Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

Strictly Ballroom: Deep Thoughts About the Comedy Inherent in Ridiculous Competition and the Dignity of Taking Art Seriously

• Sister podcasters raised by 80s and 90s movies: Tracie Guy-Decker, lover of animation, Muppets, comedy, and feminism & Emily Guy Birken, storytelling nerd, mental health advocate, and pop culture aficionado • Episode 113

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A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

On this week's Deep Thoughts, Emily brings her analysis, nostalgia--and quite a bit of drool--to the 1992 Baz Luhrmann comedy Strictly Ballroom. Though this indie film, which was Luhrmann's directorial debut, may have gotten lost among the 80s and 90s movies that were bigger blockbusters, the comedy offers an incisive skewering of the insular world of amateur ballroom dancing in regional Australia.

And yet, Luhrmann's direction, the beautiful choreography and dancing by the leads, and the pure joy of Paul Mercurio's Scott Hastings refusing to adhere to arbitrary rules about strict ballroom steps and his willingness to learn from Tara Morice's Fran about the traditional Spanish dance steps brings the viewer along on the journey. As we watch, the film goes from a comedy that exposes the entire ballroom culture as a ridiculous tempest in a teapot to the place where Scott and Fran must make a stand for creativity, art, bravery, romance, and costumes that don't look like someone bedazzled your head.

Unlike many 80s and 90s movies, this one holds up beautifully in 2025 and is delightful from start to finish. If you haven't watched it, please do check it out, possibly before listening to this episode's spoilers. For once, Tracie and Emily's nostalgia was not misplaced!

There's no need to master the bogo pogo before listening in. Just throw on your headphones and let the rhythm move you.

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

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 Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

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

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

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

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



SPEAKER_00:

I feel like ultimately that's what this story is about. The Pan Pacific Grand Prix Latin dance is meaningless. It's ridiculous. But dance is not meaningless. It's about the dance. And when you're focusing on winning this trophy, you've lost it all.

SPEAKER_02:

Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just about 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_00:

I'm Emily Guy Birkin, 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'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1992 Boz Lerman film Strictly Ballroom with my sister, Tracy Guy Decker. And with you. Let's dive in. So, Tracy, I know you've seen this because we saw it in the theater together and absolutely loved it. But tell me what you remember about Strictly Ballroom.

SPEAKER_02:

That's about all I remember, is that I loved it. Like I feel like you remember like whole plot lines of these movies we saw when we were kids, and I remember how they made me feel. So I remember loving it. I remember that it's about ballroom dancing in competition in Australia, I think. That's it. That's all I got.

SPEAKER_00:

So tell me why are we talking about strictly ballroom dancing? I cannot remember how I was reminded of it, but somehow I was reminded of it. I was like, ooh, I liked that one. So I like Boz Lerman as a director. He directed the Romeo and Juliet that had Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Claire Danes. He also directed Moulin Rouge. And with Strictly Ballroom, those are considered kind of a trilogy. Which is weird as F. Because very totally different. Um in some ways. In some ways, no, they kind of hang together. So I just kind of like this was was gonna be a very light retread for me. You know, you talk about sometimes you just wanna you wanna watch a comedy and and feel good. And this was I kind of wanted to watch a comedy and feel good. Also, Paul Mercurio, who plays the main character, Scott Hastings. I did not spend, I did not mind spending an hour and a half looking at him. Did not mind that at all.

SPEAKER_01:

Emily is consistent. Nothing if not consistent.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. All right. Well, so tell me, besides the eye candy, like give me some like postcards from where we're going.

SPEAKER_00:

The thing that I remember that stuck with me other than the romantic plot, the thing that stuck with me about this was the absolute low-stakes nature of the story because it is about the pan-Pacific Grand Prix Latin dance for amateurs. And it is such a big deal to all of these people. Like they, it is like they take it so seriously. And so we in the audience are in on the joke that this is ridiculous. And so that is something that I really kind of love about this movie. That like we end up like from the very beginning, we're like, oh, this is these people are ridiculous. And then we get into it. We're like, oh no, it is very important. And then there's also the sense of like, well, what is important? So there's there's that aspect of it, the sense of gatekeeping that I think is is kind of really interesting. The idea of like, what is creativity, what is art is really interesting. I think there's some really interesting questions about gender when it comes to creation and art and romance. And then I didn't don't remember noticing this at the time, but I I felt it this time. There's a sense of white people ruin everything. And you know, I feel that way, and I am a white people. So those are some of the things that we're we're gonna talk about.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Well, catch me up on the plot since all I remember is that I liked it and there's dancing and it's Australian.

