The 2024 Dionysus Awards

Josh Landy
Can a musical about a doll be feminist?

Jeremy Sabol
What kinds of crime can never be forgiven?

Josh Landy
Is destiny a real thing?

Jeremy Sabol
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy

Jeremy Sabol
And I’m Jeremy Sabol, sitting in for Ray Briggs. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus where I direct the Philosophy and Literature Initiative and Jeremy teaches in the Structured Liberal Education program.

Jeremy Sabol
I’m joining Josh once again for our annual celebration of some of our favorite, most philosophically compelling movies of the past year—it’s the Dionysus Swards.

Josh Landy
Jeremy, 2023 was kind of a mixed year for film, but there was some really great stuff in there, like “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Zone of Interest,” “Poor Things.”

Jeremy Sabol
I loved all of those. But today we’ll be giving awards to some other movies, including a pair of films vying for Most Disturbing Exploration of a Female Criminal Who Thinks She May Be Innocent.”

Josh Landy
We’ll also consider nominees in the category of Most Moving Film—

Jeremy Sabol
Or TV show!

Josh Landy
…about Difficult Choices.

Jeremy Sabol
And in the category Best Film about Social Justice that Wonders What Makes a Good Film about Social Justice, we’ll be thinking about “American Fiction” and “Barbie.”

Josh Landy
We’ll also take nominations from listeners like you, who’ve written to us about other thought-provoking, Dionysus -worthy films.

Jeremy Sabol
Now back in the summer, there was this fun pretend rivalry between “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” another excellent movie.

Josh Landy
So we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Holly J. McDede, to find out more about our so-called “Summer of Barbenheimer.” She files this report.

Oppenheimer song
He’s a physicist with a naughty twist—Oppenheimer…

Holly McDede
If you had to sum up popular culture in 2023 with one word, “Barbenheimer” might be it

Oppenheimer song
This guy is on it, his bombs are atomic.

Moviegoer 1
We are doing mom’s brunch and Barbie next week. So we’re doing a double feature with Oppenheimer and Barbie.

Holly McDede
Moviegoers flocked to see “Barbie,” a film about the doll, and “Oppenheimer,” a film about the creator of the atomic bomb, on the same day.

Moviegoer 2
You know when you watch a scary movie needed like an upper afterwards, so likem make feel less terrified? That’s kind of what we’re gonna do.

Moviegoer 3
The first one has got to be Oppenheime,r just because I could get the depressing stuff out of the way first. Oh, that was a downer. Okay, let’s go have fun at Barbie.

Steve Granelli
It was this representation of dark and light, masculine feminine, the movie snob versus the casual movie goer.

Holly McDede
Steve Granelli is a professor at Northeastern University where he studies popular culture and messaging.

Steve Granelli
It was coming together disparate audiences all together on the same day.

Holly McDede
The release day for both films became like an event in an era with few timed events. The Super Bowl is a rare example.

Super Bowl LVIII
Mahomes flings it… It’s there—Hardman! Jackpot, Kansas City!

Holly McDede
Fans couldn’t wait for either film to come out on Netflix to be part of the phenomenon. The other reason Barbie resonated with people is because so many were curious about how such a popular doll has so much history and baggage with be portrayed.

Steve Granelli
Oh, is this going to be a subversion of a traditional Barbie narrative?

Holly McDede
Moviegoers showed up to Barbiemania dressed in pink.

Barbie
I feel so beautiful. So do I. It’s the best day ever. It is the best day ever, and so is yesterday and so is tomorrow and so is the day after tomorrow and even Wednesday and every day from now until forever! Do you ever think about dying?

Steve Granelli
Is this going to address like you know the impact that it’s had on the presentation of feminism—like how is this going to be done? Do we trust Greta Gerwig enough that we’re just going to walk into a theater and say show me what happened?

Oppenheimer
I feel that I have blood on my hands.

Holly McDede
And when it comes to “Oppenheimer,” people also were already familiar with the storyline: how bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan and led to the deaths of 200,000 people in an effort to end WWII. Audiences just needed to meet Robert Oppenheimer, considered the father of the atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer
Dr. Oppenheimer—it’s an honor. Mr. President. Please. Thank you.

Holly McDede
Steve Granelli says a cultural movie event like Barbenheimer would be difficult to manufacture again. Movie producers could plan for two very different films premiering on the same day and see if people come out to see both, but no one wants to feel like they’re part of a marketing ploy.

Steve Granelli
When audiences perceive the manipulation, when they’re like they think we’re gonna go see this so they’re putting out this on this day—anybody who’s kind of if you’re knowledgeable about that I can see that people may perceive that as condescending.

Moviegoer 4
I’m not seeing Barbie. You’re not gonna pay to see Barbie why not? Doesn’t look good. You never had the Barbie Dreamhouse? Naw, dog!

Holly McDede
Barbie and Oppenheimer became a temporary boon for theaters across the country that are still struggling post pandemic. And if the unlikely combo of plastic dolls and atomic bombs can help cinema survive…

Barbie
You understand that humans only have one ending. Ideas through forever; humans, not so much.

Holly McDede
Maybe that’s what it takes. But keep in mind, movie executives, we want the power to control the next cultural phenomenon.

Barbie
I want to do the imaginin; I don’t want to be the idea.

