Speaker 1 (00:00:00): Art Palace is sponsored by P N C Bank coming up on art Palace Speaker 2 (00:00:07): Walker's work. I said earlier that she's horror adjacent. The more I think about it, she's not horror adjacent. She's really deeply into the horror of it. But again, like I said, it'ss a black female version of that horror. Speaker 1 (00:00:33): Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is film critic and writer TT Stern nzi. This episode was originally a much shorter video for our online film screenings, but I enjoyed my conversation with TT so much that I wanted to share this expanded version. I also want to point out that this is our 100th episode, so congratulations to us and thanks to all of you for listening. Well, thank you for joining us. My name is Russell iig. I'm the associate director of interpretive programming here at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and I'm here with film critic TT Stern. So we're going to be having a conversation today looking at the world of shadow puppets and how they relate to the artwork of Carol Walker and also to films like Candyman from 2021 and Lada Reiner's, the Adventures of Prince Achmed. So you just saw the exhibition Speaker 2 (00:01:41): Yes. Speaker 1 (00:01:41): For the first time. And I've given you no time to think about it. Speaker 2 (00:01:47): I don't need any time. You Speaker 1 (00:01:48): Don't need, I was like March down, March you down here and said, we're going to start. So this is going to be very from the gut. Speaker 2 (00:01:55): Right. Speaker 1 (00:01:56): So what were your initial just impressions of the exhibition? I guess we'll start there. Speaker 2 (00:02:01): Well, it's fascinating you mentioned sort of this whole from the gut response. It's from the gut about the exhibition, but in a way it's also from the gut for me about the film too. Speaker 1 (00:02:10): Oh, really? Speaker 2 (00:02:11): Because I haven't seen Candyman since I watched the screener for it before it came out. Speaker 1 (00:02:17): So Speaker 2 (00:02:18): It's fascinating me because as we were walking through the exhibition, the power of some of the images from Walker's work, I feel like they were playing with my mind in terms of what I remembered about the film, Speaker 1 (00:02:30): Like shadowing your actual memories of it. Speaker 2 (00:02:34): There are parts of it now that, again, I remember being immediately captivated by the idea that you have that shadow puppetry and the silhouettes being used as a storytelling device to remind us about the past Speaker 1 (00:02:49): And Speaker 2 (00:02:50): The history of this character and what was going on. And now in my head, or at least I'm attempting to re-remember Speaker 1 (00:02:59): That Speaker 2 (00:02:59): History that we were told, but because of the reality of memory and how we misrepresent what actually happened, the further we get away from it, I'm doing that now and I'm consciously doing it now with what we've seen in the exhibition. So yeah, the immediate piece of that for me is I'm intrigued by, and I'm thinking about a couple of the quotes from Walker herself that are interspersed throughout. And again, the primary one that makes the most sense right now, it's this idea that she's not a historian, she's an unreliable narrator, Speaker 1 (00:03:36): Which Speaker 2 (00:03:37): I feel like now I'm an unreliable guest on stage because I'm not as concerned about exactly what happened in the film in relation to the exhibition. It's kind of like, well, wait a minute. I just want to see if I can on my own piece those two things together Speaker 1 (00:03:56): And Speaker 2 (00:03:56): Come up with a new narrative, Speaker 1 (00:03:58): Which may or may not be accurate to what actually happens in these movies. Speaker 2 (00:04:01): Right. Speaker 1 (00:04:01): Yeah. Well, that's funny though, because I was thinking about, I actually probably have a fresher view because I just watched the movie a few days ago for the first time, and then I sort of fast forwarded through a lot of it to refresh myself today. So I maybe a little cleaner on my memories of it. But one of the things I loved about that that relates to that quote is the first, well, maybe the second time we see Shadow puppets used in the film is that retelling of the original Candyman, but it's also an unreliable narrator telling it because they're not getting the details. And we see how the events of that film have been transformed into legend at this point where the things we know from watching that movie have been kind of mutated a little bit. Some extra gory details are added in to make it a little sexier the way we enhance a story when we retell it. Right. Yeah. And those shadow puppets in Candyman are always used to illustrate a legend in a way. They're showing the past, and there are flashback scenes as well, but there is something interesting about them the way that we always are aware of them as an unreliable narrator. When we see them in the movie, we go, oh yeah, okay, this is different. Whereas what I see in Shot as a film is reliable. Speaker 2 (00:05:40): Yes, you do have that. And again, I think that's again, for this conversation, the fascinating piece of that is with Walker's work in the very beginning as we're looking at some of those images from the Antebellum South, and as she's giving us this different reinterpretation of those events and mixing it with mythology as well, it's fascinating that you've got that, again, that kind of dual notion going on of, okay, I'm getting a version of the history, but I'm also getting it and seeing it through this lens of okay, legend and mythology, which again, the film does that too. And you're right, what we see in the actual flashbacks from the film are what we're supposed to take us back. But again, as an audience coming into it, once you get that and then you get the shadow puppets, there's this question of, well, which one of these do I really want to pay more attention to? And that's the power of the shadow puppets because they draw you in to such an extent that for me, I spent more of my time thinking that's the history. That's the story. And maybe it's also because as a film critic, I am spending my time watching films where I'm almost instructed to not trust Speaker 3 (00:07:01): What Speaker 2 (00:07:01): I see in those flashbacks. If someone's going to give me what is supposed to be that filmed version, this is the actual account we've been told enough over the course of years of watching film that you know what, no, we don't necessarily always have to trust that. Speaker 3 (00:07:18): So Speaker 2 (00:07:19): The beauty of what Walker's work does, it sets up this idea from seeing her work in the exhibition to then seeing these shadow puppets in the film that are inspired by her work. It's like, well, wait a minute. Maybe this is the truth. Speaker 3 (00:07:34): And Speaker 2 (00:07:34): If you go with that as sort of the framing device for it, then all it is is just another perspective. So that at the end, we are all decades and centuries away. Again, going back to Walker's work to what really happened. Speaker 3 (00:07:53): None Speaker 2 (00:07:54): Of us knows what happened because none of us were there. So I think in some ways what it does, and it's fascinating today because of course we're caught up in all these discussions about critical race theory and everything else, but at some point, these retellings are meaningful and they allow us to open ourselves up to the idea that there are stories that we don't know and we haven't been told. So maybe it's not about necessarily trying to really get at the hard truth of things, but it's more about the idea of just let me take in these stories and then I will do what I do as a human and mix and match and kind of merge those images and stories and the histories and the mythology and everything else into something that feels right for me. And again, to take it back now to the exhibition, I think that's what art actually asked us to do anyway, when you were there in front of a piece, it is about taking what the artist has given you and say, okay, I can incorporate this in with everything