SPEAKER_00:

So we are introduced to the world of ballroom dancing, where Scott Hastings played by Paul Mercurio. He is the son of a family of ballroom dancers, his mother, Shirley Hastings, and his father, Doug Hastings. Shirley is a dancer. His father, Doug, is a very quiet and meek man, and he seems to just do like he fixes things around the studio. The studio belongs to their friend Les, I can't remember his last name, Kendall or something like that. And so none of the three adults, because Scott is somewhere under the age of 25, none of the three adults talk about the past much. All Scott knows is that Les and Shirley danced together and there was some kind of blow-up among them before he was born. So at some sort of opener for the dance season, Scott and his partner Liz got boxed in by Ken Rowlings and his partner Pam Stone. And so to get out of that, and boxed in means like they were stuck in a certain spot on the dance floor. On the dance floor. Okay. Yeah. So to get out, Scott started doing his own dance steps that were not quote unquote strictly ballroom. And when it starts, it's a little bit like a documentary. So there's a point where like they're interviewing Scott's parents and they're interviewing Liz. And Liz says, like, I had no choice where the man goes, the lady must follow. And so the steps were like crowd pleasing, but he and Liz end up losing to Ken and Pam because they're not regulation. We also meet the president of the Federation, Barry Fife, who has like basically a gopher staple to his head. It is the worst. So just a really bad thing. And everybody has bad teeth. One other person we meet there is a woman named Fran. She is part of the interviews who says, I'm I'm just a beginner. I've only been at the studio for two years, and I still don't have a partner. But I thought, I thought Scott's dancing was really lovely and they should have won. And we see her saying to Liz, who's storming off the dance floor, like, Liz, I thought you did great. You should have won. And Liz like basically knocks her over. So that you get a sense of who Liz is. We also meet Scott's friend Wayne and Wayne's partner and fiance Vanessa. Shirley, Scott's mother, is distraught. And the next day, Scott is asking Liz, like, what did you think of my steps? And she's like, I don't care about your steps. You know, don't you want to win the Pan Pacific Grand Prix? And like they keep saying it, and there's an even longer title. It's like a seven-word title. I don't remember what it was. Kibbles keep saying, You need to apologize to Liz. So he's like, dance apologizing to her, and then starts doing his own steps again. And she like scream cries, and he's like, What is it that you want? And she says, I want Ken Railings to come in here and say, Pam Stone just broke both her legs and I want to dance with you. And the camera like cuts away to a car crash with Pam Stone's car crashing. And then oh my god, comes in and says, Pam Stone just broke both her legs and I want to dance with you, Liz. And Scott's little sister, who's like about 10, says, Well, that was unexpected. That is so okay, that's funny. Like this this movie is it's bonkers. So Scott is now without a partner, and Shirley is really distraught now. So everyone goes home. Scott is alone in the studio, or so he thinks. And so he's practicing his own dancing. And Fran comes up to him and says, basically, like, I want to dance with you. Your steps. I think they're they're lovely. He's like, You think my steps are good? And she says, Yes, but they're too much. You need to reel it in a little bit, but you need to dance from the heart. And he's like, You're a beginner, you have no idea what you're talking about. I've been dancing since I was six. He's like, You've never even danced with, you know, you dance with a girl because they don't have enough male dancers to go around. So you've never danced with a partner. And he pisses her off to the point where she says, Your gutless wonder. And then she says something, she yells at him in Spanish and then starts crying. And because she's crying, he he and she's saying, like, just give me an hour to show you what I know how to do. Because she starts crying, he feels bad and and says, All right, one hour. And so they start practicing the rumba. And so even though during the day they're trying out other dancers, they continue to practice. Fran and Scott continue to practice the rumba at night. And she actually teaches them some things that he doesn't know. She's like, And so now Fran, when you first meet her, has like her skin's not great, her hair's very frizzy, she's wearing these glasses that are way too big for her face, and so we end up having like a little bit of a glow-up. Not just a little bit, like an amazing transformational makeover. So all of this is going on. Meanwhile, we see that Shirley is always very mean to Doug. We see that Doug has this locked cabinet in which he has like reels of old videos of things, and he'll watch like Scott's dancing from when he was dancing his own steps. Sometimes he'll put on music and dance himself, even though everyone says Doug doesn't dance. We see just like how important it is to everyone in Scott's world that Scott win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix because he's been training for it from age six, and he will not win with his own steps. Fran clearly has a crush on Scott. One of the things he says is when he's teach when they're doing the rumba, he's like, dance is a story. The story of the rumba is that is that you're in love. You need to sell it, you know, look at me like you're in love with me. And there's a point where he walks her home, she like looks at him in, you know, like with hard eyes, and he says, I said about the dance that it's, you know, that it's a story of love, but it's just pretend. And she's like, oh yeah, of course, and like trips over herself leaving. So there's some backing and forthing. We see that Ken, who came and wanted Liz as his partner, we see that he is actually an alcoholic and is actually horrible to dance with. And there is a, it's not a competition, but a show that Scott is going to dance with Fran at this show. The night before, or no, it's the night of that show. Fran's father says, You have to be at home for this. Fran's father, Rico, you have to be home for this. He doesn't like that she's out all the time and she's like lying about where she is because he's kind of overprotective. And so she says, I'm going to help my friend Natalie, and uh lies where she's gonna be. And she's got a grandmother as well. And so she goes to the show. There is a Pan Pacific Grand Prix champion named Tina Sparkle, whose partner is retiring, and Barney Fife, the excuse me, Barry Fife, the uh I was gonna say, wait, that's a character name I know.