Holly McDede
For Philosophy Talk, I’m Holly J. McDede.

Josh Landy
Thanks for that blockbuster report, Holly. I’m Josh Landy, with me is my guest co-host Jeremy Sabol and today it’s our annual Dionysus Awards, for the most philosophically-compelling movies of the past year.

Jeremy Sabol
But let’s get right to our first award. We’ve got two contenders in the category, Best Film about Social Justice that Wonders What Makes a Good Film about Social Justice: “American Fiction” and “Barbie.”

Josh Landy
You know, Jeremy, I absolutely loved Barbie. I loved it! It’s not just a powerful exploration of gender relations, it’s also a hoot: those extravagant sets the fabulous performances, the hilarious musical numbers, there’s even a reference to a Proust Barbie.

Jeremy Sabol
That’s the one that didn’t sell, right? Was it the plastic madeleines?

Josh Landy
Oh, no, I don’t know. But I love it so much. And there’s a brilliant joke involving a politically aware teenager calling Barbie a fascist.

Barbie
She thinks I’m a fascist? I don’t control the railways or the flow of commerce!

Jeremy Sabol
I thought that was great, too. But I’m not sure about your claim that this movie is a powerful exploration of gender relations.

Josh Landy
What do you mean? You’ve got a vision of a world ruled by women. You’ve got a nefarious Ken who wants to introduce the patriarchy into Barbieland. You got a barnstorming speech by America Ferrera illustrating the contradictions of gendered expectations.

Barbie
You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood but always stand out and always be grateful.

Jeremy Sabol
Well sure, Josh. But what’s the name of the movie again?

Josh Landy
Barbie?

Jeremy Sabol
Right—last time I checked, Barbie was a product sold by Mattel. This movie was the brainchild of Mattel. I mean, it’s a featured length advertisement, just like Steve Grannell he was saying earlier. And what is Mattel up to? Convincing girls that they need to grow up into impossibly tall and skinny women. And by the way, Margot Robbie isn’t going to disabuse them of that.

Josh Landy
But the movie’s way ahead of you, Jeremy. Look, first of all, there are zillions of Barbies in this movie— ifferent body types, different races, different professions. There’s even a transgender Barbie Plus it makes a joke about Margo Robbie being this star.

Barbie
What? You’re so pretty? I’m not stereotypical Barbie pretty. Mote to the filmmakers: Margo Robbie is the wrong person to cast if you want to make this point.

Josh Landy
This movie totally knows what it’s doing.

Jeremy Sabol
Okay, but so what? I mean, self awareness can’t save something sucky from being sucky. This movie presents itself as a feminist manifesto, and it totally fails.

Josh Landy
What do you mean?

Jeremy Sabol
Well, okay, this is a bit of a spoiler, but think about what happens halfway through. Barbieland gets taken over by the patriarchy. And guess what? The Barbies love it. Patriarchy is fun! That’s not feminism.

Barbie
Anyone need a brewski beer? What are you doing, you’re a doctor! I like being a helpful decoration. And Alan likes to help me give all the Kens foot massages. No, I don’t I don’t like that. We love it.

Josh Landy
I see that bit totally differently. Jeremy like for me. That’s a brilliant exploration of what some philosophers have called false consciousness. You know when you think you want something, but that desire has really been foisted on you by your culture.

Jeremy Sabol
You’re probably thinking and one of my favorite philosophers, Simone de Beauvoir. She says the patriarchy can make itself seem very attractive. Women can cite all kinds of reasons for buying into it. That’s what makes it so dangerous.

Josh Landy
Exactly!

Jeremy Sabol
Okay, but even if you’re right that the middle part of Barbie is about false consciousness—nd that’s a big if—there’s still the small matter of the ending.

Josh Landy
Alright, what about it?

Jeremy Sabol
Okay, plot spoiler: the Barbies fight back! And what are their weapons? Their so-called feminine wiles.

Barbie
We’ll distract them with the old standby: wearing glasses so that they can discover that you’re pretty. May I? Sure, go ahead.

Jeremy Sabol
All this does is reinforce bad gender stereotypes. And it’s hardly a recipe for revolution. You’re not going to change the world by smiling cutely.

Josh Landy
Might I remind you, Jeremy, that we’re talking about a movie?

Jeremy Sabol
Sure—but you’re the one that said it was feminist.

Josh Landy
It’s a feminist movie, but it’s not a feminist manifesto. Look, it could have done all the things you seem to be asking for. But then it wouldn’t have got all those viewers in the door. It’s broken all kinds of records. Don’t you want people to see movies that make them think about gender?

Jeremy Sabol
Well, sure, but I also wish broccoli tasted more like m&ms. The thing is, if it did, it would be m&ms. The very fact that Barbie appealed to so many people is kind Nothing bad sign.

Josh Landy
I don’t agree. Barbie isn’t an art movie that failed. It’s a bit of fluffy, big budget mass entertainment that miraculously went beyond its remit.

Jeremy Sabol
That does remind me of one thing. That fantastic note of sarcasm early in the film, where the narrative says…

Past Lives
Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solid.

Jeremy Sabol
She isn’t just making fun of Barbie dolls. She’s also warning critics not to expect too much of this one movie, as though a piece of mass entertainment is going to fix the world’s problems.