else that I have seen from the art world, from the history, from my life, and I get to put this in my narrative in some way. So how does this fit into my narrative? And that gives all of us the opportunity to basically be our own unreliable narrators. Speaker 1 (00:09:18): Yeah. When you were talking about how we've sort of been trained to mistrust certain scenes and movies as well, I was thinking about, yeah, I mean, a flashback is always sort of positioned as a memory as well. Speaker 2 (00:09:32): Someone's memory, Speaker 1 (00:09:33): Somebody. So yeah, you're usually looking at it already through that lens of this is a memory of a person, and memories are very unreliable Speaker 2 (00:09:45): As you talk about that. Again, we are saying that it's someone's memory, and we are talking about this notion that those memories are unreliable because again, our grasp of what was happening in the moment slips away the further we get away from it. But there's also the idea that those memories are somewhat unreliable too, depending on who's telling the story. Speaker 1 (00:10:09): Because Speaker 2 (00:10:09): Again, and history is a huge part of this, whoever's telling the story gets to tell and create that history that they want to create. So I mean, it's unreliable, but I think there's intentionality behind that. Is it unreliable just because it's been 10 years, 30 years away and I can't remember exactly what happened? Or is it more that wait a minute, I just have a story that I want to tell about that thing that happened 30 years ago. This is the story that I'm going to tell and it may not have any connection to the reality. It's just what I want to Speaker 1 (00:10:44): Get out there. Speaker 2 (00:10:45): It's the legend that I want you to print as fact, Speaker 1 (00:10:49): And that is actually how memory works. That's the sort of disturbing thing about it. I think the more I learned about how memory works, the more I didn't trust myself because I don't know, I think of it I should say, as we have a little computer in our brain and it's sort of got all the files, or if you want to go even older, it's like a filing cabinet where you have all these things stored away, and when you need to remember it, you go and you pull out the memory and you look at it and you go, oh, yeah, that happened. And then you put it away. But the way memory actually works is it is an act of creation, and every time you remember something, the old memory is destroyed and a new memory is created. So the more you remember something, the more it is being mutated and transformed and it's always being transformed through the lens of today. And through your views and through that story you're telling yourself and the story what it means to you. So that memory you have as a child that maybe was important for one thing. Now maybe you're remembering it and something else out of it, and that's become important. And maybe you've inserted things. It's the way people can have so easily have memories implanted. Speaker 1 (00:12:06): That seems like that would be really hard to do. But it's not. A really common thing is people hear a story told in their family over and over again and they'll think they were there. And then finally years later, somebody is like, well, you weren't even there. You weren't even born yet. And they've just heard the story so many times that they now think, yeah, I was there. I remember it. But that's how unreliable memory is. Speaker 2 (00:12:31): I'm fascinated now as we're having this conversation and we're talking about memory and the unreliability of it all, because it takes me back again to this walkthrough, the exhibition, and I did this, and I am recognizing that I did this as we were walking through what we saw on the walls, I took as a certain truth, but some of those steel cuts that are part of the exhibition that you see and you're able to walk around and just knowing, and this is the crazy thing that again, that I'm just doing as a person experiencing that I can't touch that. But because I know and saw that steel and there's a certain tactile sense of it, and you have the lights coming through it that are creating all those shadows, it has more immediacy to me. So in some ways it feels more truthful than what I'm just saying on the walls. And as I walked through, I probably spent more time around those cuts Speaker 1 (00:13:41): Because Speaker 2 (00:13:42): There was something about them that was kind of like, Ooh, this feels more real to me. Speaker 1 (00:13:46): And you're referring to, just to make sure I got it right, the piece, the Burning Village Playset. Speaker 2 (00:13:51): Yes. Speaker 1 (00:13:53): And then there's also another one whose title I can't remember, sort of across from it. That's almost like a little circus train car. Speaker 2 (00:13:59): Yes. Yes. Those two in particular, like I said, I walked around those multiple times. And as a matter of fact, the circus car has different cuts Speaker 1 (00:14:07): On Speaker 2 (00:14:07): Each side. So again, it feels like you were getting multiple stories at Speaker 1 (00:14:12): Once Speaker 2 (00:14:13): Out of that piece. But like I said, not because I could touch it, but just the idea that I knew that there was a different level of physicality to it, it felt more real and immediate. Speaker 1 (00:14:24): Well, to bring it back to the films, I think that's also when I was looking at those pieces today because we were going to be having this discussion, I was thinking about them in the way that they also feel like they have that physicality that the shadow puppets do in that you're always very aware of this is a real thing, piece of paper or whatever it's made out of. And I could imagine, again, that sort of way that in Candyman and in some of Carol Walker's own video works that she's made, you see the hands manipulating Speaker 1 (00:15:00): The shadow puppets. And that's what I always think about when I see those steel cut pieces too, is because you want to touch them. I think as well, you want to get in there and play around with them and move them and manipulate them. And so that was another connection I was making of like, oh, these feel, they have that same kind of physicality, those shadow puppets. And I was very aware while rewatching some of those shadow puppet scenes of, oh, this thing is slightly out of focus in the way focus is used in those, which probably in most cases is instead of using the camera to create focus, so probably just pulling the object forward and backwards, the closer to the screen, the more in focus, when you get farther back, you get out of focus and also larger. It made me just think about all of those, the way those things are made, which is always what I'm probably most interested in, Speaker 2 (00:15:56): But there's also this sense of dimension with it, which again is probably why in my case, I felt more connected to that as the history versus just the flashbacks that you get because the flashbacks, it's just film, so you don't have that tactile physicality to it. Speaker 1 (00:16:19): Well, those pieces are also the Carol Walker sculptural pieces in that place that they are inherently very narrative in the way that you see the way that they relate to each other in space, and you create a story out of it. And then what's exciting about them is the way that you can change that narrative. You can pick up that, I mean, we can obviously, no, Speaker 2 (00:16:47): I totally what you mean. Yes. If Speaker 1 (00:16:49): You were lucky enough to own that work, you could manipulate it and create a new narrative. And actually, I was just talking with Ciana and Trudy, the co-curators of the exhibition and Ciana told me, oh, a lot of museums will change the layout of that piece mid exhibition or change it up periodically because that's something the artist encourages, that she encourages you. There is not a set way Speaker 2 (00:17:20): To Speaker 1 (00:17:20): Show it. I think how we have it right now is maybe the way she set it up initially and maybe photographed it and showed it. So that's one version that she likes, but it is not the only version. And she could see lots of other ways Speaker 