How What We Watch Defines Us

Welcome back to the Bulwark goes to Hollywood. My name is Sunny Bunch from Culture Editor at the Bulwark. And I’m very pleased to be joined today by Walt Hickey, who is the author of the new book. You are what you watch, how movies, and TV, affect everything. Walt, thank you for being on the show today.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

So I I really love this book, for a number of reasons, one of them is that it confirms one of my, maxims of life, one of my axioms, which is, the line from high fidelity call me, you know, it would I I’m gonna paraphrase it here, but it’s, you know, call me shallow, call me whatever, but what you what you listen to, what you watch, it it matters. It fucking matters, man. And that is how I feel, that is how I feel about this book and and kind of what it is trying to, the argument you’re you’re trying to make here wanna I wanna focus on on, my favorite chapter in here, which is the, the title of the chapter is commerce and culture and commerce. And it what you would describe in it, we might describe as the flywheel, which is the the idea of, you know, a book or a movie or a TV show leading to people buying merchandise, which in turn leads to them going to amusement parks, etcetera, etcetera. But on a very specific part of that, which is a a portion of pop history that I had kind of forgotten, the Warner Brothers store.

Yeah. Walk us through the History of the Warner Brothers store and how that kind of changed everything.

Yeah. So for I mean, first, thanks for the kind words. I’d, you know, I’d really I’d really enjoy this podcast. I enjoy your broader kind of pop culture, and so here and that is. It’s very nice to hear.

The chapter is is basically the commerce chapter, the economic after. So it it’s a little bit about the economic history of why movies are what they are and how they became what they became, but there’s kind of a key, like, Rosetta Stone that I think that’s kind of actually Rosetta Stone is one metaphor, better one’s a missing link that connects the entire history of pop culture before the nineties and then what has happened after that. And, effectively, what we see is that before this era, before the Warner Brothers Studio store, was innovated by the folks at Warner Brothers. The Pop culture merchandise was for children. Television shows about Batman did not lead to adults wearing shirts about Batman.

They were all the merchandise was targeted for kids. Disney locked in very, very early on this. They realized that you could sell people Princess dolls. They realized that you you could sell people Mickey Mouse. They realized the flywheel that you alluded to earlier, you know, the the innovation of connecting merchandise film that was always, like, you know, throughout the eighties or the seventies, that was always a significant, booster.

Obviously, you saw Sounds like the empire strikes back was, in particular, the one that really capitalized on it, but Star Wars in general, kinda realized that you could again sell children dolls based on the thing that they had seen. But the thing that the world of Resideo store did was that they kinda they tapped into this, like, aging, like, at the time, I say aging boomer. When we say aging boomers, we typically think, you know, people who are sixty, but at the time, they were, you know, late thirties, early forties, and they had money, and they were nostalgic. And they realized that these folks will buy high quality material if we put bugs bunny on it. And they first thing the first inkling that they had that this was a viable model was when Batman came out in nineteen eighty nine because they realized, you know, there was a biggest movie of the year, and so they produced at least a little bit of adult merchandise for it, but then they would quickly sell it.

And they would quickly realize that there was a ton of demand for Batman pins and ton of demand for Batman memorabilia from people who are in their thirties and forties, and not just the, like, the nerds. Right? It was genuinely mainstream individuals. Again, this was a this was a this was the biggest movie of the year. And so from there, they kinda realized, like, if you look at the Warner Brothers Library, you know, it’s not the, like, cuddly Mickey Mouse stuff.

It’s, like, snarky bugs bunny kind of thing, and we’re in the nineties now. So this might be actually kind of apt. And so they really went about it in in a very, like, kind of clever I, like, hearing the folks kinda describe the development of the story. It kinda sounds a bit like a caper. Where they kinda realized where their strengths were, which were, you know, let’s look at adults, let’s completely ignore kids.

Let’s see the entire kid element of this retail environment to the Disney store across the mall. And let’s entirely basically poach people from department stores and from, like, Macy’s affiliates in New Jersey and from, design studios and then try to make stuff that, like, grown ups will actually buy. Except it has Daffy duck on it, and they really succeeded. And they succeeded to the extent that we’re still feeling the reverberations today.

The thing the most important element of this whole story, I think, at least to me, the thing that jumped out to me was the way that the pop artifacts, the pop culture items became representations of identity,

Yeah.

It was like a thing that people were like, this is me. And you have a there’s there’s a there’s a a moment in here where you’re talking about the, the way the the looney tunes characters were, kind of, targeted toward groups of people which I found which, again, it, like, it’s one of these things where I have this vestigial memory of, you know, Taz, the Tazmanian devil in, like, Harley Davidson here everywhere. Exactly. And, like, and it was it was wild. It was it was wild that it it it worked like that.

So how did that how did that come about? How did they actually, like, kind of settle on these groups and figure out what to do what to do with them?

Yeah. And and again, like, this is why I think it’s just such a cool innovation because they discovered some. And that their first conceit was like, you know, adults will buy this stuff if we make it high quality. Like, if it’s made out of the same material that the stuff that they’re buying at another department store is. They will be willing to shell out for it.

