Love Actually & the Healing Power of Christmas Films

Kelly  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode. And please, tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers, to listen too. Hello, listeners. Since this episode is posting on Christmas, we're going to do things a little bit differently this week. We're going to look at Christmas movies. We'll be discussing a number of different films. Specifically, we'll focus on, "It's a Wonderful Life," "A Christmas Story," and "Love Actually." There may be minor spoilers for "It's A Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story." There will be major spoilers for "Love Actually." If you have somehow avoided "Love Actually" spoilers for the past 20 years and still want to watch it spoiler free, I recommend you go queue it up right now, before listening to the rest of the episode. And now for some facts about these films. "It's a Wonderful Life" opened in limited release on December 20, 1946, and in wide release on January 7, 1947. It was based on a 1943 short story by Philip Van Doren Stern, called, "The Greatest Gift," which took its inspiration from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." Frank Capra directed the film for his own production company, Liberty Films, and the screenplay was written by a committee that included Capra, as well as Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, with additional scenes by Jo Swerling, starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore. "It's a Wonderful Life" was not a box office success, although it was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, which was won that year by a film called "The Best Years of Our Lives." In 1974, the copyright to "It's A Wonderful Life" lapsed. And it's now in the public domain, which is one reason that it can be seen absolutely everywhere at Christmas. "A Christmas Story" was released on November 18, 1983. It was primarily based on the 1966 book, "In God We Trust. All Others Pay Cash," a semi-autobiographical novel by Jean Shepherd, based on his childhood in Northwest Indiana. Shepherd adapted the screenplay, along with Lee Brown and Bob Clark. Shepherd also served as the narrator for the film. Bob Clark directed the MGM production. "A Christmas Story" stars Peter Billingsley, Melinda Dillon, and Darren McGavin. It was moderately successful at the box office, opening a week before Thanksgiving, and still playing in a small number of theaters by January. It was only later, after television showings and a VHS release, that "A Christmas Story" became wildly popular. Even the critics changed their tune. Roger Ebert gave  the movie three stars when it was released, but later upgraded it to four stars. A musical version of "A Christmas Story" opened on Broadway in 2012. It was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Musical, but lost to "Kinky Boots." If you're ever in Cleveland, Ohio, you can spend the night at the house where "A Christmas Story" was filmed, complete with the lamp in the front window. "Love, Actually," written and directed by Richard Curtis was released in the US on November 14, 2003, and in the UK, on November 21, 2003. The film's cast included most of the British movie stars of the day, including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, and Keira Knightley, along with American Laura Linney. Despite the expensive cast, "Love Actually" easily out earned its $40 million budget, grossing 245 million at the box office and spent five weeks in the US Top 10. The film was nominated for two Golden Globes, and Bill Nighy won a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Despite its commercial success, and its status 20 years after its release as a modern Christmas classic, the critical reviews, both 20 years ago, and now, are mixed. Roger Ebert, who gave it three and a half stars when it came out, called "Love, Actually," a belly flop into the sea of romantic comedy," opining that, "It feels a little like a gourmet meal that turns into a hot dog eating contest." Still, he encouraged readers to watch it. Christopher Orr, who had written 1000s of words about "Love Actually," declared 10 years after the movie came out, "'Love, Actually' is exceptional, in that it is not merely, like so many other entries in the genre, unromantic. Rather, it is emphatically almost shockingly anti romantic," which led to a flurry of opinion pieces defending the film. From a host of articles with titles like, "25 Surprising Facts About 'Love, Actually,'" which tend to all recycle the same material, I gleaned the following: Number one, Hugh Grant really, really didn't want to film that dance scene, both because he didn't think that's how a prime minister should behave. and because they couldn't get the rights to the song they had originally planned to use. Number two, there were originally four additional plot lines in the already crowded movie, including a storyline about an older lesbian couple that was shot but then cut for time. Three, the film footage in the opening airport scenes were real moments filmed on hidden cameras in Heathrow Airport. After filming a scene, the crew would reveal that they'd filmed and asked the people to sign a waiver to appear in the movie. Four, Olivia Olson was such a talented singer, that her performance of, "All I Want For Christmas Is You," was considered too good for a school pageant, and she was asked to redo it with less polish. Five, while casting for Sarah, Richard Curtis kept asking for a Laura Linney type, until eventually someone just suggested that he asked Lynney herself, which he did, sending her a letter in the mail. I'll put links in the show notes, in case you want to read the many more surprising facts about this film. In March, 2017, some of the "Love Actually" cast came together to film a sequel of sorts, a 16 minute short called, "Red Nose Day Actually," as part of a fundraising event organized by Comic Relief.

