Anti-Woke Movie Sneaks Past Media Execs to Smash Records (KPop Demon Hunters)
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
187.13727
Summary
In this episode, we discuss a movie that will likely change the way films are produced globally because it accidentally snuck a bunch of Christian themes into it, and because it was intentionally done so intentionally. The movie is Demon Hunter: The Hunt for Justice, directed by Bong Joon Ho and written by James Gray.
Transcript
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hello simone i am excited to be here with you today today we are going to discuss a movie
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that will likely change the way films are produced globally and because it accidentally
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snuck a bunch of christian themes and very intentionally a lot of people are like oh
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it's accidental that christian themes got into this we'll go over it's not accidental that
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a lot of anti-dei themes into the most like the biggest movie phenomenon of all time and
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they say all time you might be like oh you know k-pop demon hunters was cute but like how big was
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it exactly in in the last three months uh it has gotten more streams on its songs
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than frozen has gotten on its songs in the 12 years since it was released no by a significant margin
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oh my god what no demon hunters shattered expectations to be the most watched original
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ever with 325 million views eclipsing red notice 236 million views in squid game season one
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266 million views topping the charts in over 90 countries the soundtrack went platinum debuted at
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number eight on the billboard of 200s and made history as the first with four simultaneous top
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10 100 global hits deserved though they're catchy tunes was was golden number one it had your idol
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number four soda pop number five and how it's done number 10 with golden alone top charts in the uk
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with over a million units sold and a sing-along theatrical version grossing 19.2 million now that's
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not as big a deal but hold on i want to i want to compare it to frozen here so since it's released
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in terms of the number of streams that its songs have gotten they've gotten around 3.5 billion
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streams okay frozen has gotten 2.5 to 3 billion over the past 12 years 12 years oh my god if you're
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talking weekly streams the absolute peak for frozen was 50 million the peak for demon hunters was 141
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million whoa not even close my my monthly listeners for demon hunters it peaked at 40 million for for
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frozen it peaked at 20 million and the reason why this is so interesting to go over is because
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a lot of people like are individually like i like k-pop demon hunters it was pretty cool and based
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and then but it doesn't feel like a frozen right like no it's delightful it's fun there's there's
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conflict there's issues but frozen is just like is is culturally we don't feel like we're in a frozen
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moment like the fact that i can compare k-pop demon hunter to something like frozen and i'm like this
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completely smashed frozen's numbers you can hear that as a person and be like but i thought that was
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like my thing like like my private weird thing oh yeah everyone thinks it's like a little niche like
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oh it's just this korean anime thing that i watched the only ones dying tonight are you i'm sorry what
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your fans we're gonna eat your fans no no no no not our fans when you mess with our fans we need to
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make it hurt oh yeah and like when you and i had to like we had to to sneak into my my dad's netflix
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account ask him to give us temporary vacation traveling access and then just like i thought it
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was it was going to be like oh like listed front page top 10 like here's our most success no we had
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to search it it wasn't even listed in any of the like suggested free listings it's a deep cut but it's
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not and and no this is a movie that doesn't have a single black person in it like in terms of like
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it doesn't have a single white person in it they don't have a single white person in it either and i'm
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not complaining they don't it shouldn't have a single white person no it's korean you go to
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south korea you don't see that um you really don't see many white people in korea i lived there
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for a while the the other thing that well we felt bad walking down the streets because we were just
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bringing down the average attractiveness somebody told me that what if the people who we were
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invested in actually told me that no i'm not you're beautiful they said i i broke up the social
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harmony by looking like non with your ugly western face we just can't we can't hold a candle
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i don't know what to say like korean people are just so beautiful if you go to streams per track
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so for for k-pop demon hunters it was 300 million with versus 100 to 200 million for frozen if you
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look at like individual songs here if you look at golden which was their their top one yeah you get
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around 1 billion cumulative strings if you compare that with let it go this is this has gotten 800
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million so i love that dude because let it go is all about victimhood narrative bed rotting giving
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up we're shirking responsibility and golden is about reaching your potential it's about becoming