2 (00:17:35): To Speaker 1 (00:17:35): Display Speaker 2 (00:17:35): It. And see, that takes me back to the difference between those pieces versus what you just see on the walls. Because there are a number of the pieces that you get as you're walking through that you understand are underst kind of framed pieces that you, you're seeing individual segments of a narrative that's being told as well. But you can't manipulate those in the same way. Speaker 1 (00:18:01): Those Speaker 2 (00:18:02): Have to stay coherent and connected from start to finish. And there's something interesting about that because for me as a film critic, I'm looking at some of those and I'm thinking, wow, it has the sense and the feel of that movement that we have to take to get through this narrative. And it's one that we understand and we know because we are being led step by step through it, but we don't have any control and we can't play around and manipulate that on our own. And again, I'm far more intrigued with the ways in which we are able with those other pieces to break them up and to manipulate them ourselves. Because like I said, for me it is ultimately about how we can become our own unreliable narrators as we're taking all of this in. Speaker 1 (00:18:54): I hadn't maybe made the connection to the sort of filmic qualities of, I'm thinking most specifically about Emancipation Approximation, which is the first large work you see, it's a series of screen prints that fills an entire room, and it works often in, I think they're even called scenes. They're written as scene one, scene two, things like that. So there'll be a series of prints and they function almost in the same way a comic book does. Panels Speaker 2 (00:19:27): Like a graphic novel. Speaker 1 (00:19:28): So you have these different panels, and so you read them sequentially, but then of course they're not always easy to necessarily understand in a really clear narrative way because what's happening is sometimes very ambiguous or really unclear because of the silhouette. You don't get all the information, you're given a lot of information, but your mind has to fill in a lot of the gaps. And you go, oh, is this, I think that's what I'm seeing, is that what I'm seeing? What is this? I think the next step is from doing sort of stop motion animation in the way that Reiner is using those techniques. There's a similarity there where you're setting up one scene and then you set up another scene. The difference there is the mind is filling in the gaps between Carol Walker's individual screen prints versus literally putting every, I mean, I guess they're the same in a way, because really the mind is filling in the gaps in the stop motion animation as well. Speaker 2 (00:20:26): You are doing it in each case, Speaker 1 (00:20:28): It's just a smaller gap Speaker 2 (00:20:32): As you were trying to figure that out just now, in my head, I was kind of like, okay, there's this question of are you going from interpretation to almost like a reintegration of what you're getting? And I was trying to figure out what's really the between those two terms and the way that we're talking about it now. And I'm not sure there's that much of a difference Speaker 1 (00:20:52): Because Speaker 2 (00:20:52): You're right, you're still filling in gaps. And again, and you're right, it was the emancipation approximation pieces that yeah, you're getting those. Again, we normally get or understand how comic books or graphic novels work, and you were supposed to go from one frame to the next. You can't jump from one to four because that jump would be too much for us to try to figure out, especially if you're kind of bouncing around all of those images, it becomes a jumble that makes no sense. And at the end of the day, in each case, it is about how we make Speaker 1 (00:21:31): Sense Speaker 2 (00:21:32): Of what we're getting. Speaker 1 (00:21:34): So one thing I was kind of curious about in relationship between thinking about Candyman and Carol Walker, is Carol Walker making horror and what is the relationship to horror in that work? Speaker 2 (00:21:48): There are moments that I do believe, I don't know if it's exactly horror, but she is definitely operating in a horror adjacent kind of way. And I'm probably going to get this wrong, so I'm glad you're here as a museum rep who can refocus what I'm thinking about. But those Harper's Weekly pieces where you have the actual pieces from Harper's that are telling stories from the battlefield about what was going on during the Civil War, and then Walker imposes images on top of those, and in some cases the images that are imposed on top the silhouettes, but they're cutouts within the silhouettes that take us Speaker 1 (00:22:34): Back Speaker 2 (00:22:35): Into the Harpers piece as well. But we can't see everything. In some ways, those images kind of remind me of the deaths in Candyman. Speaker 1 (00:22:46): In what way? Speaker 2 (00:22:46): Because we early on are not given the opportunity to really see exactly what happens when people say Candyman Speaker 1 (00:22:56): Five Speaker 2 (00:22:56): Times and the horror starts to happen, or we're getting images of it or views of it from distorted perspectives so that there's something there that's going on and you get a hint of it, but there's something over that or something that's obstructing your view of what's actually happening. And that obstruction is probably there to protect you from what's really going on. Speaker 1 (00:23:24): Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that. So the new sort of gimmick, I mean, it sounds meaner that I mean it, but in Candyman 2021, when we have these candyman death sequences, these kills happening. They're only seen through reflections. Candyman himself is only seen through reflections. So you'll maybe see a body just sort of floating across the floor being dragged by an invisible force and in a reflection in a window or a mirror or something in the background will get a glimpse of him. So yeah, there is an interesting relationship there of the sort of seen and unseen, which is definitely a big part of Carol Walker's work. And those pieces, the Harper's Pictorial where you kind of want to look peek around what she's blocking. In some cases there's Speaker 2 (00:24:25): A horror and there are probably levels of horror in what Harper's is giving us, and she's covering it up. And so like I said, sometimes it's complete so that we're only getting that one silhouette. But then there are also those other moments where there's something inside the silhouette that is cut out Speaker 1 (00:24:42): That Speaker 2 (00:24:42): Still leads you back into the horrors of war, but you can't see it and feel it completely. And you're kind of like, well, I know there's something going on there, but what is it? And it takes me back. When I think about the film, the one sequence where this feels like it's the most resonant is the bathroom scene Speaker 1 (00:25:04): With the Speaker 2 (00:25:04): Girls. So there's the one girl who's in the stall as the other girls are out there and they've said it and things are happening and she can't see everything. But yeah, she'll see a body from the bottom of the stall or whatever, but she can't really see. And at some point in that case, it's kind of like, yeah, you don't want to see that Speaker 1 (00:25:24): And Speaker 2 (00:25:25): That she doesn't want to see it. But it does have that same kind of feel as those Harper's weekly pieces. Speaker 1 (00:25:32): Well, and I think one of the girls' compacts falls down Speaker 2 (00:25:36): And then you get there Speaker 1 (00:25:37): Reflection, you kind of see her viewpoint of seeing this very small little window into the horror that's happening through this little makeup mirror. And then, yeah, I think you only get really one glimpse of Candyman walking by dragging somebody, but you're getting blood splatters and other things. You also have a really weird effect in that moment where there's a bee lands on the compact, and then I think another be's, the reflection splits and it crawls underneath the bottom mirror and through the invisible sort of ether and up into the