And now, joining me is G. Vaughn Joy, a film historian, writer, podcast host and PhD candidate at University College London, who is finishing up her dissertation, which focuses on Christmas films from 1946 to 1961.

Hi, Vaughn. Thanks for joining me today.

G. Vaughn Joy  10:11  
Hello. Thank you for having me.

Kelly  10:13  
Yes, I am excited. You're my first returning guest, actually. Listeners may or may not know, we did a video show a couple years ago that they can go catch on the YouTube channel. But now we get to do this too. So this is great.

G. Vaughn Joy  10:28  
Yeah, that's very exciting. I think that was, correct me if I'm wrong. That was your first live show too.

Kelly  10:33  
I believe it was. Yeah. Yeah. All the firsts. So in case people didn't catch that show, they should go back and catch it now. But maybe tell listeners a little bit about your research and your dissertation? And you know, the kinds of stuff that you study? 

G. Vaughn Joy  10:50  
Yeah,sure. So I study Christmas films, which is the fun little shorthand for a much more serious kind of thesis. I really study, mid century Hollywood, between 1946 and 1961, so the immediate post war period and early Cold War. And I look at the Hollywood business side of things, and how the nation's politics and international politics kind of weigh down on Hollywood as a cultural sector, and how the US Federal Government has actually come into Hollywood, through various means of the FBI, of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, and the Supreme Court in 1947 and 1948. And they've really kind of shaken things up. So what I look at is the cultural ramifications of all of that shaking up of the US federal government in Hollywood taking over a cultural sector, and how that kind of changes how films are made in that period, and what those films can and cannot say. And I use Christmas films as my case study, to look at a kind of innocent genre where you wouldn't expect so many changes of political messaging, but ultimately, I argue there are many in this period.

So you just said an innocent genre. I wonder if we could pick up on that a little bit and talk about like, what, what makes a Christmas movie a Christmas movie? Is it just that it happens to be set at Christmas? Is there something else like what what does that genre mean? 

So I have a bunch of answers to this question. One is that I personally think that Christmas is a sub genre that is applied to other genres. So it's just a collection of tropes and signifiers around the Christmas holiday that are then put on to other films, whether they're like rom coms or musicals or westerns or action films, like your "Diehards," and horrors, like "Gremlins." Christmas is an applied kind of lens on top of the genre, in my opinion, but some of those tropes and signifiers they can really range. So you have your main ones of like Santa Claus, or like somebody saying, like the spirit of Christmas, or the belief of a child, like those kinds of seemingly wholesome, seemingly innocent and I should correct myself earlier, I'd say seemingly innocent films, because sometimes they're really not. There's also the kind of formulas that you fall into with Christmas films. So the holiday romance films, especially Hallmark, and now Netflix, Lifetime. They're all very guilty of just pumping out B-List films, very low budget, that all follow very conservative storylines, and have a lot of conservative, like one liners, definitely just kind of slipped in there. Always kind of end with a heteronormative relationship. Even the films that have been been about LGBTQ plus couples, they still end in quite a heteronormative way with the insinuation of marriage or the insinuation of starting a family with kids and not really branching into what a queer Christmas film, queer Christmas romance could really be in challenging those kinds of conservative norms. We also have outside of the Santa route, the Dickens route, so "A Christmas Carol." Difficult questions about social problems, and especially wealth disparity around Christmas, the whole idea that it is the season of giving. And you can apply that in a Christian way of tracing it back to the three wise men giving gifts at the Nativity, or you can take it in the kind of selfless, "This is the time of year that we don't have to be so rampantly capitalistic." So So those are some of the kinds of tropes. And again, they range, you can have many of them in a film, you can have none of them in a film or some of them in a film, you could have none of them. So that's the other category of kind of Christmas films is in in a generic way, if we want to go the sub genre route, there are those signifiers and tropes, or it is set at Christmas, and it is definitively a plot that could not happen at any other time, if not, for Christmas. Christmas has to play some sort of significant role in the plot. And for the "Diehard" example, it wouldn't make sense for him to be going across the country to his wife's office party, if it wasn't Christmas, like that would be a weird thing. You don't like just show up at your estranged wife's office, any time of year, expect to be welcomed there. So there are things like that that are kind of structural within the film. The other one that I genuinely believe is that anything is a Christmas film, if it has personal or local, regional, national kind of significance, to some sort of tradition that is shared at Christmas. Like if you decided when you were young, that "Wizard of Oz" is a film you watch every Christmas, then that is a Christmas film. And I don't think anyone can argue with those. So I think a lot of the conversations around like, is it a Christmas film, isn't it? It's whatever you want. It's not that deep. Like, if you watch it at Christmas, if your whole family watches it, if it has become a traditional thing, if it's a regional thing, like over here in the UK, a lot of people watch "The Great Escape" for Christmas. And that's weird to me. But it's not to them. Like it's, it's a regional thing. And it comes down to similar reasons as to why "It's a Wonderful Life" is now an American traditional film. It was played every year at Christmas. And that just grew a tradition around it. So there are lots and lots of answers to the question of like, well, what makes a Christmas film, so many things. It can be anything you want it to be really. But if we're talking about specifics of a sub genre, or genre if you want to make that argument, it would be those kinds of tropes and signifiers and the myth, mythologies of Santa, the remakes and adaptations of Dickens, and the formula romances, I think, are your real top three options for Christmas. Obviously, there are others, but those are the mains.