Barbie
After all, they’re living in Barbieland. Who am I to burst their bubble?

Josh Landy
Thinking about burdening us with the problems of the world, let’s talk about “American Fiction.”

Jeremy Sabol
Sure. American Fiction is all about the expectations that society places on African American writers. The protagonist, Monk, just wants to tell timeless, universal stories. But that’s not what the world wants.

Josh Landy
Right, in this movie, white readers desperately want black fictions to be testimony. In fact, they want it all to tell a single story a story of suffering poverty and desperate choices.

American Fiction
I think now will come to some sort of, you know, dumb melodramatic sob story where you highlight your broken interiority—something, something like, I don’t know. I hates this man. I hates my mama, and I hates myself.

Jeremy Sabol
You can see why I’m well intentioned white reader might want that. Lots of great art shares diverse perspectives on life, and helps us to understand why things are the way they are. And when it comes to race relations in today’s America, there’s an awful lot that needs explaining.

Josh Landy
Still demanding that all African American novels be a form of sociology and represent only one kind of life in the movie—this is a way of relegating them to second-class status.

American Fiction
Wait a minute, what why are these books here? I’m not sure. I would imagine that this author Ellison is black. That’s me—Ellison. Yeah, he is me. And he and I are black. Bingo, no, bingo, dead. These books have nothing to do with African American studies. They’re just literature. The blackest thing about this one is the ink.

Josh Landy
These novels never get to lay claim to universality or to the many functions of fiction available to white authors. They only ever get to do one thing.

Jeremy Sabol
I remember Toni Morrison raising a similar concern. In one of her prefaces. She said white readers trap African American writers in a box judging every work by political criteria: “If the novel was good, it was because it was faithful to a certain kind of politics. If it was bad, it was because it was faithless to them.” The judgment was based on whether black people are or are not like this.

Josh Landy
Right, American Fiction is raising the same questions about what readers should want, what society should venerate, what we should be expecting from our artists.

Jeremy Sabol
Plus, this movie is hilarious. And it’s beautifully subtle. The protagonist, Monk, has some real serious flaws—I wouldn’t want to date him. And the movie raises questions but it doesn’t answer them for us.

American Fiction
I don’t want him to make some grandiose speech, spoonfeeding everyone the moral of the story. Tthere is no moral—that’s the idea. I like the ambiguity.

Josh Landy
And the other great thing about American Fiction is its subplot. I don’t want to give too much away here. But the subplot is all about Monk’s everyday life: a parent with dementia, a sibling with health problems, another sibling who’s living the high life, the fear of becoming your father. This is exactly the kind of story that Monk wants to tell.

American Fiction
You gave her opioids to sleep? Yeah, you ever seen a heroin addict? Those guys take naps standing up. It’s dangerous. Look, I’m keeping an eye on her—I’m a doctor. So am I! Right, maybe if we need to revive a sentence.

Jeremy Sabol
This movie is about a guy who can’t get to tell his timeless stories about universal human issues. But the movie itself does exactly that. In the movie, African American writers can’t achieve success that way. But in real life, this film written by African American writers is up for multiple awards, and deservedly so.

Josh Landy
So thinking of awards Jeremy, we’ve got Barbie, and we’ve got American Fiction:which should win the Dionysus?

Jeremy Sabol
I loved both of them. But there’s no question in my mind. American Fiction isn’t just better than Barbie. I think it was the film of the year.

Josh Landy
So the 2024 Dionysus Award for Best Film about Social Justice that Wonders What Makes a Good Film about Social Justic goes to…

Jeremy Sabol
American Fiction!

American Fiction
I be standing outside in the night. Deadbeat dads, rappers, crack—you said you wanted black stuff. That’s black, right? I see what you’re doing.

Jeremy Sabol
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. It’s our annual Dionysus Awards, honoring the most thought-provoking movies of the past year.

Josh Landy
Coming up: we’ll consider nominees in the categories of Most Disturbing Exploration of a Female Criminal Who Thinks She May Be Innocent and Most Moving Film—

Jeremy Sabol
Or TV show!

Josh Landy
…about Difficult Choices.

Jeremy Sabol
Movies about kismet, crime and confusion, along with nominations from you, our listeners—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Josh Landy
It’s the annual Dionysus Awards. I’m Josh Landy, and this is Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything…

Jeremy Sabol
…except your intelligence. I’m Jeremy Sabol, sitting in for Ray Briggs. And we’re thinking about movies from the past year that challenged our assumptions, and made us think about things in new ways.

Josh Landy
Two films that made me think about things in new ways were “May-December” and Saint Omer.” Saint Omer is a French-language film directed by Alice Diop, and it’s about a woman on trial for murdering her infant and also about a woman who comes to witness the trial.

Jeremy Sabol
And May-December is about a woman who slept with an underage coworker at a pet store, and also about the actress who’s going to play her in a movie

Josh Landy
To find out which of those two offers the Most Disturbing Exploration of a Female Criminal Who Thinks She May Be Innocent, We spoke to Francey Russell, professor of philosophy at Columbia University, who works on cinematic aesthetics and writes film criticism. We asked her why these two films make such a good pair.

