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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Deep Thoughts about Nightmare on Elm Street
One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…
Today’s episode of Deep Thoughts gives Emily a chance to finally exorcise the boogeyman of every 80’s childhood: Freddy Krueger. Though neither Emily nor Tracie ever saw the influential 1984 film Nightmare on Elm Street, the burned and be-knived Freddy cast a long shadow over the culture, meaning the Guy sisters were completely unaware of the badass Nancy Thompson, protagonist and final girl (the last woman alive to confront the killer) who refuses to give in. Though the film hits some false notes in 2024–specifically, the “punishment” of Tina after having sex–Wes Craven has created a remarkably feminist film that allows a very normal teen girl to reclaim her power from an abuser. What a shame that our culture chose to make Freddy the enduring symbol of this iconic film, rather than Nancy.
Content warning: discussion of child murder, death, and sexual predation
Whatever you do…don't fall asleep. And do throw on your headphones to listen in!
Mentioned in this episode:
https://thegeekiary.com/a-feminist-look-at-a-nightmare-on-elm-street/18520
https://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1281
https://papaeleele.wordpress.com/2015/07/03/a-nightmare-on-adolescent-street-by-richard-stange/
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 episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
They remembered the bad guy and not the badass.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Speaker 1:I'm Emily Guy-Burken and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I will be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1984 film Nightmare on Elm Street with my sister, Tracy Guy-Decker, and with you. Let's dive in. So I mentioned at the end of the last episode this is a bit of a pattern interrupt. This is not a film that I had seen before, but it still loomed large over my childhood, and I feel that it probably did over yours as well. So tell me what your impression is, what you know about Nightmare on Elm Street.
Speaker 2:Right, because you know I haven't seen it. I know you have not seen it, yeah, because regular listeners will know I'm a bit of a fraidy cat when it comes to horror, and probably this one more than others because like, like you say, like loomed large, like Freddy Krueger was like the scariest thing ever when we were kids. He was so scary. And so in my, in my memory, in my, the furniture of my brain, freddy Kruger is like a twisted nightmare version of Where's Waldo, because he's got like a striped shirt on and like a hat, uh huh. Got like a striped shirt on and like a hat, uh-huh. And he, I remember, like blades for fingers or something, or blades for fingernails, like I don't know, a la edward scissorhand maybe, and like a real, like creepy, burned possibly face, but like his skin is not typical and and he's really, really scary.
Speaker 2:And I guess in my I'm I'm searching my memory banks he attacks you in your dreams and Of course we all know that if you die in your dreams, you die Like that's just how it works and that's it. That's all I've got. I like that. That is what I know. The sum total of what?
Speaker 2:I know about nightmare on Elm street Franchise. So tell me, why are we talking about this film that neither of us have seen?
Speaker 1:As I said, Freddy Krueger loomed large. When I, as a small child, felt scared, I can remember walking to the bus stop. What I was afraid of behind me was Freddy Krueger.
Speaker 2:That really jibes, yeah.
Speaker 1:That really jibes. Yeah, the follow-ups for the original film and just seeing him in that terrified me. The shadow that this cast over my childhood is so big, considering the fact I've never seen the movie. And then when I was probably like 13 or so, where I was old enough that I wanted to fit in with my peers, we were at the house of a friend of our father's. We knew this family, but not well, and the daughter of the family was a year older than me and I was there, as were several of her friends who I did not know, and the daughter's like let's watch Nightmare on Elm Street. And I was like no, I can't do that and shut that shit down immediately and was so frightened by the prospect of watching this movie that I didn't even care that I was going to look bad to these people Did not even bother me and they were very kind about it.
Speaker 1:I mean, like I do want to, I do want to say when I was just like no, I can't, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:They're like, okay, we'll do something else. They were very, very kind about it. It was still just like oh, I wonder if they tell that story to each other. It's something I've thought back on since.
Speaker 1:I have become a bit of a horror aficionado as I aged, as I got older, and part of my introduction to horror was a Wes Craven film, scream. That came out in, I believe, 1995 or 96, when I was 16 or 17 years old. Nightmare on Elm Street is also Wes Craven and I absolutely adored the film and that started me on kind of embracing my love for horror. And yet Nightmare on Elm Street still seemed like a bridge too far.
Speaker 1:So part of what I found putting it on the list was it is so influential to the point where you don't have to have seen it to know exactly who Freddy Krueger is. There is also there's a sense of like exercising a demon, like wanting to watch it, and you know not be particularly scared by it now that I'm a 45-year-old woman. And then it's understanding why it's so influential and how it fits in the canon of not only horror but feminist horror, because in a lot of ways this is a very feminist movie it was really fascinating to watch 40 years on, because 1984 is very different from 2024 in a lot of ways and seeing how things have changed but also seeing, in some ways, how things have regressed. So there's a lot there and it gets into what I love about horror and why I find it a fascinating genre.
Speaker 2:All right, well, fill me in. So you heard what I know. Give me like the basic plot of this film.
Speaker 1:The film concerns four teenage friends. We first meet Tina when she is having a nightmare that she is in this abandoned warehouse with dripping pipes, being stalked by a man in a dirty red and green sweater with a hat burns all over his face he has at the very beginning we see him creating this like glove with razor blades for his right hand. She wakes up from the nightmare, her mom comes in to check on her and she has a really hard time like calming down from it. The next morning we meet her friends, glenn, who is played by Johnny Depp. I knew he was in the film but I thought he had a much smaller role. I thought he like got killed off right away, but he's kind of an important part of the film. So we meet uh, glenn and then nancy, and we also meet tina's on again, off again, boyfriend rod, who is kind of pig. The first thing we hear hear him say uh, because so tina is telling glenn and nancy about the nightmare and uh, rod comes up and like grabs her from behind is well, I woke up with a heart on it and had your name all over it to her. Which Yucky yeah. At the time I didn't realize like that they were. They had been had an established relationship, but it was still icky.
