127: ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Versus The Discourse

Welcome

back to across the movie. I’ll present to my Bulwark Plus. I am your host Sunnybunch culture editor of the Bulwark I’m joined as always by Elizabeth Rosenberg of The Washington Post and Peter Suterman. A recent magazine, Alyssa Peter. How are you today?

Well. I’m happy to be talking about movies with friends.

Last week, we wrapped up summer at the multiplex. This week we’re gonna be talking about the summer of Netflix for starters. We’re gonna ask which of these movies, which represent Netflix’s most hours watched over the first weekend of release, you’ve heard of, not seen, but heard of. Here we go. The gray man hustle, me time, senior year, day shift, the man from Toronto look both ways, purple hearts, Interceptor, Spider Head, and the Sea Beast.

Now, I I’ve heard of seven of those movies. I I mean, I’m a professional. Critic. I’ve heard of seven of those movies. I’ve only actually watched three of them, and I am out of the ordinary.

Again, out of the ordinary, I do this for a living. But I’m not sure which way I’m out of the ordinary here. Am I out of the ordinary in the sense that I I watched and heard of more? Of these movies than the average movie goer if you were. No idea.

I can’t tell. I can’t help but think that the cultural memory of those pictures is smaller than the memory of the summer’s biggest box office open Here’s that list. Here’s the top ten box office openings. You got doctor Strange in the multiverse madness, dressed world Dominion, Thor, eleventh Thunder, Top Gun Maverick, minions Rise of Groot Lightyear, Nope, Elvis Bullet Train and the Black Phone. I’ve both heard of and seen all of these again.

I am out of the ordinary here because this is just my job. That’s what I do. But all told I would be willing to bet a decent amount of money that more people have heard of these movies than have heard of the Netflix programmers who knows many people have kinda seen, either of them don’t know. But I think just in terms of what people have heard of, the theatrical experience kicks the butt of the Netflix experience. So here is the big question then for movie stars.

At least in insofar as we still have movie stars, would you rather take the big check from Netflix that covers not only your upfront salary, but also like whatever sort of back end profit points that they have to buy out to get you to come do it. Right? Or would you rather take less money upfront from a theatrically oriented distributor but also get the sort of brand awareness boost that comes with being in a huge publicity campaign TV ads, billboards, theatrical trailers, etcetera, etcetera, In order to stay in the public spotlight for longer, Alyssa, what’s the point of being a movie star if nobody knows you’re in a movie?

So there’s money, there’s yachts and private jets, and jewels, and dresses and tuxedos if you’re, you know, a tuxedo wearing person. And nannies for your children and lots freebies and chocolates and private chefs and, you know, private jet travel. But stuff stuff is what you’re Money. Like, the money and the things that you buy with it and the random stuff that you get for free, for being a rich and famous person. But really, that’s the point of doing a movie with Netflix.

Right? Is not, you know, not because you think you are making cinema that is going to be seen by a wide audience and embraced by everybody, but because you’re willing to you know, be showered by the fruits of the algorithm. And that’s fine. Right? I mean, like, wanting to make a lot of money in a way that doesn’t involve, you know, exploiting third world children or destroying the environment is not the worst thing in the world.

I mean, you know, it’s

That was minuses.

Indeed. But I think if you are going into cinema because you want to act and connect with people and make movies that will be at the center of the conversation and also possibly, like, become famous and adored yourself, Netflix I think increasingly is not going to be the venue that helps you deliver on that ambition.

Right. So, I mean, I I feel like I feel like obviously, the money is a big deal. Right? If you are if you are somebody who has offered, you know, estimates vary, but between twenty and forty million dollars star in one of these movies, which is what, like, a legit a list star can get to to to to star in them. Fine.

Money is all well and good. But again, like, if you are a movie star, the reason you are a movie star is because lots of people know you and talk about you and seek you out one want to see you, etcetera, etcetera. And I I can’t help but feel that the whole Netflix thing, the whole Netflix thing, which is basically Netflix is the place people go. It’s the homepage of their entertainment, evenings on Friday night, kind of negates you as a star in terms of star power. And like, can you can you man can you maintain that sort of paycheck if you were just showing up on Netflix films and you’re there?