Francey Russell
They both take as their subject, a news story from the real world, that kind of true crime story about a sensational crime committed by a woman. So they have both kind of Greek tragic proportions, and yet they’re based in reality. Both films engage in a really interesting visual and narrative engagement with two women and the sort of uneasy relationships between them. And I think the question of knowledge of another and self knowledge are themes that run throughout both of these films.

Josh Landy
Okay, “Saint Omer” I found brilliant and deeply troubling, based on a true story of a woman who killed her own child. And in the film, at least she’s presented as not understanding why she did it. Is that part of what you’re talking about? When you say these are films that explore self knowledge? That seems like a case of radical failure of self knowledge? I don’t know why I did this truly heinous thing?

Francey Russell
No, it’s truly unsettling. The character—her name is Laurence—her first words in the movie, the judge asks do you know why you’re killed your child? And she says, I don’t know. I hope this trial will help me figure it out.

Saint Omer
Madame Coly… Savez-vous porquoi vous avez tué votre fille? Je ne sais pais. J’espère que ce procès pourra me l’apprendre. Est-ce que vous reconnaissez les faits? Oui, je les reconnais, Madame la Presidente. Je ne suis pas sûr d’être la vraie responsable dans cet affaire.

Barbie
The character fully admits that she committed the crime; that’s not in question. And so then there’s an interesting question about, well, what are we doing here? What’s the mystery? What’s the legal procedure after and what are we as audience members after and wising? I don’t know, right at the beginning, the question of figuring this woman out and whether she will be figural, I think becomes a sort of central site of dramatic tension.

Josh Landy
And it makes a difference in terms of the outcome of the court case, right? Because one thing is established, she’s confessed to the murder. But the question is, how should we understand the murder? The prosecution says, She’s a monster, she needs to be stopped. And the defense says, well, she’s sick, and she needs help. And an expert witness says, well, she deserves our empathy. Maybe there’s a kind of justification, which is sort of odd. So there are stakes here, right? Usually a courtroom drama, did the person do it or who did it? This is not a who done it. This is a why done it.

Barbie
I see a few different discourses of explanation operating in the film. So there’s the question of insanity, which would mean she was not culpable. And that she would be I think the defense attorney wants to say she deserves some kind of psychiatric treatment rather than a sentence. There’s the prosecuting attorney who says she’s not mad, she’s fully capable. She’s vengeful, she’s angry, and she killed her daughter, and so should be tried accordingly. And then the last discourse that comes into play is witchcraft, because she is from Senegal. And even though she identifies with a sort of Western philosophical tradition, she calls herself a Cartesian thinker. At one point she studied Vidkun Stein in college. But she says, witchcraft is the only explanation nothing else makes sense. And then later, her mother gets on the witness stand to talk about this.

Saint Omer
Tout ça est orchestré. J’entends vos sourires. Mais moi, ça ne me fait pas rire. Il y a de la sorcerie, je vous assure—une malédiction, même.

Jeremy Sabol
I want to go back to something you said at the very outset, which is that both of these films involve an intermediary so they’re, you know, on the one hand, we’re focused on this woman who’s done this heinous crime, and we’re in a courtroom, and we’re worried about what she’s done, and how can she explain it. But we also have this witness who is so much part of the center stage of the film, and also who often in disturbing ways, stands for us as viewers that we somehow are kind of in her place. What do you make of that, like what Santo Mayor doing there with this intermediary character who is kind of, as you say, in a Greek tragic way, it’s almost like a chorus that we have to join in on.

Francey Russell
I think the character of Rama and Saint Omar is crucial. Anthony Lane wrote in his New Yorker article that she was unnecessary for the film. And I just thought it completely misread what the film is doing, because it seems to be to be so much a relay of identifications and transferences. So Rama comes to report on the trial for a book that she’s going to call Medea castaway. So we also learned that Rama is pregnant, and the film suggests she’s ambivalent about it. And so this question of our access to Lawrence, this opaque figure is always mediated through Rama and her anxieties about what this woman’s capacities for violence and for incomprehension. How is she implicated in that? And how does what kind of academic distance is she going to be able to retain in order to write this story, if any?

Josh Landy
Yeah, I think that’s a great point. And and something I found kind of brilliantly troubling, is the sort of set of ways in which Rama seems to be thinking about this court case, because as you said, she is thinking of making a film about it, which she wants to go midday and have rajai Castaway Medea? You know, because Madea I mean, she’s a complicated figure, but she’s not a villain quite in the Greek tradition. Right? She’s given justifications for the act that she’s committed. And the castaway part makes it sound like well, really the way to think about her as a victim. She’s a kind of a victim of a system and we hear about some pretty significant racism towards her and her boyfriend, you know, was not a great guy who took advantage of her and so on. And there’s also the very beginning of the film, we see Rama teaching a class and talking about a scene from Hiroshima Mon Amour, the film by Marguerite Duras. And saying, look at Duras sublimating suffering into something lyrical

Saint Omer
Cette femme, objet d’opprobre, devient grace au mot de l’écrivain non seulement une héroine, mais un sujet en état de grace.

Josh Landy
Like we’re supposed to think of what we see later in the film in the light of that. Either this infanticide is being a sort of aesthetic sized turning awfulness into something lyrical, which is troubling. Or it’s being kind of exonerated, well, you know, she’s kind of a victim of circumstance. So of course, she killed her own child.