And if we appeal to the nostalgic element, they will they will put out, and go big. And so, you know, the the architect of a lot of this was this woman Linda Pestelle. And what she realized a couple, you know, a little while in was that, you know, people didn’t just want the looney tunes on their shirt. They wanted one looney to an on a shirt. And for a while, obviously, you kind of have the main tat.

You have the main crew. You know, if you got your porkies, you got your bugs, you got all that kind of stuff, then they kinda realized that different people were buying different characters and and be different people were identifying with different characters, which was really, really interesting to them because they’re if there’s one thing that they had a lot of those characters, so, you know, she says, you know, like, all the guys who bought foghorn, Leghorn, all kinda looked the same. And they kinda realized that there’s been a this identity component that they that know, they hadn’t even realized necessarily existed until they started selling stuff, until they started realizing that people will buy stuff. And one of my favorite stories from this was, like, you know, Marvin the Martian. Well, who somebody who I think, like, a lot of people of of our age would consider a rather, you know, staple of the of the of the looney tunes universe, Marvin the Martian was in, I think, like, an aggregate twenty minutes of looney tunes.

Prior to the nineteen ninety. Like, he was the villain in, I think, three looney tunes, end of list. And when they were just mining the archives, like, well, who can we put on a mug? And what can we kind of articulate about a person’s personality about putting that guy in a mug? They found Marvin, and then all of a sudden, he becomes you know, the guy that the dude in IT has on the mug because, you know, he’s persnickety and that kind of thing.

And then within years, he’s refereeing, like, frigging space you. And so as a result, like, they were able to kind of even take smaller tier characters out of the archives and then identify a a market segment that identified with that character’s personality. Because, again, like, the thing that that I think has really made this work in particular is that the looney tunes and their designers and their developers were, like, geniuses. And they really did hone in on, okay, here’s a character. Here’s a few traits about them.

Here’s what makes this character unique from everyone else. Here’s why this character does it doesn’t exist in this world. There’s no overlap between what these two what these what the role of these two entities is. And just from a standpoint of cartooning was just genius. And so they they obviously were standing on the shoulders of giants, but it came to the opportunity to to turn these into identity driven figures.

But once they kinda clued in on that, they they really realized that the thing that we’re driving people to spend all this money and to invest in, you know, a Taz, it was, like, biker jacket or a tweedy garden set or any of this kind of stuff. Was that people wanted a way to kind of not only, you know, evoke the memories of their childhood, but also to articulate something about themselves in the process and explain something about themselves in the process. And, like, I don’t wanna get too far ahead, but, like, you know, I you and I are millennials, like, we’d look around ourselves and and we see that, you know, our generation has sorted itself into one of four Hogwarts houses. We we look around and we see that people, you know, that kind of burst of of post apocalyptic fiction that required people to sort themselves into one of five classes. Like, like, there there’s this entire kind of perspective on a lot of whether it’s even Star Wars of that that weird campaign that they had of, like, are you light side or are you dark side?

Like, there there’s this kind of strategy that has been employed by these folks, in the entertainment industry to really kind of take the lesson that we learned that people like using pop culture as a way to express their identity and then actively kind of design in the content does sometimes reflect that.

Alright. Let’s let’s step back. You don’t talk about this in the book at all. I just wanna get your take on this.

Yes.

I wanna I wanna take. I want a hot take. I feel like this has been actively destructive to the world of culture, criticism and consumption and an Ron DeSantis in in very real and specific ways in in in what we see, in in so much of the arguments over things like Star Wars or whatever else. Like, this this whole this whole Star Wars is my identity, so I have to defend what I perceive to be the correct Star Wars. Thing, or, you know, Marvel is my identity, so I hate DC people or vice versa.

You know, DC is the best. I I love Zack Snyder movies, and these are Marvel, movies or garbage trash, put them put them in the curb. And I feel like that is I feel like that is, I feel like this this is where all of that starts. Yeah. Basically.

And that’s bad. I think that’s bad.

Yeah. Is is like, I I when I was talking to a lot of the folks about what they were doing, what they were thinking at the time, like, it you know, obviously, it was years before Oppenheimer came out, but, like, it’s it’s they’re they were in the desert cracking something open that that cannot be uncracked. And that what it did for pop culture in particular, you know, like, I I the sports metaphor, I think, is apt because what’s another thing that people care very deeply about that they buy lots of merchandise about, that they have regional rivalries about, and is basically structured as a competitive thing when you look at sports, I’m a and I enjoy the stuff. I’d, you know, New York City sports area fan, like, you know, to screw the Philadelphia Eagles, it’s it’s a lot of fun. It’s a it’s a good time to be in a try.

It it really is. There’s something that innate about my caveman brain that enjoys it. But I think that the the adaptation of culture for that to your point has been extremely active. And I think that it has made it very, very difficult to actually make, culture that resonates that kinda doesn’t allow itself to give in to that competitive nature. I think, like, you know, if you were to kind of consider the release pattern and the and the mentality around the snyder cut, then, like, it’s kind of difficult to disentangle it from what you’re describing.

