elements and the political elements sometimes conflict
Emmanuel: but also, like, it's set in 2021. There are big Black authors that exist, right? Like, Ta Nehisi Coates is probably in universe. Like, Jessamyn Ward is probably in universe. Like, there's people that are massive, well known names, and
Emmanuel: just like, no, thank
Emmanuel: you.
Alicia: and Wagner's just
Alicia: doing nothing.
Amanda: And like, hard to do a mystery in publishing when the gossip is overflowing and always so specific. People really do [00:10:00] know who be, like, hanging out together too much. So it's kind of improbable in some ways where it's like, you know, the, the gossip rags, the blind items, the dirt sheets for publishing are rampant and there's a lot of stuff that just wouldn't really be a secret.
Alicia: Oh, hold on. Let me get in on those rags. But anyway, let me finish the recap real quick. I promise to make it short. All right. So she's working there. Another black girl comes in and they are vibing really hard. They're just hitting it off. They are like, yes, girl. Oh, well, baby, was that my college performance?
Alicia: And they are like, just, just, Ah, I'm having such a good time chatting it up and the white people in the office are confused. And they both bond over the fact that they really love this editor who was there. And, this editor We see her at the beginning, uh, scratching her head until it's bloody and then running from the building as flickering lights are behind her and she, ends up on the subway [00:11:00] and we don't know what happened to her.
Alicia: It's a mystery. And over the course of this story, little microaggressions keep happening between our main character, Nella, and her new best work friend Hazel May. So one that stands out is she's dealing with an author who has written a character that is questionable at best, and we can have an entire discussion about white writers writing black characters.
Alicia: Jeremy, I'm looking at you. But, but,
Ben: Jeremy, have you ever thought about a page poise hat?
Alicia: he has and he Mm-Hmm.
Emmanuel: seen that, Jeremy.
Alicia: It is one of the hacks that fits him the best, and he loves it, and I actually think he looks quite cute in it. But, this author writes the story, he writes an offensive character, she tells Vera, who played Mellie on Scandal, so I always love to see Mellie in things, she tells Vera her boss.
Alicia: Hey, uh, that's problematic. Vera's like, it is. Cause Vera means [00:12:00] truth. And that's what she speaks to Nella, not to the author. To the author, she says, great book. We love it. Because he promises to make them a lot of money. Nella tells her new BFF, Hazel, Hey, this is a problem. And Hazel says, you should say something.
Alicia: And then as soon as Nella does, the author turns to Hazel and says, what do you think? And she's like, why? I loved it. I thought it was just real interesting and just throws Nella under the bus. Nella tells white boyfriend and best friend, best, I guess, I don't know how to describe Malika,
Ben: Just best character.
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: Most of my notes are just me writing down McKayla
Alicia: How much you, how, how much you love Malaika,
Emily: Yeah. I love
Emmanuel: all the best lines. All
Emily: yeah.
Emily: No, that's the main reason I kept watching like that I was as riveted as I was.
Alicia: yeah, the part where Malaika grabs her phone without looking and then dramatically turns her head to ignore Hazel's [00:13:00] presence, chef's kiss,
Ben: When she storms out yelling, you don't even stir paella.
Alicia: yes,
Amanda: yeah.
Emmanuel: No, the, I've been waiting for this shit, I'm taking some with me, like,
Alicia: Yes, I felt that. I felt that. So, Malika doesn't trust Hazel. She doesn't trust Hazel for multiple reasons, but one of them is that Hazel claims to love TLC, but does not recognize baby, baby, baby when it comes on. So, that was real suspish. Anyway, long story short, it turns out that Malaika was right not to trust Hazel because Hazel is not really Hazel.
Alicia: She has been working with a cadre of brainwashed women who use this conditioning agent, this hair grease, to, I guess, make the world more livable? Make them ignore microaggressions better? Make them fit in with whiteness better? I'm not really sure
Amanda: meant to quell the [00:14:00] cognitive dissonance of
Alicia: Yes.
Amanda: to behave in it.
Alicia: They don't have to do the James Baldwin.
Alicia: Is it James Baldwin who talked about having double identity?
Amanda: Dubois, yeah. but
Amanda: Baldwin definitely cited that a lot.
Alicia: Well, Baldwin basically said like to be conscious is to be angry all the time And so this kind of quells that consciousness, right? So you don't have to have that Sense of twoness, you can just exist and then get ahead in the world.
Alicia: And it turns out that her favorite author of Burning Heart and Richard Wagner, the president of the publishing company himself, girl, have been carrying on an affair and, getting smart, young black women to buy into this so that they can, I don't know, corner the market on diversity, I guess.
Ben: We'll get into, like, what the goal is supposed to
Alicia: What is the goal? We, I, what, what does the hair grease achieve that capitalism can't? I'm not sure, but we can talk about [00:15:00] that later because it all comes to a head when Kendra, the missing publisher, comes back and says, girl, you have got to run away. You got to go to Idaho or Iowa or one of those I states, something like that.
Alicia: And she, yeah, and she decides, no, I'm I'm going to fight against it while pretending that she the hair grease and slathered it on her head so that she can be in the secret cabal of hair slathered black women in professional politics, leaving it open for a second season. Now, I know that the book ends with her deciding to, you know what it reminds me of?
Alicia: Do you? Okay. So
Ben: The events
Alicia: came out.
Ben: Where they change the
Alicia: of the
Alicia: book.
Ben: And then they change the ending of the book?
Alicia: So they're like, after the matrix came out, there was like a thing with Sarah, Jessica Parker, like, I guess [00:16:00] it was like an Oscars clip or something like a little sketch where she basically decides, like, why would I want to live in the real world?
Alicia: Uh, living in the matrix is great. And I feel like, isn't that what happens at the end of the book?
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, essentially. it's a tortured decision that you question the performativity of how tortured the decision was. It's very weird in how it's. actually described in the book. But I mean, there's also just a lot of things that are revealed in scenes that are like improbably long.
Alicia: Yes.
Amanda: You know, it's
Alicia: and all this time, the whole show, she's getting notes from this girl named Shani, who's running from these other girls. She's seeing reflections of Kendra in elevator doors and in movies. And you know, is the whole, the electricity is crackling and buzzing at weird times. And then it turns out that Kendra isn't a ghost cause she's still alive.
Alicia: And was she leaving her notes? We're not sure.
Emmanuel: [00:17:00] what was
Emmanuel: that,
Emmanuel: Shani?
Alicia: it Shawnee?
Amanda: right.
Alicia: I think it was Shawnee. I mean,
Emily: it was Shani too
Ben: Yeah.
Alicia: slipped her a note like visibly
Emily: and
Emily: she broke, she's kind of broke in to the, the publisher, right?
Amanda: That's what happens in the book.
Ben: Yeah, because by then they were in thriller territory instead of, like, ghost territory.
Jeremy: was like the previous her, like Hazel May was trying to work Shani into being part of this cult previously. I
Alicia: still understand why Shani and Kendra and stuff can't just be like, no, thank you.
Amanda: They did. and then they went after them because,
Alicia: Yeah, why, like, why? Like, there are black women all over the place. There are Candace Owenses all over the place. Who would be like, yes, put the grease on me. I am ready to make money. Stacey
Ben: the best description of it, the Candace Owens School of Soft Knocks.
Ben: Another incredible line from
Amanda: Yeah Yeah, that was a good joke.[00:18:00]
Emmanuel: So that was my other question I had, with this, like, portfolio or whatever that she finds that has all of these women marked voluntary,
Alicia: why?
Emmanuel: and then
Amanda: It was placed in like an escape room manner where it's
Amanda: like,
Amanda: yeah, I'm gonna tape in manila envelope.
Emmanuel: Involuntary doesn't seem to work. It didn't work for Kendra, it didn't work for Shani, it doesn't work for, uh, Nella, like, what's the point of trying the hair grease if it doesn't work unless you believe it? Like, it's
Alicia: Cause really if somebody told me I could be living in a penthouse apartment, drinking German Rieslings, eating paella without worrying about the cost of saffron, you know, and all I had to do was use a little bit of, uh, brown butter hair grease and I would smell delicious. I mean,
Alicia: I don't, I just, it clearly is blue magic.
Amanda: Yeah, it was absolutely meant to look like blue magic.
Alicia: magic.
Ben: Yeah, like, at a certain point I'm like, oh, are we, like, demonizing black scholarships now? What's going on here?
Alicia: And also
Ben: What, how am I
Ben: supposed to [00:19:00] feel about things?
Alicia: said at the beginning, I
Alicia: said, if this has something to do with evil hair products, I'm not going to be happy because this is exactly like bad hair.
Amanda: It's the worst part of the entire thing. Like,
Amanda: why
Amanda: why is it hair goo? And like, nobody, like, like, Malaika points out multiple times, no, why would you put something on your head that doesn't have, like, why wouldn't they have patter for
Amanda: what the ingredients are and where it came from? Usually when there's a secret like that, you hide it behind a bunch of beautiful lies that distract you instead of a blank.
Amanda: Mysterious
Emily: it, you know, they're not like
Emily: they didn't get FDA approval, you know, it's very like one on
Alicia: They didn't even say, Oh, this is my grandma's special hair grease that she makes. Or I got this recipe off of TikTok because let me tell you in my natural hair journey, I have tried a lot of random recipes. You recipes of mayonnaise and avocado and whatnot that people said on TikTok [00:20:00] worked well
Alicia: for my hair and
Amanda: Yeah, people are
Alicia: alert.
Alicia: I smelled great. It did not work
Ben: you'd think one of these little mini Amorosas would have like gone into makeup industry and you could have hid it behind like that.
Amanda: Yeah.
Emmanuel: So that's my other question,
Alicia: on the first lady's head. Like they could have been in everything. Like, why was, why were they small timing it?
Emmanuel: Right.
Emmanuel: I don't use hair grease though, so how do they get Jessie? Like,
Amanda: Yeah,
Amanda: They, they hint at a vast conspiracy that's actually so much smaller in a way that undercuts the core tension of the main character and just how fucking, how fucking crazy it is to actually live through the horrors of being a Black femme in a world where you now, have to ingest a little bit of everybody's poison to
Alicia: Yeah,
Emily: yeah,
Alicia: can we answer Emmanuel's question though? How does everybody think they got it on to Jesse? I like to imagine that they took some grease, they were just talking to [00:21:00] him, and then they were like, Oh, whoops! And then fell on his head, and then just,
Amanda: Yeah, there's that. I'm thinking maybe they lined the inside of his little fisherman beanie, you know,
Amanda: the little rolled up
Alicia: he made his do rag, they, oh wait, he, no, he did have a fisherman beanie.
Ben: they spiked his beanie. Yeah.
Emmanuel: so that's a certain, do they have like a line of products? Like are there separate, like this is Shea Moisture, but it's got a little bit of the grease on it, so
Amanda: yeah. Listen, Shea Moisture purchased by a large company,
Alicia: fact that you said shea moisture, like the fact that you said shea moisture.
