Rosemary's Baby with Ryan Cunningham: Deep Thoughts About Gaslighting, Monstrous Men, and Satanism in Pop Culture

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

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This is no dream! This is really happening!

On this week's episode, Tracie and Emily are delighted to welcome award-winning writer/director and producer Ryan Cunningham to talk about Rosemary's Baby, the film that most influenced her own filmmaking and storytelling--but also made her wonder if she was a bad feminist considering the terrible deeds Roman Polanski later went to commit. The conversation covers the absurdity of two Jewish men shaping the idea of Satanism in pop culture, the mundane evil of how pregnant women are routinely gaslighted by the "guys" and doctors in their lives, and the complexity of admiring Polanski's genius. Also: Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet is delightful.

We won't make you eat the mouse. Just take a listen!

Content warning: Brief mentions of sexual assault and statutory rape

Learn more about Ryan here. And see her TED talk here.

Mentioned in this episode:

Rebecca Solnit on Women’s Work and the Myth of the Art Monster

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 Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.

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

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.

Chapters

1. Introduction to Rosemary's Baby (00:00:00)

2. The Plot: Moving to the Bramford (00:10:51)

3. The Pregnancy and Gaslighting Begins (00:21:30)

4. Witchcraft Revelations and Isolation (00:35:47)

5. The Birth and Horrifying Truth (00:48:14)

6. Feminist Themes in Horror Cinema (00:56:34)

7. Art Made By Monsters: Ethics Discussion (01:09:09)

8. Cinematography and Closing Thoughts (01:16:00)