The Super 70 Podcast

Michael Curtiz was already one of the most successful directors in Hollywood when Warner Brothers practically forced him to cast Joan Crawford in one of the most famous melodramas ever made. Crawford, an American household name who was recognized as one of the most professional actors in Hollywood, led a devastating supporting cast in this 1945 mystery that tells us more than we ever wanted to know about sexual politics after the Second World War. Join me as we talk about the feminization of men, the wasteland of masculinity, the attack on femininity, the impact of the Second World War, and that dreaded word no one wants to discuss…incest.

The Super 70 Podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, and my website at www.thatdylandavis.com. All music on The Super 70 Podcast is provided by Rozalind MacPhail, Joshua Cunningham and Peter John Ross whom you can all find on SoundCloud.

Works Cited

Williams, Linda. Feminist Film Theory: Mildred Pierce and the Second World War. Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television. Ed. E. Deidre Pribram. Verso, London. 1988. Haralovich, Mary Beth. Too Much Guilt Is Never Enough for Working Mothers: Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce, and Mommie Dearest. Velvet Light Trap. University of Texas Press. 1992. Schrader, Paul. Notes on Film Noir. The Film Genre Book Ed. Barry Keith Grant. University of Texas Press. Austin 1986. Sochen, June. Mildrid Pearce and Women in Film. American Quarterly vol 30, No. 1 Spring 1978. Harvey, Sylvia. Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir. Women in Film Noir. Edited by E. Ann Kaplan. BFI Publishing. Corber, Robert J. Joan Crawford’s Padded Shoulders: Female Masculinity in Mildred Pierce. Camera Obscura, Duke University Press.

Melvin LeRoy and Busby Berkeley both direct Golddiggers of 1933. The second incarnation of a popular broadway hit, Golddiggers of 1933 is a tangled tale of love, sex, and money. Well, actually it’s just about sex and money, right? Or is it about social issues and sexism? Perhaps this has something to do with the #MeToo movement. Join me, Ginger Rogers, and Dick Powell as we try to figure out if the progressive elements of this film outweigh its’ outrageous gender bias.

The Super 70 Podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, and my website at www.thatdylandavis.com.

All music on The Super 70 Podcast is provided by Rozalind MacPhail and Joshua Cunningham whom you can also find on SoundCloud.

Works Cited

Patricia Mellencamp “Sexual Economics: Gold Diggers of 1933” Five Ages of Film Feminism. Temple University Press. Philadelphia. * Douglas, Ann & Robertson, Pamela. (1997). Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. The Journal of American History. 84. 1136. * Jane Feuer “The Self-Reflexive Musical and the Myth of Entertainment.” Film Genre Reader II Barry Keith Grant Ed. University of Texas Press Austin

Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman crossed two unlikely themes when they made The General for United Artists: the Southern Lost Cause in popular culture and Keaton’s vaudeville straight man act. The result is a tale all too well told in Hollywood: an expensive flop that comes to be appreciated over time but still has problematic content. Join me as we ride with Keaton through several misadventures on the Locomotive Texas and cherish one of the silent cinema’s greatest gems.

All music on the Super 70 Podcast is written and recorded by either Roziland MacPhail or Joshua Cunningham. You can find both of them on Soundcloud.com and Roz at Roziland MacPhail.com on on twitter @rozilandmacphail.

Works Cited:

Pittenger, William. Capturing a Locomotive: A History of Secret Service in the Late War. 1885.

Kramer, Peter. The General: BFI Film Classics. Palgrave Press. 2016.

We wrap up the 1980's by looking at Michael Lehmann's 1988 pop bubble gum suicide film tome Heathers. With a screenplay by Daniel Waters and starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, Heathers is an unlikely black comedy that threw glitter on the glamorous to bemoan a culture that pursued evil in the race to popularity. Dismissed at the time as an insulting anti-John Hughes trash pick, Heathers was the leader in films that started to talk the way teenagers talk and took on serious issues teenagers were eager to think about.

The Super 70 Podcast is on Soundcloud.com, iTunes and www.thatdylandavis.com. You can reach me at [email protected] and on Twitter @thatdylandavis. The soundtrack to the Super 70 Podcast is written and mixed by Roziland MacPhail and Joshua Cunningham, both of which you can find on Soundcloud.com

Works Cited

Heathers - Deep Focus by John Ross Bowie

Mel Brooks took on a huge challenge when he decided to Produce and star in a remake of the classic Ernst Lubitsch black comedy To Be or Not To Be from 1941. Critical opinion was mixed at the time with most saying it would have been better if Brooks had left the sardonic and extremely sarcastic war film alone. The result, To Be or Not To Be 1983 presents itself as a very noble attempt to give the story a slightly different take including dealing with a painful past and cultural myths using slapstick and civil rights. Watch the film while playing this podcast and perhaps we’ll see our mixed opinion about this 80’s comedy change much like it did for Lubitsch’s original masterpiece.