other reflection. And they do that a couple of times where they have a bee on the other side of a reflection, which is an interesting idea. But yeah, that's a really cool connection I hadn't thought of there. Speaker 2 (00:26:31): Like I said, yeah, that for me, and again, it takes me back to that bathroom sequence where we get that, and this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with that or that question, but the other piece of this, as I was walking through the exhibition, that was intriguing, and Nia DeCosta as the director of the film, and again, I think she was one of the co-writers of Jordan Peele, and there was probably one other person involved as well, just this notion that our protagonist is an artist as well. And there is something about the idea of walking through Walker's exhibition here and the protagonist in the film as a black man, I had a couple of moments where I was kind of like, wow, what would that film had been if we had had a black woman Speaker 1 (00:27:22): As Speaker 2 (00:27:22): The protagonist? And then of course it was kind of like, well, does it need to be Walker? And I was like, no, it doesn't need to be her. But there would've been a really interesting and richer kind of connection to it all if you were using her work as an inspiration, but you had another black woman who maybe found another way of expressing these ideas and these horrors and the mythology of it all. I think there would've been something more meaningful out of that, not to take anything away again from what we got, but yeah, there's a whole other level of theme that would've kind of bubbled up to the surface in that Speaker 1 (00:28:03): That was something I didn't expect in that movie, not knowing a lot about it before I watched it. I was a little surprised that it centered so much on the art world and it kind of kept revealing itself in more and more ways. Okay, so our main character, he is an artist, he's a painter. So I thought, okay, I've kind of seen things like that in other movies that's not too surprising. But then his girlfriend or fiance, I can't remember their exact relationship, she also is in the art world. She works for a gallery Speaker 1 (00:28:38): And then she's trying to move up in the art world and move into the world of museums. And so there's a lot of commentary going on about the institution of art as well in Candyman that I was like, oh, as a person who loves horror films and works in the art world, it's so rare that I see these overlap. I can only think of one other example, which is Velvet Buzz saw that has some similarities as well is maybe less successful overall, but it's probably more satirical about the art world and in a comical way, I guess, than Candyman is. But yeah, it was interesting to see that thrown into this mix and how the movie handled that. And also I felt like a lot of times whenever you see your own profession in a film, all you can do is pick apart all the things that are wrong. Speaker 1 (00:29:42): Well, that's not really right. And I really didn't do that actually at all in Candyman. I was actually, I mean maybe it mostly focuses on galleries and I don't really work in the world of galleries, so maybe it's atrocious, but it felt like, I don't know, compared to a Velvet Buzz saw, which I did have a ton of things, I was like, well, that's not really, you have gallerists and you have curators and you have artists, and you have all of, and writers, and they're all sort of up in each other's business constantly. And I'm like, I feel like those things are sort of their own little worlds more that cross paths here and there, but not necessarily everybody's constantly on the phone with each other, and I understand why they would do that, but yeah, you have the idea also as these being primarily white institutions as well, and I think that's sort of made clear by the gallerist, but then it's kind of interesting she meets with that curator. I think she's supposed to be a curator at the M C A in Chicago and who is a black woman, and so it isn't quite so cut and dry, which I liked as Speaker 2 (00:30:57): Well. There's something to just, and again, I'm going to go back to that notion of how the perspective changes when you have a black man as the artist versus a black woman, because again, in Walker's work, there's such grounding in this notion of telling, playing around with pathology and legends and the history of race in this country. But she does it largely from the perspective of how that impacted black women. There are a few of those that involve men, but most of the work feels like it is very much focused on her perspective, being a black woman kind of looking at and dealing with these issues. And it's a different kind of horror, but I do believe it. It is horrific in its own way, and she's very explicit about that versus the horrors that you get from the film, which are primarily seen from a black man's perspective because the perspective is male there, the notion of horror becomes something that is just more traditional and familiar to us. We are going to see his version of that story and how he looks at the Candyman legend, and what happens in the film still feels like, okay, at the end of the day, this is a male take on horror. Speaker 2 (00:32:24): And maybe, like I said, that's missing. If we had had a different shift and a different character to focus on, those horrors would've meant more and would've had a greater cultural relevance to them, which is what I think they were kind of going for anyway. Speaker 1 (00:32:41): But it Speaker 2 (00:32:42): Would've hit a whole lot harder because Walker's work, I said earlier that she's horror adjacent. The more I think about it, she's not horror adjacent. She's really deeply into the horror of it. But again, like I said, it's a black female version of that horror, which it takes a little while to settle into it to think about it more, to be hit by it more. But once you get hit by it, it's like, okay, yeah, she is. This is what she's doing that we, I'm not sure that I don't feel it here in the same way. It's just, okay, it's what I'm used to. Yeah, you could take Candyman 2021 and it feels like every other horror film in one way or another that we've seen. And again, that's because most of those horror films have been from male perspectives, so there's nothing different about it, Speaker 1 (00:33:27): Which is interesting coming from a woman director as well. I'm Speaker 2 (00:33:30): Little surprised. Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I'm like, wow, what does that say about what Neil was doing? Because I feel like she definitely put her own stamp on that versus unfortunately how the film was marketed before it came out. Everything about it was, wait a minute, this is the film from executive producer Jordan Peele. How often do we hear about executive producers of films? And it's part of the marketing. It was like they hit us over the head with that all the time. So ultimately, you do kind of walk into it with this sense that, well, yeah, there was a woman behind the camera, but we are being led to understand that there is a male overseer, if you will, of what's going on. Speaker 1 (00:34:10): I think also she's trying to tell a story that is about the violence towards black men, and specifically she's bringing in police violence and things like that. And those are, if we're looking at the headlines, those are stories that mostly affect black men. So I think it makes sense for her to center that on there. I did get the sense though, that there was more to Brianna's character that we have this strange flashback at one moment where we see her father commit suicide, and it's like, wait. It felt very like, there's got to be more to this. Right? Speaker 2 (00:34:51): There's more to that story, right? Speaker 1 (00:34:52): Yeah, there's got to be more. And I kind of wonder what ended up on the cutting room floor or that I feel like maybe she was a more interesting character perhaps than what we ended up seeing. It feels a little bit like, okay, that was an interesting scene. I would've expected a little bit more there or something else to maybe make it gel a bit better