That the the kind of like underdog perception that despite the fact that I would be a fan of of what is You know, objectively one of the top two comic book universes in the world, that nevertheless I’m the underdog here. And I have been wronged, and I ought to be compensated for this in the form of a, of a film made to my specifications. And so, like,

think that

it it has been incredibly destructive towards that. I think that there are elements of it that, like, have been Like, I mean, good is is a worry, but also I think that, like, it did kind of allow us to understand a deeper reason why some things resonate with us and others don’t. I think that, you know, like, even on, like, the sitcom kind of style stuff, I think that it kind of allowed people to understand that having a resonance with a specific character rather than the entire ensemble cast is sometimes just how people get glued on a show, and that’s the case on friends, and that’s the case on Like, I think that there’s there’s different ways that kind of having, on ramps within pop culture for different people is not the worst thing in the world and understanding that people take this seriously enough that they can articulate an element of their identity through it, is not bad. I I I do not think that there is a fundamental issue there. That being said, I think that, you know, these are These are publicly traded corporations that have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to maximize value.

And as a result, at times, we’re gonna get things that are gonna play off this instinct in a way that are unhealthy for pop culture and and and just culture, like capital c culture as a whole.

Yeah. Yeah. I, when this there was a section, there’s a section in this chapter on, funko pops, which is really thing to me. Yeah. Because, like, you know, I think here you, here’s here’s how you, kinda describe what’s happening here, not I don’t think this is specifically about buncoast, but, their value is not Bulwark, but inward, and they are driving growth in entertainment merchandise, these these kind of, things that you just put on your shelf.

Yeah. And you, like but I I I I almost wonder if that isn’t a a no. If I I’m gonna say I’m gonna suggest maybe that maybe this is almost backwards because, like, the the actual value is simply Bulwark. It is simply look at this. Here’s a thing.

Look at it. And this is what I am. I’m I’m fascinated by the whole funko thing. I don’t because I don’t understand it.

Can we take a little time to talk about this? Cause I am also fascinated by the funko thing. And I don’t, like, I own maybe one or two given to me that I’ve never left a book. Like, it’s just like it’s a thing that either you like a lot or you don’t. There’s the like, I interviewed a bunch of people for the book that basically get into the psychology of collection.

And why do people collect things? Which I, like, is a is a bigger question than the book, and so not a lot of it made it into the book. But the idea is that there’s what is this Like, you know, whether it’s seashells or whether it’s funko pops. Why there’s something in human skulls that wants to just collect a bunch of pretty things to put them together and derive individual pleasure from that. So I I’ll push back that I don’t think it’s an outward thing because I think that, you know, if you consider, like, oh, the YouTuber that has fifty fungo pops behind them.

That is an Bulwark projection. I completely concede that. But I think that that is a minority of the consumers of this. I think that the people who have a lot of again, it’s not just fungo pops. There’s, you know, I I follow, actually, they’re right out of Dallas, but heritage auctions, which is just a And, like, I’m just I’m fascinated by the entire urge to spend a a great deal of money on animation cells and you know, comic book memorabilia because I have a little bit of that urge in me and I want to understand it.

Right? Even though I’m not in the income tier that can, you know, purchase a a still from Princess Mononoke. Yeah. But, like, I so I I I’m really I’m compiled. Yeah.

By a copy of, you are what you watch. By Walticki to help him be able to afford the princess mononoke cell.

I’m just so Help me make the worst financial decision of my life. So, But, so I’m so compelled by by, I’m compelled by Funko in particular for two reasons. One is that they’re a public and traded corporation, and when the when they’re a publicly traded corporation, they have to release annual reports, and they actually say the data about who consumes their stuff and how their business And the reason I bring this up is that funko is a really interesting business from a very cynical perspective in that funko doesn’t, like, run any factories. Like, Funko doesn’t have, like, they they don’t own stuff. They don’t own things.

They’re basically a company that options intellectual property. And then has a team of designers that decides what they make, and then contractors design the molds for that. And then those contractors send those molds to other contractors in in in factory areas that inject those molds with plastic and then other contractors ship that to America. And then Tonto distributes them to people. But at the end of the day, they’re a licensing company.

And every the actual, like, heavy lifting is done by other companies, which is, again, this is not knocking their business. But I just think that there’s such an obstruction that they’re really just, like, it’s that they are the EKG of the pop culture industry, of, like, that that kind of scene just because they are literally floating on top of it. Like, they they are entirely reflective of it I was at Comiccon in New York a few weeks ago. And I saw it must have been called it’s with something like PopSaver. And this was a stand and a very big stand.

And all that the stand was selling was high end vinyl boxes to contain your valuable funk goes in. And when I looked at it, I was like, how far have we straight from god’s light that we are having a viable business based on the back a viable business based on the back of a viable business, none of which actually make anything. And they’re basically just kind of surfing the wave of pop culture interest in the United States. And, like and so to get to your question, it was just like, is it Bulwark or is it inward? I think it’s inward.

