Episode 153: Multimedia Mythmaking (with Carmen Maria Machado)
/We’re joined by author and fabulist (our new favorite word) Carmen Maria Machado as we delve into the stories and urban legends that inspire her, how video games and relaxing TV are more in depth than we’d imagined, and her favorite biblical insult.
This week, Julia recommends “Sisters of the Vast Black” by Lina Rather. You can also get our new beanie, plus tons of new Multitude merch, at multitude.productions/merch
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about hypochondria, urban legends surrounding contamination/infection, AIDS/HIV, child endangerment, poison, sexual assault/rape, domestic violence, gun violence, school shootings, #MeToo, biblical/religious references, video game violence, and animal death.
Please reach out to the National Sexual Assault Hotline for confidential support if you have experienced sexual assault.
Guest
- Carmen Maria Machado is a fabulist and the author of the memoir In the Dream House and the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. Follow her on Twitter @CarmenMMachado.
Sponsors
- Calm is the #1 app to help you reduce your anxiety and stress and help you sleep better. Get 25% off a Calm Premium subscription at calm.com/spirits.
- Skillshare is an online learning community where you can learn—and teach—just about anything. Visit skillshare.com/spirits2 to get two months of Skillshare Premium for free! This week Amanda recommends “Ink Drawing Techniques: Brush, Nib, and Pen Style” by Yuko Shimizu.
- Warby Parker is our go-to destination for eyeglasses. Order your free home try-ons at warbyparker.com/spirits.
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Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
Julia: And I'm Julia.
Amanda: And this is Episode 153: Multimedia Myth Making with Carmen Maria Machado.
Julia: You've really been killing it with the guests lately. I'm very, very impressed.
Amanda: Thank you. I am also impressed with myself that I did not fall all over myself when Carmen came to visit us in the studio. I have loved her writing for a long time, and this is one of my favorite interviews I think we've ever done about modern myths about TV and film and Gordon Ramsay and also sexual assault and surviving abuse. We definitely get into some heavier topics, so check out those content warnings in the description that Julia puts together for each episode just so you can be informed and make a good choice for you. But I was absolutely floored and I love it, and I hope that you love it, too.
Julia: Do you know who else makes really good choices, Amanda?
Amanda: Is it our new patrons, Ray, Rhea, 50 Bad Songs, Christine, Jeanine, and Wild Geese?
Julia: Yes. Yes it is. As well as our Supporting Producer level patrons, Phillip, Alpha Dogs, Debra, Molly, Megan, Skyla, Samantha, Sammy, Josie, Neil, Jessica, and Phil Fresh.
Amanda: They are absolutely wonderful and they socialize all the time watching their favorite food TV with our Legend Level patrons, Morgan, Emily, James, BM Me Up Scotty, Audra, Chris, Mark, Cody, Mr. Folk, Sarah, and Jack Marie.
Julia: Yeah, they're all lovely people.
Amanda: They really are.
Julia: What cool folks. I would watch Chopped with them every day of the week.
Amanda: I wonder if wild geese are more or less chaotic that one untitled goose.
Julia: I think because wild and more, less planning.
Amanda: Yes, but Julia, you notice a herd or a flock of wild geese coming at you. You don't notice the one untitled goose. Just a cheeky little goose who loves drama.
Julia: They could pull a whole velociraptors in Jurassic Park thing, though, where they hunt as a pack ...
Amanda: That's true.
Julia: ... and one distracts you and then the rest come in.
Amanda: Very true. I guess I would rather fight one big-
Julia: Horse-sized goose?
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of which, as I contemplate just my mortality vis-a-vis geese, remind us what we were drinking this episode.
Julia: You and I were sipping Aperol Spritzers during the episode, but since we mentioned the infamous Gordon Ramsay during the interview, I wanted to recommend for the people at home to make one of his more famous cocktails, which is the Street Spritz. I love the Street Spritz. It's basically elderflower, cordial, grapefruit bitters, and vermouth. So boozy but also floral and a little bit bitter. I like it.
Amanda: That's very up Julia's alley. I am doing my best to expand my palate. I prefer the extremely whiskey-forward old fashioned type of drink, but I do like a springy drink, especially as we're kind of descending into winter here.
Julia: Yeah. So if you're one of our patrons who receives the recipe cards, I'll have a version of this week's for you to try at home. It's going to be really good.
Amanda: Delicious. And what do you recommend that we read, watch, or listen to as we're sipping our Spritz?
Julia: Ooh, so I picked up a book called Sisters of the Vast Black by Lena Rather, which I saw a recommendation on Twitter by one of my favorite authors, Sarah Gailey. Basically the book deals with religion, faith, imperialism, and also humanity and I'm here for it. It's basically Earth before we used it up and it got destroyed sent out religious flocks into space and this follows a sisterhood of religion as they're kind of drawn to people that cry out for help.
Amanda: Love that. Oh my goodness.
Julia: Yeah, no, it's really, really cool.
Amanda: Your picks are always so good, Julia.
Julia: Thank you. I'm really excited for it. And it's one of those books, too ... I think it's 150 pages or something like that ... where I can read it in one day and I feel really satisfied.
Amanda: So good. So good. Also very exciting, Julia, is our new merch.
Julia: New merch.
Amanda: We have a brand new piece of merch to share with all of you. We have a Spirits beanie. It's getting chilly. You might have to cover up your tattoos and your winter coat might not have as many of your cute queer pins as your fall jacket, but you can still telegraph to the world that you love all things creepy, cool, boozy, and ghostly with your Spirits beanie.
Julia: Yes. No, it's really, really cool. I'm a big fan of the beanie in fall and winter, especially because now I have long hair again, so I can show it off with the beanie, whereas when I had short hair, I felt a little bit weirder wearing the beanie. I don't know. But I love a beanie now.