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the best possible version of yourself was let it go because this this like actually let it go gets me
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as a song because it was the perfect song of the tumblrina it was it was like i don't need one i have
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been constantly vilified by the outside world when in reality her she was from a wealthy family who
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was pretty supportive of her and she was the one who victimized herself her sister didn't force her to
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stay in that room her sister i mean there's even a song like let's make a snowman i never see you
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anymore come out the door i wish you would tell me why do you want to build a snowman
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like let's yeah you know about her rejecting the people who were reaching out to her about her
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self hurting people and the way that self-victimization hurt the people around her
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who was the real her kingdom her entire kingdom her sister her kingdom and then when she lets it go
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and indulges in her worst impulses she ends up causing everyone in the kingdom to suffer and starve
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like mass famine and everything like that her sister to be scooped up by this creepy guy like
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the the message in frozen is like incredibly bad um uh well the message people took from it the actual
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message is that you shouldn't be that type of person and she's also the pretty vile person yeah
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one would have hoped so so you've got that and then we'll talk about the theming in this what i
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will note is i've got three because i was just looking like what do like mainstream christian blogs
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because when i thought the thing that kept hitting me when i thought i was like this seems like
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explicitly weird there were like weird moments in it where i was like this seems explicitly christian
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in its narrative and for people who don't know south korea is the largest christian community
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of any anywhere in asia it's it's gotta it's like a a mainstream very mainstream religion there
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my my one south korean friend in in high school was also the only super christian person i knew
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oh no i'll know we'll get to this narrative as well that we have this narrative that like
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this sony sold it for like nothing and they sold the streaming rights for like nothing and they're
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not so this is incorrect it's it's not real oh really no well so what really happened was is netflix
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through sony did a deal where they would handle the funding of various projects if they got exclusive
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rights to stream them this project was was greenlit and funded under this scheme there is no way it could
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have gone to anyone but netflix and there's no way it could have gone out under any terms but the
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terms that netflix negotiated with okay this makes sense because this is how the all the various
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production firms that are shopping around content about us are doing it where they yeah because we have
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the contact and then they go to the premium streaming platforms and they're like pay for pay us to
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produce this and you'll get exclusive rights and so that that makes sense that seems to be how it's done
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these days and so like what people are are acting like is like if sony was sitting on this gym they
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could have chosen to go to the theaters whiz and stuff like that and it's like no from the moment it
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was a concept netflix bankrolled it under a scheme with netflix the 100 million dollars that went to the
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funding of this because that's how much it cost to make who was given by netflix at the outset like
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how did it cost how does something cost that much netflix because it had a bunch of k-pop
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title like top k-pop people oh okay so the singers are actually famous k-pop stars yeah a number of
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them are actually famous k-pop artists oh my gosh oh i didn't know that the voices are great so that
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makes sense but well and some of them are famous artists from other types of music as well you know
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it's just the way movie music industry is but like christians are recognizing this so there's a there's
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an article on like why this is so good from christian parenting there is the christian movie review was
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like this is really good the my the miss pilgrim did a review of this that's that's that's like oh
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this is really good you should watch this and in terms of the explicit christian influences which
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which have been cited by people in the in the creative process uh somebody who goes sarah lee who
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goes by eg ae is the she she wrote some of the songs for it k-pop demon hunters including traps like
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your idol the one that you liked she said she was inspired by her christian faith she also provided
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the singing voice for the main character roomie and she collaborated with some teams so her
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grandfather's shin young kun is a renowned south korean actor and film producer who has starred in
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around 96 movies but he is also a devout christian who runs the ae chong dong entertainment church
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in seoul and he's he's around 100 years old so he's a very famous christian guy who runs their church
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they made the characters look a lot like their voice actors like the the guy who voiced genu like