SPEAKER_01:

It's Barry Fife.

SPEAKER_00:

It's very close. It's it's the the guy with the rodent on his head. Oh, the really badly bad guy, the president of the federation. He has basically decided that Tina Sparkle will be Scott's new partner. And so he has drinks with Les, the owner of the studio that Scott trains at, to announce, like, hey, the on the down low that Tina's partner is retiring after the showcase and that Tina will dance with Scott that night. So Fran shows up just as Les gets there to where Shirley is. Scott is not there yet. So there's a misunderstanding, classic sitcom misunderstanding about like, oh, Scott has a new partner. I don't know who it is, and like, oh, you minx, you figured it out, and you know, one of those things. And so Franz thinks they're talking about her and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it all comes out and Fran is devastated. And so when she finds it's like Scott runs, ends up saying, like, no, I don't want to dance with you, Tina, and runs after Fran all the way back to her house, where the father is like, Who are you? And like, and he's like, No, we just danced together. He's like, Why are you dancing so late at night? What kind of dancing are you doing? He's like, pasa doble, knowing that this is a dance that since Fran is Latina, her father, who's like, I think carrying a guitar, will know. And he's like, Oh, all right, show me your pasta doble. And so Scott's like, Oh, okay, yeah, I'll do that. And so they're having a party, which is why he wanted Fran there. And so they bring everybody in, they start playing music, and so they start doing the strictly ballroom version. So they're doing a strictly ballroom version of the pasta doble, and so everyone there like busts a gut laughing because it's not a pasta doble. And so Scott's like, what are you laughing at? And Rico, Fran's father, is like, that's not pasta doble. I'll show you a pasta doble. And so he he does like the traditional version of the dance. Super sexy, that's my recollection. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's like slow and sensual.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh it's not foot dragging. Yeah, yeah. With the grandmother. And so the grandmother says in Spanish, like, hot stuff here may be able to shake his tail feather, but he doesn't have any rhythm. And so Fran translates that as grandma wants to teach you. That's cute. And so, and she asks Scott, like, where do you feel the rhythm? And so he starts moving his feet. And she says, No, no, no, no, no. You feel it in your heart. And so they start teaching them. Now, earlier to this, when he had been walking her home, she had taught him a phrase in Spanish that her her grandmother had taught her, which is, and I don't remember the Spanish phrase, but it's a life lived in fear is a life half-lived. And so they are learning the pasa doble and like incorporating it with the rumba. And Rico is now teaching them along with the grandmother, and she's sewing the costume for Fran, as well as like adapting a costume that Rico had had for Scott. And Fran has said to Scott, you're not gonna win. And he says, I don't care. I don't care about the Pan Pacific Grand Prix. And he says the same to his mother, like, I don't care. And so at some point, Shirley, his mother, Doug Les, the owner of the studio, and then Barry Fife, the guy with the rodent on his head, who's the president of the federation, gets together and says, We've tried everything we can to convince him. And he says, Yes, except for telling the truth. So it's the next day, which is the day before the Pan Pacific Grand Prix. Scott is at Fran's house, they've practiced, and then they're they're walking for a little bit, and he says, You remember what I said about the rumba about how it's just to pretend to be in love? And she said, Yes, and he said, I think I made a mistake, and he kisses her, which is adorable. And then he goes, Oh no, I I promised Wayne I'd help him with something. And it's a running joke that Wayne needs help with the the bago pago or some sort of step. And she's like, Well, you better not keep him waiting. And so he he rushes back to the studio and Barry Fife is there and tells him the the real story of what happened between his parents and Les, which is that Doug and Shirley Hastings were on top of the world. They could have been the champions. Everyone admired Doug. He was the best dancer you've ever seen. But then he became a selfish dancer and was doing his own steps, and he did them during the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix. And he lost and ruined his mother's career, ruined Shirley's career. He became a broken man, and only the birth of Scott gave him something to live for. And so don't take this away from him. You know, don't be selfish. Holy holy. So, you know, super guilt trip. So Scott then breaks into the locked cabinet that his dad keeps and finds a picture of his parents. So there's at in 1967. So there's some proof that yes, his parents did dance. So the next day he's dancing with Liz because Ken has dropped her and is