I think that it’s the classic, like, I look at the shelf, and I see a lace on the inside, and then I, you know, go about my day a little bit. And, like, it is an inward collecting pleasure. Collecting is rarely an outward pleasure, except for folks at the highest a lot of it who are able to kind of, you know, have these kind of collections that they’re able to exhibit You see this in, you know, American museums. Like, like, you’re gonna have a wig at the museum that was donated or lent by somebody that’s a person who took pride in their collection and wanted to share it. But, I think at the end of the day, it is just it’s a fascinating instinct that, like, this is a company that makes bobbleheads.

And for whatever reason, like, the the their entire conceit is that they’re the ones who will just sign a con like, sign a licensing deal with anyone. No show too big. No show too small. And as a result, I think that we’re able to understand kind of this, like, the the the the the long tail of some of this pop culture stuff. Just by virtue of of what their business looks like.

And it is, again, like, they’ve been challenged in recent years, which I think is very interesting. I think that they’re that, you know, they are the the the perhaps it is a referendum that some of the stuff that that we had kind of seen in the past decade has stopped working in a way that is, I know, you know, publicly traded companies are fun to follow for

Yeah. Yeah. No. I’m sure there’s a a wealth of data there. Speaking of data, I mean, this book is filled with charts.

There’s a lot of data vis in this Bulwark. Well, talk to me about how that came together because I, it is I mean, this is a it’s a handsome book. I would not recommend getting this on a Kindle. Or I’m sure the audiobook is fine. If you if you, you know, if you just start

your work now, I don’t have it. For reasons, there’s

no audiobook. Okay.

Because how because there’s so there’s some, like, reset. Very, very charty. My background, for for folks who don’t know me is I was, five thirty eight’s, pop culture guy, when they hit the pop culture section during the ESPN era, And so I’ve always been interested in the intersection between data and pop culture. I think that there’s a just kind of a huge reservoir of information that You know, we’re not even let’s set aside even box office. Let’s set aside, you know, streaming numbers.

Let’s set aside all this kind of stuff. Like, I think that You know, pop culture has so much opportunity when it comes to being understood and and finding out new things about how this thing ticks and how this thing works through data journalism and through kind of the techniques of of, you know, just applied, you know, data collection and and analysis So so this book has over a hundred charts in it to your point. And, it’s great. I really dug working on it a lot. It’s it’s a lot of fun.

It’s it’s I learned a ton writing it, I would say. And and, like, I I really kind of went into it with a very kind of curious attitude. So I I was very happy with how I came away from it. I felt very good about a lot of things that I found out. And, yeah, again, like, I I could talk about data all day if you want, but, like, the idea is, like, I think that, like, my big thing and my big thing that I think is the reason that it’s important is that you know, there’s been a kind of substantial slip and trust in the media for reasons deserved and otherwise.

And the thing that I love about data journalism is that I think when you bring just some element of objectivity or at least the attempt to pursue objectivity through data that you’re able to find and bolster your argument through You know, here’s something that I observed. I sought scientifically, I sought through this. I think that it just it builds a little bit more trust between readers and and what we’re trying to do as journalists. And so I’m very fond of of data journalism in general. I know that it can spook people a little bit But I think one thing that I really tried to do with the book was make it kind of a a very easy on ramp, to to integrate some of that stuff.

But I would just, like, philosophically, you know, I know that data isn’t necessarily for everyone. I know that there isn’t a lot of stuff in pop culture that is very data heavy outside of some of the more industry stuff. But, I think people would dig it when they kinda get their taste of it.

I do. I the my favorite charts in this come, kind of early on, the, basically, you you guys hook you hooked up a, lie detector test more. To your to while you were watching amongst Casablanca do the right thing, you know, the Lord of the Rings movies, etcetera, which I find, which I found very interesting. And I’m wondering if if you’ve heard from anybody in the industry, like, you know, I they do all sorts of Yeah. Preview testing and focus grouping, you know, I’ve had, Kevin Gets on the show before who does a lot of this stuff for, with his company, you know, the the very early, like, test screenings with audiences who who who kind of help shape, you

know, something like that. That’s like, I’m feeling good right now. I’m feeling bad right now. It’s not. Yeah.

Exactly. But the, but I I wonder if they have I look, I feel like this would be most effective with something like a James Wwan horror film. Right?

Yes.

Or in genre. Like, if you are making a movie in that genre and you sit them down and you hook them up to this, be like, okay. We need we need one more scare here. We one more there. Have has anybody done anything like that?

Is this are we breaking? Are we should we start this business?

I think that we might wanna start this business. So what you’re referring to is, so there’s something called galvanic skin response. And the thing about human bodies is this. So you have palms. Right?

And sometimes there there’s little tiny pores on your palms. And as a, you know, subliminal psychological response to stress or to emotional intensity or to just strong feelings, Those little tiny pores on your palms and your fingers will let out a little bit of sweat. It it’s linked to your fight or flight response, but it’s also just basically It’s it’s just kind of related to how emotionally intense you feel. It’s just it’s a mammal thing. It’s cool.