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that that smile the eyes look a little different but the smile's that wow and and they've admitted
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this as well so if you look at interviews she's had so in an interview she had was variety in june
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2025 she says specifically about the song your idol as a christian i have always been mindful of the
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biblical warning against idolatry making gods out of people or things in k-pop we literally call our
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artists idols and that can be an unhealthy obsession and worship for fans i wanted your idol to suddenly
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caution against that reminding listeners true fulfillment comes from facing god blah blah blah
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blah literally that like like literally the the parts of the plot structure and songs were inspired
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by christianity and where i started to realize that myself as i was going through it and people can be
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like well then why not do a song that's like specifically about christianity or something like
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that or a movie that's explicitly about that and i would point out that that's actually idolatry
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many christian faiths historically were very against and i and i think rightly so against
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literally acting out christian iconography so i would argue it's actually a more faithful rendition to
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act it out with what's the word here sort of metaphor so when i was watching it the thing that got
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me when i first noticed it and i mentioned this in another episode i was like wait the demons are bad
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like i have got well they don't even like being demons that's that's what's so crazy well this was
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one thing that got me is in so many things like the demons are given power in hell based on how bad
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they were on earth like you murder a bunch of people like it has been hotel has this system and i'm like
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that's horrible like so like it learned like it's like one of you know satan's top generals so they'll
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say something like that and i'm like that that seems like the inverse of the way we would want
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this means that if you're gonna do a bad thing you need to do the worst possible bad thing so at
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least when you get to hell you have like a decent upper middle management position yeah you don't
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want to be a peon like if you're just kind of bad then you're like frontline service position in hell
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you don't want that you know or you're like at the whipping post i don't know like yeah that means
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an alternate direction with this which is most demons are they do not appear to come from humans but
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the demons that do come from humans that are bad really do not like their existence like this is
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a very unpleasant thing for them yeah but in addition to that they are also bad yeah like
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legit bad like actually oh my gosh bad yeah like okay so people who don't know this if you see a
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spoiler for something it statistically increases your enjoyment of the movie watching experience yeah
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try to tell that to your brother yeah try telling this to my brother but this is a study that's been
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done so you can skip like 15 seconds if you don't want to hear his brother if you're listening and
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you haven't yet watched k-pop demon hunters first what are you doing second spoiler alert
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the subversion that you find out is the character who you think is you know at going to
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turn on on the demons and who actually has a good side to him he was just lying he was actually bad
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yeah yeah he lied about his he lied about his background and kind of pretended that he was trying to
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like save his mother and little sister and no no he just totally screwed them over and they probably
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died it's implied that they died yeah starved to death while he became famous and wealthy and
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everything else he lived in the palace and everything like that and then he does have a a last minute
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turnaround to try to you know save the heroine but it's not like a oh and he's secretly been good
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all along he has the last minute turnaround in in the in the context of a movie was in a system that
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and this is true of the the the plot lines throughout the movie that it's a movie that is very much about
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confession yeah and owning your sins yeah and taking responsibility for your sins yeah rather than
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about shirking your sins and about attempting to uh hide the things that in your life that you think
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make you sinful or bad from other people instead of taking responsibility for them that's like the
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central theming of the movie and then the theming of the powers of the movie is idolatry when you give
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your attention to things that are only designed to consume your attention that these things end up
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producing negative externalities yeah and we got an email from a fan that i thought was was pretty
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fun about this where he just goes over like a number of base things in it so i'll just read it
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so zero diversity not one character not in one single frame even at zoe's burbank high school who isn't
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ethnically asian maliciousness and disguised cynicism slash infiltration from hostile groups is actually bad