Kelly  18:18  
One of the films we're going to talk about today is "Love Actually," and I want to get your opinion as someone who studies American culture, American history, American film specifically, but is located right now in the UK. And that is I was reading one review or another that called this a very American film. Now "Love Actually" is set in London. It's got a British director and screenwriter. It's got a mostly British cast. Is this a British movie? Is it really kind of an American Hollywood movie? Does the difference matter at all? You know, what, what do you think?

G. Vaughn Joy  18:57  
That is a great question. I would say that what makes it quite American is how saccharine it is, how sentimental it is. It is a very kind of all stories and quite positively, even Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, it still ends quite amicably, and with hope. And I think that's probably what's a bit off putting for British reviewers would be that it is too overly sweet either. There are no stakes in this film. It's just everybody's going to have a good Christmas. And that's not going to be a surprise to anyone. The surprise is how good and that's it. So I would say that the difference overall, is a bit negligible, especially for Christmas films. A lot of Christmas films, quite a few Christmas films, I'll say, have a crossover with an American production company and a British production company, or share stars. So, "The Bishop's Wife," from 1947, starred Cary Grant and David Niven, who were both British actors. And that film was, I want to say the second, I think it was the second film to be shown at the Royal Film Premiere, which is an annual event. They pick one film that year to show to the royal family, and it's a whole big deal. So the Queen wasn't personally there. I think it was Princess Margaret, and some royals from possibly Sweden. But that showing also ended the embargo. There was a very brief embargo against Hollywood in the UK. So this film, because it had these, like iconic British stars, was the peacemaking vehicle in in 1948, when it was shown to break this embargo. And I do think that there is a huge market in the UK for very sweet saccharine American films, as "The Bishop's Wife" turns into, ultimately. It is quite an American film, but also has very deep British ties. So I would say that in other films that aren't Christmas films, there's a bigger difference between British and American films, but for Christmas films, they can overlap quite a bit. And I think that is a magical thing about Christmas is that if you want it to be sweet, you want it to be saccharine. Like so many reviewers of "It's a Wonderful Life," in Britain hated it and they said, like, "Oh, it's so sweet. It's so gross. Like, 'it feels like you're having a buffet of desserts'" was one of the reviewers. And yet, I went to a talk about it at the BFI three nights ago, and I saw it at the Prince Charles Cinema last night. And they have like 20 Plus screenings throughout December, at both of those locations, and then some other cinemas do too. So there is a market for that sweet saccharine, even if they're like, "Oh, gross." I think there is, there's a lot for it. And that really comes through again in "Love Actually."

