Madness and Movies Podcast

In our previous episode about Venom, we had implied that Venom was the first plural/multiple/DID superhero to hit the big screen. Not true! We forgot about Bruce Banner and the Hulk! Plural activist Criss Itterman joins us to help break down and understand the relationship between these two complex characters. Forget “split-personality” movies like… well, SPLIT; this is a much more nuanced look at what it means to share a body with someone else.

At its heart, Beauty and the Beast is a story about embodiment. It raises the question: what does it mean to own a body, to want a different body, to feel trapped inside one’s own body? Is Beauty and the Beast a story of empowerment and radical transformation? Could it be compared to gender transition? Or is it a story of cure? Of conforming to conventional standards of beauty? Is it all of the above? You decide!

This is NOT a “stop watching Rudolph” show. But far too often we let kids’ entertainment get away with spreading terrible messages as long as they can bring it all into a happy ending. And Rudolph feels happy, right? But that’s not how bullying works in the real world. So we asked legendary disabled activist Cal Montgomery to help talk us through the ways we teach our bullied and disabled kids the least helpful messages

In this episode, we present a bunch of different Mad interpretations of The Little Mermaid. Just as an example, Ariel can be read pretty clearly as a trans icon, a victim of horrific intergenerational trauma, or even autistic (when she’s above water, that is). Which interpretation do you think fits the best?

Frozen details the sordid story of a cursed, divergent woman who is denied the love of her family and coerced into constructing a false life defined by isolation. She rebels, makes new friends, and as punishment is imprisoned and forced to watch her sister die. Welcome to the most popular Disney movie of this decade. Conceal don’t feel, y'all.

The Lion King sets up the “Circle of Life” as the driving protagonist behind the film. But it doesn’t take much thought to realize that the Circle of Life is actually a villain that entails eating/killing other animals, getting eaten, or starving, all under the guise of “the natural order of the food chain.” So in this episode, we explore the characters’ different styles of resisting and what they can teach us about our own “Circle of Life.”

Have you heard of the Madonna/Whore Dichotomy? It basically posits that women are forced into a binary choice between doubling down on their sexuality or retreating from it altogether. Can you imagine Hillary Clinton in lingerie? Can you imagine Beyonce NOT singing about her sex life? Black Swan asks us what happens when you try to simultaneously embody both. Answer: it will drive you positively mad.

What’s more valuable to you - happiness, or success? That’s what director Damien Chazelle seems to be asking the audience. If you are successful, does that somehow justify going mad? If you choose not to even try for success, is that some sort of creeping madness in its own right?

Imagine a world where the conspiracy theorists, the tinfoil hat people, the doomsday preppers and alien abduction survivors were all right on the money. Where everything they said or feared came true. That’s what it would feel like to live in the Ghostbusters’ universe. Which raises the question: how do we define and construct a conspiracy theory, and who gets to decide the difference between that and cutting-edge journalism or science? Because telling the difference isn’t always easy. Just ask Walter Peck.

Being disabled in a society that isn't built for you feels like having scissors for hands. At least, that’s what we think. Kick off your Halloween celebration by joining our discussion of Edward Scissorhands, a spooky fairytale about the perception of madness & disability.