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in fact selene and rumi's motivating fear is that rumi will be mistakenly perceived to be
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a hostile or out group infiltrator now this i also found pretty interesting and somebody pointed out as
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well uh that one thing that this did really well is women where they're like i was so shocked at the
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beginning of a movie that women were like doing makeup and like gossiping and being girly like they're
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doing the whole fighting thing but in more like a totally spies type of way and oh yeah they're
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being badass but they're yeah they're brushing their hair they're putting on makeup and they're also like
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speed eating noodles yum yeah so they're being like burping and everything like that like they're being
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sort of like a gross and everything like that but also authentically female and i and you can be like
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well isn't this bad and i'd contrast it with the western female hero archetype that we've seen
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which is uh you know your ren from whatever her name is like it's a lady from star wars that they
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oh kylo ren's the the bad guy who's the woman from star wars ray ray ray and like you'd never see ray
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doing her oh yeah she would never you know yeah be like choosing outfits and and putting on makeup and
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also like ogling six packs on guys yeah ogling guys or like you you just wouldn't see that but it's
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it's shown from the very first scene when they're in this like airplane and they get into a fight
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with demons on the airplane and they jump out of the airplane and are like doing their makeup while
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they're like they're they're they're portrayed as women like very very feminine in a way that
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hollywood has clearly yeah they they like to look pretty they they love cool clothing they love food
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in that classic like anime beautiful woman way where they eat a ton of food but never get
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and they find hot men hot oh my gosh what's cool about this is it isn't a subversion of feminism
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it's a subversion of the form of feminism that just wanted to make women look better than men and
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perfect it's saying we don't morally superior yeah we don't need to hold women to this standard of
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you know they never burp they never eat they never have any flaws but that doesn't mean we need to
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strip them of character and strip them of you know wanting to preem themselves and wanting to look
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pretty and wanting to be girly they can be girly and fight and they can take pride in the ways that
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they're girly while they are still like impactful actors in society oh yeah they always wanted to do
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like a spa day but who doesn't do like things together it's very yeah so then the next thing he
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says here is every single authority figure in in k-pop demon hunters is earnest well-meaning and
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legitimate there is no enemy within no good guy who we find out is really working for the bad guy
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bobby is 100 on side without question so mira zoe and rumi don't have a quote-unquote rebel rebel
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against anything there's no white man in charge no secondary in league with the bad guy who has to be
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found out and overthrown and this is really like weird like i'm not used to this i'm not used to like
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there's no corporate evil guy it's not that the k-pop industry is destroying these people
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their manager is never anything but like chill and helpful to them yeah it's not that capitalism is
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bad which also is so common and everything that comes out of western media now and they could have
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made it like men bad right like but but because they didn't see it that way given that the male boy
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band is the bad boy band but a few things to note about that they made their manager like their direct
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boss a guy who's just sweet and helpful and it's in the movie for i think more talking scenes than
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the bad guy boy band bad guy boy band is also not like so often when you have like the men right like
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the men of barbie or something like that right they are depicted as in a woke shows you have evil male
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group they are depicted as like incompetent or wanting to victimize women because they're women
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or you know any of those things and you don't you don't have any of that here from no one first time
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they meet them they're like this these people it's even like a whole joke scene is like oh they're
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they're actually quite good and catchy and and i like what they're doing right yeah and it's never
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like oh they they and like gender never even comes up like even though it's an all-girl band versus
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an all-boy band that's more just along the tropes of k-pop not along like anything like that but
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anyway okay so i thought that was an interesting point and then he says note here while out on the
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street demon shopping the three individually rescue a man or boy we only been rescuing women and girls
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and he says run it back and see for yourself they obviously save the whole world in the end which
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includes everyone male and female but it's still an interesting choice something about not wanting the