Francey Russell
There’s a way in which the opacity of the Laurence character, one of the things that film does so well is shows how that can be intensely attractive to us, and a sleight of fantasies. So someone who commits a taboo and refuses to give an account of themselves is a very compelling figure for us, they have sort of walked the boundary of what we accept as human, and refuse to make sense of themselves in the terms we find acceptable. And so in a way, I think the only discourse that can be adequate to that would be something aesthetic, because morality and legality and agency and psychiatry suddenly feel to fall incredibly short of what we’ve seen.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, it’s our annual Dionysus Award show, and we’re thinking about the most disturbing exploration of a female criminal who thinks she may be innocent with Francey Russell from Columbia University.

Jeremy Sabol
This is a really great transition to thinking about “May December” in which we have another female protagonist who has committed a taboo a criminal act having sex with a minor, although not as opaque as in Saint Omer, but who seems more comfortable than maybe the audience is meant to be with the choices that she’s made.

May December
My son Georgie was in the same year as Joe at school. So technically, I would have met him there, but I don’t have any memory of that, right. That everyone’s pretty close knit here on the island and you kind of recognize everyone. I know there was a point when he was friendlier with Georgie but I didn’t really meet him until he came to the pet store looking for a job this summer after sixth grade.

Francey Russell
A refrain throughout this film May December is people saying they don’t remember how Gracie and Joe met, which is just such an improbable idea, you know, it was a national scandal in the context of the film and in the story that it was based on in real life. But the line that strikes me the most is one of the many scenes where Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are looking in the mirror together, which is a visual motif that runs throughout the film. And they’re talking about Julianne Moore’s— Gracie’s hopes for the evening.

May December
What were your expectations? That tonight would go well, that my children would love me, and my life would be perfect.

Francey Russell
And the Natalie Portman character says, well, that’s a bit naive. And she looks almost directly into the camera and says…

May December
I am naive. I always happen. In a way, it’s been a gift.

Francey Russell
And what I like about that, is it’s different than saying I don’t know what I did. Why I did what I did to say I’m naive to avow it is, requires being a step outside of naivete. And so when she describes herself as naive that that puts her in a very interesting, uncertain, a little bit of an unsettling position where you don’t know if she really is naive, or if she has a very effective sort of defensive strategy, keeping certain questions at bay and keeping certain thoughts away. And that makes her mysterious and again, powerful and compelling, and possibly even more frightening than I find the Laurence character

Jeremy Sabol
Yeah, potentially more disturbing, because it might be masking a kind of complexity or depth. That complexity in Gracie is also strikingly mirrored, as you mentioned, there’s this kind of sequence of scenes it’s kind of runs as a light motif in the film of this similarity mirroring between Gracie and Elizabeth, the actress who’s not a courtroom witness but an actor who wants to reprise and and take on the character of Gracie, what do you make of what Elizabeth is doing in the film? What’s What’s her role as intermediary?

Francey Russell
Well, I find she has a vampiric quality that comes out increasingly over the course of the film. And she has a unsettling desire for intimacies with her subject. She she says things like, I want it to feel truthful, I want it to feel real.

May December
There are things that exist inside people that don’t necessarily come to head until later. And I try and look for the seeds of those things.

Josh Landy
As you say, Elizabeth’s kind of goes off the deep end, she wants to plunge deep into the character of Gracie. And the result is she starts talking about young actors and really horrifying terms and a director has to say to her, you need to come home. And it made me wonder again, about Santo Mayor where you have, on the one hand, we always think empathy is good, more empathy equals better. But in May, December, it sure seems like Elizabeth is sort of empathizing too much. She’s almost letting herself be taken over by somebody who is guilty of a really bad crime, and she seems to be about to become a criminal herself or potentially, and similarly in, in central math, we might think, you know, let’s maximally empathize with everybody. Well, does that mean empathizing with someone who murdered her own child and maybe, you know, glamorizing her as a new media and justifying things in various kinds of ways? What do you think? Do you see these two films Santo, May, and May December as raising these questions in the same kind of way questions about our vampirism as audiences and questions about the dangers of empathy, if it’s misplaced or goes too far,

Francey Russell
I think they raise them differently. So I don’t see Elizabeth, Natalie Portman’s character as empathetic. I see her as appetite. She is coming to consume the people around her. And this film doesn’t suggest to me that she comes under honest pretenses and then get sucked into this other world with this other person’s psyche takes over to me it’s much more that she comes in with fantasies of her own. You know, she she evidences her own interest in transgression. There’s that incredibly creepy scene where she visits Grace’s daughters acting class and goes into depth about what it’s like to perform a sex scene.

May December
You’re wearing practically nothing and you’re rubbing up against each other and sweating for hours. And you start losing the line of like, am I pretending that I’m experiencing pleasure or am I pretending that I’m not experiencing pleasure?