The Super 70 Podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, and my website at www.thatdylandavis.com. You can also find me on Twitter @thatdylandavis

All music on The Super 70 Podcast is provided by Rozalind MacPhail and Joshua Cunningham whom you can also find on SoundCloud. Works Cited for this episode are: To Be Or Not To Be the BFI paperback by Peter Barnes available on Amazon.com.

Our second foreign film is Peter Weir’s Gallipoli. Released in 1981 and starring a very young Mel Gibson, Gallipoli is a First World War Saga that traces the facts and fallacies of Australia’s involvement in a horrible battle that literally changed nothing but Australia’s attitude about what it meant to be a member of the British Empire. This is another one of my more rambling episodes so if you like the rigid scene by scene breakdown I usually give, this may not be your cup of tea. However, this also means you also won’t have to turn the podcast on to watch the film as I give nonsensical narration.

The Super 70 Podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, and my website at www.thatdylandavis.com.

All music on The Super 70 Podcast is provided by Rozalind MacPhail and Joshua Cunningham whom you can also find on SoundCloud. Works Cited for this episode are: Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead and the Battle of Gallipoli by Philip Haythornethwaite.

Starring wrestling superstar “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and the amazing veteran David Keith, we watch John Carpenter’s master commentary on capitalism: 1988’s THEY LIVE. Released the Friday before the federal election, THEY LIVE is an overt criticism of yuppies mixed with an undercurrent on race, politics, and the future of America. Join me as we uncover not only how THEY LIVE was relevant in 1988, but how it is still relevant just last week as we woke up and asked ourselves: “What’s Wrong, Baby?”

The Super 70 Podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, and my website at www.thatdylandavis.com.

All music on The Super 70 Podcast is provided by Rozalind MacPhail and Joshua Cunningham whom you can also find on SoundCloud. Works Cited for this episode are: Jonathan Lethem’s They Live (2010), D. Harlan Wilson’s They Live (2015) and Slavoj Žižek’s They Live and Violence (2008).

This month we will be digging deep into Ghostbusters 1984. In fact, most of the time I will be paraphrasing or directly quoting Adam Bertocci and his online essay Overthinking Ghostbusters posted on his website www.runleiarun.com. I found that I had very little to add to Bertocci’s fine analysis and asked him very kindly if I could use some of it for this podcast. To Adam, I say a heartfelt thank you. To you I ask that you think hard about what that Twinkie and the enormous Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man really means in 1980’s Reagan America.

The Super 70 Podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, and my website at www.thatdylandavis.com.

All music on The Super 70 Podcast is provided by Rozalind MacPhail whom you can also find on SoundCloud.

This month we look at the eternal cross-genre classic Back to the Future. Seemingly about a time-traveling teenager, this blockbuster from 1985 showcased Robert Zemeckis as a Hollywood directing powerhouse capable of complex cinematographic techniques to critique life in the 1980s by looking at the 1950s. But perhaps there is more to look at than Zemeckis planned. We’ll go scene by scene through Michael J. Fox’s breakout movie to explore politics, race, and rape.

If you have the means, please go to michaeljfox.org or teamfox.org to donate to Team Fox, a foundation committed to funding and fighting the scourge of Parkinson’s disease. Neither I nor this podcast receives anything from Team Fox. This is not a paid advertisement.

The Super 70 Podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, and my website at www.thatdylandavis.com. All music on The Super 70 Podcast is provided by Rozalind MacPhail whom you can also find on SoundCloud and www.rozalindmacphail.com.

This month we take a look at Hiyao Miyazaki's Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind. This Manga from 1984 gives us a peak into what Japan was thinking of in the '80's: environmentalism, violence, and pacifism. Layered over this is a female protagonist who would rather save lives than take them in her quest to help the Kingdom of Tolmekia see the world as she does. This commentary is less a scene by scene breakdown as I normally do but more of an exploration of thought as the film unfolds. Join me as I appreciate the beauty and wisdom of Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind.

You can find me, my books, and my blog at www.thatdylandavis.com. Music for the podcast is written and performed by Rozalind MacPhail whom you can find at www.rozalindmacphail.com.