Speaker 1:Vicki, tina's mom goes out of town that night and so she asks Nancy and Glenn to sleep over because she's afraid to sleep by herself because the nightmare was so bad. And in talking to Nancy and Glenn she finds out they had basically the same nightmare. Rod ends up crashing the sleepover and Rod and Tina go up into Tina's mother's room and have sex, while Nancy tries to go to sleep in Tina's bed and Glenn is on the couch. So Tina starts having the nightmare again and she is screaming for Rod to help her. Tina and Rod are in Tina's mother's bedroom with the door locked. Glenn and Nancy are coming to the room and can't get in, and in front of him Tina is killed by an invisible attacker. Rod can't see anyone there, but he can see like knife marks showing up on her body and then she's like pulled up to the ceiling and it's bad. So the police assume that Rod is responsible for Tina's death.
Speaker 2:Do Nancy and Glenn think so?
Speaker 1:They don't know what to think. We learn that Nancy is the daughter of the police lieutenant Thompson, and so he keeps saying why was she there Beaming his daughter? We learned that Nancy's parents, Donald and Marge, are separated or divorced.
Speaker 2:Wait, wait, Nancy's parents. Is that the same as the Lieutenant?
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, donald Thompson, lieutenant. Donald Thompson is the police officer, and then Marge Thompson is Nancy's mother. Okay, and they're not together, they're separated or something. We also learn that Marge has a drinking problem. So Nancy tells her father and the police Rod and Tina were fighting, but it wasn't that serious. Whatever their fight was. Police. Rod and Tina were fighting, but it wasn't that serious. Whatever their fight was, it was nothing that would cause him to do this. Rod has run away at this point. The next morning, nancy insists to her mother that she needs to go to school On her way. Rod grabs her and is trying to talk to her, and Nancy's father had had Nancy followed, thinking this would happen, and so he used her to find Rod. So Rod is arrested While Nancy is in school because she stayed awake all night.
Speaker 1:She's in her English class and she dozes off and she has a nightmare about Tina's body being dragged and calling her. So she follows. It ends up confronting Freddy Krueger in the boiler room of the school, which looks just like his warehouse, and when he grabs her to wake herself up from the dream, she pushes her arm against a hot pipe to burn herself. That causes her to wake up, and she wakes up screaming in her English class and like freaking everyone out. And she goes home and sees that she does have a burn mark on her arm. So what's happening in the dream is really happening.
Speaker 1:That night Glenn comes over. Glenn, we learn, lives directly across the street from Nancy. So he climbs up to her window because he saw her light was on and they chat and she says I need you to keep watch for me. So she goes to sleep, wanting him to wake her up. If she starts to have a nightmare because she's testing hypothesis and in her nightmare freddy krueger tries to attack her again and she also sees krueger trying to attack Rod. So even though Glenn fell asleep and didn't wake her, she manages to wake herself up. She's very angry at Glenn and they go down to the police station to say please go check on Rod. And everyone's like patting her on the head. And she finally finds her dad and says like please do it. And they're like all right, fine, like where are the keys? Blah, blah, blah. So by the time they get down there, rod has been killed by Freddy Krueger in a way that looks like suicide.
Speaker 1:After that point, nancy tells her parents that there is a man with a red and green striped sweater. His face is burned and she explains the whole thing. And you can see her father, who is very stoic like. This is the first time he shows any emotion. He looks very surprised and looks at the mother and they don't say anything. Donald, the father says, like you should take her home. And Marge says, no, I'm doing something better, I'm going to get her some help. And that actually surprised the heck out of me because it was like this is a rational response.
Speaker 1:She takes her to a sleep clinic. That's actually a very intelligent thing to do and meanwhile you have seen Nancy the entire time drinking coffee, taking no dose, try to stay awake, because she has realized that anytime she dozes off like she falls asleep in the bathtub at one point and Frederick comes for her there. She realizes that this is the only option for her is to stay awake. So she goes to the sleep clinic. She fights it for a while but they're like no, no, no, we promise we're here, we'll protect you.
Speaker 1:There's some science jargon about whatever, the neurotransmitters, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you see the numbers which are supposed to be like. If it gets up to six, that means she's having a nightmare and they go up to like 20 or 30. And she's like screaming and they finally they go in and they wake her up and she grabbed Kruger's hat in the dream and it followed her into the real world and the hat has his name in it. So when she and her mother are at home she confronts her mother and says I need to find out about Fred Krueger, I need to know who this man was. This is his hat. And she catches her mom on the phone talking to someone saying she claims that that's where that she brought it from the dream, but I don't know where she could have picked it up. And it's clear her mother knows something. When Nancy mentions the name Fred Krueger, her mother says he can't hurt you, he's dead.
Speaker 2:But she doesn't say anything else.
Speaker 1:They fight. Nancy ends up taking the bottle of vodka from her mother and slamming it on the ground because her mother keeps saying what you need to do is sleep. You'll feel better when you sleep. Because at this point everyone's treating Nancy like she's nuts. So she takes the bottle and throws it on the floor and says screw, sleep. And she goes out. She meets Glenn. She is reading a book on how to set booby traps and like guerrilla warfare type stuff, and Glenn tells her about Balinese dreaming skills and what that means. And she asks well, what happens if they dream about a monster? And he says well, if you turn your back on a monster, it loses its power. When she gets home she sees that her mother has put bars on all of the windows, which means that Glenn can't get in to her house anymore. And her mother insists you need to sleep. You're going to sleep tonight if it kills me. And that night has locked her into the house. Nancy calls Glenn and says need you to meet me on my porch at midnight and don't go to sleep? At this point it has been seven days since she's truly slept. And she tells him to check the Guinness Book of World Records 11 days is the record. So she still has time. So she does that.
