Cinema Therapy - Marvel, Archetypes, and Masculinity in Movies

Foreign.

Welcome to the man talk show. I am Connor Beaton and joining me today are Jonathan Decker and Alan Seawright, who are the creators of Cinema Therapy, which is a really interesting online. It's mostly on YouTube. It's an online platform where they use cinema. They use movies and TV shows to break down therapeutic concepts. So this is how they describe it. This is literally word for word, the biography that they sent me. Cinema Therapy is hosted by licensed therapist Jonathan Decker and film right Alan Seawright. They discuss how movies can be used to improve your life and how to watch movies with your brain turned on. Also, there are jokes, so one of their catchphrases is making sense of life one blockbuster at a time. So we're going to dive into archetypes in this in some bit of a light way. We're going to talk about mythology. And for whatever reason, we sort of focus in on the Marvel series and we kind of go deep into how certain characters are portrayed in the Marvel series. We talk about masculinity in relationship to the characters that we see in mainstream tv, in mainstream movies, and we explore really how they, the heroic archetype is portrayed through these movies and the depth and the layers of psychological understanding, self understanding, therapeutic understanding that there actually is in a lot of these movies. And so this is a bit nerdy.

There's some funny parts to this, but this is a great conversation about how we can actually view the content that we are intaking in a different lens through a sort of brain on, as they say, a brain turned on lens to better actualize, to better self understand, to better understand the sort of mythological journeys that all of us are naturally on. So without any further delay, please welcome Jonathan Decker and Alan Seawright from Cinema Therapy.

Fantastic.

Yeah, good, good. I haven't done many, many of these conversations with two people before, so this will be fun and I feel like it's going to be, it's gonna be great. I actually, when I started the show, I actually had a co host and it was his idea to start the show. Oddly enough, I felt like a very similar position. I watched quite a few of your guys's pieces on YouTube and Alan, you know, I knew what it felt like to be in your, in your seat in some ways because my, when I first started this podcast, my, the co host that I started it with, Roger, he was the one that thought we should do this. And I had never listened to a podcast before in my life. Never, not once. And he was like, you have to, you have to do. It's going to be the future, like, you got to get on it. And I was like, okay, all right. And I have just fallen in love with it. So, anyway, I digress. I'm going to start off with the question that I ask all my guests, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today. And maybe we'll just. Maybe we'll start with Alan and we'll go to Jonathan.

Interestingly, my. I think the defining moment that people would find most interesting is it's related to Jono. Jonathan. I call him Jono. He used to be Jono back in college. Anyway, yeah, I was just minding my own business, cycling through majors in college, and Jonathan moved into my apartment and was obsessed with movies like I was. But he was actually doing something about it. He was making short films and goofing around with friends in a way that I just hadn't really done or considered. And we went to a bunch of movies. He roped me into bringing my sound gear to a premiere of one of his short films. And I was like, oh, Jesus. Student film. This is going to be terrible. And he had made a parody. We were both huge fans of the TV show 24 on Fox, and he had made a sort of parody homage of that. And it was great. I mean, it wasn't good, but it was great. Like, very funny. The action was, like, surprisingly exciting. And, you know, the production quality was crap.

But the. But I'm proud of the script.

Yes, exactly. And come on, the acting, your scene where you're torturing your, what, former girlfriend by spraying ketchup on her shirt was, like, amazing.

Anyway.

Just had a blast with that. And about two months later, I guess I had an idea for a sequel to that. And Jonathan was like, that's awesome. Great idea. We stayed up till like, two in the morning hashing out all the beats of the story. And he was like, well, I don't have time to direct it because I'm too busy with school. Why don't you direct it? And I was like, yeah, I love. Absolutely failing all my classes. You're right. That's all I've been doing in college anyway. Why not do that? And that started me down a path that 15 years later has led to us sitting in a basement talking about movies.

And you became a filmmaker. And there have been so many times during our friendship where you have said to me, I don't know whether to thank you or blame you, but here I am.

Oh, yeah.

I wasn't even setting out to get you to drop out of college or anything like.

Yeah, that's. That's like a yearly text message between us, like, why did you make me do this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's awesome. I feel like that's a good, A good filmmaker. Start right there. Every. Every filmmaker needs a good, A good origin story to stay on topic. I feel like, I feel like that's. That's a good origin story right there. It's like you can. And then you have, you have a fall boy, you have a scapegoat. If everything goes. Absolutely.

It's all Jonathan's fault.