with the rest of the film. And in the end, she sort of does become the center of the movie by the end in a strange way, and it didn't quite feel as earned as I would hoped. By the time that happens. I'm like, oh, I don't feel like I know her maybe enough to, it feels like a big shift. And I feel like they were maybe trying to set up some things, but then just didn't ultimately have enough time to give her enough background. Speaker 2 (00:35:44): But again, that's a fascinating way that you phrased that they didn't have enough time Speaker 1 (00:35:49): Because Speaker 2 (00:35:49): Again, unfortunately we know they probably had more time than any of us are truly aware of because thanks to the conditions in the world in 2020 and early 2021, I wonder if anyone had ever said, well, wait a minute. Yes, we have this finished product, but we could go back. It's not going to hit theaters. We have plenty of time. They could have gone back and boosted that up a bit more, but they chose not to. Speaker 1 (00:36:18): Oh, absolutely. And when, I mean, Speaker 2 (00:36:20): There's a real choice in there, Speaker 1 (00:36:21): And when, I mean not enough time, I don't mean time in production, I mean time on the screen and the assumptions about also how long a horror movie should be. Speaker 2 (00:36:32): There's Speaker 1 (00:36:32): A lot of strange assumptions that we have no problem sitting through two and a half hours of superheroes, but horror really starts to wear out. Its welcome at 90 minutes. And I don't necessarily agree to that. And I think something like Mid-Summer is a really great horror movie that is two and a half hours. And so I think you can make that movie. And it's interesting, I think there just probably were studio pressures and things saying like, okay, make it shorter. Make it shorter. Probably my assumption, I have no knowledge. I am just making assumptions of what I saw and how it felt, but I could be wrong. Speaker 2 (00:37:15): I would also say, just as a complete aside, the example that you just pulled up of the longer horror films with Midsummer also had a female protagonist. Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:37:27): And I mean, ultimately also a movie that is dealing with issues of trauma and grief, and albeit not a sort of intergenerational trauma, but a very focused one, I think deals with all of that more successfully as well. But I mean, they're I think very, very different movies. Speaker 2 (00:37:46): Very different movies. And again, the fact that you don't have that focus on art that you have here, again, we can draw back to this piece and this exhibition in that way, but because we're going back to that, I just still feel like, wow, there feels like there was a missed opportunity even. You're probably right. You don't necessarily even have to do that much to change Anthony's character and perspective again, but you could have built in more Brianna's story Speaker 1 (00:38:14): As Speaker 2 (00:38:15): Well, and by doing that, that could have been sort of that link between the two. And a great way to kind of illustrate this difference between the societal horrors that black women experience versus black men. There would've been an opportunity, and you potentially, and again, speculation about a film that we're just talking about that's never going to happen, is silly and pointless, but it's what critics do all the time anyway. But I love the idea of that. And again, you wouldn't necessarily have had to extended the story that much further. It still could have been, you could have gotten it in under two hours, but you could have beefed up her segment of it Speaker 1 (00:38:58): And Speaker 2 (00:38:58): Then made those connections. Speaker 1 (00:38:59): Yeah, I think maybe my sort of backseat driving version of this would be like, yeah, you from the start tell kind of two stories and you start with both of them as the main characters and really give each equal time. And I think it makes your ending a little more successful Speaker 2 (00:39:19): In Speaker 1 (00:39:19): This movie because yeah, I think we spend the vast majority of the movie focused on Anthony Speaker 2 (00:39:27): And Speaker 1 (00:39:29): Brianna's only getting a little bit of time here and there, and she's an interesting character when we see her, but she just doesn't have the screen time, and I don't feel like up until that very end we're ever really seeing things that much through her perspective. Speaker 1 (00:39:43): I think a lot of this movie is also clearly meant to sort of correct the sins of the 1992 version of this movie. And maybe another problem I have with Candyman 2021 is that I can tell that a little too clearly. It's a little too obvious that that's what it's doing, where it's like, okay, Candyman 1992 is solely from a white perspective, and it's like almost everything you could go through. It's almost like you have a checklist of here are the problems with Candyman 92, and now we're going to do it the opposite. And so it doesn't necessarily, it does it in a very different way also. It is a very different movie. I don't think they're all that similar in a lot of different ways. I think this movie is much more of a slasher movie in a very traditional way of, at least in those scenes, it's a little odd in that it's not a slasher movie in that we sort are introduced to all these characters and watch 'em get picked off one by one. But it's more like we're kind of introduced to some characters who get killed off one. And that's also another problem is that I think it works better when we care about the people that we're watching get killed. And I think this movie actually is trying to make us hate most of the characters that get killed a little bit too hard. Speaker 2 (00:41:05): Well, because they're easy, they're much easier. And again, they're types, Speaker 1 (00:41:10): Yeah, yeah. They're stereotypes just as much as I think Candyman 92 is guilty of making black stereotypes. I think Candyman 2021 makes a lot of white stereotypes, and I think they're also, even if not to say necessarily stereotypes of white people in particular, but stereotypes of types of the smarmy, gallerist, they're all a little too easy. Speaker 2 (00:41:38): Yeah, it is. And again, it is very specific to the moment that we're living in Speaker 1 (00:41:44): In Speaker 2 (00:41:44): Terms of those types. And again, I'm fascinated by the talk about Brianna's story and how if we had gotten more of that, and again, the two tracks that you have, and I'm going to pull in another film that has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the stuff that we're talking about, but it's reminding me of to live and die in LA because that's one of those that, for me, seeing that film, I think it came out in the late eighties, early nineties maybe, but when it came out, it just took that idea of, again, you've got a traditional kind of crime thriller and a story you're following a protagonist, and then not to, I'm going to issue a spoiler alert here Speaker 1 (00:42:30): For a movie from the eighties, Speaker 2 (00:42:32): But in reality what happens is you lose that main character maybe two thirds of the way through the film, and you end up following a partner that he picked up along the way, and that person then becomes the focal point who has to finish the story out. It feels like that's kind of what we were supposed to feel with Kda Me in 2021 something. You get Anthony's story up to a point, and then you're right. There's sort of a transition or a setup towards the end where we lose him and we pick her up, but we don't ever feel like we knew her enough for that to work Speaker 1 (00:43:15): And Speaker 2 (00:43:15): Then to live and die in la. It did work Speaker 1 (00:43:18): Because Speaker 2 (00:43:19): We did get to see this guy work with that first protagonist long enough, and they butted heads and did the whole deal so that eventually you did know him, so that once it becomes his story, you're comfortable going the rest of the way with him, but you have to do the work to set that up. And there were a couple of hints in Candyman 2021, but you're right. Once you get her at the end, you