Amanda: At spiritspodcast.com/merch you can get the new beanie, you can get the last of our water spirit pins. There are just a few left and we have those there. We also have now a couple of things from Multitude, and we're going to be adding more, so you can get our exclusive tour posters from Portland earlier this year and then from our summer and fall tour. They are beautiful. They have little Easter eggs for each of the Multitude shows. Potterless has new merch, HORSE has a shirt that says, "Sup nerds? It's basketball," Join the Party has character pins. Join the Party has pins of Chad and Oatcake and Inara and TR8c, and it is extremely exciting.
Julia: I am so excited for those. I want an Oatcake pin real bad.
Amanda: So you can see the merch from all of our shows, including the new Spirits beanie, at multitude.productions/merch.
Julia: Woo.
Amanda: Well, with that, I will leave you to enjoy Sprits Podcast Episode 153: Multimedia Myth Making with Carmen Maria Machado.
We are so stoked today to be joined by Carmen Maria Machado, who is ... going to fangirl a little bit ... one of my favorite authors and someone who is extremely good on Twitter as well, which I think is two different kinds of writing, both of which you excel at.
Carmen: Oh, thank you. That's a really huge compliment. Thank you very much.
Amanda: You're very welcome. And your books include Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House, which is your newest book. And we are just going to talk to you about anything sort of storytelling, mythology, fairytale, folklore related, and we're so stoked to have you.
Carmen: Oh, thank you. I'm real excited to be here. Yeah. Where to begin?
Amanda: Where to begin? Actually, I would love to know, what fairytale stories were you obsessed with as a kid?
Carmen: Well, there were a couple. Anyone who's read my first book knows that I was really obsessed with The Green Ribbon story, so Alvin Schwartz and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and his sort of whole oeuvre. So those weren't so much fairytales, but more like urban legends. There also was another series that I was reading up about Alvin Schwartz recently and I found reference to this other series from that era called ... it was like Scary Stories to Tell at Sleepovers, and I had this weird tingly flashback to ... I think I've read one of those books and they seemed really interesting to me. So yeah, so I was really into horror and retellings. I had this book called The Dark Thirty that I had gotten at a Scholastic book fair and it was stories for children. It was from the South and it was just these really great, creepy, sort of Southern stories about ghosts and people with the sight. I really liked that.
Amanda: RIP the Scholastic book fair.
Julia: So good.
Carmen: Wait, does it not exist anymore?
Amanda: Stores aren't the same. I mean for us as adults.
Carmen: Oh, oh, oh, yes. Yeah, I honestly wish that I could just go ... They'd be like, "Hey Carmen, guess what? It's the Scholastic book fair this month. You can just go."
Julia: Drop everything.
Carmen: Drop everything and go. No, I agree. That was my favorite part of the year. And I remember those little sheets that you would be given.
Julia: Oh, so good.
Carmen: Right? And then I would always circle them, but I'd circle everything and my mother would be like ...
Julia: No.
Carmen: ... "You get one book."
Amanda: "Here's $10."
Carmen: Yeah, exactly. And I was like, "But I want all of these," and she was like, "No."
Julia: It's like, "You may buy two books. Go ahead."
Carmen: Exactly. I mean, if I was lucky I would get ... I had a lot of books. I was a book fiend as a kid. But yeah, so it was all those sort of horror books and things like that. And then I also really liked ... I actually had a version, a Hans Christian Andersen anthology that someone gave me, which in retrospect was incredibly inappropriate because those stories are real fucked up.
Amanda: That's that real uncut stuff.
Carmen: Really dark. Very, very dark. And so I remember reading being like, "Oh, The Little Mermaid," and I read it and I was like, "Oh no."
Julia: "Oh no, she'd die at the end. Oh no."
Carmen: Because the original Little Mermaid is horrifying. It's like her tongue gets cut out, it's like she's being stabbed, and she dies in the end. It's such a fucked up story and I was like, "Okay, well. Yeah." But I was really interested in that as well. I mean, it's one of those things where I was a very scaredy-cat kid, but I would walk toward what scared me and then I'd run away really fast and then I'd go back to it. I feel like that's kind of my personality in general.
Julia: That's such a mood. I understand that.
Carmen: It really is, right? Yeah, so I wasn't brave, but I did want to scare myself. And even after I would read scary books and then I couldn't sleep or I would get really upset, my mom would be like, "No more. You can't read any more of those." But I would still do it. I would still come back to them, which I think ... Yeah, it just is me kind of in a nutshell.
Amanda: Yeah. I feel like that makes a lot of sense if you maybe grow up to be an adult with anxiety where you're like, "I want to know everything about the thing that terrifies me. It's going to terrify me more, but then I'll know."
Carmen: I mean, as an adult I'm a hypochondriac, so I feel like that's a very appropriate ... But I'm also a hypochondriac who watches a lot of medical shows and reads articles about-
Amanda: I feel like that goes hand in hand. That makes total sense.
Carmen: Totally, totally. And my wife is always like, "Are you sure you want to watch that?"
Julia: Good for you.
Carmen: She checks it and I'm like, "Yeah, I think so. I think it'll be okay. I don't know."
Amanda: How do you describe yourself and your writing now? I was reading a couple of articles, interviews and stuff, in preparation for the interview and I heard for the first time the word "fabulist," which I believe you used as a writer of fables, which I'd never heard before and it is a fabulous noun that I want to tattoo on myself. So do you see yourself writing stories, urban legends, folklore, fables? What kind of word appeals to you there?