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three to come off as emasculating that's really interesting in hollywood it's always underappreciated
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girl bossing and doofus male lead and so that's also really important here i will note his thing
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about no authority figures being bad there is one authority figure who's seen as bad who's who's
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sort of the person who thinks that she just needs to hide all of her sin mother or well her adoptive
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mother the mother who thinks she needs to hide all her sin and i'm like yeah but that's also not like
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you know i don't see that as as like necessarily a bad message there to being like well you you should
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opt to this stuff and she also explicitly rejects that world like she's like i don't want to be part
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of a world where i interact with people and my friends through uh covering up the things that are
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bad about myself i want to confess those things and overcome them but in no way in this is sin ever
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seen as a good thing right like in in the show which i thought was very interesting because that's so rare
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you watch our view about which i actually think the great one about turning red which is like
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literally about being a prostitute like and i mean like it is if you haven't watched turning red it is
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it is shocking to me so so the movie it is very clear turning into a panda is about her sexuality like
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this this reference is drawn very explicitly it's about going through puberty and previous generations
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of asians this seems like an asian culture things have learned to suppress their sexuality
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and she doesn't want to and so what does she do she comes up with a system to see a boy band where she
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sells pictures of the thing that represents her sexuality and then eventually sells her sexuality to
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the boy who she hates most so she can get the money for the boy band and this is all played as like
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a good thing and i was like whoa disney what were you thinking with this like this is explicit man
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so and then he points out here which i hadn't thought about but he's right here he says note
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how rumi never defeats jinnu this is the male villain who ends up turning good at the end that we were
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talking about he rescues her twice but along the way he never submits to her obeys her or follows her
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he passes on all of her s tests where he talks about it he says watch yourself and note how it
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therefore feels right to us that rooming is increasingly fascinated by and concerned for
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jinnu jinnu skillfully and consistently not obeying roomie draws them together oh he says he likes how
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malcolm constantly interrupts corromps simone correct so i don't interrupt you i do i i guess i do
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the audience is very split on this like half are like why would malcolm ever interrupt simone the other
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half is like malcolm needs to interrupt so he goes into the no gay or tranny stuff which is true like
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nothing in this is remotely and they could have gone in that direction right like this is an american
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thing it's three girls working together one of them is gonna have to be gay right like they just would
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have to be right like i i would be shocked if they weren't so so that was very noticeable in the
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story he goes on here about how like this is a continuation of 500 years of age in history and
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they do a good job with this of i think capturing both korea's christian roots and its traditional
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this is the other thing is hollywood has been going out there for ages and being like look we can't make
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something new every time we try to make something new at bombs look at elo or whatever where they
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tried to make a 12 year old boy gay and i was like oh that's so creepy but anyway like why did
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is that the gay mermaid one elo is the one in in space you're thinking bruno i was thinking of luco
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here where like the characters also have like super gay vibes the mermaid one yeah that's bruno elo is
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the one or elliot or something i don't know it's the one that just came out about space and just
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completely bombed and everyone's like well you have to go see it because it's like novel and it's like
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no like they they tried to do something creepy with this and like everyone involved with that like
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like i'm not against gay people anybody who watches this channel is i'm not against gay people
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i'm against depicting a 12 year old is gay like that's iffy okay you're you're against gay 12 year
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olds we see your bigotry now it's plain for all to see that sexual oh yeah no you just you just hate
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gay 12 year olds to be a major part of a plot about a 12 year old by the way before the movie
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came out and everyone's saying that's why it's so bad because they they cut like a central theme of
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it out i was like no it's obviously going to be bad anyway if you thought that that was an interesting
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plot line what we what i was interested in was the aliens and stuff right but the point is is you get
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into this and immediately again from the beginning of it you can see that it is new but actually new
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right like you look at elliot or whatever this new one is and everyone's got bean mouse it's all