now dancing with Tina Sparkle. Scott feels terrible about having dropped Fran. Fran is there with the beginners again, dancing with another girl. And Liz is saying something nasty about how, like, oh, she's back with the beginners where she belongs. And Scott is like running after her, trying to like see her to tell her, I'm so sorry. Like, this is this isn't what I wanted. Please understand why I'm doing this. It's for my dad. And meanwhile, his dad keeps running after him, going, like, Scott, can I bend your ear for a tick? So finally she tells him off. She's like, What about a life lived in fears, a life half-lived? This is all like in the last minutes before the Pan Pacific Grand Prix Latin dance is about to happen. Scott's dad tells him actually what happened was he didn't ever dance the Grand Prix, Les danced with Shirley because they didn't want him to dance his own steps. So Doug never actually danced his own steps in the Grand Prix less, and Shirley made sure that he couldn't. Meanwhile, Wayne, because he's worried about his bago pago steps, Fife has told him, like, oh yeah, here's what you need to do. So he's following Fife to be like, Hey, can you make sure I know what I'm doing for this? He's following Fife and finds him in the basement, telling Ken, who is drunk off his ass, and Tina Sparkle, hey, as long as you go through the motions, you'll get the trophy. So he's rigged it. So they go tell Les what they found. Les confronts Fife. Fife says, like, oh, you know, so you're you're betraying, betraying that family again, or something like that. He's like, I didn't betray Doug. You told me Doug wanted me to dance with Shirley. So all of this was So it was all engineered by Fife. So while Doug is telling Scott all of this, one of the things he says is, We lived our life in fear, which of course triggers Scott to be like half. So he he uh leaves the ballroom, runs after Fran, gets her, and they dance. And so Fife ends up like turning off the music to stop them from dancing. And so Doug starts clapping so that they have the rhythm so they can still dance, and then the entire audience starts clapping. And so people are able to turn the music back on, and then the entire room comes in and starts dancing. Like all the other competitors. No, the audience, too. Everyone, everyone starts dancing. So who wins? We don't know. We all do. The audience wins. We all do. Okay, cool. The winning is the friends we made along the way.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. Well, that was fun. So where do you want to start with this?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, let's start with gatekeeping. Because that's what this is all about. From 1967, when the original betrayal occurred with Doug Hastings, to 1992 with, you know, young Scott Hastings. It was all about Barney Fife, no, very fife, very fife gatekeeping, saying, like, this is strictly ballroom. We cannot this is the way I think. This is the way I think dancing is supposed to be. And I would rather have someone who is so drunk he can barely see straight be the Pan Pacific Grand Prix champion than have different types of steps, which doesn't really make sense. Like, why are we doing this then? Like, this is supposed to be about creative expression. Excellence and dance. Yeah. Yeah. It's supposed to be about excellence and dance and creative expression and like it's all made up anyway. Are these guys amateur? Well, that's the other thing. It's like it's amateur, but like, what does amateur like I don't that's part of it too? I do not know, I know Jack shit about ballroom dancing. This the entire sum of my knowledge of ballroom dancing comes from this this movie. Right, right. I've caught one or two episodes of dancing. So yeah, I don't really okay. And that's like one of the things that Shirley says when she's fighting with Doug is like, you know, if we'd let you dance your steps, we wouldn't have been able to teach even. And I don't know, maybe that's true. I mean, there are scandals within creative endeavors that would be enough to scare people away.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, maybe. But I think it's interesting when you set the topic here as gatekeeping, because there's the gatekeeper in Barry, but then there's also the sort of followers who just accept the gatekeeping and then enforce it themselves, like surely. And so I think there's something really interesting to be extrapolated about the way the gatekeeping works because I think we tend to, I tend to kind of just focus on the one gatekeeper and forget about all of their enforcers who don't even necessarily they don't have the same sort of motives. They're just like rule followers. Like we we tend to follow rules, we tend to follow people who we see in positions of authority. Like it's like that famous experiment where everyday people like tortured people to death because somebody was wearing a white coat. Or they thought they did. They thought they did, they didn't actually, because somebody was wearing a white coat told them to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