Carmen: Yeah. I mean, I think fabulist is certainly an appropriate word to describe what I do. I think that there are lots of ways to describe what I do. I feel like the kind of work that I'm doing, I'm just really interested in sort of taking what I want from the genres that I want, and one of those genres includes stories that come from an oral tradition of a kind, whether it's fairytales, folktales, myths, urban legends, children's hand games, things like that. Those are really interesting to me. So yeah, I mean, I don't know if that necessarily tracks directly with fabulism, but I think that fabulist ... I don't know, that feels right to me and it feels ... I mean, it's weird because I feel like there's some writers for whom the sort of direct interaction with those sorts of stories are their project. As a career, I don't think that's necessarily encompassing all the work that I do, but it certainly is something that I return to over and over and I'm very interested in.
I teach, and one of my favorite weeks is to teach the fairytale and folktale class, because then we get to talk about adaptation and read ... I always assign 50 varieties of Bluebeard, which is one of my favorites, and all these modern retellings and sci-fi retellings and The Bloody Chamber, obviously, by Angela Carter, and just all of these really good ways of ... So it's like, "Here's one story and here's 1,000 ways to tell the same story," and I think that there's something really beautiful about that. And I feel like so much of writing is ... When one first starts writing, you're always imitating the people that you read. So when I was really little, I would write ... and people listening can't hear, but I'm making quotation marks with my fingers. I would write poems, which were basically just be rewriting Shel Silverstein poems because they were so funny and I wanted to write my own. So I would write ... I don't know, there was that one, "Cynthia Sylvia Stout wouldn't take the garbage out," do you remember that one ...
Amanda: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carmen: ... where the garbage reaches up to the sky and then it's awful, right? I mean, what happens is awful. The poem is amazing. And so I wrote my own version with a different name. I was just imitating. And so I think that the cool thing about ... And I think that some people don't get that about writing. They think that there's sort of this wholesale act of creation, but all writing is about what you've read and what you've consumed as a reader, as an artist, as a consumer of art, and then you're sort of churning that up inside of you and there's something that comes out and it's kind of the result of all that. That's why when I'm feeling stuck with my work, reading is really helpful to me, because it kind of just shakes all that stuff loose in my head. I think when people don't read, it's harder to write because you're not getting that stuff inside. It's not kind of being put inside of you.
So in the same way, but I feel like the nice thing about the folktale fairytale thing is it's that idea but in this concrete way. And it's true of all fiction, but the cool thing about folktales is you're just like, oh, that's a story that's been told all over the world in some variation, and there's all kinds of versions of it, and you can look at different writers doing different things with it. And it's just that sort of idea of the consumption and creation of art but made in this very literal and I think even more acceptable and understandable way. So I've just always found it really fascinating because of that.
Amanda: I love urban legends for that reason, and the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is also such a foundational text for me. I would check it out of the library again and again. Probably not good for me in retrospect, but I love that.
Carmen: Or the best for you.
Amanda: I mean, now I talk about scary stories for a living.
Carmen: I was going to say. I was like, it also made you literally the person sitting across from me right now, so you know.
Amanda: Yeah. No, it's true, it's true. And I don't know, I feel like there is something about looking at the darkness and asking it to show you something that just makes you feel a little bit more on top of the anxieties and surprises that life can bring you.
Carmen: Totally. And I think that particularly urban legends really have a way of reflecting back our fears on us. Not just us individually, but as a society and the way that urban legends shift and change reflects what people are afraid of at any moment.
Julia: Right. Because human beings have been looking into the dark and wondering what's out there since we existed.
Carmen: Right. Exactly, exactly.
Amanda: Yeah. Besides The Green Ribbon ... which I am such a fan of ...
Julia: It's such a good one.
Amanda: ... what other urban legends kind of stick out in your memory as something that is particularly ... I don't know, exciting or memorable or says something about the folks who tell it?
Carmen: Oh. I mean, the one that I think of ... and it's horrible to repeat it out loud because it's so stressful. But there was this one that I remember learning when I was a kid ... and when you think about the historical context, it actually makes a ton of sense ... which is the urban legend about going to a movie theater and sitting in the seat and you get pricked and then you stand up and there's a sign and it says, "Now you have AIDS." Did you ever hear this when you were a kid?
Amanda: No.
Julia: Yes.
Carmen: You heard. Okay, Julia, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the reason I'm telling you that-
Julia: I also heard it in gas stations. They would do that where you grab the thing at the gas station. It would be a dirty needle-
Amanda: Yikes.
Carmen: Oh yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are a lot of variations on it. It's always something that you would unthinkingly do in public, like sit down in a movie theater seat or grab a gas pump.
Amanda: Like a payphone or something.
Carmen: Exactly, yeah. It was this sort of way of thinking about fear of public spaces, fear of contamination, obviously fear of HIV/AIDS, which ... I mean, I was a kid in the 90s and that was clearly a thing, and I think that legend's been around, or some variation of it, for a while. And so right, obviously it's awful and the way that it sort of presents ... I mean, obviously it's problematic in all the ways that are sort of obvious, but I remember it really frightening me and made me think about ... It's sort of, I feel like, almost our generation's razor blade in the apple. It's not a thing that actually has ever happened, but it's such a horrifying idea and this violation of ... You feel safe when you're just out in the movie theater or you're doing whatever and then all of a sudden something has happened to you and you've been contaminated in this way, and in a way that's permanent and unchangeable. Because obviously that's the fear of HIV, is that it's not curable and that ... I mean, at the time, obviously it was a death sentence. Not anymore.
So yeah, that one really chilled me and I've never forgotten it. And it's weird because obviously it's so ridiculous. But just whenever I think about ... that's one that just comes sort of unbidden to me. I think about it sometimes and I'm like, "What a weird story that someone told me when I was eight and now I can't forget it." When I barely even knew what AIDS was.
Amanda: Yeah. I mean, it is a way for, I think, kids and teens particularly, to sort of process something that they don't have the vocabulary to talk about in a real way. This is instead, through narrative or through kind of ...
Carmen: Totally.