Now what I can do is I can take something called a galvanic skin response. Which is I will put two little electrodes, one on two of your fingers. And one electrode will send out a little bit of electricity And that electricity will because of how electricity works wind its way to the to the negative lead and then basically run through your hand as a result. And what I’m measuring is how much of that electricity made it to the other side. And the reason I’m measuring that is that that is a amazing proxy for how you feel at a given time because if you have a lot of sweat on your bum, all things considered, that’s going to a lot more electricity is gonna make it through.

And if you if you don’t, then you don’t feel very emotionally intense at that moment, some of it does. So we’re basically able to kind of track your emotional valence over the course of an experience. One of these experiences that it’s very commonly used for is lie detector tests. It’s one of the graphs in a polygraph test, the other being like heart rate and stuff like that. But what some, you know, some researchers have been able to kind of hone in on some of these technologies that have a lot of applications potentially for, you know, let’s put them on people on, make them watch a movie.

And so GSR is the thing that I have in the book. I have eye tracking, technology that I use in the book to kind of take a look at different, levels of success with direction and how people are able to steer one’s eyes effectively during a movie. But yet to your point, the GSR tests were a lot of fun because, you know, I wrote, I did a lot of the work on this book during the pandemic, but it’s not a pandemic book. But the way that I was able to do this was I built about nine of these GSR machines, and I mailed them to my friends. And I was like, hey, you guys if you wanna have a movie night during well, you’re kind of, you know, indoors for a little while, go for it.

And so I was able to kind of remotely measure a lot of people’s, basically, engagement with it. I hand I hand selected group of films that I put on plex. And, yeah, I just think it’s such a good way to understand. Like, you know, you wanna talk about how this can be used on the inputs. I think that we can use this to study films and why they work, and basically just get a better understanding and appreciation for what directors are doing and also our own emotional valence during a movie, which can be kinda hard to track and especially hard to understand in retrospect.

Because it moved like, the subjective experience of watching a film you know, kinda being able to go back to the tape and seeing how one reacted is is a is a fun and exciting experience. Right? And so I think that there’s a there’s a lot of lessons that we can learn from some of the data that I was able to pull from this. And I think that the technology is extremely promising when it comes to this kind of thing. I I do think that it could also help, you know, make an argument for a change in a film if a director wanted to.

That is, I think also, like, again, the that’s not totally dissimilar from what’s happening right now already with test screenings. I think that, you know, if they’re like, listen, the scene lags, like, we have a stretch in here that’s twenty minutes and it’s just too long. We need to either cut it down, break it up, or things like that. That that that conversation happens all the time. I think that if you were able to find a way to kinda tap into directly the emotional violence, so it’s not just people self reporting, then I think that you could potentially crack at a deeper level.

But, yeah, I I mean, I had a blast kinda taking a lot of this tech for a joy ride during the the creation of the book, and I think that there’s a lot of a a fun opportunity that, like I mentioned, like pop culture just has never really had that, the same attitude that, like, politics and sports and economics have had with data quite yet. And I’m quite, I’m hopeful that, that that is gonna change at some point.

My main takeaway from this is that you can get GSR test sent to your house and you put them together. Yeah. And then, are there just on on the internet? I can just go I can just go get one and have it sent to me. So Like, I’m don’t know why, but this is blowing my mind.

I’m gonna buy a bunch of lie detector tests and hook my kids up to them at all times.

Yeah. So I’m not saying that, yes, you can hook your kids up to lie detector I am saying that if you go to seed studio dot com and you order a GSR, and a seed Juino, and a there’s a block that you need to basically make it so that it stores things on a disc. You can build it probably in an afternoon if you’ve ever used an Artuino before. And I’m happy to I’m happy to send over the specs because it is a yeah. It’s it was a very fun project.

I really I delighted. I I, you know, I a bit of a tinker, and so I, enjoyed building those immensely. And, like, you know, I got I got nine of them, and I was thinking of giving some away at some point. But I named them after robots and just mailed them to my friends. And so, like, I have a bunch of data that’s just tagged, like, c three p o or or, optimus prime.

So

Alright. Let’s shift, shift again slightly here. There’s there’s another there’s another, moment in the book where you’re, writing about how Villains have changed, how stakes have changed, how how the art of the blockbuster in particular has changed. At least in part as response to the increased glow globalization of film in the film industry. What what is so what what was the actual result?

What how have movies changed, you know, over over the last, twenty years as Hollywood has gone more and more global and more reliant become more reliant on overseas, particularly Chinese for a while, box office.

Yeah. It was an interesting thing to track because effectively, you know, I write a little bit about action movies. I I really I personally dig action movies a lot I think that action movies are are, you know, the best way to show choreography to straight men, I think it’s a lot of fun. I think they are just a really good art form, and I love them because they’re so international in nature. And, like, it is kinda cool to watch a movie that you know everybody else in the world is watching.

Or at least we’ll eventually watch it something like that. And it is, it’s just a good genre. And one thing that I wanted to look at was how are these movies changing when it comes to, you know, what we want in them. Right? Because because action movies, you always want something in an action movie.