Yeah. So, Jonathan, same question.

Well, for me, the, you know, this. I guess this is all part of a chicken or the egg type thing because I guess inspired Alan to become a filmmaker. And then watching some things that Alan was producing and realizing that, yeah, I made some student films, but I had made films, seven or eight student films. And his very first film was way better than anything I'd ever done. And then later, you know, a decade down the line, a decade plus, I'd seen a lot of what he was doing. And I had this idea. I had this crazy obsession with movies that has never left me. And I don't know why it won't leave me alone. So what happened is he produced all these really high quality content, and I had this idea like, I'm obsessed with movies, didn't know why I'm obsessed with movies and couldn't leave my obsession alone. And I'm like, I'm a family therapist. Why can't I just be a casual movie buff? Why am I obsessed with reviewing movies and doing all this stuff? And I. And I realized that I wanted to blend my loves in a way to teach people principles that would help them. And I could never have pulled off a show without him. And so, you know, turnabout is fair play. The quality of everything he was doing made me reach out to him and say, hey, I want you on this with me. And he was, he was all about it.

It's awesome. I love it.

That was the big turning point for me. Cool.

Well, I love the concept of what you guys developed in sort of tackling very real life issues or problems or concepts or ideas and relating them to film and tv. Because I think in a lot of ways, we are in Western society. We're very much inundated with the Disneyfied version and TV version of what life should look like. I feel like in some ways, we're just coming out of a few years of life sort of feeling like reality TV where everything's hyped, everything's. And I think there's a lot of people that play into that, right? I mean, you have people like the Kardashians. I mean, I saw rumors that they want to record their divorce and crap like that. And it's like, oh my God. So there seems to be like this breakdown between what reality looks like and what TV looks like. And so I love what you guys are doing because I think it makes it very much relatable that we can sort of look at these psychological concepts or therapeutic concepts and overlay them with sort of TV and film that we're also very familiar with. So maybe we can start off with a little bit around some of the modern, not necessarily archetypes, but maybe specifically masculine archetypes that you guys see being portrayed in tv. Because this is something that I've seen a few articles written about. And I think you guys touch on it a little bit in one of your videos, if I'm not mistaken. But the idea of modern masculinity showing up in TV and film, and you guys have a great video around Eragon from Lord of the Rings and toxic masculinity. So let's just start there. How do you see men being portrayed on tv, on film, in movies? And is it intentional? Is it indicative of our times? Maybe I'll just kind of like let you guys riff on that.

Jonathan, take it away. I'll provide color commentary.

Okay. Well, I mean, you know, if you track it through time, you have, I mean, you have these very macho ideals. Even starting from the inception of cinema. You had the strong men and the very masculine men, but you also had Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton who right out of the gate there's this really wonderful balance of vulnerability and bravery. You know, where they would do, I mean, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, they do these staggeringly terrifying stunts that, you know, Jackie Chan and Tony Jaa pay homage to. Say these guys are our inspiration for risking our lives on film. And these characters and Charlie Chaplin's Little tramp had a great tenderness about them and a great warmth to them. And there was still incredible physical acts of daring do. But it was all kind of taking the piss out of the tough guy idea. And then we get into John Wayne, we get into Clint Eastwood, we get into especially the 80s were like the golden era of alpha male masculinity.

Yeah, Giant macho, muscle bound heroes.

And don't get me wrong, I mean, for all our talk about healthy masculinity and all Our talk about, you know, being able to be vulnerable and to express one's emotions and to be tender hearted. I know for a fact that Alan and I both love that 80s. We grew up, yeah, we grew up on Stallone and Schwarzenegger and, you know, and so Tom Selleck's mustache. Oh my gosh. Yeah, Right?

The manliest piece of facial hair in human history.

Absolutely. Burt Reynolds, you know, laying out on a tiger skin carpet. I mean, that's like with the chest hair, it's just like, oh, it's everything right there.

And my dad is, you know, interestingly, he was a. He was a great husband, great father. He loved hunting and sports and rock music and was very manly, but he had no problem with crying in front of our family. He had no problem being very tender hearted towards his children, towards his wife. You know, he had no problem being vulnerable or showing genuine emotion and being patient and kind. And so I had this great balance right out of the gate. My dad raised me on Clint Eastwood and James Bond. Right. But it was very much balanced by who he was as a person. And so in pop culture, I think we're starting to trend more and more towards even our action heroes. We're starting to go back into Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and look at, look at Ragnarok and look at Chris Hemsworth and how big and strong he is and how many moments of humbling physical comedy there are with Thor and how much that endears us to him or Tony Stark. I was watching Iron Man 3 the other day when he's summoning all of the Iron man suit to him at the beginning and he says, he's like, yeah, I'm the man. And then like the last one hits him in the groin and the suit completely falls apart and he's laying on the ground. And so I think we are seeing more and more a trend towards like with Aragorn, tough yet tender.