Speaker 1:We see Glenn have a little conversation with his mom. He is trying to stay awake, he's got headphones on, he's listening to music, while he also has this television on his lap on his bed. It's very weird, but he falls asleep anyway and his mom comes in and says, like how can you, how can you listen to the TV if you're, if you're, listening to your records? And he's like well, I'm not listening to TV, I'm just watching it. And she's like well, what are you watching? He's like, well, miss Nude USA is going to be coming on in a little bit. And she's like well, how are you going to be able to hear what she has to say? And he says who cares what she has to say? She put a pin in that. Is he asleep?
Speaker 2:when all that happens.
Speaker 1:Because you said he fell asleep anyway up. Oh, okay, he goes back to watching TV with headphones on, but he does fall asleep and misses the midnight rendezvous with Nancy. She tries to call him and Glenn's father answers the phone because this is back when you had a house phone and tells her Glenn's asleep, but you'll talk to him tomorrow. And then he takes the phone off the hook so she can't call back and the father has been saying like I don't want our son hanging around with that crazy kid anymore. Even though they are boyfriend and girlfriend and presumably have grown up across the street from each other. They are romantically involved. They are romantically involved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Nancy's mother ends up taking Nancy down into the basement and telling her the story behind Fred Krueger. He was a child murderer who killed 20 kids in the neighborhood before they finally caught him, and she said it was bad when they didn't know who it was. And it was even worse once they caught him because there was a clerical error and based on that, he walked free after the trial. And so a group of vigilante parents, led by Marge Nancy's mother, went to the warehouse where he lived and he took the kids and they burned it to the ground. Marge shows Nancy the glove that he had used, saying and I took this and I kept it. You don't have to worry about Fred Krueger. Mommy killed him. Whoa, yeah. And Nancy says yes, but he's still there in our dreams. He's still like he's doing this. This is, I'm not making this up.
Speaker 1:So Glenn falls asleep again, is sucked into his bed and then there's a river of blood that shoots back out again. So bye, bye, glenn. Lieutenant Thompson is among the police who show up. Lieutenant Thompson is among the police who show up when Nancy is trying to reach Glenn, like she calls back and it's busy. She calls back and it's busy. And then she hangs up and the phone rings and she answers it thinking it's Glenn and it's Freddy Krueger saying I'm your boyfriend now because he's just killed Glenn. And then the bottom of the phone receiver turns into a tongue and it's weird. So she freaks out and pulls the phone out of the wall so it shouldn't work anymore, and she puts it on on her bed and then it starts to ring again. So she knows like cause? That's impossible. So she's asleep. No, it's happening in the real world now.
Speaker 2:Oh he's crossed over into the waking world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So Nancy has a plan that if she goes to sleep and grabs hold of him in the dream and then wakes up, then that will bring him into the real world where she has a chance to fight him. She can fight him on her own turf. Fight him. She can fight him on her own turf. So she calls Glenn's house and speaks to her father and says in 20 minutes come, break down the door, because her mother has locked the door to the house from the inside, and then put the key somewhere so that Nancy can't get out.
Speaker 2:Wait, why did she call Glenn's house to talk to her father?
Speaker 1:her father was at glenn's house well, because he's there to to because glenn died. Okay, the police were called and so there's nothing but police over across the street, okay, okay. So she calls and she's like is my father there? Can I please talk to him?
Speaker 1:got it, okay 20 minutes, you know, pre cell phone, yeah got it and he basically is like, yeah, yeah, it's fine, go get some sleep. She's like, okay, 20 minutes. Yeah, pre-cell phone yeah, got it. No-transcript, with a timer that she has 10 minutes, because it took her only 10 minutes, apparently, to set up the booby traps, whatever. And then she has an alarm clock that's going to wake her up in 10 minutes and so she has to find him and grab him and pull him into the real world. And so she has to find him and grab him and pull him into the real world. So she falls asleep immediately because she's seven days without. She is in Freddie's warehouse and looking for him and he is somehow kind of avoiding her. But she's doing this badass thing like come and get me. She is worried because she's running out of time and it's getting closer and closer to the time and she can't find him. There are a couple of jump scares and then the alarm goes off and she wakes up. She's like, damn it, it didn't work. And then it's one of those safe but not moments because she's like it didn't work. And then he comes up from the other side of the bed. So she puts her plan in place, she manages to run out of her room and that's where the sledgehammer is set. And so she runs out of her room without tripping it and then the sledgehammer hits him right in the solar plexus. He falls over the side of because her room's on the second floor, right next to like kind of a balcony before the stairs. So he falls over onto the first floor. She is screaming out the window and she had to break a window screaming at the deputy like get my father, get my father. And he's like no, no, everything's fine. She's like broken glass. To get his attention she then sets that light bulb on fire, the tripwire, sets the light bulb on fire and catches Freddie there. She breaks the window in the front door and again screams get my father. And finally the deputy's like maybe I better get the lieutenant. And then she gets Freddie to follow her down into the basement where she lights him on fire. She lights him on fire, she runs back upstairs and slams the basement door and locks it. Finally her father breaks down the door, comes in and she's like I got him, I got him. They find the basement door is open and there are flaming footprints going upstairs and she's like, oh God, he's here for mom, because she was the leader of the vigilantes. They go up to her mother's room and they find Freddie completely still engulfed in flames, smothering her mother in flames. Donald throws a blanket over them and puts the fire out, but then, when they pull the blanket off again, her mother is like a skeleton. Off. Again Her mother is like a skeleton, which then, like, is sucked into the bed and is gone. So Nancy says to her father like he comforts her. And then his deputy comes up and says if we got the fire out downstairs, but there's this, that and the other, he's like okay, I'll be right there. And she says I'm okay, I just need to stay here for a minute. You go downstairs.