Amanda: Yeah, that's all.
Alicia: will say if somebody like just put something in my Dr. Bronner's one day, I would never notice. You know, it smells
Jeremy: you put one of those Dr. Bronner's labels on it, people will never know what's in that thing.
Emily: yeah
Emmanuel: tell them the whole
Emmanuel: manifesto and they still wouldn't notice. I've tried to read the Dr.
Alicia: Bronner's bottle.
Alicia: Still don't know what it's talking about.
Emily: Yeah, I know the doctor brought it's that's some cult shit right there
Ben: I know the mind control, Henry Grease, was fucking goofy, [00:22:00] but seeing, seeing, seeing Jesse go full Shaun King did break my heart a little bit.
Amanda: It sucked, yeah, though I really appreciated, shout out to Langston Kerman, cause that was a very funny performance that was like, very informed, like, he's gotten really good at playing this type of charlatan.
Jeremy: mean, that's what I'll say, like, going into this, is like, we're gonna, like, we goof on a lot of stuff that happens in the show, and like, I think rightfully so, but the acting is spot on. Like, the
Emmanuel: Hearts of Winter is
Emmanuel: so much fun. Well, the characters, right? Like, Sophie was hilarious. Like, her little cat lady vibes. She was so sweet and, like, she won me over. Loved Malika. Uh, what's her boss? Vera? Vera
Emmanuel: is the perfect, awful boss.
Amanda: Yes.
Emmanuel: She's so
Emmanuel: good. She has such command of her voice. Like,
Ben: there as much drunken hangouts with her in the book? Cause that It felt like the book would have gotten rid of her once she was fired, but in the show they were like, [00:23:00] Well, we don't want to stop having Bellamy Young in the show, so
Emmanuel: well, she shows up with, what, wine and garlic knots? Like, that's a, you're not a close friend, but
Emmanuel: that's a friend.
Amanda: yeah.
Ben: mean, you're boss bringing wine and garlic, now it's I'm sorry, that's a real one.
Amanda: It's a nice thing. That's like a very New York thing, I would imagine. But also, like, even as a remote editor, I've definitely had relationships with white report twos that, like, after everything's over, they still be checking in on you. Like, they're, like, kind of obsessed in a way that makes you think partly they think well of you, but also they're waiting to see if you ever say anything about what it was actually like
Amanda: working
Amanda: with them.
Emmanuel: show up with wine and garlic knots, I will fold like,
Emmanuel: a paper crane, like,
Amanda: I'm your friend. Yeah.
Ben: give me garlic nuts, I'm putting on the hair gear. Yeah, absolutely.
Emily: Yeah, it looks like it feels really nice. Like, the hair growth process, the grease process seems to, like, come with the massage.
Emmanuel: love a scalp massage.
Emily: yeah, like, so many, like, [00:24:00] people could do anything to me
Alicia: got him.
Emily: scalp massage, to me, they didn't, no grease
Emily: involved. People could be
Emily: like, yeah, but then girl didn't actually have, she just left the grease, and then they were assuming that Nella was like,
Emily: Completely on
Alicia: that they were doing the parting and the, you know, they're doing like these hair parties. I was like, how come I never get involved, invited to let me do your hair parties? Like that's
Emily: with
Emily: Waffle Bowls.
Alicia: happening?
Amanda: it's, yeah.
Emmanuel: You shoulda known, it was weird when you showed up to a party with all black women and it was nothing but dairy products. Like, you're just gonna
Emmanuel: have ice cream? All you can eat ice cream? You
Alicia: Lactose. I said that to Jeremy. I was like, we're lactose intolerant.
Ben: When they all put their hands over their hearts and they all like clutch their pearls in unison.
Amanda: It's
Amanda: great. in Thriller.
Jeremy: yeah,
Alicia: I think the other thing that I really love is that as Eric McCormick, who is Will from Will and Grace. Baby, he is an actor, okay? He [00:25:00] was playing that, he was so good, and so funny,
Alicia: Like everyone in this is well, Garcelle Beauvais. I'm, she may not be acting as much as I would like her to be acting. And also I thought it was weird how they just cast their younger selves, irrespective of the adult actresses that
Ben: They
Ben: looked nothing,
Emily: Yeah.
Alicia: why is Kendra giving me like sexy basketball player as a like older woman,
Alicia: you know, you know, she was all tall and like chiseled and everything. And like
Emily: Yeah.
Emmanuel: she was using Shani's, like, chin up program.
Jeremy: between 30 and 50 she grew a foot,
Amanda: Yeah, big, big on CrossFit now. Yeah, I mean,
Alicia: Completely different hair texture. Like what are we doing? what
Amanda: I, I I always clock that stuff too. I think casting did a great job for the comedic element, but yeah, for some reason, all of [00:26:00] the like, earlier versions of everyone, young, whoever, all looked off.
Emmanuel: Young Wagner was
Emmanuel: weird too, like,
Ben: Yeah.
Amanda: I was like, who's that, Zach Morris?
Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
Alicia: who could convince me to put on some grease, I dunno. Zach
Amanda: Yeah, he would have been good in this show too.
Jeremy: man,
Amanda: have
Amanda: been funny.
Jeremy: it's it's wild that you've got this like, One publishing house that's led by this this one guy that you're supposed to I don't know trust throughout the series And they named him Richard Wagner is really sort of wild to me and like nobody ever says anything about that in the show But they're like, no, really, is this guy who runs this potentially racist, like, publishing house named Richard Wagner, like, weird?
Ben: Well, in terms of casting did anyone else kind of lose their shit a little when they realized the racist author was Kevin from The Office?
Amanda: Oh yeah, once he came out, I was like, that's [00:27:00] a great choice.
Emily: Yeah.
Emmanuel: good.
Ben: Oh, when he was doing the his apology zoom call, and then the vape got out at the
Emily: Oh yeah, his like,
Emily: his, his whole apology, like his bad YouTube apology.
Ben: the
Alicia: Yes.
Ben: person he knows.
Emily: I love how in that, in his little in his author photo, he's wearing like a shirt that says artist or something, but then it looks so much like it says racist. Like, yeah, every sphincter in my body clenched when I was on screen.
Jeremy: Alicia, if any publisher ever tries to make cardboard stand ups of me, just stop me, please.
Emily: Yeah,
Alicia: Uh,
Alicia: no, not until I get one made for myself, I would love to have a cardboard standup of Jeremy because sometimes he goes out of town and I want to do like a home alone style. There's a large
Jeremy: Listen,
Alicia: here.
Jeremy: I feel like you forgot what it was like when we had a cardboard stand up of
Jeremy: Humphrey
Alicia: did. That
Alicia: was
Jeremy: And you [00:28:00] occasionally would just go, you'd just walk to the sink in the middle of the night and I'd
Jeremy: hear
Emmanuel: is the wildest sentence you've ever said.
Alicia: Yeah. Bogey did get me a few times because we had a spiral staircase in Humphrey Bogart. I think, what, didn't we also have a Marilyn Monroe one as well?
Jeremy: Um, I don't think so. We had another one, but I forget what
Emmanuel: Who
Emmanuel: is paying for these cutouts?
Emily: I know, right?
Alicia: nerd, movie nerd butt. That's who.
Jeremy: I don't think I paid for those.
Emily: Did you just get them from the, from the movie store where you
Emmanuel: He liberated them
Jeremy: I either stole them from the Blockbuster, or they belonged to my brother who was living with us at the time.
Emily: Okay.
Jeremy: one of those two.
Alicia: yeah.
Ben: to the community.
Emily: Yeah, all of those,
Ben: It wasn't
Emily: Sandy.
Ben: it was from Blockbuster.
Ben: No,
Jeremy: on this shelf has at least a hundred DVDs in it. So, it
Amanda: Excellent.
Alicia: Hey, uh, but Emily, you were saying something at the same time that Jeremy was [00:29:00] reminding me of bogey. Do you remember what it was?
Emily: was just talking about how fucking cringe the author was.
Alicia: yeah,
Amanda: Yes,
Alicia: What if that becomes you one day? Do you have instructions that I should do? Like, if I ever see you doing that, Emily, like, what should I do?
Emily: um,
Alicia: Like, if you were to, okay, you're an author, you're a writer, you're an author, you're an author, you all have written and drawn characters that are not the same culture and the same race as you.
Alicia: so let's say you write a chartricia or you draw a chartricia. I feel like I know you all well enough to be like, What the fuck are you doing? Get back
Alicia: here. Get
Emily: my God. Yeah.
Emily: No, I needed.
Alicia: you want, like, I just thought it was weird that he was like, you know, offended
Emmanuel: You're assuming that he has friends. He has no friends to tell him that.
Alicia: by his editor though. But like-
Ben: for myself as a writer, I would say, karate chop to the throat.
Emily: yeah,
Alicia: wouldn't you [00:30:00] want your editor to be like,
Amanda: I think the average author does want that and then there's a type of author who needs to be like the godhead of all ideas or whatever, and they just, they don't take notes or they've made just enough money for someone that they don't believe they should ever have to take notes, which I've also encountered in comics, which is hilarious. Nobody's paid enough in comics to act like that.
Emily: Right.
Ben: the one thing I really noticed that stood out to me was, I don't know, maybe things are different at that bestseller echelon, but just the thought of like, oh yes, no, Arthur, you come in and we have just a hair and makeup team for you, instead of just like, fucking email us something you take with your phone, that's good enough.
Emmanuel: But like, every book I've ever read, the, like, acknowledgement section has talked about, like, the books I've loved. They've talked about how this wouldn't exist without my editor. My editor made this what it is, whatever, whatever. Like, my editor took all the bullshit out of it, right? This seems to be, like, the myth that the [00:31:00] author does All of the heavy lifting, like, it only, it is perfect when the editor receives it, and all the editor does is publish it, and so, there is no one to check him, because he wrote a perfect book, and they just print it, it seems like,
Jeremy: I, I think like, I think
Jeremy: both things are true because I think all you really need to do to like see the difference between somebody who is excited about writing a thing and working with an editor and somebody who is too big for their britches is to read the third Harry Potter book and then read the fourth Harry Potter book, uh, which is twice the size of, you know, all of the previous books.
Alicia: her. No, that's true. There are so many parts where
Emmanuel: and there are a lot of chartreuses in that book,
Ben: Look, if someone was capable of telling J. K. Rowling no in her life, things would have been very different for her the last few years.
Alicia: I guess, or Amy Sherman Paladino. I just re-watched that last, Gilmore Girl A year in the life with, with the kids and
Amanda: um, I didn't
Amanda: see
Amanda: it.
Alicia: needed some, it needed some editing. [00:32:00] yeah.
Amanda: does love to write.
Alicia: I'm not a professional editor of things, but it. It baffled me how much Vera seemed like, oh, I can't tell him that this needs to change,
Emily: They had to kiss his ass.