Complete masculinity.

Yeah, complete, complete masculinity. That Tony Stark is defined as much by I love you 3000 as I am Iron man. That his tenderness is as awesome as his ass kicking ability. And I think that's a very positive thing.

Yeah, I appreciate that perspective. I think in some ways I had another gentleman on the show, actually another marriage and family therapist named Francis Weller. And we talked about one dimensional masculinity and how in.

A lot of our sort of cultural memes or TV shows or whatever, there's a very small section of masculinity that's shown you either have the Homer Simpson. Right. The dumb dad, or, you know, so you have like these examples, I think.

Or Family Guy or any number of more grown up animated series where the dad's a buffoon.

Yeah. And then, and then you have shows like How I Met yout Mother where you've got very interesting masculine archetypes and Ted Mosby and the other characters. Like, you know, Barney is a very interesting character as well. And so, you know, you have those types of shows where it's showing a very specific quality of masculinity. I'm curious, Alan, for, for you as a filmmaker, what does that look like when producing something like that? Like when you're, when you're going to have men or women that sort of fit into these very typical archetypes or symbols? You know, one, is that intentional? And then two, how do you go about developing something that then portrays that person's journey? Like do you still try and use a lot of mythology within your work? Or what does that look like from your side?

It's such an interesting, difficult task in a film. Right. One of the great things about living in the second golden age, or Platinum Age, whatever you want to call it, of television is in tv, especially more serialized tv, you get to explore characters in depth. Right. It's really great. Breaking Bad is a fantastic example of a guy who starts as a very three dimensional, sort of masculine guy and over the course of five seasons devolves into this one dimensional monster by in a lot of ways just leaning heavily on that sort of limiting masculinity. But that's not something you can do in a film. Right? You have two hours, you don't have five seasons. And so by necessity there has to be in a film a fair amount of shorthand.

We can learn a lot about characters from their actions, but.

The trickiest thing in film is figuring out what are the cliches and the stereotypes that you can play and how can you play off of those to really quickly establish who and what a character is, but in an interesting narrative, new, fresh way. And then trying to find ways to build a three dimensional character in only two hours is tricky. That's one of the reasons that so many films lean on mythological archetypes. The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell. The reason that is so prevalent is because.

Even that is not easy, but that is achievable in two hours.

And trying to have a more in depth character study while also packing in enough explosions that you can draw an international audience.

Is tricky. It really is. And so the Things that you lean on. Obviously it all comes down to essentially two things. You have to have a brilliant writer who is.

You know, really, really understands character. And then you have to have a brilliant actor who can give you three pages worth of emotional subtext with a glance or an eyebrow raise if you don't have those two things. As a filmmaker, you know, when I'm directing, if I don't have those two things, it's like, well, guess I can tap dance around this, but it's not going to be good.

Yeah, interesting, interesting. So you really rely not just on the script, but on the sort of like the unspoken parts that can't be embedded into the script from the actors to portray some of the nuances of the characters and the myths that are being portrayed.

Absolutely, absolutely. And that's one of the Marvel movies get a ton of flack, particularly from, I've seen a lot from the intelligentsia, I guess, of just being. Oh, it's the same thing over and over. And we have to have a smash em up finale and everything. And I would argue that the Marvel films are some of the best character work that is happening in film right now. I mean, obviously there's a lot of sort of contemplative, smaller indie movies. Parasite was genius. But there's such brilliant character work in the midst of these gigantic, you know, orgies of CGI and everything else that's happening. There's brilliant characterization and really, really good work from these actors who, you know, you look at them, it's like, oh, okay, they just lifted a bunch of weights and maybe took some performance enhancing drugs. Like that's, that's their entire qualification is pretty face and giant muscles and man, they're doing, you know, they're doing the Lord's work out there. It's amazing.

Yeah.