Amanda: ... the imprint of stories they've been told for their whole lives so far ...
Carmen: Totally.
Amanda: ... you can kind of get at something like that and try to ... I don't know, empower or forewarn yourself and others.
Carmen: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: There's also a certain paternal fear to it, I feel like. We're going into Halloween season at this point and I know I'm going to see a million stories about drugs hidden in candies and whatnot.
Carmen: Oh my God.
Julia: Which I'm just like, my-
Carmen: Yeah, I actually saw an ecstasy ... like, "Make sure your kids don't get ecstasy in their Halloween bag," thing recently, and I was like, "What?" Who just gives away their ecstasy?
Julia: Exactly. Who hands out ecstasy? Who gives away free ecstasy to kids ...
Carmen: I know.
Julia: ... and what neighborhood do I go to?
Amanda: I know.
Carmen: I know, right?
Amanda: Everyone I know who's done ecstasy wants you to have a nice time and prepare you and tell you what to do and stuff. Not my bag, but ...
Carmen: I feel like ... to plug one of my favorite podcasts, which is You're Wrong About... I don't know if you've listened to it.
Amanda: Yeah.
Carmen: Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes, and they actually had a really good one about the urban legends around Halloween candy and contamination I think last year. And I remember them talking. They sort of talked about the actual real life things that had happened that sort of prompted a lot of those stories, which were super specific and not in any way just a random person just accidentally giving someone ... I don't know, there was one actual ... a father was trying to kill his own son and put something in a Pixie Stick. But then that story's now morphed into, "A man gave out poisoned Pixie Sticks."
Julia: Random strangers, yeah.
Carmen: Right, yeah. And so it's a really individually very sad story, but it's not the thing that we are all afraid of. And it also, I feel like, really gets at this thing about ... It's like what that child had to be afraid of was his own father, not strangers giving him poison. Do you know what I mean?
Amanda: Yeah.
Carmen: And so often that's the case, where we think that we're afraid of a stranger doing a bad thing to us when in fact it's far more likely for somebody who loves us and knows us to do something to us, do something bad to us.
Amanda: Yeah. I mean, that kind of random violence horror seems worse, but I think again, it's a little bit easier to ... It almost looks at the issue sideways a little bit to say, "Well, it's just a random stranger for some random reason that you don't even know." That could be the reason for that act when in fact it's a lot more tragic and seems more specific but is in fact so much more common to look closer to home in that.
Carmen: Right. I mean, it's the same ... I mean, not to pound the point home, but that's the same thing about sexual assault. It's far more common for you to be assaulted by somebody that you know, you're dating, you're on a date with than a stranger coming out of the bushes. But we're more afraid of the latter because that's the one that's sort of entered into this mythological state. And like, "Here are some tips you can do," to prevent this incredibly rare ... and I mean horrible, but super rare thing from happening as opposed to the incredibly common fact that you could be assaulted by a boyfriend or some guy you met or whatever. So it's just ... yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. And I think about the ways that gun violence, too, might be kind of taken into this urban legend canon for kids growing up now.
Carmen: Oh that's interesting.
Amanda: Growing up, we had the warnings of school shootings and a sort of very reductive psychological profile of a person who would commit those acts, but now, unfortunately like you say movie theater and that's the first thing that pops into my mind.
Carmen: Yeah. It's ... yeah.
Amanda: So it feels like a thing that we are obviously going to be reckoning with. Hopefully one day will be an artifact of the past, but I feel like it is inevitable that somehow that's going to be kind of captured in the lore that middle schoolers are telling each other over chicken nuggets today.
Carmen: Right, right. I'm just remembering being in middle school when Columbine happened and I'm remembering people were so panicked that they let school out. It was such a bad situation and it was so unprecedented, and now it's like ... I don't know, yeah. I feel like we're kind of maybe a little off topic, but yeah, this sense of, like, it felt so unthinkable at the time and now it's just so old hat, which is not how I want to feel about anything that violent and horrible. But the idea of young people developing narratives and myths and urban legends around shootings is actually deeply chilling and really interesting to me.
Amanda: Yeah. Because I mean, myth as sort of self-protection is such a thing that I think about. Not just in urban legends and folklore, but also like, how do I tell the story of my life and how does this societal ... I don't know, instruction that I think of myself as the protagonist and the hero of my own story, how does that impact my decision making? Because it doesn't just impact the way I tell my story to others and the way that I shape and revise the past, but it also inevitably impacts my future decision making. I don't have a thesis about that, but it's just a thing that's in my brain all the time.
Carmen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julia: Yeah, I do love the idea that we're always the hero of our own story and to be the villain in someone else's story is something that's so typical for myth telling and myth building that I feel like ... I don't know. I'm sure there's a lot to be said about that. I don't have the thoughts in my brain right now for it, but ...
Amanda: Yeah. Well, one angle might be the sort of hero/villain dichotomy. Obviously a lot that you can kind of play in in the middle there. There's a lot to queer that dichotomy and I feel like that seems to me a sort of thing that you often kind of play or write in, sort of what makes a hero, what makes a villain, who is good, who is bad, who is able to do good and bad things? And to my mind, the answer is never, "A hero is good, a villain is bad."
Carmen: Yeah. I mean, I think I'm really interested ... I mean, with my first book this was true, but also especially for this new book that I've written. I've become very obsessed with the sort of dreaded gray area, which I feel like some people are very much like, "What is a gray area? There's no such thing." And I'm like, "Oh my goodness, there's such a space and it's so wide and so misty." I'm really interested in ... So an example that I give often is I think about the story Cat Person, which I know everybody in the world read and I actually really love. And I think the reason I love it is because it gets at this really fundamental thing, which is sometimes you have sex with somebody because it's easier than saying no. And that often happens because you are a woman or a femme or female-presenting person and the person who you're going to have sex with is a man or masc or male or whatever. And it's just easier, and that's the dynamic.