Yeah. I

mean, I think there are obviously stars that have decided to treat Netflix as the ecosystem. Right? I mean, if you’re Adam Sandler, what you do is you make movies for Netflix. Now, Mark Walberg has a big deal with them and clearly just, like, part of his career now is making Netflix movies on most as a genre. But, you know, I mean, you there’s I think there’s a reason that you don’t see, like, Meural Street making movies for Netflix.

You don’t see, you know, a star director like Stephen Spielberg making movies for Netflix. It’s because I think for many many of the public people in the entertainment industry. The movie movie making is fundamentally a communal product. Right? I mean, there’s a reason that, like, an account new coke admin is, like, putting on her sparkly pin striped suit and go on AMC, they want to make movies that are going to be experienced communally that are going to be discussed on some sort communal schedule.

And they don’t wanna make stuff that feels disposable. Right? And increasingly stuff on market on Netflix is not marketed. It’s not necessarily fed to everybody on the home screen. There is no guarantee that if something comes out on Netflix on a given weekend that if going to be watched by a large number of people in that period who then come to work on Monday, ready to talk about it around the water cooler.

I have come to think of Netflix as an incredibly effective machine for generating loneliness. And I suspect that if you’re a movie star, you sense that and worry about what it means, you know, for your own sort of import and ability to reach a lot of people at once and foster that sort of communal conversation but also because you maybe don’t feel so great about being just converted into product. Right? And you know, being used to stock the Amazon store, which will be then used to keep people alone on their couches on Friday night. Sated into something approximating pleasure.

I I wanna Peter, I’m gonna come to you on one second, but I just want I just want a listen to drill down on this idea of loneliness as a product. Here because it’s it’s interesting. I haven’t heard you talk about this before. So when you say loneliness when you say loneliness as a as a product, what what exactly do you mean? I mean, are you are you talking about, like, getting away from loneliness?

No. I’m talking what

what Netflix does is both exploits and magnify as your own loneliness and then gets you to pay for the privilege of having it magnified and having yourself sort of stuck in this loneliness loop. Right? I mean, we’ve talked and I’ve written about how, you know, the binge watch model has sort of destroyed the communal watching and discussion experience for pop culture for the most part. You know, the idea if everyone is gonna be watching stuff on demand on their own schedules, you know, I I have run the numbers on this if you look at the Google search trends. For Netflix shows versus shows that are released weekly, the shape of them is staggeringly different in Google search results.

Netflix shows sort of peak and then disappear from the conversation. There’s no sort of lingering communal effect. Whereas with something like Game of Thrones, you got, you know, or bringing dad or madman, you got a rise up at the beginning of a season. Something that sort of looks like a plateau for weeks as the season goes on and then a dip. You could see that people were having extended communal experience together, but the binge model has fragmented that.

And then the Netflix algorithm does does that even further. Right? I mean, it creates a situation where everyone can have exactly the content they want when they want it. People aren’t even advertised the same things at the same Right? Like, the Netflix home screen is increasingly a personalized experience that is intended to serve you more of what you like regardless of what else is happening culture at the time regardless of what anyone else might like.

There is no, you know, Netflix is not designed to say, hey, this is the show that other people are watching let’s catch you up so you can do it together. Right? That might sort of once have been its function where shows could become hits over time because people would bend the back catalog on Netflix and then get into this schedule will weekly release. But that’s simply not the way the streaming and, you know, linear ecosystem work together anymore. And so You know, what Netflix does is it accounts on the fact that you are lonely and you wanna be entertained, and then it offers you that entertainment in a way that makes it easier to sit in your loneliness.

And be out and be a synchronous with other people, be out of the conversation. It strips away all of the social effects that used to flow from pop culture. And that has made it, I think, successful in terms of filling the immediate hours that lots of people need filled. But it makes it much, much worse at filling all over the rest of the hours that we used to fill ourselves with conversations and debates and arguments about pop culture. Peter,

that’s pretty deep.