You know, nobody Nobody will, you know, go to to to seek justice on the world unless they truly want something. And so I tracked two things over time. I tracked, essentially Mcguffins over time. Like, we need to get the nuclear codes, James, or we need to, you know, stop this weapon shipment from getting delivered, or we need find the glowing rock and and prevent the bad guy from getting that glowing rock before we get the glowing rock and tracking over time all those different indications. And then I also tracked Basically, what was the nationality or background of the individual who was attempting to, you know, foil up?

Who who who was the bad guy so to speak? So in, like, a bond movie, fairly unambiguous to the bad guys in the bond movie, even in other kind of thrillers, you know, born movies, things like that. You know, you you know who the bad he is. And what effectively we kinda found was that the nineties were a bit of an inflection point where it went from, you know, the bad guys trying to steal money, the bad guys trying to steal weapons, the bad guy is trying to steal, maybe technology that they shouldn’t have. The classic micro trip, we in a in a, you know, a a pelican case is is is a is a favorite but it went from ceiling like that kind of stuff towards as, you know, superheroes became a fairly dominant genre, towards Kind of more magical style things.

Again, I I alluded to the glowing rocks earlier, but it’s not wrong. Like, just kind of some sort of magical entity that can solve all the problems at once, or oftentimes it’s like weapons. Like, if you think back to kind of the Iron Iron Man movies, that style of, like, well, we can’t let this superhero technology go to the hands of bad guys, which I think has undergirded most Spiderman films as well as most Ironman films as well as, hell, most captain either way. So it’s either the rocks or the technology. Sure.

Basically, the idea that, like, can we let, American power slip into the hands of people who did not design that power? It’s kind of a little bit of what that’s reflecting. Can we let the genie out of the bottle and if what happens if it does? You also have at the same time that the Things that are the the entities of the bad guys, it’s not, you know, Hans Grober from East Germany anymore. Right?

It’s not, you know, they kinda realized that Russians buy movie tickets too. And they realized that in the mid nineties. And after they realized that, what you started to kind of see was you would see, you know, either, like, rogue, American, or British generals view to people from the west in general, you would see kind of a new thing, which was rogue states, and just kind of entities that were unconnected with any kind of individual things, terrorist cells, things like that, really start to emerge post nine eleven for obvious reasons. But then the big one that you really kinda saw was that you saw American corporate executives. Increasingly become individual, like, privatized centers of power within these kind of films, and would take the role of the warlord or of the, foreign dictator in an action movie and would have and instead of getting you know, somebody, who, you know, would have been rushing in an earlier movie, you instead got to to go back to Ironman like Justin Hammer.

Right, or an American technology executive who wanted to to accrue power to oneself. So you kinda saw, you know, At a certain point, I think that a lot of that was a market based decision. I I don’t have a lot of illusions about that. I think that they realized that particularly following the end of the cold war, that a lot of areas that had been written off for pop cultural export were once again opened up. You saw the other kind of big element that you saw in action movies was you kinda saw monster movies and, a monster movies and alien movies kinda take over.

So that you’re shooting, you know, you know, green guys in suits or or or walking skeletons rather than human beings, which I think can make it a little bit easier to export sometimes as well too. I don’t know. Like, you know, it’s not from the chapter that you’re alluding to, but, like, I write about the intersection of military and pop culture in the book, and kind of the role that Top Gun played in both opening things up, as well as kinda continuing things forward with with things like Maverick. And, like, the only reason I’m bringing that up is that the fa my favorite document that I got the chance to see over the course of reporting the book was, a memo from the Pentagon. Where the Pentagon had seen the script for top gun.

And they, you know, the script for top gun originally had the North Koreans as the bad guys. And so The there was this the memo typed out from the Korea desk at the Pentagon saying like, hey, we would actually really like it if you could make North Korea not the bad guys of Top Gun. Why don’t you try Libya? That seems like it could be a little bit better. It gets you everything that you need, maritime, power, you know, aircraft, that kind of thing.

Just give Olivia Olivia a world. And then written in pencil on the typed memo. It was like, hey, this is Bob from the Libya desk. Please do not give Gaddafi any ideas. Just make it a nobody.

And so as a result, in the first top gun movie, you’re fighting the enemy and not any country in particular. And and that’s just kind of the the, like, that’s a very specific example, but that’s the effect that we’ve been seeing for the past thirty Whether that’s good or bad? I don’t really know. I I I I think I can understand the the economic idea behind it, but also at the same time, it does kinda feel like If we’re just punching aliens over global rocks, some of the stakes of our action films aren’t where they used to be.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I do think that that, I I this is a this is a broader broader question than this than this podcast, but I I do I am I’m sympathetic to the idea that we getting back to real stakes would be useful. That that being said, I mean, Top gun Maverick, one of the biggest movies in the last couple years, has the same the exact it’s just the enemy.

It’s just Yeah.

Not it’s not Iran. No. Don’t call it Iran. It’s definitely not. It’s just the evidence.

I don’t have fifth generation fighters. Sunny, what are you talking about?