Alicia: the sensitivity reader flagged all of this stuff will never, I was like, just change what she flagged or don't, like, those are your options, like,
Amanda: what Oh, let me tell you. It's a, no, it's, it's unfortunately more of a problem than you think. and it's not among like, rational, you know, good faith artists who have community that they're accountable to and stuff. But like, the people who really. think of themselves as a franchise. But and then there's also just a type of, like, very sensitive white boy artist who really is just, like, there's a type of editor who's very afraid of making them upset, and that's a big thing.
Amanda: One of the biggest problems with it. Publishing being like 87 percent white [00:33:00] women or whatever, is that white women's job is to keep the peace in a way that is about quelling the problem. And the problem is whoever's pointing out the problem. And I was in a meeting once where an editor was asking everyone for advice on how to deal with a sensitivity reader who wasn't very nice.
Amanda: in, uh, their notes and wrote their notes in a way that they can't send that to the author without them getting upset. And they were so worked up about this, that in a way that like the author hadn't even seen the notes who, but they've already sort of decided that it's too upsetting because they are also uncomfortable and they don't want to have the conversation.
Amanda: They also don't feel equipped or educated enough to have the conversation, even though they know everything they need to know. They just, don't want to actually endure the discomfort of doing it. But yeah, I've been in meetings where we've had to tell someone, no, you have to tell the [00:34:00] author what the sensitivity readers
Alicia: Yes,
Emily: Yeah.
Emily: Otherwise, what's
Emily: the point?
Alicia: is there a problem with saying, like, with rejecting a note from a sensitivity reader? Is there a problem with, like, the sensitivity reader says, Oh, and I really like how the show, how the show was like, apparently we can't say crazy anymore. And then just decided to do that joke over and over again.
Alicia: And it's like, okay, so you're just doing the thing that you're talking,
Amanda: Yeah.
Ben: I didn't like, Yeah.
Alicia: yeah,
Alicia: I was like, calm down. Like, I get Vera saying it one time, like, but let's move on. We don't need to
Ben: The craziest white lady boss thing in the whole show was Vera telling Nella that she's her dog's godmother.
Emily: Yeah. That was.
Amanda: Yes.
Emmanuel: it was the whitest thing to happen on
Emily: Oh my god.
Amanda: so white.
Emily: And this is, this is what is like, the charm of the show. Like,
Emily: this is why I would recommend, like, this is the reason I'd recommend the show. I'd be like, don't have your hopes up for the, uh, like, the twists and [00:35:00] turns. Don't be expecting any sort of, like, incredible plot twists.
Emily: But these characters are great and they're, the line, like, the dialogue is
Ben: Yeah, it's kind of like, should this just been a comedy about, like, two black girls navigating the world of publishing, and not a mind control conspiracy
Alicia: Well, this is the real problem that I had with the premise in general. Well, I had two problems. One is that you need anything more than money. To make somebody flip the script like that. Like we have seen time and time again that you don't need magical hair grease to get people to do that kind of crap.
Alicia: You just need to offer them enough money
Amanda: Exactly.
Ben: Yeah.
Alicia: you say, what we want you to say, and we'll pay you a lot of money. And then all of a sudden it gets easier and easier to, I mean, OJ Simpson was like, I'm not black, I'm just OJ. Like that came really easy to him. And it did not take magical hair grease, but number two, just the.
Alicia: Just the idea that there can only be one. That's like, how much better
Amanda: [00:36:00] supposed to be busted.
Amanda: And they don't do a good job.
Alicia: They don't
Alicia: bust it. Like, she does that at one point. Nella says, well, I'm going to invite Hazel to work on this with me. And she's like, but Hazel is your competition. And she's like, but she shouldn't be. Like, we should be working together.
Alicia: And then that message just disappears. But I'm like, how great would it have been if Hazel was working for the OBGs? Then Nella was like, we don't have to be against each other. We can work together and we don't have to do it their way.
Emily: yeah.
Ben: That's,
Emily: And then they had, they had this whole thing with Hazel, like, right towards the, the last few episodes where Hazel, we saw a little bit more of Hazel and that she was not really into it, you know, she was having second thoughts. And so I felt like that Yeah. Was something that would be a lot more worthwhile to engage in, but instead it was her just being more and more desperate for [00:37:00] Nella to, like, be on board.
Emily: So, I, yeah, like, there was, it's a really weird thing to have this show, or to have this story that is so much about being true to yourself, And then the way that they, like, at the end, she still had to lie.
Emily: Like,
Emmanuel: straighten her hair, and
Emily: yeah. yeah. to go undercover, And can we talk about also that it is true that wearing your hair in an unnatural way has been a way for people to assimilate or even, you know, in a lot of ways it has been. In the past that people have accepted the idea that natural hair is bad, and so we need to straighten our hair, and da da da da da.
Alicia: But can we also just say that straightening your hair, or wearing a weave, or wearing a wig, does not necessarily mean that you are a sellout?
Alicia: Like, MAYBE, you just It's like, [00:38:00] if this movie was like, we're gonna demonstrate that this white girl has sold out by having her wear makeup, or having her wear false eyelashes, it's like, it can be that people are using these things inappropriately, but also, girls can wear wigs if
Jeremy: it's
Jeremy: it's really
Jeremy: weird that like they're making this She's making that I feel like they're making that point in the last episode Well, Hazel May is sitting there with dreadlocks. Like
Jeremy: it's I don't understand the point they're making
Ben: well,
Emily: outfits are so fucking cool. I
Emily: love her. I love her outfits. Some of them are a little like, I don't know why you're going like full cyberpunk to this like, publisher's meeting, but I, you know, if I could, I would. Like,
Amanda: Yeah, she actually, that actually reminds me of someone I know.
Ben: oh, when they were at the fucking, like, reception for the imprint launch party, and she had that crazy science fiction,
Amanda: Yeah, the [00:39:00] Alexander
Emmanuel: I had what's with
Ben: necklace around. Yes!
Emily: I know. I
Ben: What? That's exactly what it was. That was fucking crazy.
Emily: mean, if they
Emily: gave me a
Alicia: her locks were fake. But also, her locks were fake, too.
Emmanuel: course
Alicia: Like, I mean, I, I get, like, is that what they're trying, like, I don't, I
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: Well, this is where I run into some trouble with this show, like, as much as I actually, like, I really enjoy it, like, I fucking tore through it, like, I loved, like, the characters, the comedy was on point, was, like, an engaging thriller, but then, like, once, you know, I finish and I have some time to think about it, it is, like, yeah, at this point, like you said, Alicia, like, we've now seen enough times where it's, like, straightened hair equals evil slash mind controlled that, you know, At a certain point, it's like, people are allowed to have that hairstyle.
Ben: Like, if they want, let them have that hairstyle without being like, you are literally evil.
Amanda: yeah.
Emily: This is like a [00:40:00] red flag or something.
Emily: Ha
Amanda: It's a trope that nobody is, has been given adequate room to actually explore in an honest way and it just needs to be retired for retroactively a hundred years. I, it's, it's something. That it's one of the few things that white people know about black people, and it makes it one of the easiest types of concepts to sell to white people, and like, the very nature of how, unfortunately, like, in my pers in my opinion the way this book got through to white All of the iterations it must have gone through without very real structural changes to make this actually a mystery, to make it actually a thriller, to actually stand on business about what the characters politics are, and what we are saying when we say that we're all dancing with [00:41:00] the perception of authenticity, like what that means when it's something that we have to sell to other people.
Amanda: And It doesn't complete the thought, it doesn't complete the argument, and like, that in itself is an example of like, if there were more black people at that publishing company, you know, I'm sure they had a great editor, but there would have been More scrutiny put on it, but I think by the nature of some of its tropes made it a little easier to skate by you know, the kind of, I, as someone who has had to give a lot of tough love notes to books by black authors, um, some that are just like, Oh, they're never going to send this to them, are they?
Amanda: It's, it's definitely, you know, trying to call each other in as a real, you know, is a real problem that could have been also handled better in the execution of the book. The, the, the show does a better job actually in kind of fixing the dialogue. that's like where the [00:42:00] comedy writers kind of came in, but the comedy writers are naturally trying to turn into what y'all already said would be better, which is just like a sitcom about them actually just kind of episodically trying to figure out what the fuck, uh, their place is in publishing.
Amanda: But, But, But, that's not what the book even gives them room to do because there's a stupid mystery that's
Ben: I do, I do, want to get a tattoo of the line, your inability to see that I'm always right really concerns me.
Emmanuel: Malika.
Amanda: Yeah,
Emmanuel: Queen. Queen
Amanda: queen.
Emmanuel: Link,
Amanda: Yeah, and about Malika, honestly, I think that's also like a weird problem crutch in the book is that all of the sense and all of the spidey senses and wisdom and calling things as they plainly are all have to fall on the radical black lesbian. And you know, that is supposed to
Alicia: she's also like goofy comic relief at a lot of points.
Alicia: Like [00:43:00] I,
Amanda: also mirrors. Yes.
Alicia: I was going to say there are times when they put some sophistication on her and it's, it's done in such a way to be like, Whoa, you didn't expect knowledge about Paella from Malika, did you? Because she, you know, and so that's supposed to be funny.
Alicia: And she's got a real Lil Rel Howery in
Emmanuel: gonna say, it's like they saw Get Out
Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
Ben: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Ben: they
Ben: they quote Kahn. they literally look at their own fucking mind control, like, hair gel and go like, That's some get out style shit
Ben: right there. I'm like, I don't wanna, well I guess if you're, if you're calling it out, okay, I guess your word's not mine,
Amanda: Yeah, you know, that's the problem when you adapt a book that has very real structural problems in the story, you know, they've got to come up with some dumb band aids that also aren't that satisfying. I appreciate some of the abbreviations they made, but they also spent way too [00:44:00] much time at the, with the first half of the book and should have spent more time on the second half.
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: whole mind control hair gel reminds me of like, in an action movie, when they make the villain too sympathetic. And, like, their point, like, their
Ben: radical point is, like, it's completely that there's two, right? So they then just have to, like, murder a bunch of, like, civilians
Ben: just out of nowhere?
Amanda: It's ever, It's their favorite thing to do.
Ben: because otherwise, Diana's plan is, like, let's have a group of professional black women provide community. And, like, emotional and professional support for one another, while we deal with the complicated emotions that the society foists upon us. And it's like, that's really hard to make seem like a bad thing,
Emily: Yeah.
Emmanuel: Your hair looks good, you don't have any guilt about your experience, and you're successful, like, [00:45:00] what's the drawback? What is this soul you're
Amanda: Yeah. It's, it's like the limitless pills, you know, like
Emmanuel: but you won't be human, but I look good. Have you seen
Alicia: I
Alicia: look great, and I'm
Emily: a vampire
Alicia: about racism, and microaggressions don't bother me,
Alicia: I could just get over it, and that's the other thing is that this show really seems to be saying, hey, you know what, if black people could just get out of their own way about these microaggressions, I mean,
Emily: Yeah,
Alicia: it all.