Does

Netflix make people lonely on an industrial scale? I just don’t see that it’s all that different from stuff that came before. In the eighteen hundreds, there were literally concerns about young women spending too much time reading Jane Austin novels because, like, they were, you know because and they were just, like, getting they were out of touch with reality. They didn’t have any social life. They were, like, getting they were just getting lost in their own heads.

You there were moral panics about pinball, there

were one

of his love matches. Right. Like, all of this stuff, I spent my teenage years reading novels that that were just designed to please my particular interests and watching movies that nobody else was watching on VHS home kind of binge watching them. Right? This is what I did.

I did I was like and it I was a little bit of a lonely nerdy kid. It was okay. This, like, this Netflix is not doing something new here. It’s not taking people away in a new way. It’s just a different way of delivering entertainment.

But I think I think I I agree with you in a different way, certainly about the, like, what movie stars should be doing. And maybe I can tie these points together. Let’s see if I can do this. So to me, the issue is, like, if you look at those the the Netflix top ten movies that that the list that Sonny read off, and then you look at the box office top ten movies. The clear difference is that the box office top ten is dominated by recognizable IP.

So even the the biggest, like, non IP film is dope. And dope is a, you know, a Jordan peel film. Right? Like, this is he is a he is a there’s a clear product there that they are selling you. Like, this is part of something that a lot of people know who what a Jordan Peale movie is and wanna go see that already.

Elvis. Right? Elvis is all is like a a already a widely known pop culture phenomenon. So even the non IPE films there are kind of partaking in existing IPR in in stuff that is known. And so the like, the way you get successful IP is that you market it.

And you get people talking about it. And Netflix doesn’t have successful IP because they don’t do marketing and they don’t get people talking. And so this like, there is sort of a chicken and an egg problem here, which is that, like, without the marketing, they’re not gonna have the cultural cache. And without the cultural cache, they’re not gonna have IP because their stuff is forgettable. They also, I think, explicitly design their movies and their shows to be kind of forgettable.

Their whole model, if you go back a couple of years, you know, when we were first talking about peak TV, their whole model was we wanna just sort of feed every niche. Right? And what that means is they can’t develop a coherent brand identity. In a way that Netflix excuse me, that HBO or a twenty four or vertigo comics developed a coherent brand identity. What is what is it?

What does a Netflix movie or a Netflix series feel like? You can’t describe it. You can’t sit right. It’s sometimes it’s Sandman and sometimes it’s House of Cards and sometimes It’s, you know, some kids show or reality. Sometimes it’s like, it’s is it cake?

I have no idea, like, what ties those things together is that Netflix owns all of them. That’s it. There’s nothing else. And so I think Netflix the the problem with Netflix isn’t that it makes people lonely. The problem with Netflix is that it its business model feeds them stuff that is intentionally disposable, and that is designed as a commodity, both in the way that they market it, in the way that they that the way that the commission programs and the way that they roll them out so that you can’t get so that they have no sort of cultural lift in traction.

And what that means is that’s not I don’t think that’s like creating loneliness, but what it’s doing is it’s creating a kind of cinematic or television, empty calorie system, in which you’re not getting any anything out of the stuff that you’re watching, because there’s nothing that’s designed for you to not remember it two months later unless, you know, there’s there’s another season on. I guess I’ll spend a couple of days watching it this week. And so for stars, that presents a real problem because the only way you can get paid big money by Netflix is if you are already a big brand, which means you need to be associated with something that is big and marketed and has a cultural footprint before you get to Netflix. Will Smith gets a giant paycheck for Bright on Netflix. At I’m Sandler gets a giant paycheck for doing what up for those movies.

But somebody who doesn’t already have a brand name can’t build one on Netflix and that ultimately is gonna create problems with them with when it comes to talent. And because talent is gonna like, they’re gonna be stuck with second rate talent except in some cases where they can just buy, you know, where they can just overpay for for stuff. And so I think I think what I would say is that I don’t think Netflix is trafficking in in loneliness or make loneliness or making people more lonely than any other kind of solitary stay at home get lost in fiction medium is. What I do think they’re doing is is delivering a lot of stuff that ultimately leaves no impact, not just on the culture, but on the individuals consuming them. Because the individuals Don’t unlike the sci fi novels that I read as a kid, unlike, you know, the Quentin Tarantino movies that I watched a hundred times over a man, I must have seen reservoir dogs.