Francey Russell
And all the kids in the scene are very aware that this is a completely inappropriate way to be speaking. And so that is the scene for me that exemplifies Elizabeth. And so again, it’s not a scene where empathy is either too much or too little. And then when it comes to St. Oh, Mayor, I don’t think it’s a problem of too much empathy. And I just don’t have the same worry about glamorizing a murder. I think the film does so much to suggest other sites of contact between these two women. They’re both have Senegalese parents, they both now live in France have an uncertain relationship between these two cultures. They both identify with the sort of Western philosophical cultural tradition. Rama is herself feeling uncertain about what it would mean to be both a mother and an intellectual and certain about, you know, how can she love her own mother given their very complicated relationship? And so of course, Lawrence did commit a horrific crime. But I see all of these sort of peripheral similarities being being really where Rama feels the pull, and then I think there’s that moment where she suddenly sort of snaps out of it. And it’s the moment when Lauren’s looks her in the eye and smiles and there, I think she really is thinking, Oh, I, I have been projecting a relationship here with someone who I’ve been naive about, let’s say, or there’s a sort of snapping to alertness in that moment that I find very striking.

Josh Landy
Well, Jeremy, I think Francey has made some brilliant points, especially this point about a refusal of empathy in Saint Omer. Because if I can be thoroughly convinced that sentiment was not inviting us like the project of Septermber is not to invite us to give over our full empathy to the central character—wow, that really cements my admiration for that movie.

Jeremy Sabol
My votes with you, Josh.

Josh Landy
So the 2024 Dionysus Award for Most Dsturbing Exploration of a Female Criminal Who Thinks She May Be Innocent goes to…

Jeremy Sabol
Saint Omer!

Josh Landy
Francey, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Francey Russell
It’s been my total pleasure. And thank you for having me.

Jeremy Sabol
Francey Russell from Columbia University. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, and we’re celebrating the most philosophically compelling movies of 2023 for our annual Dionysus Awards.

Josh Landy
In our next segment, we’ll talk to my regular co-host Ray Briggs about nominees for Most Moving Film—

Jeremy Sabol
or TV show!

Josh Landy
…about difficult choices.

Jeremy Sabol
More Dionysus winners—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Josh Landy
Welcome back. It’s Philosophy Talk’s annual Dionysus Awards show.  I’m Josh Landy.

Jeremy Sabol
And I’m Jeremy Sabol, sitting in for Ray Briggs. We’re talking about the most thought provoking movies of the past year.

Josh Landy
Next up: two nominees for most moving film—

Jeremy Sabol
or TV show!

Josh Landy
…about difficult choices: “Past Lives” and “The Last of Us.”

Jeremy Sabol
The Last of Us is a TV show based on a video game, but it miraculously made for some of the best viewing of the year. It imagines a world in which fungal infection has turned humans into zombies.

Josh Landy
And Past Live lives is about two childhood friends from South Korea, who reconnect as young adults in the early days of social media. And again in the present day.

Jeremy Sabol
We asked co-host Ray about the difficult choices and philosophical conundrums depicted in these two works of fiction.

Josh Landy
And spoiler alert for these two: there’s gonna be no way to talk about them without giving away at least some major parts of the plot.

Ray Briggs
The cool thing about past lives is that the main character, Nora, or Na Young, is kind of two different people in her two different cultural settings. And with the two different like other kinds of biggest characters in the story, one of whom Arthur is her American husband, and who has a bunch of like American writer cultural shared reference points. And the other one Hae Sung, who is her old sweetheart from Korea, who has a bunch of Korean reference points that she shares. And there’s kind of no overlap between them, but each of them has some kind of really meaningful connection with her. And I think one of the tragedies of the movie is that she can’t be both people at once those two people are incompatible. But she sort of has both of them as parts of her.

Past Lives
He was just this kid in my head for such a long time. And then he was just this image on my laptop. And now he’s a physical person. It’s really intense, but I don’t think that that’s attraction. I think I just missed him a lot. I think I miss Seoul.

Jeremy Sabol
So one might be tempted to say that she has become you know, Person Number one was her in her youth and Person number two is her adult life. But the fact that they come together in the second part of the movie, do you think that split is still happening? Is this a temporal disjunct? Or is it? Is it happening kind of culturally in the movie at the same time? Yeah,

Ray Briggs
I think those two people are both there at the same time. And when she’s interacting with like, her husband and her old Sweetheart, you can see both of them kind of overlapping as she’s negotiating between them.

Past Lives
Oh, yes. Military service. You know, how Korean men administering militaries? Your dad talks about it? How was it? You like it? No.

Josh Landy
So it’s, it raises an interesting question about where a person can go from there, right, it seems to some somewhat potentially somewhat uncomfortable position to be in for now young, to feel like, there are two very different selves that she is. And I assume that one person might say, for example, well look for the commonality, right, there’s gonna be a kind of Venn diagram intersection between these two people, these two selves, and that’s who you really aren’t hanging on to that. And somebody else might say, well synthesize the two, put them together. And now you’re, you know, you’ve got a kind of totality that embraces these two. But sounds like you’re suggesting Ray, though, neither of those is an option.

Ray Briggs
I think the intersection of them is too small and boring of a person. And I think she hasn’t synthesized this down by the end of the movie, and like whether it’s possible, but I think she’s kind of the union of those two, I think a lot of us are the unions of separate parts that don’t really fit that well together. There’s this great shot of young nyang and Hasaan, walking their separate roads. And it gets repeated at the end of the movie. And I think that this is like a really clear depiction of her making a choice that brings her toward oneself, and not toward the other.