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the cow art style but you know this american stuff bean mouth look up bean mouse mark or cow i think
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it's cow something style uh art it's the art that you have in steven universe that it's the art that
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you had in turning red no i did i loved the unique styling of k-pop demon hunters too that it didn't
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it didn't actually feel like they were copying anyone it felt like its own thing yeah no it felt
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well it felt very pretty inspiration even if you think about like the designs of the monsters you
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immediately see these monsters and you're like oh this isn't like monsters i've seen before it's
00:25:31.260
it's building on history but i hadn't like that's unique and interesting and they're also very
00:25:36.160
memeable there's already been amazing cosplays of the monster cat so great yeah yeah but so so
00:25:42.720
immediately i see the way that they're stylized i'm like this is unique i see the way that the the
00:25:48.360
art style is done and i'm like this is unique i see the way that they've tried to like world build
00:25:54.220
to not have the typical oh you know the whatever betrayal scene and everything like that i'm like
00:25:59.720
oh this is unique yeah you know and they actually there must be some german word for that unique
00:26:04.660
feeling of like both stress and boredom that you feel when you kind of know the plot point of a movie
00:26:09.780
and you're like oh i don't want to go through this one i don't like this one you know what i mean
00:26:13.100
of like oh there's going to be this betrayal or this this tension and here's a you know love
00:26:18.120
triangle and you're like i don't want to do this you know that feeling this didn't have that i love
00:26:21.840
yeah yeah so i i thought that this was one like is hollywood going to learn from this like is hollywood
00:26:30.220
going to change what they're doing in relation to this is hollywood like what's what's your take do
00:26:36.480
you think that they have the capacity to look at how i mean disney is basically going but i guess i
00:26:41.880
can already answer yes they will and here's how i know they will okay because you know friend of
00:26:47.500
the show obviously because we've had her her little sister on a few times suzy weiss is is a friend of
00:26:51.940
ours barry weiss who used to run the free press she recently took over cnn right like yes yes like
00:26:59.600
that to me shows like oh boy like a deep recognition that the old model and the old ways are failing
00:27:08.040
yeah like we need to i mean barry if you don't know barry weiss is seen as like a demon by these
00:27:14.180
people now she's a lefty she's like a lesbian manhattanite jew right and she lives in la
00:27:18.860
she lives in la i said she lived in manhattan no she lives in la
00:27:22.380
but she's also questions the trans narrative and questions dei culture
00:27:28.660
also into that like centrist heterodox zone which is where sane people sit and she produced the what
00:27:36.360
was it the witch hunt of of jk rowling which trouse of yeah the witch trouse of jk rowling um which i
00:27:42.600
thought i thought was was great if this was also true with the contract but so i can go over a little
00:27:48.880
bit if you're interested in the the streaming rights issue i don't really need to go over this
00:27:52.780
basically what happened is is that during the pandemic sony signed on this to get a stream of
00:27:58.260
continued revenue for its movie department so k-pop demon hunters began production during the pandemic
00:28:03.620
yeah wow so this took a long time to make all right that's when the deal happened that led to its
00:28:12.500
creation that may not have been when it actually started oh hold on i can just come up when it because
00:28:17.960
i i i noted here it was in 2018 when it was first pitched wow in in the woman who did it the last
00:28:26.320
movie she had done was the lego ninjago movie so you know they hurt ninja go ninjago yeah the lego
00:28:34.340
ninjago movie just exploded out of nowhere that's that's fun no so a bunch of people's and and by the
00:28:40.560
way people are like well sony got nothing for this oh my god do you remember that lego restaurant we
00:28:45.040
went to in seoul oh yeah that was cool i gotta find what we i'll see if i can find pictures so i
00:28:50.120
can put them up gosh korea is so great but sony still has the rights to this well i also saw like
00:28:56.680
the designs of the outfits of the male villains in like the last scene when they're in the traditional
00:29:02.080
korean outfits it was really on point i was like that is it looks good in villainous the other thing
00:29:09.660
that's also interesting about the the sort of character that's portrayed as like satan in this
00:29:15.300
is it is not humanized it's a very clear whenever you see it the distant voice you're not meant to
00:29:22.720
like it you're it's not meant to be funny or cute it's just bad it's not funny it's not cute it has
00:29:29.460
no redeeming qualities but it isn't bad in the way that disney makes demons bad you know so consider
00:29:37.080
like hades disney disney honestly makes the the the naughty characters in disney films
00:29:43.640
are largely treasured and loved and and and they become beloved characters people dress up as and
00:29:50.220
they buy the merch you don't buy merch of this big bad yeah bad bad guys are bad guys instead of like
00:29:57.480
oh bad guys maybe good or yeah well he's very flashy and fun and and and and like mean to his
00:30:05.220
underlings you know you have that whole trope of like the that almost sort of belittles the character
00:30:09.300
i call it like captain planet syndrome where like if you consider hades the way he treats his
00:30:14.340
underlings like kicking them around and everything like that is very you know like i think it sort of
00:30:19.900
belittles him as a character it makes him look like incompetent and like evil is not actually
00:30:24.060
competent evil is not actually something that is going to be tempting to you where in in this the big
00:30:30.160
bad is way closer if i was going to give it to a disney villain way closer to the original enchantress
00:30:37.700
from uh which which one is that the one where she's just the enchantress turns into like a crow or
00:30:43.840
whatever she's just like bad she's not like funny bad she's white where she turns into a witch
00:30:51.480
and then a dragon was there one before that yeah maybe snow white is what i'm thinking of yeah
00:30:58.420
maleficent's pretty bad but she's also one of the most beloved oh she's she's a really great
00:31:05.480
she's a really great bad character um in in in disneyland like the best character actress
00:31:11.660
in the disneyland parks is maleficent oh really she she just walks around insulting people and it's
00:31:18.220
amazing yeah that's that's fantastic yeah she's like and like you have to be really smart to be
00:31:23.760
her character actress because people will like try to shout and like heckle and she'll just burn them
00:31:29.820
