Genre Reveal Party!
Genre Reveal Party!
Dave Maher and Madeline Lane-McKinley
Examining TV and movies through the lenses of politics and genre: its definition, its limits, and what we can learn by exploding them. Madeline is a writer, cultural critic, and the author of 'Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times.' Dave is a comedian and actor, who has appeared on 'This American Life' and FX's 'The Bear.' Sometimes it's just them. Sometimes they have guests. Each episode, one person chooses a tv show or movie to discuss. At the end, we do a "genre reveal" where we name the highly specific genre the movie or series belongs to, such as Meta-Clusterfuck, Child Liberationist Anti-State Vision, or Hoodiecore. There will be spoilers, partially because it’s our goal that you don’t need to have watched the thing to enjoy the podcast.
Rothaniel: This Only Works If We Feel Like Family with guest Tim Barnes
To conclude our first season on "Family Matters," we watched Jerrod Carmichael's 2022 comedy special Rothaniel with special guest Tim Barnes. Tim helped us unpack this incredible special and Carmichael's discussion of family secrets, Black kinship and family experiences, coming out, and more. We also talk about Carmichael's relationship to other iconic Black comedians, especially Richard Pryor.Spoilers: Chairs in stand-up comedy, the vibes of Bo Burnham, audience participation, edge-lords, looking directly into the camera. Tim Barnes is a comedian and television writer whose absurdist humor brings light to social issues from unexpected angles. Tim has written for the Nickelodeon sitcom Warped!, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Nickelodeon's All That revival, Comedy Central, the NPR quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, and even documented his testicles once for Men's Health. Chicago Magazine named Tim one of the 16 Chicago Comics You Should Check Out... and The Chicago Tribune has described him as "a smooth wordsmith who is sharp, polished and confident..."Please check out Tim's strange and fantastic short film, Inland Empire (a Vimeo Staff Pick!), which he wrote and stars in with his good friend Ian Abramson.Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter, and email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, suggestions, guest requests, and genre reveals.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jul 28, 2023
1 hr 59 min
Cruising: What We’re Doing Is Affecting Us with guest Max Fox
This week we discussed Cruising, William Friedkin's highly controversial 1980 film starring Al Pacino as a cop who goes undercover to catch a serial killer who's targeting gay men in the underground subculture of S&M and leather bars of New York City. Joining us this week to help us think about this confusing, confused, and fascinating film is writer, editor and translator Max Fox. We talk about attempts to sabotage the production of the film in the summer of '79 by gay protestors, the ways this film has been re-considered more recently, as well as James Franco's weird 2013 "docufilm" re-imagining footage of explicit sex scenes that Friedkin cut in order to acquire an R-rating from the MPAA. Spoilers: werewolves, sexual paranoia, all method actors are undercover cops, Madeline's Pacino impression, "rich texts."Max is part of the editorial collective for Pinko Magazine, edited Chris Chitty's posthumous book Sexual Hegemony with Duke University Press, and translated Guy Hocquenghem's The Amphitheater of the Dead for Guillotine Press. He also co-authored a book with Madeline, Fag/Hag, which will be out next year from Rosa Press.Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter, and email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, suggestions, guest requests, and genre reveals.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jul 21, 2023
1 hr 48 min
Jordan Peele's Us: We Are Americans
We are them and we watched Us. Jordan Peele's 2019 movie Us.Spoilers: Santa Cruz housing crisis, Hands Across America bookkeeping, the Jordan Peele trilogy, Madeline thinks infamous horror villain Jason is a ghost.Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter, and email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, suggestions, guest requests, and genre reveals.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jul 14, 2023
2 hr 6 min
The Royal Tenenbaums: We're Not Related By Blood
This week we took some time to revisit The Royal Tenenbaums, a film neither of us had seen in about twenty years, but which falls very clearly into this season's theme of films about family with lots and lots of genre troubles. We chatted about Wes Anderson's career, the politics of his aesthetics, and also what we didn't notice about this film in our late teens. Spoilers: hot pink, hot goss on Gene Hackman, the hipsterdom of hating other hipsters, needle dropping, castration anxiety, Richie's suicide scene should be edited out George Lucas style, CD players with skip protection. Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter, and email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, suggestions, guest requests, and genre reveals.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jul 7, 2023
1 hr 54 min
Caché: We Did Not Send the Tapes with guest Bettina Johnson
This week we discussed Caché, the 2005 French film by Austrian director Michael Haneke, starring Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, and Maurice Bénichou, and suggested by our guest Bettina Johnson. Caché is about a well-off French family terrorized by a series of surveillance videotapes left on their front porch. This terror reverberates from the Paris Massacre of 1961, which had only recently been acknowledged by the French government when the film was made more than four decades later. Through the course of the film, we see how this unspeakable moment in history and the horrors of colonialism haunt generations. Spoilers: guilt, colonialism, disagreeing about how to pronounce "Haneke," Paul Gilroy doesn't buy it.Bettina Johnson is a co-founder and current steering committee member of Liberation Library, a prison industrial complex abolitionist books-to-incarcerated youth project. They're also a facilitator and member of other abolitionist campaigns like Defund CPD. Donate to Liberation Library's GoFundMe! And follow Bettina on Instagram @bettinajaywalker and Twitter @lesypersound.Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter, and email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, suggestions, guest requests, and genre reveals.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jun 30, 2023
2 hr
Fate of the Furious: We Are the Crocodile at the Watering Hole with guests Em Gonzalez and Jo Giardini