It’s just the enemy. It’s fine. Alright. One one one one last really interesting thing here, that I I I kind of I think I had read this before, but but not in this clear and, concise away. How how have violent movies helped reduce not, violence in the real world?

How how how How has showing violent movies to you know, we always hear about, oh, the culture is degraded. We show these kids violent movies. We can’t be surprised when they go out and shoot up the streets and everything, but it turns out that’s not quite the case.

Oh, yeah. So far from it. So I mean, we’re gonna be referring a lot to this very cool study that if there’s anybody read listening who has a who has an interest in this. It’s by Stefano Delavigna and Gordon Doll. It’s one of the I think one of the clever things that I read over the course of the book just because they’re act they’re they’re economists, and they effectively sought to confirm this confirmed lab based finding, which is if you show somebody something violent or if you show somebody’s violent imagery, violent media, violent film, they get agitated.

This is just a human that if you see, you know, fight, then you your brain does go into that mode. You know, it’s particularly acute. We know among young people. It’s particularly acute among young people, particularly among men. These are public health things that we are just aware of as a society.

And, you know, there’s always this kind of question of just like, what’s the role of media in cultivating it and agitating people and and kind of causing this this issue. You know, the the the the one that I always step back into is is, like, you know, We export our movies to every country in the world. And whatever problems locally one might attempt to attribute to a violent film doesn’t really hold up because those Local problems don’t necessarily transcend international borders, which we that that that’s kind of a very good what economists call a natural experiment. Which is a chance to basically take two people two groups of people who have different outcomes or have different exposure experiences and and and conclude from those different things about how the world works because it’s it’s unethical to design the experiment that people would want to design for this, which is gonna show kids a bunch of violent movies, and then we’re gonna show a control group no violent movies and see what happens to them because that’s just not a viable thing to do in our society. So back to the study.

What they effectively did was that they realized that there was inbuilt in the way that movies get released. A natural experiment of sorts, where there’s no given weekend in a given year that is the weekend in which we release all of our violent movies. We released them just, you know, kind of over the course of the year and at somewhat random points. And so what they kind of realized was that you can compare in a decently apples to apples way different weekends of the same weekend of the year with same weather patterns, with same, you know, general turnout to the to the box office, And compare weekends in which you have a very large popular violent film exhibited and weekends that you don’t. And we can use this to confirm that violent movies will cause an uptick in violent assault after the fact.

Because since you’re kind of conducting this experiment where, you know, a million people can see a movie in a given weekend in the United States. That’s just how these box office numbers work. And so if a million people are being exposed to violent content and we violent content causes violent crime, you will see that register in the aggregate in crime statistics in the United States. That’s that’s a that’s a mass exposure. Right?

And What they instead found was that no, we don’t actually see any uptick in violent crime. And more specifically, We actually see a decrease in violent crime whenever you release a film. Not only during the evening portion of the night, like the time between six PM and midnight, is kind of a bit of a danger period, but also between the period of of midnight and three p three AM and six AM, which to some notoriety, there is not a movie being exhibited then. And the reasons that they chalk up to this, I think just kinda speak to a lot of the power of movies in the sense of, like, we don’t necessarily even appreciate just what the act of watching them does for us, which is that, you know, it’s not like somebody’s gonna see a violent movie instead of going to church. The people who see a violent movie on a Friday night would be doing other risky behaviors that young men between the ages of sixteen and and twenty four are apt to do.

Maybe they’ll go to a bar. Maybe they’ll have a few drinks. Maybe they’ll just hang out and and potentially get themselves into trouble in other Instead, they’re spending three hours in a crowded cinema where everybody’s quiet and munching on corn. And so as a result, that’s called self sequestration. The idea that, like, somebody’s basically taking them out of play for a assault or for getting in a position where they can potentially find themselves in a bit of trouble.

So there’s that self seek registration effect that we can talk a little bit about later potentially when it comes to, you know, things that extend to this, like, video games as well too, I would argue. But then the other thing that they found was that even later in the night, they were noticing a significant decline in violent assaults during the period in which there was no longer a movie being played. And the reason that they attribute that to is that the behavior of a person who say, saw a movie for three hours, got out at nine, and then went to a bar to drink, and the behavior of a person who started drinking at six, drink for three hours and then met up with a friend who left a movie and then kept drinking that the difference in BAC between these two gentlemen is gonna be substantial enough that the person sequestering themselves in a movie theater for three hours, genuinely did a public health good by reducing the amount of alcohol that they consumed, which is, again, one of the main contributors towards you know, this this stuff. So I I think it speaks a little bit to the power of media in the sense of like, yes.

We do know that this is absolutely educating people. But There’s so many other modulating factors that the fact that somebody just took themselves out of the game for three hours is able to have a a material public health benefit in the aggregate over the course of years.

Yeah. It’s wild. I mean, again, it’s it’s it’s interesting because the the framing here isn’t necessarily violence in movies stops people from wanting to do crimes. It’s just like people go and because that’s what they wanna see. They just wanna go see the violent.