it's amazing that is that's the thing it's like in disney again yeah they elevate and make them
00:31:34.120
fairly beloved and yeah that's that's not well i mean you see this more with recent i mean
00:31:38.460
i want to ask you like did is netflix not like intentionally not emphasizing this show like
00:31:45.540
that really confused so they didn't they didn't know it was going to become a success like this
00:31:49.600
and now the algorithm sort of handling itself right like uh i i think that the the next iteration of
00:31:55.600
this may have a lot of hollywood meddling we'll see because you know obviously they're going to
00:31:59.320
make sequels sony still owns a sequel rights so they can they can make a sequel if they want to
00:32:03.800
and also note here that like we see the messages coming out of hollywood and disney getting like
00:32:08.920
increasingly bad i didn't want to do a whole video on it but wish has like the worst message
00:32:15.680
ever oh you mean the moral the moral imperatives presented by movies the
00:32:21.000
the moralizations in wish if you haven't seen it which is one of the recent disney movies
00:32:25.620
they're supposed to be like their tent pale movie that like it's where the song make a wish comes from
00:32:32.460
from like the disney parks and everything oh they were trying to do that okay yeah they were trying to
00:32:36.740
like make that the central song of the show to make it like the central disney thing and it was about
00:32:43.720
a kingdom that a magician created and you could come to the kingdom it was completely you know up to
00:32:48.920
you and what you had to do is you had to give him your wishes and then he would may give you your wish
00:32:56.000
back later in life right but he didn't give the wish back to everyone and when confronted about this
00:33:00.980
he's just like and and everybody like clearly likes this kingdom like it's a clearly functional
00:33:05.240
good place and it's even mentioned in a song that he houses them all for free in this kingdom
00:33:09.720
right so so what's his big thing is that he thinks that giving everyone every wish that they wanted
00:33:16.880
would be irresponsible yeah which is accurate and this is worse like deposing him and ruining his life
00:33:25.560
and everything he built that is but it's such like a progressive message give me whatever i want
00:33:31.640
now or i'm going to destroy your your life you know affirm me for whatever i want to believe about
00:33:36.880
myself affirm whatever one of crazy thoughts i have like that's obviously super super toxic it was
00:33:42.940
funny about the movie is if you look at the wishes that he's holding back right like they all are the
00:33:49.080
wishes he's holding one looks like it was somebody like conquering something now you don't know if he's
00:33:53.820
conquering a mountain or another country right like another the grandfather's wish which this story
00:33:58.400
hinges around is he wants to be an inspiration to the kids but an inspiration to do what right like
00:34:03.380
it is like oh he just wants to be witnessed basically yes it's basically witnessing he just
00:34:08.560
want he does the grandfather does end up inspiring the kids through wanting his wish to rebel and
00:34:14.380
overthrow a benevolent kingdom like clearly that's not a good wish right like i think that the and it's a
00:34:21.260
fairly selfish wish as well you know to the witness me wish you know i i think that very obviously not
00:34:29.960
all wishes are good right like i i don't even understand like this is something that like media
00:34:35.280
and like back to like bruce almighty or whatever like granting all the wishes and then it causing all
00:34:40.300
these problems right like i'll just grant all prayers like whitelist all prayers there's a reason you
00:34:44.380
don't do that right like and socially and through media we used to understand this like this was
00:34:51.920
delivered to us and we would see these things and we'd be like ah well that's like the story of x
00:34:56.620
and that's why you can't just grant everyone's wishes and disney is like literally no no self-control
00:35:03.220
at all everybody get what they want now it was also really interesting about wish and about a lot of
00:35:09.100
disney movies recently is is people have analyzed this in more detail and i may as well there isn't
00:35:13.840
generally a single good straight male character they're all depicted as potentially willing to
00:35:20.720
backstab you or doofuses or in some other way villainous right and it's just shocking to me
00:35:28.320
that you could have that right like it's it's it's that hollywood could have gotten away with this for
00:35:35.400
this long and i really hope that this wakes up the industry and we see some systemic changes in the
00:35:39.680
industry in relation to this because now they are actually hemorrhaging it should give us hope that
00:35:44.380
people are turning to a movie that has hopeful self-empowering take responsibility kind of message
00:35:50.020
of like i'm going to reach my potential i'm going to own my faults i'm not going to hide things i'm
00:35:55.680
going to work hard that's that's good i mean that that market driven forces are showing that people
00:36:00.940
are leaning into messages that are not so toxic is a great sign and that that go wrote go woke go broke
00:36:07.600
is a pattern is also a really good sign that people don't they don't buy into those more toxic
00:36:12.300
moralizations that you're talking about and i would say that the movies that have done well
00:36:16.400
that disney's put out also don't have as toxic of moral stories like i don't actually remember what
00:36:22.200
the moralization of encanto was it was kind of the opposite it was like well you don't get your wish
00:36:27.160
because i don't think she ever came away encanto was a fairly i just thought encanto was a good movie
00:36:31.720
across it was delightful and it was one of the it's the only disney movie i know of that like
00:36:35.520
a lot of our friends that we really enjoyed and it it didn't have like any super toxic moralization
00:36:42.780
it also didn't have any strong male characters that weren't doofuses i mean bruno was just a
00:36:48.080
sort of screwed up mentally ill person yeah it was always getting injured yeah it had problems but
00:36:54.820
also it was one of the less toxic ones so what i'm saying is in the end as much as as progressive
00:37:01.100
culture has taken over hollywood and other really powerful institutions like academia
00:37:05.020
people in general are are reasonable and like inspiring messages and and and are are leaning
00:37:16.140
into healthier narratives and i appreciate that this is the thing that gets me about this and i think
00:37:21.800
it's one of the most shocking things about this is you watch the movie like i watched the movie i was
00:37:26.500
like yeah that was a good solid movie right i didn't i didn't come away like being like oh that
00:37:31.700
was the movie of the century or anything like that i was just like yeah you know what sometimes we just
00:37:36.560
need to have fun malcolm interesting about this and i because my kids have really liked it like they
00:37:42.280
like watching the songs thank goodness yeah yeah but i had thought of it as just our family thing
00:37:48.360
right like and i didn't realize that this had captured the public to the level of oh yeah no so i was the
00:37:56.180