Like a hundred times before I was eighteen years old. Just like that movie is just completely burned into my head. And I don’t know if I’ve watched it in ten years because I’ve seen it so many times. Right? Like I spent a lot of time, you know, sort of obsessively watching and rewatching things, you know, the nineties version of binge culture.

And I just think this this sort of thing is is, I don’t know, it’s fine. It’s weird to watch up reservoir dogs a hundred times, to be clear. But it’s fine. And so but Netflix is making something that no one will watch a hundred times and be talking about twenty years later. And they’re doing it by design, and that’s going to cost them in the long run.

Well, I and the other person the other group that it’s gonna cost is the star. Right, Peter? Because I if you’re you you you you set it you you focused on the main problem here for the movie star, which is

that

Netflix cannot make you a movie star star, but Netflix can pay movie stars that already exist, exorbitant sums to be in their stuff. But if you start paying those stars to get out of the cinematic these film theatrical distribution ecosystem and stay only in Netflix, you risk destroying that whole ecosystem anyway, which will just then create a system where Netflix never has to pay anybody more than like five hundred grand. To be in a movie because, like, every you’re all basically the same. You’re all just content for the Netflix consumer. And I mean, I like, am I wrong?

Am I am I I I really feel like there’s an almost there’s an almost predatory aspect to overpaying Jamie Fox, like, forty million dollars or whatever to be in

debt. I don’t think it’s predatory. I actually think that Netflix will come to regret this strategy. The only place where they make movies that are extremely differentiated is their Oscar bait stuff that comes at the end of the year like Roma and, you know, Menck and that sort of thing. But everything else is so commodified.

Right? Is so just like we just need this to hit the kind of target genre beats and, like, it’ll, you know, sort of it it it fits, like, this is the genre that it fits in. So it must it has to feel like, oh, it’s a vampire movie. Right? There’s no twist.

There’s no cleverness. There’s no sort of attempt to make it be something more than just like exercises and box checking. With some like some exceptions, I’m obviously general in here. And I think that in the long run, that’s going to make Netflix less essential. And they they sort of bet that they would be that, like, being their essential list would come from being first and being biggest.

But in a world of heavy streaming competition where other where the other streamers have big IP and also a commitment to a kind of quality. I think even Disney plus as much as I’d often, you know, sort of find their stuff frustrating, is aiming for a sort of cinematic vision of television. With with their Marvel and Star Wars shows. That Netflix doesn’t really ever quite get to. That that means that those other streamers that have built an IP that have, you know, attempts at higher quality stuff even if they don’t always work are the like Netflix becomes the thing that people can cancel in a world of four, five, six, seven streamers.

And that Netflix that this makes Netflix’s, you know, total subscriber problems persist over the long

run here. Listen, we’re

running along here. So parting thoughts on this on this topic. Yeah. I

think Peter is wrong about the extent to which Netflix has disrupted the sort of the structure of the entertainment experience just in the sense that, like, a lot of these, you know, from moral panics that people go into rabbit down into rabbit holes on this kind of pop culture are because that cultural experience was communal. Right? I mean, you can’t write You can’t be concerned that like too many girls are reading Jane Austin and demanding love matches unless a lot of women are reading Jane Austin simultaneously. You know, something like, you know, Alexander Jamal’s serial novels, you know, had this sort of distinct criminal or you knew when they were gonna be published, you read them at the time, you discussed them with people, well, you waited for the next clip next clip hanger. You know, what Netflix has done is distinct not just in the sense that it has created content that people can get sort of obsessed with to the extension of other things, but it has disrupted the structures in which it works.

Right? It has taken away the episodic and sort of linear and asynchronous nature of the television viewing experience. It has sort of stripped away the idea of a mass market box office, and that’s what makes it not that the stuff that it makes is so engaging that it takes you away from the real

world,

but that it entertains you in a way that deliberately takes you away from artists and communal experience. Alright.