Yeah. Like, I, you know, I I was one time between the ages of eighteen to twenty four. And and the reality is is that, like, that’s a complicated time. There’s a lot, like, just hormonally, like, biologically, chemically, for for young adults, there’s a reason that most people who get into trouble are young men between the ages of sixteen to twenty four, And it’s also the reason that people tried to innovate things like, you know, midnight basketball or church youth groups on Friday nights. Like, a lot of that is is literally a public health attempt.

To to just keep people in a safe place on a night that otherwise they might be getting into trouble. And violent movies just do that voluntarily. They just make people want to sequester themselves an evening rather than being compelled to. So it’s, it it I don’t know. It’s just it’s I think it’s it speaks to trying to meet people where they are and not trying to be prescriptivist for what you think ought to be.

I I think it it’s, like, a very compelling counterpoint to the Helen Love Joy types that, I think, increase. Like, you know, oscillate in power, but I think are kind of on the upswing right now who want to kind of ban media, and, like, even if it’s not your cup of tea, you don’t have to like slasher movies, you don’t have to like violent movies. But understanding that there’s stuff going on that is to society’s benefit just by their very existence, I I think it gives you a little bit more, empathy is the wrong word, but I I guess it’s just like it makes you understand that there’s that there’s so much more going on here that it it is worth having a bit more respect for that I think inherently people sometimes do.

So what you’re saying is we need a billion dollar invest in the John Woo industrial complex.

A federal investment, one time, but obviously with the possible to extenuate it in in in two thousand twenty nine, of of just creating violent movies. So just you

put you put a billion dollars into a studio. You can make fifty, twenty million dollar movies that way. They don’t all have to be eventually they’ll pay for themselves. You know, it’ll be a

They don’t have to be hits. They just have to contain hits, my friend. You just gotta get some butts and some seats. It’s a public health game.

You get one out of every three as a hit and you’re paying for your alright. We’re or it’s this is silly, but it’s not a terrible idea.

It’s not that we’ve we’ve come up this is our second business idea over the course of Unless you wanna come up with a way to protect your pop boxes, in which case, we we have a third viable option.

Someone at DHS is listening to this right you know, let us let us know. Or HHS. One of the two. I one of the two. Alright.

That that was everything I wanted to ask, and talk to you about. I always close these interviews by asking if there’s anything I should have asked, what do you what do you think folks should know about your book? About, yeah, how how what we watch changes who we are, etcetera, etcetera. What did I fail to ask that I should have asked?

No. I mean, you you you really hit it. I I am, you know, I I really enjoyed coming on this podcast. In particular, because again, I I really enjoy your critical eye, and I enjoy the kind of folks that you get to talk to. I think that that all I I admire a lot of the guests that you have on the show.

So it’s a real treat for me to come on. I would just kinda say that again, like, I don’t think I’m telling something that a lot of folks listening don’t really know, which is just that, like, you know, this isn’t time that you waste. Right? Like, this is you don’t just, like, you know, I think that when we were growing up, a lot of the line was, like, you you, you know, you could just television is a waste of time. Or, you know, this kind of stuff is just a distraction.

And the kind of key argument to the book is that that is so far from the case. That the thing that you watch will have tendrils and impacts on you beyond what you necessarily appreciate. And, like, as a movie Anne and a guy who just really, really loves this art form and and and and cinema in general, like, I was just so in courage by what I found over the course of it. I I I I was it was very exciting to kind of come away with a deeper appreciation, rather than I think sometimes, you know, the money Bulwark experience in baseball, I think scared people away from baseball a little bit because it it it changed the sport the more that they understood it with data. And like, just working on the book, I just came away with such a deeper love and appreciation for this art form.

And, again, like, I I know that you have a lot of movie fans in your in your audience, and and I think that they would potentially dig it as well, even if they’re potentially new to pop culture data journalism stuff, I don’t know. I I just really came away with it with just such a deeper appreciation for the art form and just kind of a better understanding that you know, it’s not just it’s not a thing that you just do to piss away the hours. It it is a meaningful thing, and and and consuming this stuff is, you know, it’s The first thing that we did after we started, you know, developing societies is is telling each other stories. And though the technology has changed over time, Like, there is it’s not an unnatural thing that we’re doing here. It’s it’s it’s an important thing.

And, I just, you know, kinda, as we head into potentially, you know, whether it’s Oscar season, whether it’s just the time of the year where good movies come out, whether it’s, kind of a winter where where I think we were treated to media a little bit. Like, just kind of appreciating that, you know, this is this is pretty nice, and that there are some interesting effects that this is gonna have. And and that is, is kind of a big takeaway for the book. I know that’s a little over the all over the place, but I I find myself sometimes getting sentimental when talking about the topic just because I was very encouraged by what I found, and, I think the folks who dig movies will like it to bunch.

Alright. Walt, thank you for being on the show. Again, this is Walt Hickey. He’s talking about his book. You are what you watch, how movies, and TV affect everything.

I tellicized everything. Everything. So, thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

I mean, thank you for having me. This is a this is a huge treat

again, my name is Sunny Bunch. I’m Culture Editor at the Bulwark, and I will be back next week with another episode of the Bulwark House of Hollywood. We’ll see you guys then.