Ben: I don't even know if it's mind control, or if it's just some, like, psychedelic mushroom therapy.
Emily: could be. Well, I think that there's, there's this implication that Wagner, Wagner have, I kind of like calling it Wagner better because it's a bit more on point, but, I feel like he's sort of behind it all, but I, I mean, I haven't read the book. I don't know
Emily: if
Alicia: exa it just seems like bad hair, like just,
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: It's, there was a [00:46:00] lot of it where I'm like, this is what I wanted Bad Hair to be, but also, I'm not sure, but also like, Bad Hair, I'm not wondering if there was just some innate flaws baked into the premise of
Alicia: I just, I wanted Molly, you in danger, girl. I wanted ghosts. I wanted, I wanted magical realism.
Emily: yes.
Alicia: instead,
Alicia: I
Ben: Gothic in it,
Emmanuel: And for
Emmanuel: Sophie and
Alicia: southern gothic.
Emily: for sure.
Alicia: instead I got bad hair grease. I did want to talk about, sure, Tricia,
Emily: And to answer your question, cause you, you asked me the question, what do you want me to do? If I, if
Emily: you ever find a shirt, Tricia you know, please do what you thought that an art, the writer would want is, you know, say like, what do you, what's, I mean, you, you don't even have to say a nice, you'd be like, you know, there's this, this a racist thing here.
Emily: Like you can say [00:47:00] racist. This is, you could say something's racist, like,
Emily: I just
Emily: you
Alicia: don't feel like, even if they were the hair, even if she put the hair grease on her head, like, Hazel could still make her own decisions. I don't,
Ben: I feel like Racism or
Alicia: She could still say Chartricia is problematic with the hair grease
Emily: yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know, it's, I just, everyone has a blind spot, and you gotta accept that, and I think that's, I mean, if that was something that was more explored, Maybe, I don't think this, this particular story wasn't so much about that, but, um, yeah, like, I, I almost wish that it was the, some of the comedy was about this intent on having a cult, and then they realize that it's like, there's, they don't have to be sinister about it,
Alicia: mm
Emily: you know? Like, they don't have to be like, you know, they can just take it themselves and be like, oh, we could just be cool, you know? And then [00:48:00] maybe there is magical realism. I
Ben: like,
Emily: a lot more
Ben: you're waiting for them to be like, wait, why do we mind controlling people into getting their dream jobs?
Emmanuel: does Diana benefit from any of this? Like, what does she get?
Ben: It truly seems Is It
Emmanuel: just like a Pokemon thing? She's just collecting Yes, like, she
Ben: truly just, that's a saying, it's like, we don't have, like, a plot, it really just seems to be like, she wants black women to succeed, even through some light mind control,
Amanda: We needed to know so much
Amanda: more. Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe if, wa, if Waner was like at, you know, if it was his thing he's and he was like he's still just a simp, for, for Diana, she's in the driver's seat, which,
Emily: which is awesome. Like if she's in the driver's seat, awesome.
Jeremy: supporting women's wrongs here.
Emmanuel: Can you imagine Wagner in the store trying to pick out hair grease? Just him standing in an
Emmanuel: aisle, trying to, okay, she said to get, I know what she [00:49:00] said, get, I don't, I don't see it.
Alicia: Jeremy, how does that work for you?
Jeremy: I, I buy what I'm told to buy, and, if I, if it's not there, usually I will either text you or call you and say, Hey, they don't have that, they have this and this, and either you'll say, oh, I don't want,
Alicia: at you? Do people ever look at you weird when you picking up, like, when you're just in the black hair aisle looking at stuff?
Emmanuel: He just tells him he's trying to get his waves to come in.
Jeremy: I mean, the part of Durham we live in, basically, at this point, I think everybody is just like, Uh, he's probably, he's probably shopping for his wife.
Emmanuel: No, he's gonna pull a John
Amanda: uh, He's
Amanda: going on a post Malone Y'know,
Alicia: listen to what people say. They don't know about you and me,
Emmanuel: everybody thought he was black.
Alicia: John B, John B. And, um, You know, what you won't do, you do for love. Who's that? You tried everything.
Emmanuel: know, he, the two of them and Rick Astley are the trifecta, like, [00:50:00]
Alicia: Yeah. I guess you're wondering where I've been. That guy is white. I came back to let you know Got a thing for
Emmanuel: he is white. I
Emmanuel: don't
Alicia: let go His name is Bobby something. My friends wonder what is wrong with me. Bobby. Hold on, I'm
Alicia: gonna tell you. Bobby
Alicia: Caldwell?
Emmanuel: Yes, he's white.
Alicia: Yeah, he just passed away. Yes, a whole white man.
Alicia: They even put him on shadow on the cover.
Emmanuel: Yes. Cause they knew! They
Alicia: because they
Alicia: yeah, but I was just thinking about with Chartricia, I was thinking about the Bluford High Series. Do you guys remember the Bluford High Series?
Alicia: Are y'all familiar with the
Emmanuel: High High school teachers
Alicia: Okay. Can I
Alicia: share my screen with you?
Amanda: please.
Alicia: All right. Oh, the host disabled participant screen sharing.
Alicia: So just Google
Alicia: Bluford High Series.
Emmanuel: women down.
Alicia: and just look
Alicia: [00:51:00] and just look at these covers, uh.
Ben: Oh, wow.
Alicia: So all of these, the kids love these books. They ate them up because they're so, but Sharon draper is black.
Emmanuel: Yeah. Was he
Alicia: Like two and two and a third of the Bluford High series are black,
Emmanuel: all like, my name is Jamal and I live in the ghetto and the gangs come for me every day.
Emmanuel: But reading got
Alicia: some of these newer authors are, but the ones, the Paul Langen, Ann Schraff, Ben Alarez, like none of them are black.
Emily: Paul Langan, huh?
Amanda: the fuck? I'm looking at these covers now.
Amanda: I,
Amanda: oh my god.
Emmanuel: when you could get them for free
Emmanuel: too, like they would send them to you as high school teachers
Alicia: Yes.
Alicia: And like the kids would, the worst part is the kids would eat the bop, but I'm like, y'all don't see that this is not written by black people. Like y'all can't see that right here. Y'all don't see that right, right here.
Alicia: Cause it's like soap opera. They were really soapy, [00:52:00] you know? And sometimes it's like, well, we just, we eat what we like. It's just an Applejack situation. Like, like kind of like Blackula. Was Blackula written by black people? Heck no. Was there a lot of racism in Blackula? Absolutely. Will I
Emily: that's homophobia.
Emmanuel: Why are the covers so bad? I mean, I'm guessing the illustrators were also not
Alicia: the covers are so
Amanda: god. They're really, really bad. I
Alicia: They're
Ben: really, bad, but I feel like somebody worked so hard on them.
Amanda: Oh,
Ben: Like, this isn't LazyBad, Like a ridiculous amount of hours was put into each one to make them each bad in a thousand different ways. It's,
Emmanuel: reminds me of Ali Mullen talking about how people don't know how to shoot black skin Like they don't know how to light it like the like this is like what are these colors?
Amanda: that's what it is. Yeah. I mean, gosh, you know how many notes I've given on art?
Amanda: Where
Amanda: it's like, what's the hex code on this purplish gray concoction that you've [00:53:00] created for this person, this human person?
Alicia: but the writing is given, like, it's given Fosh's, Fosh's, Ginuwine, and I, I have to thank Britney Spears for bringing that to our
Ben: Well, what's that,
Ben: what's that, new Jeffrey Wright movie, uh, American Fiction?
Amanda: Yes, I'm seeing that
Alicia: oh yeah. I need to see that,
Alicia: one of the things that I thought was interesting was he, she had all this heat for sure. Tricia, but her and Hazel are kind of doing this thing where they're like key keying with each other and getting along, but they're like one upping each other as far as blackness is concerned. Like. Oh, yeah, I'm from Harlem.
Alicia: Oh, you know, you know, like they're kind of like trying to like out black each other.
Amanda: That's a,
Amanda: that's something that I have sort of observed, especially in like, like predominantly white, like institutional environments where there is this like pressure. I think. Once you're when you're around white people, nobody fucking has enough sense to know when you're [00:54:00] off or when you're lying.
Amanda: They can't tell. But when you're around another black person, there's a different level. There's an added layer of accountability that we all sort of feel for each other. And
Amanda: that gets sort of
Alicia: If I'm in a group, If I'm in a group, of white people, they can't check me. They can't tell me who I am or who I'm not
Amanda: They can't They can use their power, but they can't
Amanda: actually read me.
Alicia: exactly.
Amanda: But, like, Alicia could read me if she really wanted to, you know, in a way that Jeremy never could, and so, like, there's this feeling, especially when you have to work with them, it's like, I, this is someone I have to work alongside of who is being pitted against me, but I also feel like they have to know that I'm real, and, and it creates this, like, tension that I have actually seen But like, I feel like this is also like a very New York thing.
Amanda: A very
Amanda: LA thing.
Ben: terms
Ben: of,
Alicia: it reminds me
Alicia: of,
Ben: okay, sorry.[00:55:00]
Alicia: it reminds me of in Not Another Teen Movie, where the token black guy is like, no, you can't be at this party. This is my party. I'm at this, I'm the black guy at this party.
Amanda: Yes. Yes. I've been assigned to this outpost. Um, if there's one more and the cops will be called. So I'm,
Alicia: Yeah, we can't, we can't have more than one.
Amanda: I'm a load bearing black guy standing in the corner
Amanda: of this party so that you know that it's a cool party,
Amanda: but it's not a, but it's not a
Alicia: hell naw!
Amanda: party.
Emmanuel: Are you a pillar in the black community
Amanda: Yes.
Emmanuel: pairing?
Alicia: Sorry, B.
Ben: Well, just in terms of the conflict between the characters, one thing that I feel like this show implied, but really didn't go into or explore, is that it does seem to imply that Nella has certain class privileges. That especially, like, Hazel didn't have. Like, you know, like, we, we don't learn too much about where she's from, but we just know that she's from Connecticut, [00:56:00] which could mean a lot of things.
Ben: Like, that's a
Alicia: Does it, in
Ben: Connecticut.
Emily: Yeah.
Alicia: mind, Connecticut just means, like, rich people.
Amanda: it means you've had to, you've had eyes on you, you've had hot eyes on you since you were born. That's
Amanda: what it means. Like, as someone who grew up in Orange County, California, in like the 80s and 90s, right as it was turning into a diverse place, it
Alicia: I grew up in Orange
Amanda: you go,
Alicia: It's not quite the
Alicia: same.
Amanda: oranges. Yeah, and
Amanda: Florida has an Orange County too, differently
Amanda: toxic. Yeah.
Alicia: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: Nothing
Ben: good ever comes from an Orange County. The places or the show.
Amanda: no, no. With orange groves comes, colonization. Comes weirdos.
Emmanuel: think there are orange groves in North Carolina.
Ben: that,
Alicia: this,
Alicia: our, our Orange County is named after like the Duke of Orange or
Ben: that,
Alicia: It's,
Emily: yeah
Amanda: worse. .