Let’s

this isn’t really a controversy or a controversy, so we don’t have an exit question there, but think about this. Movie stars who are listening to this Think about think about what you’re doing with your career into the industry. Be careful with that Netflix money, you never know. Alright. Make sure to tune in for our bonus episode this Friday in which we’re gonna celebrate ten years of the Indi distributor a twenty four speaking of which.

On to the main events, body’s body’s bodies. Bearing the vaunted a twenty four label, body’s body’s bodies is a combo horror thriller and murder mystery movie with a tick talk Bettina. Think of it as a r rated Gen Z clue when you have some idea what you’re getting into. Spoilers from here on out,

So if

you’re waiting to see it in theaters, you bet you better do it quick because it’s not gonna be there much longer. It’ll be on VOD. I believe September twenty seventh is when it drops on Apple and and Amazon and elsewhere. And then the the the physical media release couple weeks after that. So if you’re waiting for that tune out now, the spoilers coming up.

Alright. So the movie is like this, Socialite and Atticton Recovery Sophie’s played by Amanda less Stenberg. Brings her new girlfriend, B, who’s played by Maria Bakalova, to a mansion to wait out an incoming hurricane with a group of friends. It’s a hurricane party folks. The mansion is owned by the parents of David who’s played by Pete Davidson and the friends are various forms of aimless, post millennial young people.

You’ve got Alice who’s played by Rachel Senate. She has a podcast. And she she brought her date too. She brought a date too. The older than the rest of them, Greg played by Lee Pace.

There’s Emma who’s played by Chase Susie Williams. She’s bit of a drama queen, and then there’s Jordan who’s played by Myeala, my myeala, Harold. I’m sorry. I’m I’m horribly butchering her name. But she is an ice queen, not a drama queen.

Drugs and alcohol and power outages form a potent mix when in the midst of a party game, one of the characters shows up dead. The remaining girls and guys have to figure out who was picking them off one by one. More importantly, they have to figure out how to handle their various social pathologies and learn that buzzwords like gaslight and silencing and triggering are no defense, against the cruelty of the real world. We landed an era of the so called social thriller. Right?

Pictures like get out, candy man. This week’s Barbarian, which we’re probably not gonna review, Alyssa. I think that’s on her no fly list. But they they have a pronounced political agenda in in addition to trying frighten audiences. Right?

And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that most of those pictures have a relatively straightforward progressive bend. Nope. That’s just the world in which we live. What makes bodies body’s body so interesting, at least to me, is that it takes the social thriller model and essentially inverts it using progressive cliches against the characters in a way that really demonstrates their utter absurdity and the ways in which they use they use essentially these terms as shields to claim grievances that in turn heighten their own privilege. It’s very funny.

It’s a weird little trick that anybody who has been on social media for any amount of time will recognize. In my review, I wrote that it’s both the meanest and the funniest movie of the summer. There’s a great ten or fifteen minute sequence in the last third or so of the picture that just involves the girls engaging in this sort of competitive intra class struggle that all upper class people have always engaged in. The modern elite mindset is no less competitive now than it was during the nineteen eighties New York City of American Psycho or the Georgian Air of Jane Austin. But just as Patrick bateman’s goals were different from the goals of the Bennett, so too, are those of this Gen Z CLATCH from generations prior.

It’s just that Modern competition revolves around the ability to claim persecution in a land of modern striving, granted wealth and power the likes of which the world has rarely seen, She who can lay claim to the greatest number of handicaps and the lowest number of privileges is queen victim and therefore the winner. As always, I worry that I enjoyed these pictures because I agreed with it rather than it was good. But the audience I saw it was totally into it. I don’t know. It seems like a place for everyone.

Peter, did you make a body’s body’s bodies? I

really liked it. And I think you are correct to zero in on this movie being about language policing. And the and the the abuse of language in online the the use and abuse of sort of of language in online discourse. There is at the very beginning of the movie, not very beginning. It’s fifteen minutes or so into the movie.