Speaker 1:Once her father goes downstairs, freddie reappears. Well, she turns her back to where he was and he reappears while her back is turned and she turns to look at him and she says I take back all the energy I gave you. You're nothing, you're shit. And she turns her back to him again. He goes to attack her and he disappears. The next scene one of the things she said to him is I want my mother and my friends back.
Speaker 1:The next scene you see her and her mother exiting the front door saying like wow, it's really bright this morning. Glenn shows up and he drives a convertible, shows up in his convertible with tina and rod in the back seat and nancy gets into the car. The roof extends like it's it had been down and it comes back up again and you see that it's red and green stripes like freddie's sweater, and then the car appears to be moving forward without. And then the car appears to be moving forward without glenn trying to drive it or anything there, and they're, they're all. All four of the kids are screaming and trying to get marge's attention and marge is just smiling happy, happily at them as if nothing's wrong. And then she is standing by the front door and the glass in the front door is broken and freddy's arm grabs her from behind and pulls her in and that's the end of the film whoa, it's fucking scary it is.
Speaker 1:It is actually. Let's talk about fear, okay, because I think that's really interesting. So we've talked before, offline and maybe on the show, about how one of the things I find fascinating about horror is that it represents our deepest fears. So we put our fears into our scary stories. One of the best examples is that we tend to have when America has a Republican or conservative president, we are more likely to have zombie movies, while when America has a Democrat or liberal president, we're more likely to have vampire movies of. Underlying fear under conservative politics is that we are going to turn into mindless followers who are just destructive with no sense of self.
Speaker 2:No purpose. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The fear of authoritarianism and what authoritarianism can do to a populace yeah, and then under liberal presidents, the fear is of depravity, because there's a sexualized nature of vampires, and then also the fear of resources being sucked dry, right Right, by depraved individuals. This comes out in 1984. So in the middle of the Reagan years. So in the middle of the Reagan years, right. So some of the fears now, some of what Wes Craven did, was he got to like just human fear, which is you can't avoid sleeping. So this is, this is a fear, and one of the reasons why the film, I think, is enduring is because he gets to something that's not time bound, like we will always have a fear of being vulnerable while sleeping, because that is a human fear.
Speaker 1:But some of the other fears that we see have to do with a very specific time frame. In the 80s there was the fear that we were losing the nuclear family, and so this both highlights that fear and also lampoons it in a way. So it highlights that fear because Tina's mom is single. We learn at some point that her father ran off at some point in the past 10 years and Tina's mom has a boyfriend. So when she comes in to check on Tina after that first nightmare at the very beginning boyfriend which you don't know at the time, but he's so gross you kind of suspect he's a stepfather or boyfriend. He comes to the door. He's like are you coming back to the sack, to the mom, in a way that makes it really clear that he does not give a single solitary shit about tina?
Speaker 1:yeah, the fact that she was screaming yeah, that's gross yeah and we get the very common trope of the Madonna whore with teenage girls' sexuality, because Tina dies just after having sex with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1:But that is also like kind of the fear is like well, what will happen to our children without a father present, right? We do have like some highlighting of that fear. Right, know that Nancy's parents are separated or divorced and her mom is an alcoholic, but Glenn's parents are like the traditional, like leave it to beaver family, because the mom is loving and fond and you know like, oh, boys will be boys when he says that Miss Nude USA thing, and the dad is like this is what I say and what I say goes it's a very traditional family and we see that they are wrong. They're wrong not to let Nancy warn Glenn, they're wrong to let him continue sleeping and they are kind of punished for it. I think it's really interesting that that is something that was such a big fear in the 80s and we don't actually see any healthy family dynamics if you consider the fact that Glenn's family are the reason he died, freddy Krueger's the reason he died. But if they had listened to Nancy they would have gone and woken him up.
Speaker 2:They took his chance of survival away. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:So I think that's that's very interesting. Now, freddy Krueger is just about the worst example of humanity and he's supernatural at this point, but that there can be. He was a child murderer and it is suggested that he did other things. He did other things and that is. It's interesting that Marge like led the vigilantes. Now like they don't specifically say like I was the leader or anything like that, but the way that she talks about it and the fact that she has his glove makes it clear like to me she and she's like he can't hurt you. Mommy killed him right. There's some interesting things to look at in terms of like the problems of the criminal justice system, because not only did it fail when kruger was alive and they were unable to prosecute him, but it keeps failing nancy over and over again and failed Rod. Everyone is treating her like she doesn't know what she's talking about.
Speaker 2:Even though there are these dead kids all around. Yes, teenagers yes.
Speaker 1:We find out, tina was 15, which, like I was thinking the character was supposed to be 17. And who knows about the actress. But yeah, like they're kids there's. There is a sense of like both Marge and Nancy Take matters into their own hands when the patriarchal systems fail them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they're punished for it.
Speaker 1:That's. That's the thing we talk about giving with one hand and taking away with another. So dancy was amazing. I have read that she is like the most badass of the final girls, and you're familiar with the final girl.