Amanda: That's right. I forget. The East coast has so many
Alicia: we're just, it's
Alicia: older.
Amanda: century [00:57:00] guys.
Alicia: Yeah,
Alicia: but B, you were saying?
Ben: Well, yeah, just that, like, you know, that we see Hazel before she, you know, becomes agent of mind control, like, MLM,
Alicia: Yeah. Oh, Yeah. it is an MLM. Oh,
Ben: like, she,
Alicia: no, it's Lulu. It's, it's, it's them leggings. Who
Alicia: did the leggings?
Emmanuel: 50 percent of your
Alicia: Rose.
Emmanuel: my black girls, and then when you hire black girls, they
Ben: it's, it's, uh, honestly, you see, Diana's got her group, and then Hazel's under Diana, but then Hazel has her group, but, like, That, you know, that Nella, way before any Mind Control cult comes in, has the education and the financial resources to get this job that is so impossibly out of Hazel's reach, like where we see where Hazel came from, and that's something I feel like this show, you know, it's there, but I feel like this show doesn't actively delve
Amanda: it
Alicia: like it makes [00:58:00] sense that Hazel would join this sorority of I'm gonna tell you what to wear and how to act so that you can get into these spaces that are closed to you,
Alicia: but she says something to him. I mean,
Ben: What's
Ben: how don't, I don't want to I gotta say, the sororities mad at
Jeremy: I gotta
Jeremy: say, if it is, if it
Jeremy: is, a multi level marketing scam that makes way more sense now, because like, if after you get addicted to the hair grease you then have to pay an exorbitant price for it, or you start feeling all the racism
Jeremy: again, where did
Emmanuel: the ear like, then Oh, now that's true. I would pay a lot of
Alicia: money if somebody was like, here, don't feel the racism and then I get yeah. it. I would pay a lot of money
Ben: No, here's what That's what it absolutely has to be. It has to be the MLM scheme. Because, hit author or not, that is the only fucking way Diana is affording that Manhattan apartment.
Amanda: Yeah, it's, uh, yeah, my
Alicia: Dastardly.
Alicia: Oh my gosh. was [00:59:00] unspeakable. So nice, that
Alicia: But, but Hazel says something to Nella like, you've already gone to the school. And you're already, you know, at this job, you're already doing all this and that. What's, what's, what's, you know, wearing the hair grease? It's just one more step. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what are you saying?
Alicia: Are you saying that, like, going to a certain school, speaking a certain way is necessarily selling out? Or, I don't know. It's
Amanda: Yeah, there's a muddy message about what it means to, to engage in survival behaviors, you know, and like, you know, and like, and like for a black woman, survival behavior is sometimes relaxing your hair. It's sometimes code switching when you're around different people. And that's like an added, like, it's like, You need a, a bigger CPU in your computer to process that much information all the time everywhere you [01:00:00] are.
Amanda: And that's the wear and tear. And like, we, we undercut that by, by not giving us any real glimpse of what that really felt like for Nella. Cause if we actually got to see what it was like to go through her four year university. to like, to what it was like at whatever her toxic, you know, private high school was like, you know, those things would give us more information about why she chooses to behave the way she does and why she makes some kind of dumb decisions or really more dumb indecisions, like just, you know, trying not to make changes.
Amanda: And Yeah, I just think she, she could have been a real three dimensional main character if we got to see that. Then we would have a real conversation about all of the concessions that she's made to get there in the first place. To have the opportunity that Hazel couldn't get without the grease. Yeah, we don't, we don't get that conversation at all.
Amanda: It's all just sort [01:01:00] of buried under, sort of, you know, signifiers. Connecticut, etc.
Emily: yeah,
Ben: Yeah. Emmanuel?
Emmanuel: B, your hand was up first. you want to say
Ben: Oh, well, just, I mean, this is where the twist with Diana being the villain is where I, like, I keep running into some hurdles, cause like, from a thriller angle, I'm like, ooh, yes, the mentor figure was the mastermind, yay! But I'm, it changes the
Ben: sto Well, to me, it fundamentally changes the story.
Ben: It, this takes it from, like, a person versus this, like, you know, this almost monolithic force of just institutional publishing, this almost, you know, like, person versus society. Like I said, that really lent itself to this kind of, like, this very ghostly Southern Gothic thing they had going in those first two episodes.
Ben: And the themes of, again, like, you know, and that's a very thematically rich angle, and it, [01:02:00] and the Dianatrace, it makes it from into person versus person, and then, like you said, it really gets into one way or another, we're kind of demonizing them. People's survival strategies, and it feels like now we're putting more focus into policing people's survival strategies rather than criticizing what's forcing the, you know, forcing people to have to survive,
Amanda: exactly. It diverts the gaze from the structural to an interpersonal relationship that doesn't support the weight of what they're trying to put on it. And like, like you said, Diana, we don't even get to know enough about her to understand why she would make these decisions, why she would. Like, it sounded like they, that she wasn't with Richard for a long time and then they got back together recently.
Amanda: What does
Amanda: that mean? but also he's been fun, but also he's still been like [01:03:00] funding and facilitating the connections for it. It's like, there's a lot of that 35 years between Burning Heart and now,
Alicia: But she also, don't feel filled in.
Emily: yeah.
Alicia: was in more of a Hazel y type situation, right? Like she didn't have the opportunity to go to college, Is
Emily: Well, they, they really glossed
Emily: over, yeah,
Emily: she was the friend of the public. Or she's friend of the editor, Shirenda Kendra. And then, and then she was she and Kendra were sort of competing for whatever, like, s success they were looking for, and then they just jumped to her having a great book. And they didn't show anything, like, they showed that they were friends, and then they showed that they were both interested in writing, and then they showed that they, you know, and then it just skipped ahead.
Emily: We didn't get, like,
Amanda: Yeah, we got a tiny scene that was like, you don't understand what I'm going through when like she visits her at Harvard, uh, Kendra, she visits Kendra Ray at Harvard, but it's so quick and it's [01:04:00] supposed to stand in for a lot of backstory that needs more than that.
Emily: yeah.
Ben: that's, uh, that's a change in adaptation that I guess didn't quite land.
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah,
Ben: but they're like, look, we need to hunt down Shawnee. He less than half a minute montage of them just checking like three places. I'd be like, well, we couldn't find her!
Ben: Next plan!
Emily: great song though. Great music drop.
Ben: Yeah.
Emmanuel: I wanted
Emmanuel: to go back.
Ben: Oh yeah, oh for, oh some
Ben: great music, like set, yeah, great, like I gotta look up the soundtrack to this show,
Ben: cause there was a,
Emmanuel: whole thing's on there. Um, no, to go back to the whole thing about criticizing survival choices, like the, the fundamental accusation is like, you're not authentically black or you're not as black as I am, but like, The muddy politics of this story is that Hazel's not a real person, that's not [01:05:00] her name.
Emmanuel: Hazel didn't go to an HBCU, she's, she has no room to criticize anyone for going to a predominantly white institution, even going back to Diana, if you're talking about authenticity, you changed the end of your book, like the whole thing here, there's nothing authentic about you, so then, what are we actually saying here about blackness or
Alicia: you're saying is, real recognize real, and it
Emmanuel: Is she looking unfamiliar?
Alicia: was looking unfamiliar.
Ben: Also, question, the barber boyfriend, was that actually her brother?
Amanda: Uh, no, I think it was like a cover. I, I
Emmanuel: Yeah, cause he's Dominican. That guy
Amanda: yeah, he's extremely Dominican. Yeah.
Emmanuel: like, stereotypical Dominican New York barber. Like,
Amanda: Very much so. Down to the, you need to leave. Um, yeah, that was, that was, and, and then the book, they, they talk more about [01:06:00] Hazel's like fake. You know, life. They talk more about, like, the non profit she does and, like, the hair club and stuff. There's, like, a little bit more of a song and dance to show you,
Amanda: like, how real her and impressive her life is.
Amanda: But, yeah, it's
Emmanuel: Like, I, we all listen to podcasts. Squarespace, it's there, right? Like, you, you wouldn't just throw Hazel's picture up on a dummy website, so if anybody happens to look into this, she pops up,
Amanda: We literally know how to reverse image search, like.
Emmanuel: she's going to a place that sells stories, and your story is so thin, like,
Emily: yeah, I
Ben: Did anyone
Amanda: I What I have real.
Ben: I was just gonna ask, did anyone else think Did anyone else think it was Hazel who leaked the book? Like, I kept expecting it to, like, that time, and not to just be this off screen, never seen sensitivity reader who was just like, Man, fuck this book. Mic drop. But
Amanda: Yeah,
Alicia: That's funny.
Amanda: Hazel. Yeah,
Emily: cuz like otherwise why not engage with that [01:07:00] part of the plot more? Like why not engage with the sensitivity reader more? Make this,
Ben: that's the thing, like, that's a great, and I like that it's like, as this part of like, this fucked up, you know, hazel mind thriller way, but once you have the full plot, it's like, okay, you're Wagner Books, you're Master Strategy, we intentionally publish a racist book, we then leak the racist book, get ourselves in a bunch of trouble,
Ben: Like, launch new
Ben: imprint, yeah, I'm like, I feel like you could've just launched this imprint and saved yourself doing a You don't understand it, B, because you're not smart enough. They're playing 3D chess. See, I want to get cancelled, thereby making more money.
Amanda: Don't you see? Then I unlock secret international money.
Alicia: Can we talk about Sophie? I just,
Alicia: I wanted her to be nicer to, I really [01:08:00] wanted her to be nicer to that little weirdo, like
Emmanuel: Yes.
Alicia: to be like,
Emmanuel: When she does her little,
Emmanuel: like, reaching in her shirt to pull out the fake key to undo her zippered mouth to say thank you, I'm like,
Emmanuel: sweetheart. Like,
Ben: That's
Emily: showed me so much more
Amanda: adorable.
Emily: Yeah, like she
Amanda: that's like the best case scenario, white girl coworker.
Alicia: Exactly. She's a little annoying. She tries too hard, but she really is like just trying to make connections. Like her talking about how much she loves fish.
Jeremy: I mean, I feel like that should be the
Jeremy: character that, like, when she's at rock bottom, she screams at Sophie, and you're like, Oh, no, not poor
Jeremy: Sophie! She's trying!
Jeremy: She's the only
Ben: such a,
Alicia: didn't deserve this.
Ben: Sophie is
Ben: such
Ben: a she,
Emmanuel: lines. Go ahead, B.
Ben: Sophia said she a little confused, but she got the spirits
Emmanuel: Exactly.
Emmanuel: No, there's the whole Hazel calls out sick, and Sophie's like, well, I know that I can't be around racism, it makes me sick. And I was like, you're the best. [01:09:00] It just
Amanda: funny.
Emmanuel: Yes.
Alicia: please let Sophie in on this heist.