Say more about that because I think, I do think that there's a lot of flak for it. And I think when we look at, I mean, one of the things that I've been very interested in is the sort of like cultural breakdowns of mythology. You know, that we, we normally have these very strong myths that are being played out within our culture, within our societies on a large level and then on a sort of smaller microscopic level within our communities. And it seems like in the last decade or two that those cultural mythologies have started to break down. You know, that we in Western society have really over indexed on the hero myth and that the hero myth within, especially within America, but even within Canada where I'm from, is very much front and Center. It's like the pinnacle, the pinnacle myth. And it feels like we're sort of coming to an end of times to be apocalyptic about it. Apocalyptic. It feels like we're coming to an end of times in and around that hero mythology. And so I'm curious, from your perspective, why do you feel like the Marvel series and the Avengers series are so important right now? Because I feel like that's almost like a counter narrative in some ways. Like what, what messages, what archetypes, what components do you feel like they're portraying that are important based on our time right now?

I think Joss Whedon addressed that really well in his script for the first Avengers film where Agent Coulson is talking to Cap about wearing the old uniform. And Cap says, doesn't that seem a little old fashioned? And Colson says, with all the things that are about to come to life, light and everything that's about to happen, I think people could use a little old fashioned. And then you have Nick Fury later on.

Believing in heroes. And it's an old fashioned notion. I think we want to be inspired to make a difference. I mean, there is a fantasy component of superheroes coming and fixing up and fixing everything. But that was more Christopher Reeve's Superman, which I love, by the way, at least the first two. But the Marvel films show like that.

The whole civil war is they're trying to do good and there's still collateral damage, there's still things that happen. So I think Marvel addresses the reality of it's not always clean, but we still not just need heroes, but we want to be that.

We want to be inspired to make a difference. And I think that's why we're drawn to hero stories. I know as a kid that's why I was drawn to Christopher Reeve Superman, because it taught me, literally taught me as a boy, something that has stayed with me my 40 years, which is that being a man means helping people. Being a man means using your strength for good instead of to hurt and to make a difference in people's lives. And that has never left me. And I think for this generation, for my kids, they'll watch the old Chris Reese Superman with me, and they like it just fine. But they're all about the Marvel and it's because these characters inspire them to do good.

Yeah, and I think leaning on, obviously, the Marvel films are all superhero films and the standalone movies, by and large, it's one hero saving the world, usually, unless it's Ant man and then he's robbing a bank. But it's saving the world from a threat. It's one hero saving the world from a threat. And I think what the overarching, like the entire cinematic universe, especially including the Avengers films, did, that I think was brilliant and in some ways sort of deconstructivist of the entire hero mythology is it's not one hero saving the world. One hero can't save the world. We have, you know, they've steadily ramped up the power levels of the heroes in this franchise. You know, Thor's a literal God. Captain Marvel is maybe tougher than him, and she shows up and, you know, can't beat this threat. So the only way to save the world, to protect what we love about our world, is to join forces and work together in a very.

Non stereotypical for that hero myth kind of way. It's not one person going through sort of your hero with a thousand faces, Joseph Campbell, becoming master of the unknown and then coming back and fixing things. It's everybody coming together as masters of their respective fields, respecting each other. And when they finally figure out how to do that, then they are able to prevail against the forces of purple guys.

And I think it's powerful and purposeful that the Avengers often don't see eye to eye on things and that there is quite a bit of internal conflict.

I mean, there's an entire film that's just internal conflict.

Yeah, well, there's. I think there's probably two that I can think of. Civil War and the first Avengers are both. I guess Civil War is the one that the conflict isn't really resolved, it's just the conflict. But. But that notion that. Because that's what we see right now, like everyone's. Everyone's bickering and we're tearing ourselves apart from inside, and I think we want to believe that we can work past that to something better.

Mm, yeah. Well said. Well said. What about the. What about the villains? I feel like the villain archetype within the Avengers movies is sort of evolving as well. So I'm curious to hear your perspective on. I mean, obviously it's pulled from comic books, right? I mean, Thanos and some of these other villain archetypes are obviously a manifestation of what was already written in the comics, but I mean, you look at the sort of villain archetype that was in those old school Christopher Reeve movies, and, you know, they were sort of otherworldly and they were definitely powerful, but there wasn't this sort of same. At least I didn't feel it in the same way. There Wasn't the sort of same level of annihilation or destruction, you know, and so I'm curious to get your thoughts on that. Like, what's the evolution of the villain archetype in our, in our modern day movies?

I want to hear Alan talk about Killmonger is what I want to hear. Well, yeah, we talked about that. I love your thoughts on that.