Speaker 2:Because of Scream. Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean, she is proactive, she makes plans, she does what she has to Like. So she's constantly taking like no-dos and drinking coffee. And at one point, because her mother is like you will feel better when you sleep, you have to sleep. Because her mother is like you will feel better when you sleep, you have to sleep. And her mother gathers up all the mugs and she's got a pot of coffee in her room and like the bottle of no-dose, and takes it all out and closes the door and Nancy pretends like she's going to go to sleep and as soon as her mom's out of the room, she takes a coffee maker out from underneath the bed. It's already on and brewing. March have smelled that. I guess you could assume it's the old coffee.
Speaker 1:Anyway, like she does the research into like how to booby trap the house and like it's really amazing. And she does that because it becomes clear that no one will help her. So even Glenn, who is like willing to help her, he keeps falling down on the job by falling asleep. Now, granted, he's a kid too and he's also exhausted. He's also having these nightmares. But it's become very clear to her that she can rely on no one but herself. Even when she says to her father Daddy, please, 20 minutes, come, break down the door. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. And the final confrontation, like he goes back downstairs after they just watched her mother die and then disappear. Yeah, you don't leave your 15, 16 year old daughter alone after that. Yeah, I, as I understand it and I might be, I'll have to kind of take a look again. So I did some research into this last night.
Speaker 1:There were a couple of things that said that the ending was not what Wes Craven wanted and that the studios wanted to leave it open for there to be sequels, and I think he wanted it to end right after Kruger disappears and have it clear that Nancy won. Yeah, and I have been thinking about what it means. Freddy Kruger became the boogeyman that was ubiquitous in the 80s and spawned I think it's something like seven sequels and or reboots, when we have this badass final girl who took her power back. But we didn't get to keep that. We got to keep the baddie with a personality and that was the other thing I was expecting. I know that Freddy Krueger is supposed to like make quips and be kind of like darkly funny, and he really wasn't in this film and it's because that's what he became later, because he became the draw Right. And God, I hate what that says about our culture. Yeah, I mean, some of it has to do with just capitalism and like we in America milk things for everything they're worth, Like we will not let a single dollar go that we could squeeze out of a franchise. But some of that is people went to the movie and they remembered. Now, granted, he's got an iconic look, but they remembered the bad guy and not the badass.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that is really amazing about Nancy is that she is very much an ordinary high school girl. So some of the things I was reading was talking about how oftentimes the final girl will kind of take on masculine qualities in order to defeat the big bad. Nancy is a very feminine kid. She still calls her father daddy. She doesn't like that. It's kind of funny. At one point she looks at herself in the mirror because she hasn't been sleeping. She's like, oh my God, I look like I'm 20. That's a bad thing when you're 15, I guess maybe. So she cares about her appearance. She's wearing pink. One of the times that she goes to school she's dressed in pink and she wears these very delicate pajamas with embroidery on them. She embodies a lot of feminine characteristics. That doesn't in any way affect or take away from her badassery.
Speaker 2:That's not just when she's being vulnerable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, and it's an amazing character that I do kind of wish I had had as a you know, 14-year-old, although I don't think I could have gotten over my fear of Kruger to watch it. Then, speaking of her femininity, let's talk a little bit about gender too. I was pleasantly surprised that it passes the Bechdel test in the first like 10 minutes, and continues to. Pleasantly surprised that it passes the Bechdel test in the first like 10 minutes, All right and continues to. Tina and Nancy talk about the dreams quite a bit. They talk about how and I mean technically this could be about a guy, but they talk about what Glenn has done to be able to convince his mom that he's sleeping not at Tina's house but someone else's house, his mom that he's sleeping not at Tina's house but someone else's house. And then Nancy and Marge have lots of conversations about all kinds of stuff. So for the most part the women are fully realized characters in this. It is clear that you know, marge has some issues, but she is a loving mother who has her own level of badassery. That clearly has caused strain. And even we don't get the teacher's name, but the English teacher whose class Nancy is in when she falls asleep, seems to be a really good teacher. Like she's walking through the class as she's explaining something and like she stops. She you know kind of chats with each not chats, but like interacts with each of the kids. When she gets to Nancy, she kind of like just you know, squeezes her shoulder nancy's best friend just died the night before, and so it's this like very clear caretaking. And when she wakes up screaming, the teacher's like a little befuddled, not sure what to do, but she's like I'll call your mother, you're okay. You're okay, don't you head home? So it's interesting that this film does such a good job with fully realized female characters, because Wes Craven, when he got started, his very first film was Last House on the Left, which does not have fully realized female characters.
Speaker 1:It was in the early 70s, I think it was about 74. And the story is about the rape and murder of two young women. And it was actually Craven's daughter that got him to recognize that he was not characterizing women in his stories appropriately. So he did, uh, swamp thing in the early 80s which I feel like you and I have watched. That's familiar, yeah, and so his daughter, who I think must have been kid still on seeing swamp thing, said to him daddy, girls, don't just fall down. And he realized he had fallen victim to the trope of the heroine running away from whatever the monster is and then tripping over something and falling down and that's and the monster gets her. And that is a big part of the reason why he created nancy to be this very proactive and dynamic character. I don't believe.
Speaker 1:I think Craven did this film and then much of the rest of the franchise was other writers and directors.
Speaker 1:He did do Wes Craven's New Nightmare in, I believe, 95. It was a year before Scream came out. That got very meta, where Heather Langenkamp, who is the actress who plays Nancy, played a fictionalized version of Heather Langenkamp and Wes Craven played a fictionalized version of Wes Craven and Freddy Krueger comes to them in the real world in New Nightmare, and so he was getting meta even before he got to Scream, which is very meta. And what I think is really interesting about him as a writer and director is that he was constantly trying to innovate. So part of the reason why he didn't do any other nightmare movies is because he'd done the one he wanted to do and moved on and then slasher movies became really big, and and so he was kind of pushing back against that with these tropes and get beyond them, which is admirable, particularly since he started off in a place that did not necessarily see women as people universe like the, the metaphysical reality, like does it because?