Ben: I loved when she asked Nella, are are jobs in trouble? And I was just like, yeah,
Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
Emily: Sophie is a good character to talk about too. Like, I think that in terms of a story like that, I feel like Sophie is Also, you know, you could say a lot with a character like Sophie instead of just bullying her because she's so, like, willing to learn. Like, I felt like I felt the relation to Sophie because it's like, you know, you're willing to learn, but like.
Emily: You're, you know,
Emily: you just want people to know. Yeah.
Emily: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah. And then like you're, but you're also like, that's, and that's a lesson that I have learned is that like, you can't go around and ask every one of your black friends, like, can you tell me, you know, me at the queer bar. Trying to just have a drink, not having to explain what non-binary is to every [01:10:00] yeah, yeah.
Emily: Or like ace or whatever. Yeah. But like, I mean, it's, it's, there are believable things about it, but like, for me. You know, it's, I feel like these characters do need to be, I think white people, especially, need to understand that, like, they're awkward as fuck, but, you know, it's okay, like, you can be awkward as fuck as long as you, like, learn from it, you know,
Amanda: The thing is, we already know you're awkward. You're
Amanda: awkward around us all the
Amanda: time already. But the pro, the tension comes from, no one is allowed to publicly acknowledge that the white person is uncomfortable because then the white person looks bad for being visibly uncomfortable.
Emily: well, and then,
Alicia: Always great when the, it's always great when the white person goes, Wow, I'm really awkward or whoa, I just
Amanda: like,
Amanda: okay, all right.
Emily: that's why [01:11:00] Sophie's so good, like, as a character, and then she, like, I feel like she should be bullied less.
Emily: Or be less like, just kinda kicked around. Is that like, You know, she is awkward and she, but she's like, fine.
Emily: She's
Alicia: you feel like, do you feel like, do you relate to Sophie? Do you feel like Sophie?
Emily: Less than, Less now than I used to, Yeah.
Jeremy: say, Emily is absolutely the person that will go, Ah, I'm so awkward!
Emily: well yeah. Nah, I will absolutely admit that I'm awkward, you know?
Alicia: But also, I feel like Sophie is the one who, like, if she wrote something that was, like, insensitive, she would want you to tell her. Like, I feel like Sophie
Alicia: would be like, hey, Yeah. She's the, She's the, right kind of attitude. It's Exactly. be an ally and help does come from a legitimate, like, empathetic place.
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: And I, I'm glad that I think Nella probably could have done a little nicer than you're not the worst person to work [01:12:00] with, but at least Sophie really appreciated right. Sophie knew that's, that's all she could ask for. Like,
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: it does precede Nella's best line of the show where she calls the situation Kanye levels wild.
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: yes yeah, Sophie has more to say in the book, but it's still pretty small, a role, but like, yeah, there's a lot that they did in the sort of, like, big office scenes where she was just an easy punching bag, like a really easy punchline for jokes, and yeah, I think, that Like I can, I see Sophie in like a lot of people I know, and it's not a bad thing to be a Sophie, but what's real is the feeling of having to manage a Sophie's feelings, because they're vibrating in front of you.
Alicia: Exactly.
Emmanuel: when I think, too, they want that room for season two. Can you imagine Sophie radicalized in the backseat with Malaika with a separate Taser? Like, she's just in, she's just [01:13:00] down. She's
Ben: If, again, if we get a season 2 and this show doesn't end with Malika and Sophie getting together and setting something on fire, what are we even doing here?
Emily: Yeah,
Amanda: Yeah, I see her as, yeah, season two scene stealer for sure. That's,
Ben: Like.
Jeremy: I gotta ask, I feel like we've talked about a lot of the other characters, how did everybody feel about Owen, the white boyfriend?
Amanda: Oh yeah, you know, he's Owen was there, too. I was glad, I was very glad he wasn't evil and part of a conspiracy. I like that he yeah. And a good old dorky cute white boy.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda: because, He, and he also did a lot of like following her lead and like doing what other people told him to do. He wasn't like one of the, he wasn't like horror movie boyfriend
Alicia: that was like, no no,
Alicia: I don't believe you. I don't believe you. He spent a lot of time being like, okay. I mean this in an
Jeremy: absolutely, I [01:14:00] happening?
Jeremy: mean this in an absolutely positive way, but, uh, he's written as a girlfriend, like, he's not written as a boyfriend, he's written as a girlfriend, like, he's, you know, he's down to help, he's behind her the whole way, he's not trying to take over the story or help,
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, in terms of like, yeah, mainstream narrative expectations. That's like what's happening. Um, that's the.
Emmanuel: He's
Amanda: And he's attentive. I mean, honestly, like this is a book written by a black woman who was probably dated white men because to be an educated black woman means being willing to date lots of different types of people.
Amanda: So I, I felt like it was pretty well informed of like, this is like your best case scenario, white boyfriend, like non Jewish white boyfriend. Cause like, and like, I, I saw, I saw bits of Jeffrey in, in the way Owen is written in the book, not, not in the show, but like that feeling of, okay, I'm doing my best to like listen to you and help you, but I [01:15:00] also can't really tell you what you want.
Amanda: You know, and so it's really frustrating to be a boyfriend to Inela when she's in a conflict like this because he's missing the context. So he's constantly like trying to look for clues and Malika has to be the one to point them to him. Um, and that's, that's a fun dynamic that,
Alicia: like that he just came over, that he just came over. She was like, I'm at this weird party. And he was just
Emmanuel: Yeah. On
Emmanuel: a scooter, he
Emmanuel: came over. He rode across
Emily: Yeah.
Emmanuel: New York
Alicia: scooter tried to
Ben: Yep.
Alicia: then they just opened the door.
Jeremy: I also like
Jeremy: that he and Malika are tight, like,
Jeremy: that they are like,
Jeremy: they're the crew, they can hang out together, they can be in the same room without her needing to be there.
Jeremy: Um,
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: That, to me, like, that Malika likes Owen said so much to me about his character before it even really said or done anything, where I'm like, okay, if this best friend is cool with this white boy, he must be such a fucking golden retriever.
Amanda: Yeah, [01:16:00] big, big time.
Jeremy: well, I feel like it's weirdly, like, revolutionary to have, like, these, these two characters of this, you know, straight white guy and this black lesbian who are, like, friends anyway, like, without it being horrible in one direction or another, like,
Jeremy: in TV, I think it's just a,
Emmanuel: They're not both just like chicks, dude. Like, it's, it's very much, they have a
Emmanuel: genuine friendship,
Emily: Yeah,
Ben: Yep. Owen's finest moment is forcing Hazel to give him soup through a crack in the door.
Amanda: That was so funny. Like, I can do it. I can do it.
Emily: Yeah, yeah. And he's, I mean, he's, he's a kind of a meek personality but he's still like is He's there to the end, you know, he does his, he tries his best and he doesn't like give up any
Ben: I, I like Owen.
Ben: He's a good, he's a
Emmanuel: Yeah,
Ben: boy, Owen.
Emily: Yeah.
Emmanuel: Owen we're going to Harlem to get a fade, he's like, I guess I'm going with my friend Malaika to get a fade. Like, he, he just, he just tags along. Like,[01:17:00]
Alicia: He was like, are you sure? Am I, am I supposed to be, are you sure? okay,
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: It's okay, Owen, we'll get,
Alicia: Owen.
Ben: we'll get, you some swordfish and you'll have a great time. It's okay.
Alicia: Yeah. So who is this show? For?
Amanda: don't know.
Alicia: Because I don't think it's for it's for Sophie. it
Emily: was for Sophie,
Amanda: The Sophie demographic of viewers.
Ben: Yeah.
Emily: think if it was for Sophie, Sophie would be bullied less.
Amanda: I think it's,
Amanda: I think it's kind of like a lot of It's like, I guess, paid cable or basic cable, like prestige dramedy. I think it's like following that tradition from the tens that we still sit can't seem to get away from of like, this is this is for upwardly mobile professionals who like to talk about workplace comedies, you know, we don't have succession anymore, you know, and I [01:18:00] think they were trying to go for that a little bit in the way it was, you Maybe styled for Hulu.
Ben: show is definitely chasing the, like, 300, 000 people watching Secession instead of, like, the 12 million people watching Autism Doctor Has a Screamie.
Alicia: gotta say, I tried watching Secession, not Secession, Succession, that's
Alicia: a completely different movie, speaking of the South. I tried watching it, but I felt really, really bad when that little Kulkin was yelling in that little boy's face and wouldn't let him have a quarter million dollars for like, not making a home run.
Alicia: And I was
Alicia: done. I couldn't watch it after that. I
Alicia: was like, Oh my God, give that little boy some money.
Amanda: Yeah,
Ben: Yeah,
Amanda: show you how evil they are and
Amanda: how
Amanda: callous
Alicia: was so evil. I couldn't,
Emmanuel: watched House of Cards. I've seen white people.
Emmanuel: yell at white people. like, I,
Emily: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: I mean, characters don't really become better people, but it does take about, like, three or four episodes for them to kind of figure out [01:19:00] everyone's personality.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah,
Ben: Like,
Ben: that character, that character,
Ben: is Terrible. Like, that
Ben: McCulkin is terrible, but He isn't as, like, out he isn't as, like, that kind of terrible
Alicia: He is terrible. And He acted, he acted, he acted that, honey. He was, I believed that, that, that he is that terrible
Ben: everyone's acting in Secession is, oh,
Emmanuel: like a J. K. Simmons, right? Like the, I can believe
Ben: Yeah.
Alicia: my soul.
Ben: That's why I like, uh, Whiplash so much, because I absolutely believe that J. K. Simmons legitimately bullied Miles Teller, and I think Miles Teller probably deserves that.
Alicia: Wow. Wow. Miles, Miles, we don't all think that you deserve to be bullied by J. K. Simmons.
Alicia: I don't really know who Miles Teller is, but, um, yeah, I just felt like, you know, as far as this show goes, like[01:20:00] it dives into race issues a little bit, but not enough that I felt like it was able to extend a conversation.
Alicia: And, you know, it was kind of like.
Alicia: Basic one on one surface level. Yeah.
Alicia: So it wasn't really relatable to me. It wasn't like, I'm going to tell you a little bit about it and now we can loop more people in. Like, I just was like, what, what is the goal here? What is the, is this a warning? Like, is this a
Alicia: a call to action? Like, what are we doing?
Jeremy: Well,
Emmanuel: I feel like it's for people who enjoyed Get Out and they like the idea of like, a race drama, but they feel like identity politics, quote unquote, is too much. Like they're,
Emmanuel: anything that goes too far, right? It's the, I want you to talk about race, I want you to do a story about race, but I also want to feel like the good guy, like I'm rooting for the right people.
Emmanuel: Anything that gets kind of like, Nuanced to real is not a thing. That's why you have those throwaway jokes about like crazy or this that and the other. It's like the, Oh, I [01:21:00] recognize that Kanye joke. I recognize this thing, but anything that actually becomes like naming of real life problematic faves, I think would be too much.