Yeah, well, we're planning an entire episode just on Killmonger because he's such a fascinating character.

Those who don't remember that's Michael B. Jordan's character in Black Panther is Killmonger.

Yeah, he's the villain of the Black Panther film.

Antagonist. Antagonist more than villain.

Antagonist more than villain. Yeah, it's really interesting. And I mean, I know we're apparently we're just living in Marvel world right now. We've watched other movies, we're educated, we know things.

Yeah, Killmonger is fascinating. This is another thing where I don't know that Marvel gets enough credit. They're doing really, really daring storytelling. So.

In Black Panther, the antagonist of the film changes the protagonist's mind.

The protagonist comes around to doing literally everything that the antagonist wanted to do, except for the methodology. That's it. The only thing that doesn't change, you know, Killmonger was going to do things by force. And t', Challa, the Black Panther doesn't do things by force. And but other than that, he comes around completely to his way of thinking. He's like, nope, you were right. Which is crazy. I mean, how many times have we seen that in the movie?

Yeah, I don't think that the villain was. That the villain was philosophically right.

Yeah.

And you know, another really, really daring thing that Marvel did is, hey, let's build up an entire series of films for 10 years and our intro to like the big climactic clash is going to be a two and a half hour movie that is a movie about the villain. It's the villain's hero's journey.

Infinity War is classic hero's journey about Thanos. It follows all the same beats. It does everything exactly the way you would want from a Star wars film or a Marvel movie or whatever, but it's just about Thanos. And you know, they. There's an immense storytelling ask there where it's like, not only are we going to do a hero's journey for the villain, which is insane, we're also going to tell compelling stories and have at least some amount of character arc for 30 odd other heroes, plus quips, plus action sequences, you know, It's. It is unreal what they've managed to do, but the. What they're doing with villains is. Is really. It's really, really interesting. People have often said about the James Bond films that James Bond movies are only as good as their villain. And I think that applies to. I honestly think it applies to most movies. I think one of the reasons the original Die Hard is so great is because Alan Rickman is so great in Die Hard.

Classic.

And as an actual person, sure, he's motivated by greed, but the way he interacts with people, the way, like Theo. What did Theo play? The character of Theo, I can't remember what else he played in. But, like, the way Alan Rickman interacts with his crew in Die Hard and the way. Not only is there banter, but, like, when they open up that safe, there's, like, genuine elation, you know, and they play ode to Joy and just. And the way he. When Holly McClane comes in asking for, you know, basically hostage rights and he hears her out, like, there's just so much nuance there that makes him so someone you can latch onto. I think we see, like, with Magneto, we see, you know, at least with the good X Men films, you have. You're having more and more antagonists instead of villains. You have an antagonist who. The only thing that's in question is their methodology, because their philosophy very often leaves audience going, that's valid, you know.

Or they come from a place of pain. Zemo in Captain Civil War, losing his family. I think you have these. These characters that tend to be more people, and they have motivations or philosophies that we can relate to, and that's kind of what makes them scary. But then you have the Joker in the Dark Knight who goes completely the other way. He has no backstory, he has no motivation, and that's what makes him terrifying. And I was kind of yet to see. At least maybe there have been. But I can't think of, off the top of my head, anyone like Heath Ledger's Joker, who is such a tour de force and has no reason for being that other than he just is, and somehow it worked.

I mean, I think I love that because there's the archetype of the Joker in some ways, of Loki, of that sort of character, of Chaos, is that there is no reason, Right? Chaos doesn't need a reason. Chaos just is. And so I think there's this wonderful component to Heath Ledger's Joker where it's like he doesn't seem to give a fuck, and you don't need to know why. And it just doesn't matter, Right? It just doesn't matter. And I think that that is so brilliant. But there's also merit in what I think you guys are saying, which is that the villains, you know, Marvel movies that we're starting to see, there's like, a human.

There's a component of them being more humanistic, you know, that we're adding.

There's definitely Marvel movies where the village villains are just kind of there and the heroes do all the heavy lifting. But, yeah, the better ones, your Lokis, your Thanos, your Killmonger, people like that. There's little nuance there.

Yeah. And it seems like we're moving towards that space. Why do you feel like I'm going to get both of your perspective on this? Why do you feel like that's important from a psychological standpoint and then from a filmmaking standpoint to really humanize the villains and add in these. This, like, these deeper layers of texture?

I think that. I mean, I'm a couples and family therapist, so everybody's got a perspective, right? And the difference between movies and reality is in movies, there's generally somebody who's clearly.