There’s like a a Pete Davidson monologue. In which he picks up. What was the what’s the word that he says? But he’s just like, oh, gas. Gas.

It’s gas lighting. Right? And he’s just like, you just you don’t know what this means. It doesn’t actually mean anything when you say it. It’s just an Internet word.

People people that people just repeat because everybody else says it on Twitter. And it’s sort like a state the theme moment except that it’s not just your sort of typical, like, five minutes into the movie, we say what it’s be about. It’s like, no, this is the movie’s prevailing ethos. It’s about the ways that language gets abused and used, like, I think you were you’re exactly right. As a shield, as a weapon.

And in order to tear other people down often because the people using those words, are deeply insecure and kind of awful themselves. And you’ve you’ve argued that this is reactionary. I don’t think that that’s wrong. But what I think it

is is this is this is

the like the leading edge. Of what I think is going to be over the next couple of years, like a a youth gen z backlash. To bad, progressive Internet discourse culture and the kind of language policing and class infighting that goes you know, it’s sort of a privilege mongering that goes with all of this. Because we’ve spent we’ve the Internet has spent the last five or ten years setting up like a a really sort of unpleasant system of discourse policing in which there’s a lot of things that you can’t say and a lot of ways that you have to behave and act and you know, sort of you comport yourself in which people can sort of use this like you said, these tricks to win arguments. And when you’re fifteen or twenty years old, if you’re not already, like, if you’re not a sort of a conformist who just goes along,

And you

hear that there’s a bunch of words that you shouldn’t say and a bunch of ideas that are deeply dangerous and corrosive to society. And then you start talking about, like, sort of making fun of those ideas, playing around with them, with your friends. And you realize we can just do this and it’s funny and it gets a reaction out of people, then what is the thing that you end up starting to do. And you see this already all over sort of often kind of scuzzy and unpleasant Internet forums. Is that what what, like, the the the sort of don’t wanna call it punk rock, but like the the scuzzy underbelly of Internet discourse has already gotten there.

Is that they have decided that they are just going to, in a doubly, triply, like backlash, you sure, backflip ironic way, make use all do all of the things that the discourse says you can’t do. And they’re gonna do them semi seriously, but also completely unserious and you’re not allowed to and like they won’t tell you which they’re doing at any given point and that’s the whole point of it.

And this movie

is like the first kind of mainstream thing to do that. And what I found interesting is seeing this at, you know, in Washington DC, not exactly like, you know, sort of sort of It’s small conservative town. Right? And the Alamo Drafthouse, you know, on a on a weekend show with a bunch of people who were all, you know, mostly forty and under. Like, they watched this and they clearly sort of unders like, felt seen and enjoyed it.

And there was Like, this is I think I think that this movie like, I both liked the movie as a movie, but I also think that it is a sort of It’s an on the edge of like where culture is gonna go kind of social statement. Because if you wanna genuinely be edgy right now, you want people to or you want people to think you are. Then the way to do it is to say that all of this sort of language police, all of this sort of hear the manners that you were supposed to have and the beliefs that you’re supposed to have, most of which are sort of left leaning progressive. All of that stuff is is nonsense and stupid and we’re just gonna do whatever we want. And this is the movie that sort of that takes that and turns it into a really funny, really mean appropriate length mystery about why people are dying.

Yeah. The

sense the sense I had in my theater was one of intense a tharsis. Just like watching this happening on screen and laughing at it and being like, yes, this is all ridiculous. I’m glad we can all highlight that. Alyssa, how did you feel watching bodies, bodies, bodies? I

think y’all are overstating the goodness of this movie for two key reasons. I think the first is that this would be a stronger movie. So

there are

sort of two things that are going on in the movie in terms of the critic of kind of Zenil. I think it’s is it Zenil? Is that accurate culture? Zenil is

is is elder millennial. Right? We’ve got — It’s Gen Z. —

Gen Z. The Gen Z millennial border. Right right there.