don't feel that that character earned that place that we're supposed to have with her. Speaker 1 (00:43:54): Yeah. Yeah. Something I liked to go back to the idea of the art connection and the way it depicts art. I mean, one thing I liked in Candyman 2021 a lot is the evolution of Anthony's artwork as he transforms, he's transforming, so does his artwork. And I personally liked the more horrific he got. I liked his artwork more. It's kind of funny because the beginning and they show his artwork, and I think the gallerist gives a sort of unfavorable review, and I was like, I'm kind of with him on this one. I'm like, it's a little weak. And actually his girlfriend looks at his new painting, she's like, it's a bit literal, isn't it? And I love that those opinions felt very real. And instead of a lot of movies where it's just whatever you're looking at, people are like, it's amazing. Most things. There's not really a lot of criticism towards art in movies. I feel like people just are like, it's wonderful. Speaker 2 (00:44:56): But you see that though in how art is portrayed in film just in general, whether we're talking about fine art or writing or anything else, you have films about writers, and there are always those moments where it's kind of like, Ooh, yeah, they just read an excerpt of their latest work, and you listen to it and you're kind of like, really? Speaker 1 (00:45:17): That's Speaker 2 (00:45:17): What we're taught. This is great writing in this world. I'm not sure I want to live in that world if that's what we're getting. But yeah, film in general in terms of how it looks at and portrays art always tries to give you this sense that, well, yeah, we're just going to love this, and the world's going to love it, but there's not enough of the harsh criticism in there to say, well, wait a minute, maybe this isn't really that great. Speaker 1 (00:45:42): Well, that's the other thing. And this actually, to go back to Velvet Buzz Salt, I feel like that was a movie where everybody had only great things to say about art usually in it. And there's something like most stories about the art world in movies are usually just variations of the Emperor's new clothes that is like, we got one story to tell about art, and it's the emperor's new clothes, and that's it. It's like, especially contemporary art, I should say, because I feel like that's what usually gets that sort of critique of, haha, isn't it funny that they think this is meaningful? And so I never got that sense here. I think it treated contemporary art. It exists in the world, and it's a thing that people do. But actually another connection I was thinking of was when I saw his paintings, there's something that made me remember the controversial painting of Emmett Till that was in the Whitney Biennial a few years ago Speaker 1 (00:46:49): That was painted by a white woman. And it became this whole ordeal because of, this isn't your story to tell, this is not your story, to sort of sensationalize and put out there. And it became this huge ordeal. And so it was interesting. There was something a little bit similar in Anthony's later paintings that have, I mean, they're not one for one, and actually I like the paintings in the movie more, but there's something about the way they turn sort of violence into gesture, and that connection of abstract expression is gesture that we see, or maybe in an artist like Francis Bacon where the treatment of paint becomes violent, and that is what we're seeing reflected there. But it couldn't be more different than the work of Carol Walker in general, which is so a little cold usually in that way when violence is happening, it's generally not terribly. It's not full of expression and passion. It's something sort of detached and a little bit like, huh. Speaker 2 (00:48:00): There's also not that sense of the motion and the energy behind it either. I'm thinking of a couple of those images from Walker's pieces where a young black woman in silhouette with the heads that have been chopped off. Oh, Speaker 1 (00:48:18): That's from the Emancipation Approximation series. Yeah, it's the same. It's like the finale of that same story we were talking about earlier, because you have the swan at the beginning, which kind of seems to be referencing like LADA in the Swan, Speaker 2 (00:48:33): And Speaker 1 (00:48:33): Then by the end you have all these swans, white swans with blackhead black Speaker 2 (00:48:38): Heads, Speaker 1 (00:48:39): And then you kind of see those first floating in a pond, and then you follow. It kind of keeps going. And then we start seeing trails of heads of just these decapitated heads. And then the final panel is just this woman standing with an ax next to a tree stump and then all of these heads around her. Speaker 2 (00:48:58): But yeah, it was a little colder and detached because you didn't have this sense of there being the action of removing those heads. It was like the work was done. Speaker 1 (00:49:10): Right. And Speaker 2 (00:49:12): I mean, there is a certain heart in that because what has been done, but you also are not seeing or feeling the immediacy of it happening. Speaker 1 (00:49:23): Yeah. It's interesting that you said she was a black woman because I'm not 100% sure, but she is represented as a black silhouette. But that's another angle of Kara's work where sometimes the race is so over the top stereotype that it's very obvious what we're supposed to be seeing. And then other times it's less clear and you're like, well, maybe. And you have, again, all of these other issues that come in of how we interpret a person's race without seeing all of the details. So we're also looking at how is she dressed and things like that, which is really interesting. Oh, that's not really related to race, is it? But is it in this world she's setting up that does become really important and how we position a person. Yeah, I remember the woman is wearing this sort of big antebellum dress, Speaker 2 (00:50:17): And it is interesting how what we bring to it each of us brings to, it changes that, or tense the notion of how we see that final figure. Because for me, I look at the whole notion of the Antebellum period, and I can't imagine a white woman wielding an ax. Speaker 1 (00:50:37): Right? Right. Speaker 2 (00:50:38): So in my head, I look at that and I'm thinking, unfortunately, that was a black woman Speaker 1 (00:50:43): Because of the labor, the aspect of labor, Speaker 2 (00:50:46): Because there's work and labor involved in that. And yeah, I didn't necessarily go there. Plus, again, I see the unfortunate reality of how black people were used to inflict harm on other black bodies, which again was a way for slave masters and owners and white people to not necessarily have to dirty their hands over what's going on. So in my head, I see that whole scene and we get to the end and I'm like, yeah, she's black, but she might not be. Speaker 1 (00:51:19): Well, and that's the thing. We will probably never have a definitive answer, but it was something I also made note of when I was looking at that piece because that question of that character's race came up to me as well. And I looked at it for a while and I wasn't totally sure, and I went back and forth and I was like, well, she could be white, she could be black. I'm not really totally sure which way I think it is. Speaker 2 (00:51:45): It comes up a couple of times during the Emancipation Approximation. There are certain figures that you see along the way. And I caught myself looking at it, and I'm kind of like, well, I'm looking, I'm trying to judge facial features. Okay, what am I supposed to assume about this person based on, and again, you could go either way in those cases, and it's just like, okay, at some point I'm going to make a judgment and then kind of move on, Speaker 1 (00:52:11): Which Speaker 2 (00:52:11): Again, it gets back to the initial idea of the unreliable narrator. And at some point when we each approach that work, we make those changes, we make those decisions for ourselves, and then that becomes our new narrative. Speaker 1 (00:52:26): I mean, were there any other connections that you made between Speaker 2 (00:52:30): Carol Speaker 1 (00:52:31): Walker's work and these films and styles that we're talking about that we haven't you talked about yet? Speaker 2 (00:52:38): There's one that I am struggling to make the connection, and so I'm worried that I'll fumble through this and it won't come out in a coherent kind of fashion. Speaker 1 (00:52:49): Welcome to my world. Speaker 2 (00:52:50): I love the quotes from Walker that are interspersed, and we talked about one with the unreliable area. I've been killing that one the whole way. But there's the other one about the black hole Speaker 1 (00:53:04): And the Speaker 2 (00:53:04): Black hole being kind of what every star belongs to be. That quote stayed with me, and I was trying to figure out how it connects to the film. And again, like I said, I'm not sure that I have an exact notion for how that works. It's fascinating to me that we, and again, as a critic, and I think I mentioned to you earlier, I got a Truth and Reconciliation Project grant last year or at the beginning of this year and worked through that. And as we have spent so much time talking about race and representation as a black critic, I spend even more time kind of thinking about ways in which, if I don't see myself on screen and stories, I'm always trying to insert myself in those stories. And by doing that, I'm changing. In some cases, I'm completely changing or maybe even obliterating the narrative that's presented to me. But as I'm doing it, it's kind of my way of saying, okay, if Elliot from et, just as a random example, I see ET as a young kid, early teens maybe, and look at that world, and I'm not there at all, but it's a beautiful fun world for a young kid. And I'm like, okay, well, boom, I'm going to insert myself into that world once I do kind of like a black hole, I change Speaker 2 (00:54:31): Everything about it. I turn it into me it, it's me kind of pulling all of my experiences and longing for an opportunity to be seen in that kind of story. And I'm basically sucking all of that other stuff out and trying to find ways to turn it into something that looks more like me. Speaker 1 (00:54:55): But I think that, again, it's funny you were saying, not wanting to go back to the unreliable narrator, but a lot of the stuff we were talking about of how we do that with everything. So it's like, I see what you're saying, but at the same time it's like, yeah, but isn't that what we always do in a way, we do that all the time. Speaker 2 (00:55:15): I think we do. And I remember, and I had a podcast interview with one of my best friends that I grew up with, and it was funny, I mentioned ET because in that podcast, my buddy Dave remembered the fact that we went to see ET together. It was probably one of the first films that we've seen, we saw together, and obviously I've known this guy 30 plus years and our different perspectives of what we were seeing and experiencing on that screen. We were both young, like 12, 13 years old seeing that film. But he had less of a journey to insert himself into that story as a white guy than I did in a lot of ways. Not that much had to change for him. There were some subtleties for his own experience and longing that was there, but what he had to do was very different than what I had to do. And it's in that sense of that hole that is usually missing that black viewers go through. We've always had to exercise that muscle and that draw of changing and reinterpreting those stories that we're presented with until now. Speaker 2 (00:56:37): And I feel like I've been a bit of a curmudgeon in the last few years because I have enjoyed the changes that we've seen in the world and this idea that representation matters more, and that means that studios and producers and filmmakers are saying, yeah, we want to present more of these stories. We want to give more opportunities to find those filmmakers, find those artists, find those actors, get them involved in this process. It's a great thing. And I'm never going to say that it's not, but I will say what it does is it means that younger generations will not necessarily be activating that muscle in the same way that my generation and the generations before me had to. And I'm a little sad about that because there's something about it that, again, I'm recognizing a higher level and degree of creativity that you had to exhibit and to utilize. There's a generation of or generations to come of young black audiences who won't have to do that, won't have to flex, that muscle, won't have to play around and think about the world in that way. And I feel a little sad for them, Speaker 1 (00:57:57): Even Speaker 2 (00:57:57): Though they're going to see themselves in much different ways and will probably be very happy with, or if they aren't happy about it, they'll be able to say, well, wait a minute. I'm going to get out there and know that I have the opportunity to change what I'm seeing. But yeah, is there's a little weirdness in me that, yeah, I liked having that muscle. Speaker 1 (00:58:17): When you were talking about that though, it was funny. I wasn't sure where you were going. I wasn't. Speaker 2 (00:58:22): I wasn't sure where I was going either. Speaker 1 (00:58:24): No, I wasn't sure where you're going to end up. And I was actually really happy where it ended up, because when you're describing, I was like, this is kind of how queer people are really resistant to anytime somebody's like, we're going to make a new gay teen romance. And almost invariably every gay person over a certain age will hate it. And I think it's the same exact thing that we've had to work to put ourselves in things for so long, and we kind of like the work, right? You do. Speaker 2 (00:58:58): And I struggle with that, and I find myself in classrooms talking to students about this stuff, and I have to catch myself because again, I'm like, I don't want to be that dude that I walk away and they're just like, whatever, you struggled. And I'm like, no, I Speaker 1 (00:59:16): Can't Speaker 2 (00:59:16): Honestly say that I struggled that much. I have this conversation, my mother and I catch myself with her. Yeah, I can't really talk about struggle because I didn't struggle like she did. So I don't want to be that guy that's like, well, yeah, my struggle was so great. And then the next generation comes along and they're really what your struggle really that hard because, but again, that's just part of that generational kind of divide. But like I said, I think there is a certain strength that we should acknowledge that we had. There is a skillset that we had to develop in order to interact with these works, but that act of creation is a powerful thing. And I just worry, and again, like I said, it's not a comparative kind of thing, but it is a worry that I wonder if you're 20 years old today, are you going to lose that creative kind of switch that I have? You're not going to have to use that muscle in that way, which means it may potentially disappear. Speaker 1 (01:00:29): I think probably what we both like about that is that it's that act of interpretation and that that's the fun of it, right? It's the interpretation that's fun. It's the trying to pull the thing out that's meaningful to you, even if it wasn't really made for you Speaker 2 (01:00:47): And Speaker 1 (01:00:48): Trying to figure out, oh, this resonates. And I think it's interesting when there are those things that culturally do seem to resonate with certain audiences, despite the fact that weren't really made for them. There are plenty of movies that have become sort of strange queer texts almost, that were never have no queer people behind them, and that just something about it hit the right sensibility, just resonated with people, and it's just sort of more fun. I was thinking about this a lot recently, and I think I came in, and again, I feel like a grandpa as well when I say this kind of stuff, but I was like, man, I really would like to see gay characters in movies who don't act like boring straight people. I went to Eternals and I came away just being like, why are these gay guys so boring? Why are they so dull? And I was thinking about the gay uncles and Mrs. Doubtfire, and I'm like, I miss those kind of gays guys that you would look at and you're like, oh yeah, that's a gay couple. Got it. But they also, they had fun jobs. They were makeup artists. They did cool stuff. They weren't just boring people. I feel like now gay characters and movie, everyone's so worried about being homophobic through or stereotypical or something that they have to now, everyone has to be the sort of same bland, homogenous, straight person, but they just kiss guys and Speaker 2 (01:02:20): That's exactly what you get in Eternals. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1 (01:02:24): It's like, huh, okay. Speaker 2 (01:02:25): You could plug and pull anybody you want in the role of the partner in that. And it's like, yeah, okay. Speaker 1 (01:02:34): Yeah, Speaker 2 (01:02:34): You put a woman in there and it's like, okay, that it's the same movie. Yeah, it is. Exactly. Speaker 1 (01:02:37): It doesn't change anything. Speaker 2 (01:02:39): You put a white woman in that story and then you're like, oh, there's an interracial couple. Speaker 1 (01:02:43): Exactly. It could be completely interchangeable. And that's the thing that probably rings false is it's like these characters experiences have had no effect on their lives in any way. Right. And of course, that's the other thing that's weird about that movie as well, is it is in the title, they are eternal people and that has had no seemingly effect on their lives. When we got to that scene, I just kept thinking about the pathos of watching your partner die early and all of these things like watching your kid get old and all of this stuff, and it's like, Nope, we're not going to engage with any of that. The idea of how do these people even function as humans and what does that mean? And there's all of this really big ideas that could have been tapped into, and they're not at all, but this is not an Eternalist podcast, Speaker 2 (01:03:40): But it is, again, those are cultural issues Speaker 1 (01:03:45): That Speaker 2 (01:03:45): Are part of that film that, well, I say part of that film, but they're barely part of that film. They are hinted at in that it sets, the stage is set, but then left completely up to us to determine whether we want to go down those pathways or not. And if you do go down those pathways, which obviously we did, you come away frustrated, but if you didn't, was barely a blip on the radar for anyone else. Speaker 1 (01:04:13): Yeah. I mean, I just feel like it sort of obviously had ambitious goals of being very diverse and having a very diverse cast, but then did not want to engage with those perspectives in any way. No, absolutely. I could change the race of any of these characters to, it wouldn't change anything apart from the fact that maybe it would be weird if there was a white Bollywood star or something like that might feel a little odd, but otherwise, it's like there's sort of no perspective to anyone. Speaker 2 (01:04:47): I mean, again, as an artistic director of a film festival that focuses on disability, I look at the speech in there Speaker 1 (01:04:55): Who's Speaker 2 (01:04:55): Deaf, and it never engages with this idea of her being deaf. Speaker 1 (01:05:00): What that Speaker 2 (01:05:01): Means. She's an eternal, and she has all of these powers. I guess you're supposed to go with the general message that because we don't talk about her being deaf as a disability, it is just seen as just part of who she is. We're Speaker 1 (01:05:15): Supposed Speaker 2 (01:05:16): To embrace that. I'm like, but that's not, again, she's lived 7,000 years on this planet or more. Her interactions with people seemingly would've changed how we look at and talk about disability, but it didn't have any effect at all because yeah, she's deaf and the world just kept on going, and we see that as a disability now, and it's like, but we wouldn't have, if we had seen a moment in her life where she was able to show and illustrate that Speaker 1 (01:05:49): They never, and it's like you could, again, this is a movie with magical people with finger lasers. You can really do anything you want in this world. You could set it in an alternate world where everybody understands sign language because of her existence. Right, right. That could be a really fascinating viewpoint and at least would acknowledge the differences between our reality and instead of what we've got here, which is just that what you're saying, it's just like, oh, yep, she's deaf, Speaker 2 (01:06:22): But she had no impact on how we perceive abilities in the world, regular old human abilities. It's like it didn't happen. So I don't know what that means. Speaker 1 (01:06:33): Yeah, yeah. No, Speaker 2 (01:06:34): But it's still a fascinating kind of cultural bit that bubbles up out of there that, like I said, we don't know what to do with it. That's an unfortunate reality for all of this. I mean, we live in a world now where when Black Panther, the movie came out, all of a sudden everyone was so focused and so excited about that representation of black superheroes, that notion of Africa as a different place and a place of power and influence in the world, and having resources beyond what anyone assumed or thought about on the continent at that time. But we have to think too about the idea that when the Black Panther was first introduced in the probably late sixties, he was a stereotypical character at the end of the day. No, they didn't get Speaker 1 (01:07:27): It right. Speaker 2 (01:07:28): It's just again, we got it right within the last five years, and yes, there had been moves to make sure that there was a progression to get that character to that point, but again, where it started, they weren't thinking about any of that. Speaker 1 (01:07:46): Yeah. Speaker 2 (01:07:47): I mean, it was a feel good thing for them at the time, but it was feel good, but it was still rooted in stereotypes. But again, like I said, that takes me back to that generational kind of notion and the creative abilities that viewers and audiences have or will not have moving forward. I talked about that experience of ET with my buddy, his interpretation and the ability to leap into that story was not as great. I think we're going to get to the stage where as marginalized audience as a whole, we will be closer or getting closer to his vision and his experience of things. And there's a part of me that's like, I don't know that I would want that. And I love Dave to death. I do. I've known him 40 plus years and I'm like, I don't want that. I want, I want to know that I've had that opportunity to play around with and exert that kind of power, which again, is going to take me back to that black hole from Carol Walker. What's so meaningful about that quote now is the idea that we understand the power of a black hole and we understand it to be greater than just the notion of a star. Right? The black hole is what stars really want to be. Speaker 1 (01:09:23): Well, thank you for being my guest today, tt. Speaker 2 (01:09:25): It was a pleasure. I'm always glad to be here. Speaker 1 (01:09:28): I mean, I think you've been on the show for the podcast. You've been on it three times. That is the highest number of times anyone's been on. Alright. Yeah. So congratulations. Hey, Speaker 2 (01:09:42): Now that I've earned that top spot, it's all about extending it. Speaker 1 (01:09:47): Yeah. Keep it going. Keep it going. Well, thanks again. Speaker 2 (01:09:50): Thank you. Speaker 1 (01:09:56): Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the art yourself. The museum is currently open, but please visit our website for the most up-to-date information about operating hours and museum policies. Current special exhibitions are Carol Walker, cut to the quick, simply brilliant artist jewelers of the 1960s and 1970s and American painting. The eighties Revisited is back on view now on the second floor in the Shift Gallery. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and we also have an Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Music by Blau, and as always, please rate and review us to help others find the show. I'm Russell, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.