Emmanuel: And so that's the show just sort of stays in its safe place.
Alicia: Huh. Huh.
Amanda: with you. I highly recommend a book. Uh, this is a nonfiction book called Elite Capture. And it kind of, it's more of like a theory book, but it describes what happens when a Revolutionary sort of minded black people enter media and what the, what the mechanisms of co option really look like when someone is, you know, like the Jesse Watson is supposed to be a stand in for like elite capture of like, this is somebody that we have neutralized with money.
Amanda: Now we can say, all the goodwill that he's built up before selling out we now get to benefit from and cash in on and make [01:22:00] new product based on
Amanda: and,
Alicia: And what's that called again?
Amanda: elite capture. Yeah.
Alicia: need
Ben: you want to see that concept explored in fiction, that is, the major topic explored in Season 2 of, uh, Woke, starring Glamour Morris, uh, also on Hulu. So if you want to see that explored in fiction Woke really dedicated an entire season to that. I,
Alicia: Are we at the recommendations portion?
Emily: I guess so.
Ben: I guess, yeah, I guess, yeah,
Emily: I mean, we
Emily: talked
Emily: about.
Alicia: can we, before we go into what other things we would recommend, can we say, would you recommend somebody watch and or read The Other Black Girl?
Alicia: Jeremy? would. I have qualified, it's a qualified recommendation. Like, if it's, you know, other Black people in media, I'm like, Oh, you should watch it because I want to know what you think. And then, and then there's like, I don't know, there's a part of the other Black girl that kind of [01:23:00] reads. And the TV show reads like, if like a an aunt in law had to describe to somebody what I did for a living, you know, it's like
Emily: Yeah.
Amanda: sort of hazy kind of grab bag of specifics of like, oh, you know, and in that way, it's like, not really informative of the real experience
Alicia: Yeah. Amanda walks around the office and eats bagels and like, drinks
Alicia: champagne and
Emmanuel: But
Alicia: it
Amanda: definitely not hiding in the bathroom.
Jeremy: yeah, there's a lot of this that, like, it's, it feels too much in the middle. Like, it feels like
Jeremy: they, Like, they, they don't want to, they don't go as far as to project, like, actually hiding in the bathroom, but also the characters don't make logical decisions about what to do next.
Jeremy: Like, Because I, I was saying, to Alicia, like, from an author's standpoint, and maybe this is me [01:24:00] being more open to criticism than some authors, but, like, talking about Nella, I was like, alright, you read that thing, you hate the thing.
Jeremy: You tell the boss, like, not, I hate this, not, it's dangerous. But this would reflect poorly on our company and this can bring that, you know, that Twitter firestorm that you want to avoid. And that's a thing that the boss can see, like they can understand in their mind and they say,
Jeremy: what do
Alicia: that was a wild decision that she made, like, looking at an author and being like, this character you wrote is dangerous. I think she's dangerous. And I'm like,
Emily: I fully thought,
Alicia: A lot of people have done it.
Ben: like,
Emily: thought he was
Ben: called we haven't actually called the mentioned called out, like, the title of this, like, book yet,
Ben: have we?
Jeremy: Pins and Needles
Ben: and Pins,
Jeremy: Yeah, needles
Alicia: Oh Yeah.
Alicia: that's right. Right.
Jeremy: Yeah,
Jeremy: and I was like, I was it was like, as I was [01:25:00] watching that part, I was like, you know, you get a sensitivity reader. That's what you do. You get somebody who's paid to do this thing. It was outside your company. That's specifically their job is to read this and say, this is messed up.
Jeremy: And then you, as the editor can hand it to the author and say, Well, look, we had this person from outside the company that read this and said these things and this is what you need to know and then like, if the author decides not to do it, either you don't do the book if you think it's that big of a deal, or when the author gets backlash on it, you say, we did everything we could do, like,
Jeremy: you know, this, this guy decided not to fix it.
Jeremy: Um, and I was like, that's like, yeah, A logical process of what you should do to, like, handle this thing. Whether he would handle it any better, given this character, is hard to say, but, like, that would be the way to go about it.
Amanda: Yeah, the way that meeting went down really annoyed me, like I was just like that's not how this conversation would
Emily: bet, I [01:26:00] bet, yeah, like,
Alicia: Can you see, like, later? Like, Hazel, you were supposed to back me up. Girl, you went off the deep end. I wasn't expecting you to say all that.
Emily: yeah, yeah,
Jeremy: Yeah,
Jeremy: and I was like, if this guy is important enough that you can't say that, that you shouldn't say those sort of things to him, then you shouldn't say those sort of things to him, but like, there are ways to approach it as a person whose job it is to stand between the author and, you know, the, the publisher or the, you know, the audience and like, Tell tell them what needs to be done that make more sense than just like making him your enemy right away
Ben: this is another area where I'm not sure the plot quite holds up, because if not, it's like, why did What did Nella even stand to gain from this mind control cult at the start? Because, take away this, for instance, where she's like, Your book is DANGEROUS! She is already on track to get promoted and get, like, the [01:27:00] position and on the upward track at her dream job, like, She was already on her way to doing and getting the things that they were promising her!
Jeremy: Yeah, I I have a hard time recommending this despite the fact that I literally did and that's why we're talking about it Is I put it on the list? but like I think it's no coincidence that, like, I was looking at an IMDB, and the lowest rated episodes are the first one and the last one because they don't really connect to each other, and there's a lot of the stuff in the middle they don't connect to either, and I think a lot of the stuff that we've talked about people enjoying is, is sort of incidental character moment stuff that happens in the story and is fun, and And as I think a result of having comedy writers, a lot of the writers that are on this come from the, you know, have been in the blackish family of shows, you know, grown ish and and mixed ish and stuff and like that, you know, those sensibilities show up and I think that's when it's best is when it's funny.
Jeremy: Unfortunately,[01:28:00]
Amanda: yeah, the flip of that sensibility is moderate politics.
Emily: yeah, That part,
Amanda: I mean, yeah, that's, that's the mentality that drove Black ish and drove also that same showrunner to make that terrible show for Netflix,
Amanda: Black AF. was terrible.
Amanda: Oof, you know, that's like a great example of like, this is like what Elite Capture does to
Alicia: Do you think if he made it last year, it would be called like black, no cap or something like that? Like just
Ben: Hm. like, like just what are the kids saying these days? Like, Oh, Emily, would you recommend?
Emily: The show?
Alicia: Yeah.
Emily: You know, I, parts of it, but it sounds like this second season of Woke is what I would recommend because the thing that this, the subject matter of elite capture that you're describing is, sounds like it's what this show was trying to talk about. But failed because it was just
Amanda: It's what the book tried, and that failed, and then the TV just like, kind of failed even more.[01:29:00]
Emily: yeah, because it feels so diluted. Like, everything feels so diluted at this point. So, I mean, I, I, the only reason I would recommend the show is because Malaika is great. That's
Emily: pretty much,
Amanda: give that actress all the things.
Emily: yeah,
Emily: yeah. Also, I love, I mean, Nella for, I mean,
Alicia: all the actresses are great,
Emily: yeah,
Emmanuel: Yes.
Alicia: of Malika,
Emily: yeah, like, I, and I love the character of Malaika. I also feel I also love Nella in a way.
Emily: Like I would just wanna hug her and be like, it's gonna be okay. But, you know, I don't understand, um,
Amanda: same.
Emily: But uh, yeah, the characters are really, like, the characters shine. The, the plot of the show just doesn't go. It's sort of like a, a a, a plot occurs and there's magic question mark and not a fun way.
Emily: So, we don't ever [01:30:00] establish, and this is, this was a question that I had when we were re watching at this time, is do we ever establish how this stuff works?
Jeremy: Like, Or where it Nope. chemicals? Is it,
Emmanuel: it,
Amanda: no, a little bit.
Emily: Yeah.
Jeremy: it 90s voodoo like we keep seeing in all of our, all of our Satan
Ben: It's actually Child's Play voodoo, so we gotta go back to the 80s for it. Cause it's 88! The year from Child's Play! It's the Oh, no.
Emily: Well, no.
Emily: this is so, so Wagner is actually Satan and what he's trying to do is find, like, the most ultimate wife for himself so he can have, like, a mixed race, woke, Antichrist child. That will take the media by storm,
Emmanuel: through TikTok, naturally.
Emily: yeah, TikTok for sure, and like, have all the good podcasts, and that's why he needs to control what's his face, it's James, whatever.
Jeremy: All right. So yeah, I, I said I wouldn't recommend it. I think Emily is sort of on [01:31:00] the fence.
Emily: I'm on the fence.
Ben: Yeah, I, I kinda also find myself on the fence where like, there's, like, I enjoy like, all the acting's good, like, I did find it very engaging, I found it a really fun, gripping watch, but now that I have had like, a few days to sit with it, it's like, It was a really enjoyable time watching it, but thematically, it's not quite there to hold up, like, as well as I really wish it did.
Emily: Yeah, it wasn't satisfying as a
Ben: Yeah, my recommendation, I think, would be, uh, you know, if you want some real, like, kind of, um, Afro surrealism that's also very funny definitely check out Atlanta.
Emmanuel: Thanks. hmm. Good stuff.
Amanda: Yeah, very much so. I think we're in a time where we just snapped back from a moment of letting black women say what they want until they learned that they didn't like it. And so there's [01:32:00] not a lot. that is, there's not a lot of media right now that's doing right by its Black women characters. And it's like, that's like, unfortunately, continuing to be the case.
Amanda: I, I, Woke is great. I love Atlanta. It's one of my favorite shows, but it also has never known what to do with Black women.
Ben: True, absolutely.
Amanda: and it's, uh, and queer people. And it's like Atlanta has the most Black
Ben: Lookin at you, lookin at you, ve Lookin at you, Vance Storyline and Yerop.
Amanda: Yeah, you know, so it's like, there's a lot of, like, limitations being put on what Black representation looks like, and so I give my recommendations with that sort of in mind. But I would uh, recommend Woke Like Thee and read anything by, let's see. Uh, there's a really great book by Rebecca Hall called Wake, and it's about the history of women led slave revolts, and [01:33:00] it's a great example of,
Amanda: like,
Amanda: a history of slavery.
Alicia: the actress.
Amanda: A different Rebecca Hall.
Amanda: This is a, yeah, this is like a doctorate of history Rebecca
Amanda: Hall. And, yeah, and, uh, yeah, I know it's funny because she's, she's, she's a little, uh, she's a little, uh, passing.
Amanda: She's a
Alicia: she is. I was going to say, is. she, uh, is she, a little, uh,
Alicia: what, what was the, what was the movie that she made
Amanda: Yeah.
Alicia: with, uh, Yeah.
Alicia: Rebecca
Alicia: Hall,
Amanda: Yeah.
