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Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion

Grease is the way we are feeling

This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily revisits one of the classic movies of her Gen X childhood: Grease. This musical comedy was set in high school, but all of the lead actors were in their 20s and 30s, which may help explain why much of the lessons about romance, performing adulthood, and gender expression sailed over her head as a child.

The lyrics in many of the songs were unapologetically ugly--the Greasers actually ask Danny if Sandy put up a fight!--but the actual characterization of the young men and women show that they are adolescents flailing their way through what they think masculinity, femininity, sexuality, adulthood, and romance are supposed to look like. Even the ick factor of Sandy changing into a leather-clad Greaser girl for Danny at the end is a little more nuanced than the Guy sisters remembered, since all she did was change her clothes, while Danny actually ran track for the entire school year. Talk about romance--maybe?

We'll be hopelessly devoted to you--if you listen to this episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

Grease: Performing Gender

Yes, Grease was deeply problematic – but it was ahead of its time, too

Tags

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, romance, women, feminism, classic movies, film, gen x childhood, film analysis, nostalgia, cultural commentary, analyzing film tropes, comedy, movie reviews, storytelling, comedy podcast, pop culture, musical comedy, grease, john travolta, olivia newton john

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

I am standing here beside myself.

For this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie returns to one of the beloved movies from her and Emily's shared Gen X childhood: Short Circuit. The sisters remembered the charming robot Number 5 who gained sentience, the romance between Newton (Steve Guttenberg) and Stephanie (Ally Sheedy), and the funny malapropisms from Ben, the Indian character played by Fisher Stevens--a white actor in brown face. Even though brown face in pop culture was never "okay," for some reason it was "acceptable" in 1980s-era movies. In Short Circuit, the racism puts a pall over this otherwise life-affirming comedy. While the comedy of Stevens' Ben is mostly based on his humorous misuse of the English language, Tracie discovered that Ben was originally written as an Eastern European character. Which means making the white actor into an Indian caricature for both Short Circuit movies--Ben returned as the hero of the sequel--was entirely superfluous.

You need input. Throw on your headphones to input this episode!

Tags

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, movies, pop culture, romance, 80s and 90s movies, sci fi, storytelling, comedy, women, feminism, psychology, mental health, film, cultural commentary, analyzing film tropes, steve guttenberg, ally sheedy, fisher stevens, aziz ansari, gen x nostalgia

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response.

“…all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings.”

This week, Emily revisited everyone and their aunt’s favorite late-90s advertisement, er, romcom, You’ve Got Mail. The film was a feature-length commercial for America Online starring two of the biggest names in romcom, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. With the biting interactions that lead to romance between Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) and Joe Fox (Hanks), this Nora Ephron-written and -directed film showed us something so true about what life was like for women in the late 20th century, it took decades before we realized just how infuriating it was. In the sisters’ conversation they unpack the sins Hanks’ charm manages to cover, the irony-not-irony in a romcom about the destruction of a small business being bankrolled by brands like AOL and Starbucks, and what ingredients made this film so beloved (comedy, pacing, chemistry, and dramatic irony). And in what may be a first, the sisters note how this movie makes New York City feel cozy.

Emily and Tracie may not be Hanks and Ryan, but we have our charms. Throw on your headphones and be charmed!

Tags:

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, romcom, comedy, film, storytelling, cultural commentary, 80s and 90s movies, movies, psychology, movie reviews, women, classic movies, romance, analyzing film tropes, millennial nostalgia, nostalgia, film analysis, tom hanks, meg ryan, nora ephron

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!