The hero and someone who's the villain or the protagonist versus the antagonist. There's someone that you're rooting for and someone that, okay, maybe you relate to them, but they're still a monster. And in therapy and in relationships, there's just perspectives. There's just people who are kind of like a lot of these villains. They just want safety, respect, and love. And a lot of the bad, awful, mean, nasty things that we do in our relationships is either an attempt to get safety, respect, or love or response to not getting it. And we're actually seeing that psychologically in a lot of our villains, a lot of our antagonists, at least. You know, Killmonger just wanted safety for his people. He just wanted respect for his people. He just wanted. I love you, buddy. I'll have a chocolate peanut butter smoothie later. Thank you. Sorry.

Anyway, real time dad life.

Seriously. But, you know, you guys want a chocolate peanut butter smoothie? Some of you are listening right now going, I'm gonna make myself one of those, right? So you want frozen bananas, you want peanut butter, and you want Hershey's syrup and milk. That's all you gotta do.

I love that you just put out the recipe for it.

That's definitely staying in the.

You want a little granola to give it texture, that's fine. But that's my opinion on that. I don't know if I. Go ahead. Alan, is there anything you want to add?

No, I think I mostly covered it already. It's just from a filmmaking standpoint, you want to have a story that's compelling. And the easiest way to make.

Your story compelling is have interesting dynamics between your protagonist and your antagonist. And the best way to make it interesting.

Not easiest. The quickest way to make it interesting is have an antagonist that your protagonist can at least somewhat identify with. This is where the oh, we're not so different, you and I trope comes from. Right. Is the antagonist trying to convince the protagonist that I'm just like you, but our methods are slightly different. Where storytelling gets really good is when your protagonist figures that out on their own. You know, I think we're seeing that more. I think we're getting to a place where our storytelling is, you know, not universally, but in our best stuff. That's our best films that are coming out. We're starting to see protagonists who are more self reflective than your muscle bound Schwarzenegger types. And save the Terminator from Terminator 2, who is a very reflective killing robot.

From the future.

He somehow learned to love.

He did.

Yeah.

He taught us all to love too.

I don't know a single man who didn't cry at the end of Terminator 2, by the way.

Oh, I cry every single time I've seen that movie. Probably 20 times. Every time that the thumb comes up and goes into the lava, I'm just, I'm in bits.

But yeah, just. Just having a protagonist or, sorry, an antagonist that the audience can understand and at least in some ways identify with and watching the protagonist learn those things but still defend what is good or right is.

It's.

That's. That's good storytelling.

That's it. I'm curious on this note to get your perspective on, on the Joker, on Joaquin Phoenix, the Joker. Because that seemed to be like this very interesting dissolving of the boundaries between the protagonist and the antagonist. So what?

Were both. Yeah, because he was both at the same time. Well, I, I'll keep. We'll keep our thoughts brief on this because we are doing an episode on this, like in a, in a few weeks.

Yeah.

So we don't want to, we don't want to use all of our good bits here. We'll just use this as a teaser. We still want people to watch the episode. I look at that. And what Joker asks you to do is to treat, is to treat him as someone you relate to and have compassion for while still Being appalled by what he ultimately ends up doing. And there is, there is, you know, for those who haven't seen it, I won't go too. I won't go into spoilers. But there's. He's on Robert De Niro's talk show at the end and they're, they're having kind of a debate with jokers, talking about how people treat those with mental illness and how awfully they get treated. And that's why he's kind of turned into who he is. And De Niro was saying, you can't justify your actions based on all the stuff you're saying. You're drowning in self pity. And what's crazy is as I'm watching this as an audience member, I'm thinking they're both right.