There's that internalized sense of like this is right and this is wrong. And like what's interesting is because if you asked, I mean, all of this is ridiculous, obviously. But if you asked Shirley Hastings, like, what's the most important thing in the world to you? My family. But is she acting like that? Because she's acting like what's the most important thing in the world to her is a trophy that is, you know, like really not that expensive. You know, it's like something you get down at the trophy store that's down in the strip mall, you know, that literally no one else cares about. And that that is true of so much. Like we so often internalize these external rules because of people in higher power are gatekeeping.

SPEAKER_02:

It's interesting too, even just thinking about the gatekeeping, like what's at stake. Like when you say it that way, when you talk about sort of internalized like good and bad or whatever, like for whatever reason, to Barry Fife and to many gatekeepers like him, like change feels like dangerous. And so it's sort of interesting to think about like the psychology of it that makes people dig in so hard that they're trying to protect something. And I don't think it's just ego. Like there is a there's a safety and a danger component, which is, as you point out, completely ridiculous. I mean, that as this movie points out by making the the central action be this dance competition, which there'll be another one next year, presumably. So, you know, that really kind of underscores the sense of safety and danger, safety in the way it's always been done in danger and change, is completely misplaced. But I think we see that in all kinds of places where it's harder to see.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and that kind of gets into one of the things that I find really fascinating about this is in the first 10 minutes you're watching this and like kind of documentary style, it's interviewing Shirley and Doug, and Shirley's saying, like, Scott won most of the the trophies in in this room. I mean, that's what's so tragic about it. His, you know, it was his year to go all the way. And he was gonna win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix of South Arab. And like you're sitting there going, that doesn't matter to anyone at all.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, also like it'll happen again next year. Like, it's not like a once-a-decade competition.

SPEAKER_00:

She says that and you laugh because it's literally ridiculous. But if you zoom out, anything that we put on, like we say, like, oh, it is so important that I get this, that I get the corner office, that I win that departmental award, is equally ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, because ultimately what that is is outsourcing happiness, right? I'll be happy when that trophy sits on my shelf. And then the problem is you get the trophy and you're still miserable.

SPEAKER_00:

And then what do you do? I so this gets to, I was just reminded of this recently. When I was in college, each department they had an honors day. And this, I don't know if this is common in in in smaller schools. I don't know if they did this at Oberlin, but each department would give out honors to to various students. Oh no, I didn't I don't think we did that. I received an honor from the French department because I double-majored in English and French once when I was uh a sophomore and once again when I was a senior. And that was amazing. It felt amazing. I really wanted the English department to recognize me. Like I wanted that so bad. I wanted that recognition. So my roommate's boyfriend was also an English major, and he was a moody, taciturn, kind of a pain in the ass. Like I did not talk. Emo. He was emo. Before it was cool. So there was a day where the three of us were walking across campus and we ran into an English professor. Now he and I were both English majors. I never took a class with him, just never happened to take a class with him. All of a sudden, we run into this English professor, and he was Mr. Schmooz, the boyfriend. He was all like the moody taciturn does not talk, was suddenly like Mr. Charm. And I was I was sitting there with my mouth like on my like my chin was on my chest. Like, who are you? And guess who's getting awards and honors at Honors Day from the English department? And I realized Mr. Moody slash Mr. Schmooze, you know, is like Dr. Jackal Muster Hyde, he knew exactly who the glad-handing professors were and he he went for them. Whereas like my favorite professors had nothing to do with that shit because they didn't care. And he specifically schmoozed with them. That to me is like what this, it's a microcosm of that. And so, like, since then, and it's not to say like I still being recognized still feels really good. I received an award from there's something called the Plutus Foundation about excellence and financial media, and I received a award for freelancer of the year, and I'm a little twee about it. I also know for a fact that I got it because Joe, who came on a few few episodes ago, put in a word for me because it's holding the story about this this guy. I know that's exactly what happened. I know that is what happened. Because I told him I was like, Yeah, I don't I don't put any any any stock in this shit anymore because of this experience. Like, because I don't do that shit. And I know he was on the panel for it was decide. Again, he's like, Emily should get it this year. Thank you, Joe. And I also I'm a little twee about it because I was just like, that's my Plutus award. I keep pensing it. So anyway, what I'm saying is anything we do, like the Oscars are ridiculous. The Olympics are ridiculous. They are. That's not to say that they're not worthwhile. Right. But they are ridiculous. Right. I think that's an important distinction distinction.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I've been thinking a lot lately about like this is such a weird thing. What a tangent. Sorry, folks. What is the evolutionary benefit of being able to appreciate beauty? Like, what did our the you know, his Like ancient humans, like how did it make them survive and thrive better? I don't know. Like I can see where pattern recognition or even like having like a dopamine hit or like like being like getting aesthetic satisfaction from different things could like help you survive, but like actually appreciating beauty. I don't know. I'm not sure how it helps the species survive. It's still really worthwhile, right? I guess that's where that's why I'm going here. It's like just because the Olympics are ridiculous and like in many ways meaningless does not make mean that they have no meaning. I know I just contradicted myself, but well, and that's but I stand by it.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's I feel like ultimately that's what this story is about. Because the Pan Pacific Grand Prix Latin dance is meaningless. It's ridiculous. But the meaning is the dance. Dance is not meaningless, and that's what that's what the whole area is. And that's what like Doug is saying to Scott is like it's about the dance and where when you're focusing on winning this trophy, you've lost it all.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Does Doug say that? You've lost it all?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, okay. That's me. That's cool. That's Emily.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's what brings these two people together, too, is that she sees that he wants because he's Scott says, I'm bored with strictly ballroom. I'm bored with the normal steps. And she sees that he is trying for something that he's not getting from what he's known all along. And she sees him. He does not see her initially until she like because there's a point where they're doing something and he's trying to figure it out. And she's like, No, I've got something. I've this is what I've been working on at home. And he's he's like, No, no, no, shh, and she finally just does it. And he's like, Whoa, what was that? And that's when he first really sees her. And so that's also, I think, really lovely because where his parents don't see each other is because his mother was so focused on winning rather than on dance. And at the end, when everyone comes onto the dance floor, the first to join on the dance floor is Doug goes to Shirley and says, Will you have this dance with me? And she says yes. And there's there's this sense of like there is still something there between them. There is still dance between them, even though they have not danced together in 25 years. And that's that's it's lovely. It's it's just it feels good for this ridiculous movie.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I mean, it sounds to me like it's sort of a meditation about the power of joy and creativity to bring us together. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

And then like the the a life lived in fear is a life half-lived. I love that in terms of like looking at it in terms of creativity. Because if you're looking at it in terms of like fear, when you're talking about this like Grand Prix, Pan Pacific Grand Prix, oh my goodness, it's so silly. But if you're looking at it in terms of like, because I do carry such anxiety about creativity, but say no, like the wholehearted don't live in fear of your creativity, jump right in. That is amazing. And like that, it's coming from a director, and Boz Lerman also wrote this with the co co-author, and it started as a stage play. So it started as a stage play in 1984 and went through a couple iterations. Lerman had the original idea and had like some help with writers and things like that. And then also Mercurio and I'm not gonna remember her name, but all of these are dancers. Like Mercurio was was the actresses are dancers. Paul Mercurio was part of the Australian ballet as of age 19. Just really truly talented people. And so that's also one of the things that's really remarkable about this is that you've got this dichotomy between this like tempest in a teapot and like remarkable dancing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. So talk to me about white people who ruin everything. I think that like by having Fran and her family actually speak Spanish to one another, that helps to underscore Scott's whiteness, I guess.

SPEAKER_00:

So, and this is this is one of those things where like I saw it this time, I definitely didn't notice it when I saw it as a teenager. And then because it's set in Australia, I feel a little less qualified to discuss this because I don't really have a sense of where the history of Latinx people in Australia. But the white people ruin everything. It's the paso doble.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, which is not which when when he does it the way you're supposed to do it on the competition floor, the actually the this Latin dance, these Latin people say that ain't it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So, and it was like not even like cultural appropriation, it was like just culturally wrong. Yeah, yeah. Um and that got me thinking about also the costumes that everyone is wearing. What Scott and Fran are wearing for the Latin dance is very traditional Latin costumes. She's wearing one of those skirts that is like got a long, it's longer in the back than in the front. So you can see her legs, and he's got one of those short jackets and then like very tall, like high pants. It's the short jacket with all the sequins, and it's very traditional. And when I say like it's interesting to say white people because I think that's very Spanish, which Spain is white people.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, that's the thing about whiteness, right? Is that erases difference because it once upon a time Spanish and Italian and Irish and Polish were all distinct, but now they're all white. So it just erases difference.