Speaker 2:does it get explained? Or or even like pointed to at how this presumably human bad guy, sociopath, psychopath, whatever, like evil child killer, through his kind of horrible death became able to move in the in the dreaming world, and why it was you know, however, many years later, that that that it manifests like. Do we get any answers to those kinds of like what is not in this film?
Speaker 1:yeah, we. What Not in this film? Yeah, we don't get them in this film and they do some like retroactive world building in future films which I only know based on the reading I did last night where they have something about him like making a deal with demons or something I don't know. In this film there is no explanation and that's part of what makes it scary. Yeah, Because, like, there's no explanation and so there's no way of fighting it, because it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:There's no logical sense to it, which and that's also part of the reason why I found it so interesting that Marge took Nancy to a sleep clinic Like my expectation when watching horror movies is that people are not going to act like people do. They're not going to make rational decisions. One of my favorite moments in Scream is when Sidney, the main character, says like I hate horror movies. They're stupid because the you know big breasted girl goes into the basement when she should be running out the front door. And in fact, when these characters were doing things that did not seem logical, it turns out they were dreaming. So there were a couple of times where I'm like is this happening really or are they dreaming? And the one time where it was like I know, you're smarter than this, she was dreaming.
Speaker 1:That's that kind of also that gets to the fear. That gets to the truly terrifying aspect of a specter like Freddy Krueger is that there is no explanation and that means that you can't. You can't really fight him, because this is Kruger as an abuser, if we look at him that way, is terrorizing Nancy, but he doesn't actually have to be there to terrorize her, and so when she refuses to give him her energy, refuses to look at him or think about him and calls him shit.
Speaker 2:He disappears, at least until the fake out ending and the, the fake out ending presumably like it didn't work, and now she and all of them are dead and in his clutches in the dream world it's like it's unclear, it's very unclear.
Speaker 1:Now, craven did want the ending to be ambiguous, as I understand it, which to me like. She says I want my mother and my friends back, and so and this you know horror aficionado is listening. If you know, I'd love to hear from you. It may be known what Craven intended, which was like can she just ask for them back and they come back because this is all in a dream, or, you know, is she asking for something that's impossible because this is happening in the real world? Unclear.
Speaker 2:Or you know, she got what she asked for, which is not the way she wanted. It's sort of one of those like you have to be careful when you ask a genie for something you have to be very, yeah, monkey's paw type thing.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Now nancy comes back in, I believe, the third film and she comes back she's a sleep researcher, which again is just like, yes, that's exactly what she would do. And that film again, haven't seen, it, just based on my research is the most hopeful because in it she is working with teenagers who are being plagued by kruger and they are learning how to use their dreams to fight back. And then they cancel all that progress in the fourth movie. They kill all the characters off before the fourth movie.
Speaker 1:It's interesting to me because I, like Nancy is incredible and I knew that I knew her name, although I had forgotten it. Like when I first started watching the movie I was just like, oh, is it? Tina is the main character, because we're with her for quite some time, it seems to be from her point of view, and then she dies, like this is a Hitchcock thing. You know, you think you're watching one movie, but I didn't. I couldn't have told you what she looked like, I didn't like nothing. Whereas Freddy Krueger is so instantly recognizable, and some of that is because he's so instantly recognizable. You know, a teenage girl is a teenage girl, yeah, but it makes me wonder, like why are we drawn to the monsters to the point where we make them the heroes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he totally was the hero. I mean, like later in the 80s, like I can remember people like you know not bragging, what's the word I'm looking for Like like trading stories and laughing and stuff and like mimicking, whatever the quips were not from this movie, obviously but from future ones yeah from future ones.
Speaker 1:yeah, well, and the thing that's interesting is it gets to another one of the fears so I mentioned. There's a point where she's taking a bath and she falls asleep in the bath and the camera comes to the other end of the tub so it's looking at her from, like where her feet are and her knees are apart in the water. You can't see anything because there's bubbles, but the knife hand comes up in between her legs. Oh, wow, and you can't get any clearer than that about sexuality, vulnerability, and he is the bad guy. And you know, our fear, particularly for young white women, is about sexual predation. So we put that into our movies all the time. It's a constant theme of our movies, but we still want to watch it and then we make the predator the hero of the franchise. What?
Speaker 1:yeah, why are we doing that?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, you know, when I think about like what west craven was thinking about and making this bad guy, like the backstory that he gave him right, and I think you know, I'm thinking that, you know, from a storytelling perspective, like he needed him to be so awful that we, as audience, forgive marge for having led the vigilante mob, like he has to be so bad that we're like, yeah right, damn right, lady, like glad you did, and so so there was like storytelling reasons to make him so awful, but then we still, as you say, like we still then turned around and turned him into a hero yeah, yeah, it's what it is yeah, some of it, I think, has to do with one of the things I read last night was talking about how a lot of times the monsters in these movies like had no personality.
Speaker 1:So like Jason in Friday the 13th doesn't speak, he has the white mask, like a hockey. Hockey mask on that was painted white or is am I thinking of? No, that's michael myers. I'm thinking of michael myers, sorry, you're right, jason just says the hockey mask and so it's just a mindless killing machine, right? And some of our reaction to freddy krueger is that there's style, there's panache there, you know, and he becomes quippy as you go and he's not like he taunts the, the, the kids in this film. But it's nothing funny that, or at least nothing that I found funny. So I know some of the reaction is just the novelty of an interesting bad guy. But you know it's frustrating that. You know the novelty of an interesting teenage girl. And you know, don't get me wrong there are, like there are papers upon papers written about Nancy and like people have like she is a part of the feminist horror canon and people are interested in her, but not the zeitgeist, exactly.