Jeremy Sabol
So as you say, Ray, this is a film about tragedy and tragic choices. That makes me think about fate.

Ray Briggs
Right, that concept of fate is a Korean concept of inyeon, which she mentions inyeon being about having some important connection between two people’s lives. But it’s not necessarily a romantic connection.

Past Lives
It’s an inyeon if two strangers even walk by each other in the street, and the clothes accidentally brush because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives.

Ray Briggs
In fact Hae Sung says to Arthur, well, maybe we have inyeon too. And that’s clearly not a romantic thing. It’s just some kind of connection.

Past Lives
That’s just something Koreans say to seduce someone.

Josh Landy
When you think about Nora, and all the thoughts that she has about in yarn in relation to the her life, the her life shape and the choices that she’s made, does it seem like it’s sort of blowing her up, comforting her, consoling her? Do you think it’s maybe doing the opposite? Could there be a kind of worry, I’m not sort of living the life that my past lives have laid out for me? Or is it kind of neutral?

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I think that there’s a concern that it’s bad for her. Because if you have this idea about how your life is supposed to go, and then you compare it to the reality, the reality isn’t going to measure up. And she’s sort of has this collection of ideals, and the reality doesn’t quite measure up to any of them.

Past Lives
Childhood sweethearts who reconnect 20 years later, only to realize they were meant for each other. Were not meant for each other. I know. In the story, I would be the evil White American husbands standing in the way of destiny.

Jeremy Sabol
So I’m thinking about fate some more here. And I’m thinking about the TV miniseries “The Last of Us.” And it’s true that all the characters in it are living in this situation that’s totally beyond their control. I mean, how much freedom do they have?

Ray Briggs
Uh, not much. A lot of them don’t. A lot of them don’t have the freedom to not get eaten by cordyceps, which is a freedom that I take for granted every day.

The Last of Us
Let’s go, come on, get in! Joel? Denise, you get back inside the house—you lock your doors NOW!

Ray Briggs
They often don’t have a lot of freedom from interpersonal violence. Their lives are pretty crappy. But I guess some of them managed to carve out a decent place for themselves through some combination of luck and good choices.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I’m thinking in part of the famous, the justifiably famous third episode, which focuses on a gay couple who have carved out this little tiny space of maybe utopia in the midst of this vast devastation.

The Last of Us
Maybe you are decent people, maybe not doesn’t matter. We’re self sufficient here. I don’t need you or your friend complicating our lives. Is that clear?

Ray Briggs
They have this option, partly because they’re super lucky. So Nick Offerman’s character—and oh, gosh, he’s great in this—is a prepper. He got lucky that all of his paranoid beliefs were true. Probably not because of how he formed them.

Josh Landy
They were right for the wrong reason.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, right. Things just turned out that way. And it’s lucky that Frank, this sweet guy who wouldn’t hurt a flea runs into Bill instead of somebody who really wants to murder him. And, you know, it’s lucky that they have chemistry. And it’s not like they have a great dating pool and the post apocalypse,

Jeremy Sabol
I wonder if we’re not supposed to see villain fragment as a commentary, or maybe even a critique of the main protagonist, or one of the main protagonists of The Last of Us, Joel, the way that he feels like everything is just he has to do everything, like everything he chooses doesn’t feel like a choice that he’s constrained that there’s only one way out,

The Last of Us
I made this decision for your own good. It’d be way better off we call me knows the area better than I do. About me or not? Course I do. And what are you so afraid of?

Josh Landy
Okay. But that brings me to one of the really interesting moral dilemmas in this show. And again, big spoiler coming. The two main characters Joel and Ellie, have been wandering through these Badlands. And Joel has been trying to make sure that Ellie survives a she’s a teenager who has an immunity to the quadriceps infection. And the aim is to take her to some medical researchers who are hoping to make a vaccine somehow on the basis of her immunity. And he delivers her to the doctors, but then he learns that if they proceed with their experiments, she will die. So now he has to design whether to save humanity at the cost of alley or save Elliott, the cost of humanity,

The Last of Us
How long till she’s torn apart by infected or murdered by raiders? Because she lives in a broken world that you could have saved? Maybe. But it isn’t for you to decide. Or you. So what would she decide? Cause I think she’d want to do what’s right.

Josh Landy
That seems like a genuine choice, a difficult decision, a moral dilemma. And also one where it’s not clear that we look kindly on Joel, the main character.

Ray Briggs
So I actually think the way that the show set this up was a little bit strange in one respect. Normally, you see this kind of thing presented as a trolley problem. There’s this kind of classic case, is it okay to kill one person to save a bunch more people. And this is the situation that the surgeons who are going to kill le RN, they might kill one person to save humanity. And that seems like a real moral dilemma. Joel’s decision is different. Should he kill a bunch of people to save one person who is special to him, and also prevent the salvation of humanity. So I think it’s kind of no accident that he doesn’t come out looking good here. There’s a piece of evidence for this after he saves LA, which is that he then lies to La Yeah, about having killed all of those people. And about the fact that those people were going to kill her.

The Last of Us
Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true. I swear.

Ray Briggs
And I don’t think that’s presented as a good or desirable choice by the show. I think we’re supposed to feel weird about that.