Amanda: Her mother was a famous extremely light skin singer in
Amanda: the UK. Yeah,
Alicia: okay, cool,
Amanda: Yeah. I learned that from Finding Your Roots. But yeah, anyway, a great book that kind of gives you an example of like the breadth of women, black women's survival behaviors and how those can be as revolutionary as they can be a way to You know, pacify a [01:34:00] broken nervous system or justify going another day at work.
Amanda: But yeah, that's my book rec.
Emily: My recommendation is Hair Wolf.
Emmanuel: Hairwolf is so good. Yeah. Harold.
Jeremy: It is,
Emily: is there a book of It's a short. movie. This is It was a short that we watched,
Ben: Yes.
Jeremy: is directed by Miriam Diallo, Yep. first episode of this show. Um, shit! what I thought. That's what I Malaika
Ben: That explains why the, spooky parts of that first episode are so well directed.
Emmanuel: Yeah.
Emmanuel: Malaika reminded me of the Muslim
Amanda: oh, from
Amanda: 2018
Ben: 2018 Yeah, I have seen this. Oh my gosh, that was so long ago. Totally forgot.
Ben: does really funny. ago, right?
Amanda: is like a demarcation line. Yeah.
Ben: Yeah.
Emily: that was, that was the before times. it's just so long ago.
Emily: Also, I recommend getting boosted [01:35:00] it's, you know,
Ben: Yeah, if you haven't gotten your booster, definitely recommend that.
Emily: Yeah.
Alicia: had no holiday plans because everyone in our family, not us, but everyone around us got sick.
Jeremy: Every person we tried to plan anything with all holiday season got COVID two days before we were supposed to do the
Emily: Jesus
Alicia: which as a result meant that we spent, we spent, Christmas at home in our pajamas with our kids and didn't go anywhere. And I was like, Whoa, now I know why people do this. Uh, Yeah.
Alicia: Yeah.
Emily: great.
Alicia: It was
Amanda: You set a new precedent. You set a new
Alicia: I was like,
Amanda: You don't have to go
Alicia: travel again. I may never travel again. I don't, I think I recommended a lot of people watch this because I wanted to have somebody to talk about it with.
Alicia: The acting is fantastic. It's beautifully shot. It's just the pacing is so slow. So, I feel like. It's, it's got some good things going on. If you're interested, I just always give that as a caveat.[01:36:00] Somebody said the book is supposed to be like Devil Wears Prada. It's nothing like Devil Wears Prada.
Alicia: So just, if you're picking up the book because you think it's going to be like the Devil Wears Prada, don't listen to that blurb. It's wrong. Um, I would recommend, I haven't watched Kindred yet, but I would recommend reading Kindred. And, and one day I'll make everyone in the world read Kindred and then I'll have people to talk about it with but Kindred is a time travel book in which a woman who is married to a white man in the present, and in the book, the president's like 1970 something, gets sucked into slavery times, Finds herself having to save the life of this white child in those times, and you can imagine how things get complicated when her white husband gets sucked back in time with her at one point.
Alicia: So, uh, so, yeah, it's really interesting and very thoughtful and it's, um, Octavia Butler. [01:37:00] So, yeah, read that. I will say, I have been reading Parable of the Sower for like the past year,
Alicia: haven't really gotten through it yet. Yes, so
Alicia: I keep picking it up. I keep picking it up and putting it down and reading like Travis Baldry, like, Legends and Lattes and Bookshops and
Emmanuel: Let's do some
Emmanuel: lattes, it was
Alicia: Lattes was delightful.
Alicia: And so right now I'm reading the Bookshops and Bone Dust. so yeah, those are what's on my nightstand. Parable of the Sower and Orc Romance. Oh, I also read, um, Everybody and My Family Has Killed Someone, which was actually really good and I enjoyed it a lot.
Emily: Nice.
Alicia: because it was there. So, yeah, highly recommend.
Jeremy: Yeah, I, I didn't recommend anything yet. The only thing that I've really experienced media wise in the last week or so is, uh, Spider Man 2 for PlayStation 5, uh, which is fantastic. [01:38:00] It's phenomenal. It's, it actually does a really great job of integrating both Peter Parker's stuff and Miles stuff, which is important because I, the Miles Morales stuff.
Jeremy: Game that, you know, was launched on PS5 is amazing. And I was really hoping that that wouldn't get lost in the, you know, bringing back Peter and the actual sequel to the first game. So yeah, they, they do a great job of sort of integrating those two characters and bringing in a lie, like a large supporting cast of characters in there.
Jeremy: And, uh, they do some, some interesting things with you know, both, both characters and the story generally. So you haven't played Spider Man too. I'm almost done with it, but I would definitely recommend it.
Emmanuel: Actually on the heels of that One of the things, so I think I would recommend this, It's, I don't think it's great, But I am also the champion of Little Caesars Hot and Ready, Like it's not great, but it is hot and it is also ready, And so this, it is funny, it's well shot, It has an incredible soundtrack, I think it's [01:39:00] entertaining.
Emmanuel: I don't know that it's incredible, but it's decent.
Emmanuel: Um, wita.
Alicia: that's true!
Amanda: Yeah.
Emmanuel: one of the things that we talked about is like the mystery fails here. If you want to see how a mystery can work really, really well, speaking of video games, um, if you've never played Return of the Obra Dinn it is an incredible point and click detective mystery where a ship returns to harbor and it's 60 passengers are all dead.
Emmanuel: All missing. And you basically have to wander around the ship, look at bodies, and you get little snapshots of the past, and you have to figure out who everyone is, where they all went,
Alicia: Wait, you're telling me it's a video game that's epistolary as well?
Emmanuel: It is incredible. Uh, I started
Emmanuel: playing it
Emmanuel: because the return of the Obra Dinn. It is, it is one of our sorts of awards, but I started playing it because one of the podcasters I listened to talked about how it is a game that he wishes he could [01:40:00] forget, just so he could play it all over again,
Emmanuel: because, yes.
Emmanuel: So, it looks like an Apple IIe, like, green screen
Emmanuel: kind of, but it is, it is mind blowing, and it also does the slow trickle of a mystery that just gets worse. And gets worse, and gets worse, it's an incredible game, you should play it, and then you should message me so we can talk about it, cause it's a masterpiece.
Alicia: Absolutely. I love any sort of game where I find out what happened to, like, People who are missing through audio logs and notes,
Emmanuel: You're, this is right
Alicia: into it.
Jeremy: This is, this was created by the same guy who created the other game that I really want to play but have never played, Papers, Please, is
Emmanuel: please is too
Emmanuel: intense for me.
Emmanuel: I'm not trying to,
Ben: I really like papers, please.
Emmanuel: it doesn't seem like a game you can like.
Ben: It's,
Emmanuel: cross the border because
Ben: well, it's a fucked up, it's a, it's one of the, you know, it's one of those, like, damn, I'm, I'm thinking [01:41:00] about stuff now.
Jeremy: fantastic. Everybody recommended something, right? Everybody?
Jeremy: all right. something.
Jeremy: All right. Fantastic. This has been wild. All right. Okay, so, uh, let's wrap this up. Amanda, can you let people know where they can find out more about, uh, you and what you do online, where they can follow you and all that?
Amanda: Ah, yeah, first I gotta figure that out, but for now, you can follow me on the Twitter, The Bad Place. If you want, like, just basic updates at Amandawnium. If you're interested in, uh, what I do as a comics editor, you can look at my website AmandaMeadows. card. co. And I, uh, let's see, do I have any books coming out soon?
Amanda: There is a, uh, really fun d and d novel called Party Prime, the Fallbacks. I think it's coming out later this year. I did a little bit of work on that. It's really cute. [01:42:00] Yeah, find that and pre-order it.
Emily: Awesome.
Jeremy: Nice. And, uh, Emmanuel, what about you?
Emmanuel: I am still on the bad site at Ellipscom2 talking about education, reading and such. So come say hi.
Jeremy: Fantastic. And Alicia, what about you?
Alicia: also still on Twitter at Alicia Whitley. Mostly I'm just there for like fun Twitter takes and catching up on the news. And occasionally I talk about I rant about being black and in academia.
Jeremy: Awesome. And, uh, Emily, what you got going on?
Emily: Well, I've got mega moth.net, which is basically where all of it's a card, so you can get to all of my, uh, my things, including my letterbox, which we have, oh, some of the progressively horrified stuff over there.
Ben: Yeah, get ready next week. Rankings
Emily: Yeah. Woo. Um, well, next week in, in,
Ben: Let's, uh, let's objectively rank art! [01:43:00] Yeah!
Emily: it's always, it's always fun but you can also find me on Patreon, Megamoth Patreon, Twitter, Tumblr, Blue Sky, and then Mega underscore Moth on Instagram,
Jeremy: Fantastic. And, uh, Ben, what about you?
Ben: Yes, you can find me on Elon Musk's racist playground at, at Ben the Kahn, uh, all other places. Website, Instagram, and Blue Sky at Ben Kahn Comics. And check out, uh, the Captain Lazerhawk, uh, manga from Tokyo Pop out in stores now.
Jeremy: Fantastic. And, uh, I am on Twitter at jroom58, and basically I just use that because BlueSky doesn't have DMs or a lot of wrestling content yet, and that's basically the only things I I look at on Twitter. I am at blue sky at, uh, Jeremy Whitley. If you know, you actually want to talk to me about something that doesn't involve DMs, uh, much prefer that because there are a lot of, uh, [01:44:00] horrible people and non people on Twitter.
Jeremy: So many bots.
Emily: Bots,
Jeremy: yeah, I, like, I don't have a problem with porn, but porn bots are the worst.
Emily: Yeah,
Jeremy: yeah, I'm also at JeremyWhitley. com. Uh, I am also on Instagram at jrom58. And, uh, tumblr, jeremywhitley. tumblr. com, if you want to read something I wrote, which I would love it if you would do, The Cold Ever After is out this month, it is our it's coming out from Titan.
Jeremy: It is our sort of Arthurian noir, as I like to put it, or queer Arthurian noir story with me and, uh, Mechadwong on the illustration. I've also recently put out the, uh My Little Pony Classics, Reimagined, the Unicorn of Odd, if you're, uh, looking for some, some pony stuff, and of course, uh, Jamie Noguchi and I just, uh, back in November put out the second volume of School for Extraterrestrial Girls so that is all available right now, and, uh, the podcast is on Patreon at [01:45:00] Progressively Horrified, our website at progressivelyhorrified. transistor. fm, and on Twitter at ProgHorrorPod, where we would love to hear from you. Speaking of loving to hear from you, we would love it if you'd rate and review this podcast wherever you're listening to it right now.
Jeremy: It helps us find new listeners. Thanks again to all of our guests for joining us, guys. This was a ball. It moved much faster than this show.
Emily: yes,
Amanda: Yep.
Alicia: Thanks for having me.
Emmanuel: Always a pleasure.
Amanda: I
Emily: much coming.
Amanda: I had a great time. Thanks again.
Jeremy: And, thank you to all of you for listening as well. And until next time, stay horrified. Clap.
Amanda: Clap.
Emily: Quack.
Ben: clap. clap.