They're both right and they're both wrong because De Niro has kind of been a douche and he's not owning it. And Joaquin Phoenix, like, okay, the world has been awful to you and people went awful to you. Doesn't mean you can, you can start inciting violence and killing people. You know, and so I look at that film and I think it's such an interesting duality because he is both protagonist and antagonist. You know, when he's Arthur, he's protagonist and you're rooting for him and you're hoping that he finds love and he finds acceptance and that he finds kindness and that things are going to turn out well for him. And then once he's joker, you're not rooting for what he's doing, but you understand how he got there. And I see it as a call to. We're such a judgmental society and we see, you know, we see one thing that somebody has said or done or a tweet from 10 years ago, and we're so quick to dismiss people as bigots or jerks or, you know, we find one thing that they've done that we are morally opposed to and are justifiably morally opposed to. And we think, well, that's the person. And I think Joker calls us to say people are more complicated than that. And, you know, not to borrow the Christian phrase of love the sinner, but hate the sin. You know, I'm not even talking about sin from a theological standpoint. I'm talking from a societal, ethical standpoint of there are things that people do that are reprehensible and sometimes they're beyond redemption and justice must be served. But if we're to retain our humanity, it's the best, the better course of action. Totally my opinion. But the better course of action is to look for the person in the monster, because that's how we reach and that's how we help. And I guess that's the world I live in as a counselor is sometimes I'm presented with people that I'm like, oh, my gosh. And my initial reaction is a very human reaction of what a monster. And then I'm like, well, I'm called to help.

It is literally my job to help this person find their humanity.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's. That's what I see in Joker. And I'm gonna refer back to what I just said, because this just came from my brain. And now I'm like, crap, we gotta put this in the episode.

I mean, it's a good. It's a good. It's a very, very good line. I mean, I think it's. It's. One of the reasons why I wanted to go down this path of exploring the villain is that, you know, in some ways, I mean, we all have a villain inside of us, or at least we. Most of us feel like we have a very intense villain that's sabotaging us or pulling us down the road of shame or acting out or whatever the. You know, whatever the course may be. And what we know psychologically is that rejecting that part of us never goes well. Right? It never, ever, ever goes well. And it doesn't go well culturally in our societies either. And so there is this sort of confrontation with the predator, with the villain, with the, you know, protect or the antagonist or whatever. Whatever label you want to throw on that, that seems to be showing up within our, you know, collective unconscious right now, within our psyches right now. And it's showing up within our culture, within our cultural movements. Alan, did you want to add anything to that? I just want to give you a chance to pop in on that as well.

I do not have anything to add. Maybe the only thing I would say is contrasting Heath Ledger's Joker with Joaquin Phoenix's Joker. Both fascinating characters, both really interesting character studies. Joaquin Phoenix's is one that we can identify with, and Heath Ledger's is one that we are fascinated by, because Heath Ledger's is sort of the personification of entropy as. As a force in the universe. Right? It's a thing that we're all familiar with, and we've all seen it. We've even met those. I call them entropy people. Like, people who just sort of. Things crumble as they walk past relationships and jobs and, you know, Just not from their own malice, but just sort of things fall apart. And to find to have a character who is that person and revels in it and just loves that is fascinating but not.

Approachable.

And Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is. I feel like I know that guy. I feel like I've met 50 of that guy who just haven't quite gone that far, thank God.

I'm curious to shift gears a little bit here before we wrap up. Where, if anywhere, do you see Cancel Culture being represented within films? Because this seems to be a very interesting part of our modern society. I know we're sort of, we're veering off topic and I know I didn't, I didn't preface any of this. There's no preparation on this is just sort of like off the top. But it is a sort of curious phenomena that there is a lot of this silencing in Cancel Culture that's becoming very pervasive, especially in the face of things that we perceivably don't like or things that we have labeled as the villain or the antagonist within our culture. So it feels like we're almost regressing a little bit in some of these ways where that's becoming a very specific form of dealing with things that we don't like. So do you have any, off the top of your head, any representations of that in film or thoughts on it in general?

Well, we're on the subject of Joker, the Joaquin Phoenix version, and the whole Thomas Wayne being an a hole in that movie versus the good hearted philanthropist he was in Batman Begins and calling the poor and the mentally ill. He basically calls him a bunch of clowns. And this starts, this movement started by Joaquin Phoenix's character where all these people are. They're gonna take back their city from the rich and the privileged, wearing clown masks, inciting acts of violence. And to me, the cancel culture is. They're trying to cancel the classes and they're trying to. They're trying to cancel basically how they've been treated. And I see Cancel Culture. You know, I don't agree with Cancel Culture, broadly speaking. I mean, there are a couple of people that I'm like, yeah, you're done. Like, I'm sorry, Bill Cosby, but you ruined Bill Cosby for me. You know.

Harvey Weinstein should be canceled and put in prison probably.