Jeremy Sabol
Speaking of difficult choices, we’ve got a difficult choice ourselves to make. We’ve got this great film Past Lives, and this miniseries, The Last of Us, up for a Dionysus award.

Josh Landy
And I agree it’s a difficult choice because, as Ray brilliantly pointed out, Nora has to decide whether she’s now young or Nora and we’ve got Joel who has to decide whether to save humanity or to save the person who’s really dear to him, which is the more moving film Jeremy?

Jeremy Sabol
Well, I have been swayed by Ray’s arguments and I think that 2024 Dionysus Award for Most Moving Film (or TV show) about Difficult Choices goes to… Past Lives.

Ray Briggs
Good choice. This is the objectively correct move.

Jeremy Sabol
Ray, this has just been a great conversation. I’m thinking really differently about both of these works of art. And thanks so much for joining us.

Ray Briggs
Oh, thanks for having me.

Josh Landy
Ray Briggs, Stanford philosopher and nature of difficulties. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. It’s our annual Dionysus Awarda show.

Jeremy Sabol
Let’s get a nomination from the floor. Kasia in Ithaca, New York. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Kasia
Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Josh Landy
Okay, so Kasia, you’ve got a movie for us? What’s the name of that movie?

Kasia
Yes, it’s “Anatomy of a Fall.”

Josh Landy
I saw that film. Can you give us a 10 second or 20-second synopsis?

Kasia
It’s a courtroom drama in which a woman is suspected of having murdered her husband.

Josh Landy
What is philosophically interesting about this film?

Kasia
So this movie only pretends to be a courtroom drama. The more interesting thing about it is the the woman is a writer, and has written the novel about a woman who murdered her husband, which is part of, of course, the mystery and intrigue. The movie begins with a student coming to interview the woman writer about her work, and there’s a whole back and forth and a conversation about whether or not something has to actually happen in reality, for a writer to be able to write about it, that they can improvise, they can change things. You know, they maybe they can embellish, but Does something have to have happened?

Anatomy of a Fall
What I do know about is my interest in you. And that is really, but still you had to meet me first. I’m real, in front of you now. Yes, that you are Yes. So for you to start inventing, you need something real first?

Kasia
I think that’s the question that the whole movie turns around. And indeed, the resolution, at the end without giving anything away, is all about a story that is told. And I think the final question at the end of the movie is whether or not that story is a fiction.

Jeremy Sabol
I mean, one of the reasons why I think people are caring more and more about kind of the authenticity of experience that leads to fiction is identity politics that it should be grounded in the author’s own cultural background and traditions. Does that matter in this movie, Kasia?

Kasia
I don’t think so. Okay, no, I don’t think that’s what the movie is really, sort of talking about is like debate, you know, those debates about cultural appropriation or other things?

Josh Landy
What about gender, though? I mean, this is a film. Yeah, yeah, directed by a woman and the main characters a woman is that? Could we think of it that way that this is a film by women about women, so to speak? And so could could the question of authenticity come up at that level?

Kasia
Yeah, I think so. I wouldn’t, you know, want to invest too heavily in an argument that like only a woman director could have made this movie. But I think that where you see the kind of question of gender is in the way that it plays on your expectations about a courtroom drama, that it sets you up to think that the important question is whether or not she committed the murder. And I have been asking people who have seen the movie afterwards, you know, do you think that that’s actually the question? And almost everyone I’ve spoken to has said, No, I’m certain that I know the correct answer.

Josh Landy
I think I had a very different experience of this film than the people that you’ve talked to I, I found myself throughout the film, uncertain whether or not this character had committed the crime that she was accused of, I wasn’t quite sure what the stakes of the film were supposed to be. But I was pretty sure that I wasn’t sure. So and I was pretty confident that’s that some of the sensible clues were relevant to the court case. So the stuff about people’s sexual life seems to be completely irrelevant. So maybe I’m just a bad viewer of this film.

Kasia
I mean, the fact that you recognize that it’s feeding you clues that are irrelevant, right? Yeah, significantly.

Jeremy Sabol
So Josh, I think this film sounds like a strong candidate for the classically-established Dionysus Award category of Philosophically Interesting Film Which Seems to be About One Thing But Is in fact About Another.

Josh Landy
I might add a rider to that. I think it’s a candidate for the category Philosophically interesting film That Seems to Be About One Thing But Is Really About Another and Was Watched Poorly by Josh. Congratulations to “Anatomy of a Fall” and thank you very much, Kasia, for the great nomination.

Kasia
Thank you. Thank you.

Jeremy Sabol
If you’ve got a thought provoking movie from the past year that wasn’t discussed on today’s show, tell us about it. Send an email to comments@philosophy talk.org and we may feature upon the blog,

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW San Francisco Bay Area and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2024.

Jeremy Sabol
Our executive producer is Ben Trenfy, Rhe senior producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Pedro Jimenez, Merle Kessler, and Angela Johnston.

Jeremy Sabol
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University and from subscribers to our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
And from the members of KALW local public radio San Francisco, where our program originates.

Jeremy Sabol
The views expressed—

Josh Landy
or mis-expressed!

Jeremy Sabol
…on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Josh Landy
Not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can become a subscriber and screen our library of nearly 600 episodes. I’m Josh Landy.

Jeremy Sabol
And I’m Jeremy Sabol. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thanking.