Speaker 2:I wonder if there's something in the psychology of like identifying with the monster, because the monster has control and one of the things that we fear is lack of control.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. That is interesting, yeah, that's interesting. That is interesting, yeah, because if we identify with Nancy, or if we sort of embrace her and sort of self-insert as Nancy, that's fucking terrifying. Well, and the other thing that I saw people, you, and that you have to take care of yourself, and that's something that we all have to deal with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And if that's the parable, then ultimately, the lesson that Craven is giving us is that we're going to fail at it.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm, yeah.
Speaker 2:No matter how hard or how smart. You know how hard we try or how smart we are. Mm hmm, that's depressing.
Speaker 1:I don't know that that's the message he wanted to leave with, because I think that he didn't want that fake out ending. I think he wanted it to end with her, with him disappearing, with him disappearing, with her taking her power back.
Speaker 2:I mean, it is a neater package in terms of storytelling, especially since we saw the earlier like we got from Glenn's research about how to Balinese the Balinese monster uh defeating uh in dreams. So it's like it wraps it up much more neatly.
Speaker 1:Yes, I found that ending like as it is, really befuddling just it. It was like what am I watching? And it didn't help that like freddie, his arm comes out, the like, breaks the window in the front door and grabs marge and pulls her in and you can see that it's a mannequin. So like I mean it's. It probably worked in 1984, but like I'm looking at it, going like, this is so fake looking and the red and green striped soft top for the convertible, it just looked funky to me. It was just like, is this a fan of it? That's too funny and like, and I know that's, that's. That's how the movie ended, but I prefer to think of it ending when she.
Speaker 1:She turns around and and she walks out the bedroom door, interesting, he's disappeared and that even is also like she has tried so many different things to end this Like well, I mean to deal with this. She stays awake for seven days. She tries to have people who will wake her up. She stays awake for seven days. She tries to have people who will wake her up. She, you know, sets up these booby traps and none of them can stop a supernatural psychological terror. It's recognizing that the terror has no power over you if you don't let it.
Speaker 2:Right. What you resist persists.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it right. What you resist persists. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the power to to defeat him was there all the time, if she just had to redirect her energy, I mean that feels like a much more interesting lesson to me. Oh, absolutely, you know the horror.
Speaker 1:That's interesting well, it's similar to sarah in labyrinth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just yeah yeah, I was thinking about labyrinth also. You have no power over me. Yeah, I was also thinking about labyrinth and and that was another another parable for abusers, dealing with abusers. So, yeah, yeah, um. Well, we've been talking for a minute. Is there? Are there any like points that you wanted to make about nightmare? Um, that you haven't yet made before. I see if I can reflect back some highlights to you.
Speaker 1:I found it really like I was. I was surprised at how feminist it was. I knew the basic outline of the story. I knew Fred Krueger's backstory, like I already knew that I had seen several scenes throughout the years. So because I know what horror movies can be and you know, movies in the 80s and 70s especially can be so much trauma porn of, like young women being abused. It did not occur to me that this was going to be so empowering. So I was really really pleasantly surprised by that. The one false note is the fact that there is this sense that Tina is punished for having sex and I like to believe that Glenn and Nancy are having sex. They just don't at any point on screen Because, like people were talking about, like yeah, Nancy is virginal, Like we don't know that, we don't know anything Like he can get in her window anytime before this starts happening.
Speaker 2:He's climbing up into her window. I'm not sure virginal is actually like what they're going, yeah so that's like I choose to believe it that way.
Speaker 1:But I know that it's taken as like you know and west craven even mocks this in scream because, like you got to know the rules like never have sex because you know if you have sex you're going to die, and Sydney sleeps with her boyfriend and that she still survives even though the boyfriend is one of the killers.
Speaker 1:Spoiler alert for 30-year-old movie Scream yeah, yeah, the fake out ending. I don't think that that necessarily is the lesson anymore, because it's not as if Marge I mean, yes, kruger is coming back for the children to get back at the parents who killed him and Marge led them and so you know that's why he's focusing on all the kids on Elm Street. But you know, it's not that she did anything wrong, it's that this is like something so evil it figures out a way to come back and get revenge. And if you remove that final scene, marge has passed on badassery to Nancy and she even says to Nancy you face things, that is your gift. You always want to know the truth and you face things. And she says to her but sometimes it's better to turn away. So that's the other part of it is like she's remembering that her mother said that when she decides to turn her back on Kruger, Interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me see if I can reflect this back at you. The first thing I heard was that, well, not just the first, like a, an underlying theme was just how feminist this film is. Not only does it pass the bechdel test in multiple times, multiple ways, right away, but it also gives us this really strong and fully realized female character in Nancy and also in some of the other female characters, including Tina and Marge and the unnamed English teacher. So that's pretty cool and unexpected. And actually, speaking of unexpected, one of the things that we have said on Deep Thoughts about horror is that one of the ways that it scares is often in subverting expectations. So we didn't say this out loud exactly, but I heard actually several ways in which this film subverted expectations in interesting ways that weren't necessarily scary but were fascinating. So, number one being that this is not Tina's story. You start watching and you think it's Tina's movie because it's from her point of view, but then she dies. So there's a subversion of expectations.
Speaker 2:It sounded like relatively early. The first death is the person whose point of view we've been following, which is interesting in terms of storytelling and movie making, and then sort of the fact that dreaming is one of the settings allows the subversion of expectations in multiple ways as well, because we're never quite sure it sounds like, or sometimes we're not sure if we than this, and then it being the dream, which is its own sort of subversion of kind of the horror tropes where the you know, as wes craven's daughter said to him, like girls don't just do that, they don't just fall down, they don't go in the basement when they should be running away from the house. So there's another layer of subverting expectations to, I think both to the sort of horror genre, but also to the feminism, the underlying feminism that you're pointing to. Let me see, what else did I hear? I heard that there is kind of depressing, honestly Well, not if we take out the received final um scene, but there's a.