And that isn't assault, it isn't rape, but it isn't exactly consensual and it falls in this very weird place of like ... I don't think anyone goes to jail about that, but I do think that there's a space to honor and sort of recognize the complexity of that idea. And I'm really interested thinking about Me Too and thinking about ... obviously when you have villains like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein and just these sinister ... or Matt Lauer. When you're saying things like, "Oh, he had literally a sex island where he trafficked young girls," or, "He had a button on his desk that he could use to lock the door," it's like, "Well, that's just like some straight out of Bond-"
Amanda: Villainy.
Carmen: It's such villainy. It's almost comical. I mean, it's not comical, it's terrible. But it's so on the nose. It's like how I feel about Trump. It's like if you wrote it down, you'd be like, "That's what too on the nose. Take that out. It's too obvious." But I'm far more interested in things like ... it was ambiguous in some way or another, or, the person that abused me or fucked me over or treated me like shit wasn't this sort of villainous figures, this sort of mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash character. It was somebody that I cared about or it was a woman or it was not a person you would expect. Or the thing that was done to me was nebulous, it wasn't as clear cut as something like assault, because there are other things. And I feel like we really, as a society, we crave these neat edges and these, "Did he rape you?" Like, "What did he put in where and when?" And let's put that timeline together. And they're like, "Well, if it doesn't happen that away, then everything is okay," and it's like, "Well-"
Amanda: I feel like it's very influenced by crime procedurals and it seems like you have to point to evidence timeline provable in court, knowable and irrefutable by a jury of your peers.
Carmen: Right. And it also assumes that A, the law is in any way fair or just, which we obviously know it's not for all kinds of reasons.
Amanda: Or that 12 random people could pass judgment on you.
Carmen: Totally. I mean, even before that, just the act of police and the act of sort of ... But even besides that, even if that process was completely impartial and fair, there's a giant spectrum of behavior that falls outside of illegality that is shitty and bad and fucked up and not okay for people. I'm really interested in that. That's super interesting to me, and it's more interesting than the sort of obviously villainous stuff because the obviously villainous stuff, it doesn't come up very often and I think it's more important for us to really begin to pull apart the more nuanced spaces. I mean, it's just more interesting to me as an artist. And I think that's something that I try to write about in my first book, and it's also certainly something that I've covered in this new one, this memoir that's coming out.
Julia: That's really interesting, too, because I think that a lot of early mythology kind of reflects that gray area. We talk a lot about how Zeus is the ultimate fuckboy, the fuck father if you will, on this show, and Zeus has done a lot of really terrible shit, but also he's the king of the gods and people worship him and give him sacrifices and all of that kind of stuff. He's not always portrayed in a terrible light, so it's really interesting because you look at that and there's no black and white with the gods because the gods are human. The gods have human personalities and make mistakes and make faults and do fucked up things, but still require a level of respect. I think that's what I love about early mythology in particular, is that there is no black and white, there is no Christian God and the Devil. There's no good and evil, necessarily. There's just okay and pretty bad.
Carmen: It's so funny because I feel like ... I mean, I was sort of very religious when I was young and I was very Christian. I'm not anymore, but I think a lot about that to me, the best parts of the Bible were the parts where Jesus gets super fucking mad. He turns some tables over, he curses a fig tree. And I'm like, "That is so much more interesting to me than ..." And I feel like in Sunday school, they'd always really draw this hard line. They'd be like, "Oh, it's righteous anger," like righteous anger's okay. It was like, "But wouldn't it be great if Jesus just got fucking pissed because he was a human being and that's sort of part of being human or whatever?" I don't know. I actually was always interested in ... The Bible is such a weird book. There's my favorite passage in the world ... which I don't know if you ... I think it's 2 Kings. I can't remember the actual verse, but it's about a prophet who these youths tease him. They call him "old bald head" and they're-
Julia: Love a good old insult.
Carmen: Yeah. I remember the line from the Bible that I used to have was, "Go up, old bald head. Go up, old bad head," and then he gets really mad and he summons a she-bear and she comes out of the woods and eats the youths.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Carmen: That's the whole fucking thing.
Julia: That's great.
Carmen: I always was like, "That's metal as hell." I love that.
Julia: That's some Pan bullshit and I'm here for it.
Carmen: Yeah, exactly, right. It feels very Pagan, I think is why I like it so much. It's just so ridiculous. This idea that, yeah, most things exist in these spaces and that it's just simply more interesting and more human.
Amanda: And in the Torah, Moses dies within sight of the promised land, and does that make him not a servant of God? There is just such a palpable sense of consequences that I feel like is ... I don't know, so shocking. Like they went there. That's how I feel all the time reading the Torah and kind of other stories. It's just ... it's wild.
Julia: Amanda, this week, our episode is brought to you by Calm. And gosh, stress is a worldwide epidemic, isn't it? It's real bad. Even us who get to work our dream jobs, we're all working longer hours. The news cycle is exhausting. Stress is a part of our lives and I want it to go away.
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Amanda: Speaking of meditative things, Julia, sometimes I go to Skillshare for new skills I want to learn, but sometimes I go there just to watch the videos, because the videos that they make are very high production quality, which I love. And also, the ones about fine art and different kinds of crafts and hobbies that I might not necessarily have the skills to do but I do want to know about them, I love watching it. So this week I was actually checking out a Skillshare class called Ink Drawing Techniques: Brush, Nib, and Pen Style by Yuko Shimizu, and it is so stunning to watch the just paintings unfurl from her pen. I know that sounds silly because it's just drawing, but as someone like me who doesn't have a ton of experience or skill in that arena, it's really wonderful not just to learn, but also to watch and observe and be entertained by the kinds of classes you can see on Skillshare.