SPEAKER_00:

It's also like I'm not sure how this plays out in Australia, New Zealand, and Australian culture. But when that then when you look at the like Latin costumes of everyone else on the dance floor, they're like caricatures. They're like peacocks. They're wearing like sequined tuxedos and like I can't think of what those they would be called, but like puffing puffy sleeves and and then like basically bikinis with like not quite like feathers attached as skirts. And on the one hand, it's like, okay, you don't want to do cultural appropriation where you're wearing a costume that's not yours, but on the other hand, like that ain't it. So, but that is traditional for ballroom dancing and stuff, like it's complicated. It's complicated, but it it had me feeling like white people ruin everything. And like for people who are really into ballroom, like I I forgive me, I don't know ballroom. I don't know the evolution of how those costumes came to be. There might be an amazing history that I know nothing about. And so I'm coming in, but I think there is something really interesting here in the the fact that there's this like strictly ballroom rule that is has taken something. It's like this is Latin dance, and we got all of these people who are all like all of them are blonde and like bleached blonde. So like Ken is like bleached blonde and Liz bleached blonde. Wayne and his partner both redhead, Shirley is bleached blonde, but like all of the dancers are like performing whiteness. And even like Barry Fife, his toupee is blonde, and his girlfriend wife, whatever she is, she she is bleached blonde. So they they are all very much performing whiteness, as is Les. He's bleach blonde, but this is the Latin dance, and so it's weird. It's this very weird thing, it's complicated. Does it pass Bechtel? It does, actually. It does very well. We have many female characters with names and they talk to each other, they talk to each other in mean girl ways. Oh, okay. So Shirley tells Bechtel is a very low bar. Shirley tells Fran like she should go home because everything would be better if she weren't there. Fran's grandmother also tells Fran that her her mother would be proud of her if she were here. So that's that's lovely too. Does the does grandma have a name? She does, but I don't remember what it is. But yes, there's a name. And then Scott has a little sister who has a name that I don't remember, but she talks to Liz, she talks to Shirley, she talks to Fran. There's there's there's lots of conversation. Oh, and she talks to Barry's girlfriend slash wife, whatever her name. Barry's girlfriend slash wife is named Charm Leachman. She tells her, You should be ashamed of yourself, Miss Leechman. So yeah. But this the gender stuff, it is like, as Liz says, where the man goes, the lady must follow. Because it is very much Scott's decision on everything. Some of that has to do with the fact that he's the competitor whose name is like she does not have whatever the background is necessary to put in as a competitor, and she doesn't have Oh, she's just heart partner for the tournament. But there's also and like she definitely has agency. Like she she she's the one who like comes to him and says, like, I think you could do this and I want to do this with you. She calls him a gutless wonder multiple times. Fran does. Sorry, I thought we were talking about it. Oh no, no, no, no. No, right, yeah, right. I see. So I I think you know, for 1992, I think it's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it sounds like it. And and even like the gender stuff, thinking about like the the male, the man leads and whatever, the dynamic between Shirley and Doug, that wasn't the case. I mean, there was another man interfering, but it's at least, you know, before the sort of reconciliation because of the joy of dance at the end, it sounds like Shirley very much was the wore the pants in the family to use a outdated expression.

SPEAKER_00:

And even with the Fran's father being like overprotective, it seemed to be more that he didn't know where she was and he wanted to know. Not so much that like as soon as he was like, Okay, who is this kid? What have you been doing?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, he wasn't policing, he wasn't policing her sexuality. It didn't sound like that.

SPEAKER_00:

And as soon as like they found out, like, oh, you you're dancing, show me. All right, we're gonna teach you how to dance. And they're like, they're they're sewing costumes for him, and like they we show, we we see there's some really hot scenes because Fran's father is very good looking. There's some really, really good scenes of Rico and Scott dancing together where he's teaching him.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I was gonna say, I wonder what this movie would be like if we remade it today. When the I know the rules of ballroom dancing have changed, and now you can have same-sex couples on the dance floor, which I only know because of my, you know, Instagram reels with these super hot dances with two men that I enjoy. But I wonder like if we were to like write a you know, a sequel that's set today where it doesn't have to be a hetero like couple, like what changes with that unique? Um it doesn't really matter. It just is like my that's where my brain went when we were talking about this. Yeah. So all right. Well, any final thoughts from you before I try and reflect back to you what I heard about Strictly Ballroom?