So there’s sort of the influence of social media and the desire to be sort of seen and display your display yourself or podcast. And then there is the way that a specific kind of social justice language is weaponized. And the action in the movie turns out the the funniest scenes in the movie come from the sort of mockery of the language and way of talking and thinking about every sort of minor inter you know, interpersonal drama or unhappiness as, you know, a trauma or a matter of justice or a trigger. But the actual action ends up being driven by social media. Right?

I mean, like, there’s no serial killer. There’s just like a dumbass who wants to make a TikTok video with Spoilers. Spoilers. That’s boilers. I can talk about, you know I mean, so it ends up being there’s sort of like a little bit of a disconnect between the phenomena that is sort of getting the headlines and the phenomena that actually drives the plot.

Right? I mean, like, this is this is sort of a funnier movie. This is a sharper movie to me. If the action ends up being driven by like, the the sort of a language that’s at issue. Right?

In the way of sort of talk it interacting with each other, like, to a certain extent, it’s a funnier movie if someone, like, murders someone over a microagression that if like some dumbass. Let’s let’s his own throat with his father’s champagne and say we’re trying to make a TikTok

video. But

isn’t part of the point that they’re all too pathetic to be murderous?

Maybe. I mean, but they do end up killing people. Like, you know, where the movie is real missed opportunity comes in, I think. Is that you have two characters who are sensibly sort of outside of this milieu. Right?

You have Greg, the older, like, veterinarian who’s of a different generation. And then you have b who for class reasons should be like sort of entirely outside of an alien to this vibe whatsoever. And the movie never engages at all with a question of how they feel about out, like this sort of language and way of speaking and relating to each other. Right? Oh.

Oh,

I

I disagree. I disagree with that pretty strongly. I mean, there’s there’s that whole sequence where where the leappaced character, Greg, is like, oh, I get it. You guys are fucking with me. Like, when when Pete Davidson is, like, mocking him to his face, like, trying to get him to explain the, like, common sports metaphor that he has deployed.

And that that is part of the whole thing. But also, like, I I I thought I thought they did a very good job with B showing somebody who was an outsider without without, I don’t know, making making it too obvious that that was going on. I mean, the whole sequence with the zucchini bread and, like, she knows she shows up in

this part of it. But those are, like, they they play with the differences about her and class, but not about but not in a way that specifically plays into the extent to which this is language that has been sort of adopted and weaponized by people from a very specific class position. Right? Like, there is there are ways in which she doesn’t fit in or which she’s comfortable, you know, or which she’s uncomfortable. She gets accused of sort of lying about her background and it turns out because she didn’t graduate from college and she’s embarrassed about it.

But there I mean, I don’t think wearing a back logo is very good in this. To be perfectly honest, I find her sort of flat and unengaged. And I think part of that is, like, you get just no hint of a reaction to this specific language that is class coded and the fact that there is that these sort of other points of friction make the lack of engagement there stand out. So but isn’t that isn’t the

movie trying to say that the the sort of the the rich dipshits have passed this sort of thing down to to everybody else, the the cult you know, the the college drivers who drop out. Right? Like, the movie starts with with b and with the, you know, the the the two girls like, texting in parallel right next to each other. Right? Like, to so that we understand that they are both participants in this sort of, like, totally obsessive messaging, like, can’t look away from my phone culture.

There is a gap

here again between, like, the technology is clearly universal, but the language is not. Right? And there there is a confusion in this movie between the critic of language and the way of relating to each other and and of technology and social media. And those two things sometimes feed each other, but they’re not connected in the movie. And that critique has not made explicit.

I think, look, I think, like, the scene that is just all the girls yelling at each other in, like, they’re in, like, they’re a Twitter fight come

to life.

Is quite funny, but the movie is not the move that spirit is not quite sort of infused with the movie in a way that is consistent and masterful. Like, this movie

is fun,

but I don’t think and it may well end up being a harbinger, but the idea that it’s like,

you know,

a sort of deeply developed critique of all of this stuff just strikes me wrong. I mean, I

think I think that the fact that Maria Vakalova’s character doesn’t engage on this language level with any of them in any way is is I think an important part of the movie. I mean, she is She is watching these arguments play out and not really participating at all because this is a milieu beyond class that is unfamiliar to her. She just that’s, like, not the language she uses. Just like yeah. I mean, there’s there’s that sequence where she mentions that her mother is a bipolar borderline personality disorder.