Julia: Yeah, I mean, that's why people love Bob Ross and stuff like that, and why calligraphy videos are so popular. It's nice that Skillshare offers that as well as being able to teach you how to do the things and not just watching the person do the things.
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Julia, I recently realized that I think I'm going to become a museum gift shop old lady.
Julia: Yes. Correct.
Amanda: You know what I mean? One of those ladies who only wears jewelry from museum gift shops and has just statement glasses.
Julia: Just jotting down for your birthday in February real quick.
Amanda: Thank you, thank you. I just want to really prepare for that, and what I've done over the last couple years is each year when my eyeglass insurance lets me pay for a new pair of frames, I just grab one from Warby Parker. It's really easy to keep my prescription updated. They let you take a photograph of your prescription, which is wild and so much easier than having someone call someone else and having to follow up and fax and blah, blah, blah. But moreover, their frames are so affordable, they are absolutely beautiful, and you can go ahead and try those on in your house. You don't have to go find one of their retail stores or go in there and be sweaty and try to wear makeup, but then what if you don't have makeup on, and what do you look like in your house? It's so hard to tell.
Julia: Yeah. Jake actually did the free try on program and he ended up taking home two pairs of glasses, one for his distance and one for his desk reading, and they both look adorable on him.
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Well I want to kind of broaden the idea of source material. And we talked about urban legends, but also, Carmen, one of my favorite stories from you is based on Law & Order: SVU. And I know that whether it's video games, TV, it seems like a lot of things are in scope for you and for both of us as well. We talk all the time about how some of our favorite modern myths are podcasts, are video games, are kind of places that we don't think of as capital L Literature. So talk a little bit about your experience reading those, playing those, looking at them for inspiration. What are your favorite examples?
Carmen: Yeah. I mean, I think Law & Order: SVU is interesting in particular because I think it's actually a really good example of a modern ... I don't know if I'd call it a modern fairytale, but a fairytale system of a kind. Especially because Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU and the Law & Order franchise often hinge of this idea of "ripped from the headlines," or a thing sort of taken out of context and then kind of mashed together with a bunch, and then you watch this episode that sort of vaguely resembles reality, but not quite, but so much so that ... I remember during the election ... I don't know if you remember this ... there was an episode that was going to air that was apparently about a Trump-like figure and NBC decided not to air it for reasons I don't remember.
Amanda: I'm sure that had nothing to do at all with-
Carmen: I'm sure it had nothing to do with ... yeah.
Julia: Of course not.
Carmen: So cough, cough. But yeah, so they didn't air it. But it's so funny because it's like, well, it's fiction so who cares, but it's like obviously it was close enough that it hit some kind of note. And it's been going on for so long and it just has such a place in our culture and this sort of ubiquitousness that I think is sort of similar to the fairytale as we more traditionally understand it. And so yeah, it just feels like that's what it is, and so it was a real pleasure to get to play with that. And I think, yeah, whenever I do anything, I read anything, I watch anything, I play any video games, I'm always thinking about, "What is it in here that gives me a kind of narrative pleasure or I can sort of derive something from this idea?"
So an example I usually give is I really love this thing that happens on a lot of video games where you have to clear out insert X here. It's like a thieves den or it's like a collective of enemies which you have to approach in a certain way and clear out and you can get loot. And I always think it's really funny when I play games like that where, when you approach it, you're always hearing their chatter. They're always chattering to each other and they're usually just these kind of work a day ... They're not top brass. They're all just sort of like-
Julia: They're just living their lives.
Carmen: They're just living their lives. They got a job as a thief in a whatever, or like a-
Amanda: They're like mercenaries in a pub.
Carmen: A mercenary, yeah, exactly, exactly. And I always am so tickled by their dialogue, which also, if you stand there long enough, will either repeat itself and it's like Waiting for Godot and you are by virtue of your presence just hovering off on the edge listening to them talk, even though it's mostly nonsense and eventually it will repeat itself. I don't know. And also some of the games, if you make a noise or you work too quickly they'll be like, "What's that?" They'll be like, "Never mind. You're just hearing things." So there's just something very funny about that to me. The more I play games ... it's like every third game I play it comes up and I'm like, "I need to do something with this. This is so interesting to me." I don't know what it is yet, why it's so interesting, why it speaks to me in this way, but it's just kind of beautiful.
Amanda: That is very Waiting for Godot, though, because I can imagine a fucking weird 90-minute play where it's like the thieves in the pub or all of the NPCs in the tavern before a D&D campaign start and then what happens? Okay, maybe the dialogue repeats twice, but then if inaction is also action in that way and no one comes to interrupt that cycle, what then happens? Do they organize? Do they fight each other? What happens?
Carmen: I mean, I'd watch that play.
Amanda: I would, too.
Carmen: I'd write that play.
Amanda: That'd be sick. Listen, if you write it, just put me in the acknowledgments.
Carmen: I will.
Amanda: It's all good.
Carmen: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, there's just something about that. And I just feel like that's like ... And so I think to say ... And I mean, it's funny because people are always really surprised when I tell them I play video games and I'm like, "Well, I mean, maybe you're surprised because I seem very busy." I am in fact busy and I do go through lulls where I haven't played games in a while because I've just been-
Amanda: Oh, my first instinct was like, "Fuck you, not all gamers are teenage white men."
Carmen: Oh, no. Well that too, but I think people ... Yeah, so I think it's a combination of I don't fit the profile you would expect and also they're like, "You are hella busy. How do you have time to play games?" It's like, well, there are times when I don't play them for months because I'm really busy. But yeah, I mean, and the idea that I could enjoy a game ... not even a quirky narrative indie game, which is also a genre that I love, but also I want to go shoot some stuff or cut some stuff up with my sword or whatever. I want to kill some monsters. So I don't know.