SPEAKER_00:

Honestly, this is this is a delightful film with one exception. It it holds up. And the one exception is Fife calls less the homophobic F word, but he's a horrible human being. And that is like the only thing that doesn't hold up. And even then, that's like he's a horrible human being. And so I was really pleasantly surprised how well this movie holds up, how delightful it is from beginning to end. It's got a great soundtrack, it is full of eye candy. And it's it's genuinely funny and like and it's feel good. Like you you really feel good, even as you're like, come on, people. But at the same time, you're just like, no, this is this is really important. Like the Pan Pacific Grand Prix Latin finals trophy matters not at all. But what Scott and Fran are doing is really important, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So I'm thinking about Christopher Guest movies. When you say that, the thing like the not important, like it makes me think of Best and Show. Maybe we'll put that on the list. Anyway, let me see if I can reflect back to you what you brought about this delightful movie from 1992, directed by Baz Lerman and apparently written by him as well, with some help. I think we spent a lot of time actually thinking about gatekeeping and not just sort of the like that it happens and what the effects are of gatekeeping, but also the ways in which sort of gatekeepers have enforcers who have internalized the idea, the ideas of right and wrong or good and bad or whatever safety and danger that the gatekeepers have sold them. So that was sort of an interesting meditation that kind of goes through the movie because of this character whose name is not Barney Fife, it's in fact Barry Fife. And he has a very bad toupee, and he's a horrible human being, and he uses the F-word, the F homophobic F-word, not fuck. Okay. We also talked a lot about connected to gatekeeping is the very low stakes of like everything, right? Like specifically, we're talking about the pan-Pacific Grand Prix Latin dance championship in this film. But I think you extrapolated, you use the phrase zoom out and sort of talk about like almost everything that we do is just sort of ridiculous like this. Like the stakes are not what we make them. Like we make the stakes high when in fact they don't matter much of the time. Yeah, I think like oncologists might disagree with us, but well, I mean, that's heart surgeons.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, that's that's why like competitions don't matter.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Competitions, competitions, yeah. Specifically, yeah. I think that's right. So I think that was a that was a key learning for you. There was something really interesting in a life lived in fear is a life half-lived. And I think that's sort of like just general advice for humans, but you actually like did a little like even further interpretation of that because of the way it shows up in this movie, to talk specifically about creative pursuits and the idea that sort of shrinking one's creative outlets or creative endeavors for fear of being judged, failing, whatever it is that we fear when we don't put our work out into the world, that's actually sort of an important lesson about like living our full creative selves, not just about taking risks and like asking someone out on a date or like applying for the job that you're not qualified for, but actually like living as creative beings. And I think that's important, that distinction. I appreciated your bringing that, and that it came from this movie, especially since sort of the climax, the reconciliation between the estranged parents, or they weren't quite estranged, but they also weren't quite together either. And sort of realizing that the gatekeeper is a gatekeeper and a horrible human being, what that unlocked was joy in creativity, joy in dance in this case, that is actually what brings all of these people together. That's why they do this competition because they all love dance. And so by uncovering, unmasking the gatekeeper in this case, we actually were able to see the whole universe of the movie return to the joy of dance. And that's really beautiful. And then lastly, I heard some gender stuff that was kind of minor. It passes Bechtel, and there is some stuff about like who leads because of the dance and like France sort of following, which is also partially about the story, but partially about gender. So there's there's a little bit of messiness there. Oh, and white people ruin everything, which is true, but also like complicated in this movie because we don't fully understand the milieu of Australian culture and also like Latin, it's Latin dance, but it's also ballroom culture, and like it's complicated, but there is there does seem to be something in there, especially in the fact that Fran and her family speak Spanish to one another. So they're not like the movie makers made sure we understood that they were different from the English-only speaking Australians. And lastly, my sister is a Plutus award-winning finance writer, you people.

SPEAKER_01:

Like, I want you to like note that. So did I forget anything else?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, next time I'm excited to bring you my deep thoughts about the cartoon movie Land Before Time by Don Bluth with the dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_00:

That's awesome. See you then.

SPEAKER_02:

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