one i had i had seen a bunch of youtube commentary already on k-pop demon hunters and i was like
00:38:00.120
malcolm you've got to watch this like we have to watch this for cultural literacy which is why i
00:38:04.300
struggled so so much to get netflix account access without paying for it but you were like oh i heard
00:38:10.380
this bombed i heard this and you thought it was a complete failure of a movie that no one's ever heard
00:38:15.040
of and so yeah that really that's telling no but i mean even after seeing it the point i'm making
00:38:20.140
is like hollywood you don't need to make the greatest thing ever anymore if you just make
00:38:26.220
something that's based and interesting you're you're gonna get a lot of viewers right like
00:38:31.240
the the thing is is we you know we were looking at doing a documentary and we we probably blew it up
00:38:36.420
like the one that we had with a major studio because we were like i will not work with this
00:38:39.360
director because she was so woke it was just like completely intolerable and i knew that whatever
00:38:43.940
she made was going to bop because she clearly couldn't connect with was like average people
00:38:49.260
right like she could connect with like award shows and stuff like that but it was clear
00:38:52.500
she wasn't going to be able to create something that would perform in the current media environment
00:38:56.560
and i was like i don't want to make something if it's gonna bop right like i don't i don't need to do
00:39:01.300
that right and i think that that you just need to have like the most basic level of competence
00:39:07.500
in terms of putting these things together to create like one of the greatest hits
00:39:12.180
of like the past decade or i mean technically ever for a streaming site right like and it shows how
00:39:19.100
starved the public is and so you know get out there and make based media guys yeah let's do it
00:39:25.480
no i think this is great this is also an indication of the so if i if i have takeaways from this basically
00:39:31.380
we're seeing another sign of a surge in more traditional based in christian culture as indicated by
00:39:41.220
the rampant and amazing success of k-pop demon hunters which has christian messages and generally
00:39:49.920
pretty like based plot and that's good yeah i like it well i love you to death simone i am so excited
00:39:56.660
for the bulgogi tonight speaking of korean bulldog bulldog bulldog bulldog we're doing bulldog tonight
00:40:01.820
and if you haven't had bulldog i would suggest it so yeah bulldog is is basically it's it's it's korean
00:40:06.860
fire chicken i mean so here's the problem is there's it's going to confuse people because
00:40:10.580
there's no like bulldog sauce like it's just spicy so what what we're making is basically it's
00:40:15.440
teppanyaki no not teppanyaki is a totally different japanese dish it's to toboki it's it's those it's
00:40:22.420
those thick korean rice noodle things sauteed and then you add to it basically chicken heavily marinated
00:40:31.420
in jung sauce mixed with sugar and a couple other spices and then to that malcolm also prefers that
00:40:39.120
we add enoki mushrooms all of that is then broiled in an oven under a layer of mozzarella cheese
00:40:46.100
so it's almost like a spicy chicken crust pizza and it's delicious yeah well if you're comparing it to
00:40:54.240
a pizza the the fried rice sticks take the place of the the dough teoboki i don't someone tell us
00:41:02.520
how to yeah tell us how to genetically they are fantastic when compared to well you don't get the
00:41:09.020
same crunch you would have with a pizza but you get a lot more sort of uniformity throughout the dish
00:41:13.760
and i think that the flavor is well it's also a little sweeter and spicier than a pizza yeah because
00:41:18.960
i think you add but at least the recipe that i use i think has both honey and brown sugar in it
00:41:23.040
yeah it's it's actually it's sweet and spicy but then the cheese on top i think also you so that
00:41:29.080
what cuts through the sweetness and the spiciness is the mozzarella cheese on top it's all melted
00:41:34.360
today we're gonna try and get this half cheddar because we're out of mozzarella well we're low
00:41:37.940
we're extremely low on mozzarella so we're gonna yeah half cheddar half half who knows though i think
00:41:42.180
the cheddar could be interesting i think the cheddar could be really good i mean i prefer cheddar to
00:41:45.700
mozzarella i always think of mozzarella as being like very you know not not quite spicy so we're doing
00:41:50.960
korean when when the koreans are gone we will eat some of your food you know when you're extinct
00:41:55.360
we'll we'll be like this is what korea was like before they went extinct from low fertility rates
00:42:00.860
so sad all right i'm gonna go get the noodles and start the bull duck i love you very much
00:42:06.440
love you too okay oh god i'm gonna hit end recording all right i was listening to the songs from this again
00:42:16.860
and i i love the the demon one where they're trying to be evil because i just hear it and it's so
00:42:24.780
romantic of like there's a lyric of something like i'm the only one who loves your sins and that is so
00:42:31.460
romantic because it's what you do with me you you know she believes i love her failings not her actual
00:42:36.540
sin you love my sins well yeah my yeah my feelings but then you're like a heart you harness my demons and
00:42:42.080
you turn them into like she means like being autistic not like actual flaws but the things
00:42:48.540
society judges her for that she shouldn't judge herself for they were always framed to me in my
00:42:54.640
childhood as things that i should try to hide and be ashamed of and mask and you were like no let's
00:42:59.500
use this and i love that you're like let's unholster your autism i what i love is you don't have any
00:43:05.740
actual like flaws you know you don't have you have to deal with them all the time but you're just
00:43:13.040
being the perfect person right now you're not like drawn towards sloth or you know sexual
00:43:18.700
i don't have like a gambling habit at least or something no but like of like actual sins you you
00:43:25.200
you don't have any addictions you don't you're not a spindy person you're not a addicted to our kids
00:43:31.620
i'm gonna take it to you idolatrous person you're not a yeah you're just you're very dedicated to
00:43:37.120
your family you had all these things that you thought were bad about yourself because everyone
00:43:40.760
had always told you that they were bad and i was like you know maybe we could just lean into that
00:43:45.880
like f f everyone else i don't mind that you you know weigh all your food i i want a skinny hot wife
00:43:51.640
okay i know other people said that's weird to do at a restaurant and i'm like well we don't have to
00:43:57.600
go to restaurants anymore sweetheart i'm so glad we don't go to restaurants anymore i oh gosh i have
00:44:04.160
to share with you that video on how basically cisco provides a ton of restaurants and you're eating the
00:44:09.340
same frozen food at a bunch of different restaurants across the united states be it in
00:44:13.640
nashville or alaska so it makes so much sense it explains so much
00:44:18.800
hey captain look at the snail look at the snail to send us actually i'm feeling stuff in this book