But there is something about the form of the video game and the way that games, depending on their goals, fall into different sort of structural things and the way that games sort of adapt around ... I'm also really interested ... There are two games that I've played ... and I'm sure there are more that exist, but these are the two that I ... There's The Last of Us, which is this zombie game, and the Witcher 3, which I loved and was one of the earlier games that I played in this new patch of my life. And both of those games have a very masc male protagonist who is either journeying with or interacting with a young woman. There's a girl that they're sort of taking care of or they're sort of mentoring in a way. And in both of those games, there is a section of the game where it reverts the POV to the girl.
So in The Last of Us at some point ... I forget what happens to the guy, but he's unconscious or he's sick and she has to go get some stuff for him and you're playing her. And then in the other game, it's these periodic sort of chapters where instead of playing Geralt you're playing ... I can't remember her name, but this girl. And what's so interesting is when you've been playing a certain character for many hours and you have weapons and you have all this stuff and you have a certain amount of strength and skills and whatever ... and then so they just throw you into this female POV that you haven't been experiencing the entire time, you have none of the shit that you're supposed to have.
Amanda: New body.
Carmen: Totally new body, and it's really weird. The first time it happened, I was like, "That's interesting." I was like, "What is that? Huh." Is it meant to be that I now feel weak and helpless? Because that's how I feel because I don't have any of my weapons, I don't have anything that I've gotten over this ... And then it's like, so is that intentional and then what does that mean? The second time it happened I was like, "You've got to be fucking kidding me." And it's so specific. It's just a weird ... I don't want to call it trope, but a weird thing.
Julia: Mechanic.
Carmen: Mechanic, yes, that's the word. It's a weird mechanic and it's like, "What does it mean?" And I keep thinking about it and as I'm playing I'm like, "There's something happening here that I don't know if they intended to do or not, but I have so many feelings about it." I mean, this is true of everything I consume. I mean, when we were about to have our wedding, I was putting together centerpieces and I would be in my pajamas hot gluing flowers to things and my wife would leave for work ... or my then fiance ... and I'd be watching Kitchen Nightmares and I'd be like, "Bye." Then she'd come back eight hours later and I'd still be doing the same thing, in the same position, still watching Kitchen Nightmares. And after a couple days, I was like, "I have a theory about Gordon Ramsay." Because I'd just seen so many of them and I had so many thoughts.
Amanda: Just lay it on me.
Carmen: Well, if you want to-
Julia: I want to hear your Gordon Ramsay theme.
Amanda: There's very few things I love more than the food TV and criticism thereof.
Carmen: Oh, okay, okay. First of all, I really like Gordon Ramsay. I actually have a deep abiding respect for competence.
Amanda: Yes. Me too.
Carmen: That is a thing that gives me a lot of pleasure, and so I really respect ... I'm like, "He's an asshole, but."
Amanda: That's how I feel about Top Chef. I'm like, I know that there is so much invented drama here and the chefs are increasingly professional TV chefs and that's kind of a weird thing that's happening, but also they are relentlessly competent at what they're doing and it's so relaxing.
Carmen: Totally.
Amanda: And Padma is always perfectly dressed and it's just like-
Julia: I love her so much.
Amanda: Drown me in this.
Carmen: Right. It's like they're just a really good top. You're like, "Yeah, you know what you're doing. I relinquish everything to you. You know you're in charge." It's sort of beautiful in that way, right? But the thing about Gordon Ramsay in particular that was really interesting about Kitchen Nightmares was that entire show was about negotiation of masculinity. So the episodes almost always ... I mean, there were woman occasionally, but mostly the women were like the beleaguered wives or sisters or girlfriends or daughters or whoever. It was about this sort of alpha male Gordon had to kind of knock down this sort of weird masculine alpha energy until it was underneath him.
Amanda: Yeah, out-alpha it.
Carmen: Or he had to build them up because there was some ... I remember this one guy where they literally had him box in the middle of the episode. I don't know if you remember that episode. It was ridiculous. It was so on the nose and it was like he was-
Amanda: That's some Karamo shit.
Carmen: He was just this sad sack guy who just looked really sad and he was like, "We're going to go do some boxing," and they box and the man's like, "I never knew my father."
Amanda: Oh God.
Carmen: It's just so on the nose and I was laughing so hard because it was so ridiculous.
Amanda: But it's not 100% humorous because that person needed that.
Carmen: No, totally, totally, right. Obviously it's not funny, but it's sort of funny because it's like-
Amanda: It's both.
Carmen: It's both.
Amanda: It is funny because it's needed. Yeah.
Carmen: Or just watching and it's like, really it's about him or the men who think that they're ... and they're like, "I'm in charge. This is my restaurant," but they know literally nothing and Gordon is just like, "Well, that's fine, but you know literally nothing and I know everything, so how are we going to negotiate that?" So I just feel like the whole show is just about this gendered back and forth. And I think this is true also ... I also watch Bar Rescue, and Bar Rescue is sort of the same way.
Julia: I like it, though. I get it.
Amanda: A beleaguered woman bartender who's been holding shit down for three years.
Carmen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, so it's just ... Anyway. So this is what I mean. It's like when I watch enough of these things ... Val came home and I was just like, "I have a theory about Gordon Ramsay." I feel like that, to me, is when I'm consuming art and when I'm doing stuff, even if it's not something particularly ... I don't like phrases like high and low art, but something that's not particularly artistic or "literary." I think there's still a lot to be derived from it in terms of pleasure and what makes it interesting, what advances it forward, what makes it pleasurable to watch or not pleasurable, I guess.
Amanda: Yeah. I have that feeling very often. My partner likes to point out that I really enjoy media with no conflict in it.
Julia: That's true.
Amanda: I really enjoy shows with no conflict.