And one of the other girls is like, oh my god. That, you know, I myself Body is just more of a diagnosed of body dysmorpia and and she

doesn’t react to that because

there’s like how if you were like a person who has like an actual crazy person in your family. How do you handle, like, the Twitter person saying, you know, I actually have mental health issues as well. Like, it it it’s it’s a different it’s a different sort of thing. I mean, this is in a way she is serving as the audience surrogate here to, like,

show the craziness of it. I

don’t know. I think I don’t think to

me the non reactivity did not serve that purpose in the way I guess you guys experienced it. I just I found the writing for her. I think she’s just kind of a non character, and I thought the performance didn’t bring out any particular nuances in it.

Think one thing we can all agree on is that sorting off a champagne quirk is really cool. That

is really cool. I mean, it’s it’s it’s really a indictment on Pete Davis.

I haven’t done that on video and posted it on social media. So I just I really — Until

—

talk. I relate. I I

will

say so I

I like this

movie a lot. At the same time, I I don’t entirely disagree with Alyssa here. I think if there’s a the biggest weakness to me was the rely I think a a some a slight overreliance on just sort of using a name check like well known sort of Twitter bullshit words. Terms.

Terms. Terms. Right. Yeah.

And it was like, oh, we

said toxic. Now laugh. And they’re like just so and it’s mostly pretty well done. At the same time, like, that’s a lot of the joke it how the jokes play out in this movie. And there’s just like there’s like ten percent too much of that.

And I wanted something that actually sort of like the dug into how that, you know, that has developed those the specific jokes about the specific words a little bit more because it it did seem to just sort of be like, hey, we’re gonna we’re gonna use that word that you know that is overused like that p like Peter Davidson says in that opening bit. And I I just felt like there’s like a a the the script wasn’t bad and was actually quite clever in a lot of ways. At the same time, there’s one more pass on this draft would might have made like a really really sharp film, whereas this one is very fun. Very funny, quite pointed

in

a lot of ways. And I think, like, telling it it’s, you know, it’s kind of ideological or non ideological leanings, but doesn’t quite get all the way way to, like, oh, man, this is just perfectly skewered what it’s, you know,

its targets. If there’s

one more thing that bothers me, I have no sense in this movie of why B and Sofia are together. Just none. I have no idea what they like about each other. You know, and maybe the whole point is supposed to be, it’s like, all of these people are in, like, such new relationships that they’re all just in, like, the sex haze. But, like, I have no idea how they met.

I have no idea, like, what there’s just there is nothing there. And for this to be, like, a sort of operatic relationship, like, it just does not land at all for me. And, somehow, Harold I mean, I think, like, really you get like she and a man with Danberg have like real chemistry in the movie. You can see the sort of like anger and attraction there and

to have the

central relationship be so inert, really, I think, like, what’s kind of a damper on the

movie? Yeah. I mean, I think, again,

this is kind of Bakalova, not quite being as strong as she she maybe could have been. In the movie. I don’t I don’t disagree with that exactly. Except I also don’t really care. I mean, like, it’s a bunch of twenty somethings.

Like, twenty twenty somethings being attracted to each other is, like, okay.

I don’t

know, man. Kids. Kids these days. So

what do

we think? Thumbs up or thumbs down. Body’s body’s body’s Peter. I

think all those kids are spending too much time on Netflix, and it’s making them lonely. And it’s a good movie. Listen. A

thumbs up. It’s diverting. Thumbs up. It’s it’s

very good. Alright. That’s it for this week. Sure. I’ll make sure to swing by a t m a dot forward dot for our bonus episode on Friday.

Make sure to tell your brand, the strong recommendation from a friend is basically the only way. If you grow podcast audiences, if you don’t, girl will die. If you did not love today’s episode, please complain to me on Twitter ads only. Bye. Let me tell you that there is a fact that I show in your podcast feed.

See you guys next

week.