Speaker 2:There's potentially a parable or an analogy to growing up and reaching adolescence and realizing, like leaving behind the childish um and and child's sense of their parents, that their parents can do anything, that they are somehow perfect and also that they can protect us from the things that scare us, because ultimately, as Nancy learns, ain't nobody going to protect her, she's going to have to do it herself, and that's sort of an analogy for growing up. There's also potentially some useful analogies and metaphors for dealing with abuse in the way that, for instance, freddy Krueger doesn't even need to be alive in order to continue abusing these victims, which he does through their subconscious. So there's something like there's a metaphor there that feels pretty literal in some ways.
Speaker 1:You know what that's actually? It reminds me how, like one of the things that abusers do is instill in you like self-abuse, so like they don't have to be there, and I'm thinking she was keeping herself awake for all of those days and like that is miserable, and like that is miserable, and so, like the world of the film, we are applauding her for doing that, because it's keeping her, it's helping her survive. But that is another way that this abuser doesn't even have to be there but is still causing harm to his victims.
Speaker 2:Sleep deprivation is a torture modality. Yes, yeah, yeah. So those are some interesting questions. I mean the last point that you made where you pointed out the fact that, like, in many ways, this film is a part of the feminist horror canon, and there's one beat in particular that falls flat by that lens, and that's the fact that Tina dies right after having sex, as if she's being punished for being sexually active. So I wanted to lift that up and you, as an interpreter, subvert that by believing, choosing to believe, that Nancy is also sexually active and manages to survive, which to me sounds like a legitimate interpretation, if her boyfriend's like climbing into her window, frankly, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, in terms of the actual like, so my questions about, like, the the nature of this universe in which freddy krueger lives, like the cosmology and the metaphysics of it, there are no answers, which in some ways is scarier because you know, to our point kind of near the end of our conversation, like recognizing that we don't have control and or don't understand the rules of the world in which we live, the game that we're playing, which could end in death, that that's kind of terrifying, and so, in some ways, like not explaining how he's able to come back, how he's able to inhabit the dreams, adds to the fear factor of this boogeyman of Fred Krueger, which I think is also, you know, sort of an interesting thing when we think about it in terms of storytelling, storytelling beats and strategies. What am I forgetting?
Speaker 1:Some of the fears that this is representing are the very particular fears of the 80s of the breakdown of the nuclear family and how Wes Craven is both like highlighting that fear by showing that Tina's mom is kind of failing Tina. You know she's going out of town with her boyfriend on a school night with just leaving Tina alone and Nancy's parents are separated and unable to protect her, but at the same time lampooning it because the kid with the family that is the most stable, glenn. His parents are clearly in the wrong and are also unable to protect him. So I think that that's an interesting thing to look at, particularly in the decade where you know there was so much hysteria about latchkey kids and you know concern about children growing up without fathers and things like that.
Speaker 2:The fact that the criminal legal system fails Tina and Marge. Well, it fails multiple characters. Marge and Nancy take matters into their own hands because the criminal legal system has failed them so egregiously. It's interesting that that criminal legal system is represented by daddy in this case, I, I'm. I'm not even going to start to analyze that because I don't have time, but I do. That's an interesting note that it's not just the lieutenant is failing them.
Speaker 1:Lieutenant is the last girl's dad yeah, well, and the fact that, like he can't hurt you, mommy, mommy killed him. I mean like that line, holy cow, you know as mommy, in talking about the vigilante murder of a child murderer, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm probably not going to watch this movie. That's okay. Your synopsis is going to have to suffice for me.
Speaker 1:I do have one listener comment. I asked on social media because I mentioned that I watched this movie for the first time but it has had a profound effect on me, even though I'd never seen it, and I asked are there any movies or TV shows or other pop culture that's had a major effect on your life that you haven't actually seen? And my friend Jill, who is a teacher, said the movie Dodgeball did. I asked like, was it something your students talked about when it was out? And she said all the time it opened up even more homophobia and toxic masculinity culture in the high schools. And dodgeball team names were the vomit emoji wow and uh. Yeah, I can, I can see that. I can see where that that would have come from. I haven't. Oh, I've seen dodgeball. What I think is is interesting is it probably has a similar kind of effect as f Krueger Becoming a Hero did.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I haven't seen it so I can't speak to Dodgeball.
Speaker 1:but it's a 2000s gross-out comedy. Basically, yeah, yeah, interesting, interesting. Do you think there's something about the control piece? No, no, this is more of a Like Dodgeball is more of a modern day, like revenge of the nerds type story, where it's it's not about control, it's it's, and it's supposed to be, an underdog story, but same sort of thing, where, like, women aren't people and I see.
Speaker 2:So it's more about like flipping the hierarchy for the people who feel like they're losing the game.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and just the idea that toxic masculinity having like a heyday because of that. I wonder if that has something, if toxic masculinity has something to do with why Freddy Krueger became a hero because, like he is the active masculine participant, even though Nancy is very active, she's very proactive and so people latch on to that rather than to the actual hero of the of the film.
Speaker 2:Well, on that I'm going to say we have overthunk it a lot today.
Speaker 1:Oh yes.
Speaker 2:So what's next? Next time? Next time's me. Oh, it's me next time. Next time I'm gonna bring you my deep thoughts about field of dreams oh lovely, you build it, they will come. Yes, all right. Well, until then, see you then. Music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?