Carmen: Do you watch all the British ... Do you watch-
Amanda: I super do.
Carmen: Escape to the Country?
Amanda: I watch Escape to the Country. It is my favorite program.
Carmen: Val and I also watch Escape to the Country.
Amanda: I like Extreme Homes: Australia Edition because it's even more extreme than other ones, because in Australia, land is just forever because that is how the land acquisition happened to that continent, and it's just ... yeah. And in video games, I love Pokemon Go because I can just walk around and not play any gyms and just collect my Pokes and grow them. There is something I discovered a few years ago called a Nuzlocke run, which is, I believe, named after the gamer who invented it. But it's a way to play the Pokemon Game Boy games with a series of really interesting rules. So in gaming and speed runs and streaming, people put these really fascinating constrictions on ways to play the game, so like, "Can you play Super Mario without ever using the A button?" Or different ways ... it is such a world.
Look up Summer Games Done Quick, which editor Eric of Spirits showed me several years ago, and it's a charity fundraising thing that happens every year and gamers ... the best in class, people who set world records in these different genres of playing these games ... do it live and it is so wholesome and they raise money for amazing charities. It's the best of that world.
Carmen: Oh my God.
Amanda: But the Nuzlocke run involves several different rules, one of which is you can't use any potions or items to heal your Pokemon. And if your Pokemon dies, you have to release it. If it faints, you have to release it.
Carmen: Oh.
Amanda: And as soon as I heard that, I was like, "Oh God. I have been treating these animals as a endlessly renewable resource, and in fact they're not." There is so much about that system that it just didn't occur to me to question because it's in a video game. But I feel like my instinct to question these structures in the world is heightened and sharpened by my ability to look at video games, stories, TV shows, movies, and be like, "Is it feminist or not? Was that a choice?" As a creator, I want to kind of always ... I wish I could turn off that brain sometimes, which is why I really love Escape to the Country. But in playing Pokemon, this makes it different and I make such different choices if I know that I cannot ever let my team faint.
Carmen: Wait, can I tell you how I overthink Pokemon Go, which I also love.
Amanda: Yeah, please.
Carmen: Which is instead of ... To transfer them away, I actually hate that because I'm like, "Where are they going?"
Amanda: I know.
Carmen: Where are they going?
Amanda: Are they playing in the PC? Do they have food?
Carmen: To me, it feels euphemistic. It's like, they're going to the upstate and I'm like, "No."
Julia: They're going to the ocean.
Carmen: But unless you want to keep paying to up your Pokedex or whatever, you have to. I always am very kind of weirded out by that. Where are they going? What's happening to them? And actually because they have now this Team Rocket and they have these possessed ... or what are they, the dark Pokemon but they're possessed, basically?
Julia: Oh no.
Carmen: And I'm very upset about it. I'm like-
Amanda: That's not their fault.
Carmen: That's not their fault! That's exactly what I think. I'm like, "It's not their fault. They're just Pokemon. They're just little monsters. They're just living their lives."
Amanda: I want to rescue them. They're victims.
Carmen: I think maybe that's what makes a writer, an artist, a creative type, is vastly overthinking everything narratively, which is something that my family always used to tease me about, overthinking stuff. But I think that's just the way my brain works.
Amanda: Yeah, I'm just thinking, man.
Carmen: It is hard and also, yes, sometimes I wish I could turn it off. Though I agree that these conflict-free like Escape to the Country is really pleasurable because it's just like nobody's like ... At the end they're like, "Have you chosen a house?" They're like, "Not yet." And they're like, "Great."
Amanda: I know.
Carmen: That's the end of the episode. And there's none of that artificial like, "He likes tile, she likes carpet. How will they ..." It's none of that bullshit. It's just sort of people have lovely little trips and looking at some cool houses.
Amanda: Or even Chopped where we know exactly what's going to happen. Every segment is going to be the same length. Ted is going to be there in another fabulous tie.
Julia: Always.
Amanda: And at the end of it, no one's career has been validated or not. No one's self worth has been judged. It's just like, "Did I do okay with these ingredients in this competition today?" And it's just so cut and dry in a way that it does register to me as a plot-free TV because it's just a discreet example of competence or not, and I don't know.
Carmen: Yeah. I love TV.
Amanda: Me too. I know, I wish I could go home and read novels all day long, but sometimes you need to watch some plot-free TV.
Carmen: I know. I mean, I do, and I think I have to be careful because watching TV is easier. Because I do feel like when I watch TV, I think ... I feel like when I'm reading a novel, there's some language part of my brain that's being activated that makes me sort of a little more frenetic. There's some more sense of activation and I think when I'm really tired, it's like I can't read, I just need to watch TV and I have to be careful. I mean, I'm just tired a lot, which is part of the problem. But yeah, no.
Amanda: I don't know. I feel like a thing we come back to again and again on the show is being aware of and critical of the stories around you and not just kind of accepting narratives that are given to you or the role that life or people around you tell you that you have, but knowing that every narrative is constructed and you always have the option to change it, to opt out of it, to rewrite it.
Carmen: Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
Amanda: Well Carmen, thank you for coming in and talking with us about all my favorite subject.
Carmen: Oh my God, of course. My pleasure. Any time.
Julia: Seriously.
Amanda: And please let folks know where they can find you and your work in bookstores and online.
Carmen: My website is carmenmariamachado.com. My Twitter and my Instagram are @carmenmmachado. My memoir, In the Dream House is out now.
Julia: There you go.
Carmen: And I am doing events in Brooklyn, but I don't remember when.
Amanda: So folks can check out your website for your tour schedule and for links to get the book.
Carmen: Absolutely.
Amanda: Beautiful. Well, thank you again.
Carmen: Of course.
Amanda: And listeners remember ...
Julia: Stay creepy.
Amanda: Stay cool.