We learned so much in this episode about the meaning of family, freedom, and driving real fast. While Dave was a fan already, Madeline had never seen a Fast & Furious movie, so we called on two experts to fulfill this mission: Em Gonzalez and Jo Giardini. Em and Jo help us unpack everything from the geopolitical to the penis allusions of the entire franchise. Most of the discussion is about the eighth installment, Fate of the Furious, and none of the discussion requires any previous knowledge of any of it.Spoilers: Vin Diesel impressions, no blondes allowed, Paul Walker is no longer alive, cars are impossible, man tears, no fatalities.Em Gonzalez is an organizer around prison and police abolition, reproductive justice, and anti-sexual and domestic violence. They love chisme, fantastic meals, and long walks on brisk days. From the depths of Shudder to the best of Criterion Channel, Em enjoys various types of media and how they impact the way we look at the world and reflect moments in time. Email them your favorite 80s movie at [email protected] Jo Giardini is a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where they teach for the Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Their research focuses on twentieth-century poetics, communalist and separatist movements, literary genre, and the intersection of political economy, racial capitalism, and the history of sexuality. They're currently working on a history of Johns Hopkins University's Gender Identity Clinic (1966-1979) and the production of trans narratives in the 1970s, among other projects. Hit them up with your favourite slasher recommendations, Trailer Park Boys hot takes, and used bookstore stories at [email protected] us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter, and email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, suggestions, guest requests, and genre reveals.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jun 23, 2023
2 hr 51 min
Picard Season 3: We Are the Original Series with guest M. E. O'Brien
This week we talked to author M.E. O'Brien about the final season of Picard, and her forthcoming book Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communization of Care (Pluto Press 2023). We discussed the political legacy of Star Trek and recent series in the franchise, and the ways that sci-fi can help us better understand what exactly it might mean to "abolish the family."Spoilers: woke mob borg, the family form, the correct pronunciation of "Data," nostalgia, Troi and her outfits, father stuff.M.E. O’Brien writes on gender and communist theory. She co-edits two magazines, Pinko, on gay communism, and Parapraxis, on psychoanalytic theory and politics. She previously co-authored the novel Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072. Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter, and email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, suggestions, guest requests, and genre reveals.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jun 16, 2023
1 hr 31 min
THE MICHAEL DOUGLAS TRILOGY: When Did We Have the Power? with guest Jasmine Bridges
This week we're getting into some cringe-rotic territory with a conversation about THE MICHAEL DOUGLAS TRILOGY: Fatal Attraction (1987), Basic Instinct (1992), and Disclosure (1994). Spanning from the Reagan era into the Clinton years, this trilogy features so many flavors of feminist backlash. These films have different directors, writers, producers, and co-stars, but what they have in common is The Michael Douglas Character and his lady problems. To help us understand all this, we called on Jasmine Bridges, Madeline's best friend since the 9th grade, to tell us about the erotic thrillers of this time, and much more.Spoilers: Michael Douglas's butt, career women, family values, #believemen, virtual reality, Dennis Miller, sexy VHS covers, power mullets. Jasmine Bridges' beige flag is having a background in psychology but forcing everyone she meets to take online personality tests. When it comes to TV, she lives for trash and aliens. Email her 00spaceistheplace00@gmail if you were the other person who watched Foundation or you have important 90 Day Fiancé UK hot takes.Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter, and email us at [email protected] with your thoughts, suggestions, guest requests, and genre reveals.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jun 9, 2023
2 hr 31 min
BONUS: Succession Finale: We Are Bullshit with guest Kyle Lane-McKinley
Back by popular demand, we're doing an encore discussion of Succession! We've got some emails and social media polls to share as well. In our first episode of the podcast, Dave and Madeline made some provisional genre reveals (Dave said "American satire accordion," and Madeline said "at worst, cluster-fuck, at best, meta-cluster-fuck"). Now that we've reached the conclusion of Succession, we're going to make our final calls on the genre reveal with guest Kyle Lane-McKinley. Kyle and Madeline know each other pretty well. Spoilers: the finale, correct opinions about Succession, BattleBots, decline of British television supremacy, rise of slop.Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jun 5, 2023
1 hr 44 min
A Serious Man: We Didn't Do Anything with guests Daniel Strauss and Sheera Talpaz
This week we're talking about A Serious Man, the 2009 Coen Brothers film starring Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik, a Jewish physics professor whose family mostly hates him, and whose bad luck just keeps getting worse. While A Serious Man is certainly Coenesque or Coensy, we wanted to think more about the film's genre and the politics of Jewish humor with our guests, Daniel and Sheera. Spoilers: Santana Abraxas, F Troop, Richard Kind, threatening goys, more serious men, Sy Ableman, girls just wanna shampoo; ALSO: you might hear Madeline's cat killing a rat in the background at some point. Daniel Strauss is an LA-based writer and actor. He's an alum of The Second City MainStage in Chicago. You might know him from Curb Your Enthusiasm, Bust Down on Peacock, or the Hulu series There's... Johnny! Sheera Talpaz is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies at Oberlin College, who's taught courses on Jewish comedy along with much else. Follow us @genrerevealpod on Instagram and Twitter.Follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ on Twitter and Instagram.Follow Dave @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to his other podcast, This Is Your Afterlife.---Music by Kirk Rawlings from Courtesy and beige on beigeCover art by Tuli Lane-McKinley
Jun 2, 2023
2 hr 1 min
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