Exactly, exactly. But, but, but I think Cancel culture comes from a very genuine place of We've had enough. We've. We've had enough of. I mean, I. We've had enough of misogyny we've had enough of homophobia. We've had enough of racism. We've had enough of giving people chances to change. And we're just fed up. And you know what, what happens with it, in my opinion, is it becomes a loaded weapon that people can get caught up and it can. It can be pointed and aimed and fired when it shouldn't be. You know, I look at Joker and they're. They're fed up with what's going on in society. So what happens? They basically. I mean, the crowds basically burn the city down and celebrate Joker as their hero. And the reasons they're upset are completely valid. But there are people in the crosshairs that are either innocent or could change and would change if they were just made aware. I see people like James Gunn. I'm not condoning some of the jokes James Gunn did 10, 15 years ago. Like, and neither is he. He's like, those were awful. And I was in a very different place. But there was a whole surge of, let's cancel James Gunn until basically the Guardians cast and a bunch of other people, like, you guys don't know him. And that's not who he is today, you know, and that's not. And I think if we. If we cancel people, we don't give them the chance to change. You know, now if people are given the chance to change and they continue being belligerent, a holes or treating people poorly, I think we're all within our rights to say, I'm not going to support your work anymore. But saying, hey, you said something offensive 10, 15 years ago. Alan and I are going to address this in the future. We had a project that had offensive content in it now that we were trying to be edgy and funny, and now we're like, gosh, that was terrible. And we would hate to be canceled over who we were 16, 15, 16 years ago when we were a couple of dumb college kids, you know, because we learned and we grew.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It's interesting because there's sort of an intersectionality between that Joker character of Joaquin Phoenix and the cancel culture. You know, it's that basically like, oh, you're not going to listen to me. All right, well, then I'm going to take things to the next level. And I think that's. That's the sort of interesting part about the Joker character for me and Joaquin Phoenix was that it. I felt like it sort of spoke to both extremes, you know, that we're feeling that polarity within our culture right now. It sort of spoke to both extremes.

Yeah. Any. Any other thoughts on that from either of you before we. Before we wrap? No, it's a. I know. It's an interesting.

I think we need to balance our activism and our. And our pushing for change. Like, it is unfortunately true that usually when things get extreme, it is because less extreme methods haven't worked. You know, like, that's, you know, people. I'm not going to. I'm not going to share political opinions on, you know, people are talking about, like, the riots that happened last year and Black Lives Matter and people like, well, you know, protest peacefully, not this. And the response was we did for decades, you know, And I think the best thing if we want to avoid extreme in cancel culture or.

In any sort of societal change, we want to avoid the extremes and the violence or even just the social violence, not physical violence, but where there's so much vitriol and hatred and anger. When we show that we listen. When we show that we care, when we show that we're willing to take ownership and make changes, we prevent escalation.

Like, like in Joker, like, all of that. Like, all of that could have been prevented. I'm not saying, like, I justify the actions that were taken, but it all could have been prevented if people gave more of a damn, which was exactly, you know, Arthur Fleck's point.

Yeah, yeah. Well said.

Well, I feel like it's like he's Jack Nicholson's joker, except for instead of talking to Michael Keaton, he's talking to society and he's like, you made me remember, you know?

Yeah, well said. Well said. Well, I feel like that's a good place for us to pause. This was awesome, guys. I really appreciate the work that you're doing at Cinema Therapy. And for the people that are out there that want to follow along, they want to watch you, where do they go? Where's the best way for them to Access you on YouTube?

Best place to find us is Cinema Therapy on YouTube. We're also on Twitter and Instagram as Therapycinema because we were too slow. And we're also on Reddit, R. Cinematherapy.

Awesome.

And Facebook. Maybe you said Facebook and I didn't hear you.

All good? All good. Well, we'll have the links for all that in the show notes and maybe we'll have to have you back on for that. Talk about Jungian archetypes in movies, because.

I would love to bring it on.

That at some point.

I will pull out the old textbooks and brush up.

Yeah, yeah. There you go. Awesome. Guys. Well, thanks so much for joining me. For everyone that's out there listening, definitely head on over and check out Cinema Therapy. There's some great, great videos. Are you guys doing One on Soul? Have you already done One on Soul? Have you seen this movie?

We have and we will be shooting it in two weeks, I think.

Awesome.

Three weeks.

Yeah. Three weeks.

Yeah. Awesome. I can't wait. I can't wait to watch that one because what a great. I thought it was a great movie.

I loved it. It was brilliant.

Yeah, yeah, awesome. So don't forget to share this episode, man, at 4. Share with somebody that you know will enjoy it and love the love the geek out conversation as much as I did. And don't forget to rate and subscribe until next week. This is Connor Beaton signing off.