Kelly  22:37  
Yeah. So we're at the 20th anniversary of "Love Actually." And so there's a lot of like retrospective pieces and stuff looking at it. And, you know, I think a lot of it feels fairly dated. Some of it, I think probably was wildly inappropriate even at the time. But you know, that that's kind of the way rom coms are sometimes. But some of it, you know, feels like in a post "need to" moment and just like feels a little, what do the kids say "cringe." Yeah. But I wonder if you could talk about the ways that it it it really is kind of a product of its time, that moment 20 years ago that we were in? 

G. Vaughn Joy  23:22  
So Richard Curtis, who is the screenwriter and director, wrote this film as a response to 911. And that comes through very clearly in the film in the opening monologue. Hugh Grant is talking about 911, and the arrivals gate at Heathrow, the concerns that people had flying like all of that is in the first minute of the film. And Richard Curtis said in an interview for Channel Four over here in the UK, quoting him, "Of course, there's tremendous greed, tremendous corruption, tremendous violence. But the balance of that does not seem to me to balance up against all the goodness there is in families and countries and businesses around the world." So he made this film to say that in response to national and international trauma, we can only look to the goodness and the kindness of humanity. And we need to look for the love, almost as like, parallel response to what Mr. Rogers said after 911 saying that you need to look for the helpers. And Richard Curtis really was moved to make a film that addressed the pain and the fear, especially in that moment after 911 and in the lead up to and ultimate invasion of Iraq. So this film is a real kind of healing film. And I think that's why it has such cultural status, especially among Americans. Because those years were really scary, like, looking back at them. And even through today, it's been a very scary kind of 20 years since this film came out. And it's almost like the last time we really felt safe and good and like happy was with this insanely sweet saccharine Christmas film in 2003. And I've been thinking a lot about Christmas films recently, and their place in kind of national culture. And it's, it's very striking, to think about this film as a direct response, as a proclaimed response to 911, because I think "It's a Wonderful Life," and to an extent, "A Christmas Story," are also responses to national fear and national trauma in that way. Like, "It's a Wonderful Life" starts with Mr. Gower receiving a telegram that his son has died of influenza, and that's the Spanish flu. A lot of people sitting in the audience in 1946, would have memories of having lost people to the Spanish flu. And then it goes through some high times in 1928, right before the depression. You see a bank run, you see people struggling. And then you see World War II. And it's just these rapid moments of recapping a lot of national trauma with some light spots. And the only real light spots are the love that you're watching grow between George and Mary. So I think there's a real place for these overly sweet, sentimental films, to really heal something and offer a rallying place for Americans. And they don't necessarily do very well on their release. None of these those three films, including "A Christmas Story," there, which I'll say more about in a moment, none of them did particularly well, in their moment. In the box office, they were fine. But years later, coming back to them, when people were more ready to have a kind of collective grieving process, or work through some of the trauma that has been all around us, I think that has really, really says a lot about the power of what a Christmas film can do, and how not innocent they are. They're making very real stands in response to pretty horrible things. And the only thing I'll say about "A Christmas Story"very quickly, is that it came out in 1983. And it is based on a 1966 book, looking back at 1940. So we have three different moments here. But it was decided that this film specifically would be made in 1983, the Christmas edition of the franchise about the Parker family, I think their name names are. And 1983 was one of the hottest years of the Cold War. It was it was when probably second most to like '62 with with the the ramping up of the Cuban Missile Crisis and things like that. So this Christmas film gets made at this very peak time of national terror and fear, looking back at 1940, which was a year right between the depression and US involvement in the war, and for a child in that time period, may have been the last time that they kind of felt safe, pre Cold War pre- even thinking about the bomb as a possibility in the average person's reality. That was the last time that person felt safe. And I think for a lot of us, 2003 was the last time we felt genuinely safe. So I just I find it really fascinating that we come back to these films every year. And they gain new meaning each year, and deeper meaning each year even with our other kind of progressive changes over these years. So yes, absolutely. There are some things in this film, particularly your man with the cue cards with Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln. That is uncomfortable, it's incredibly uncomfortable to watch. And I remember being a child watching it and be like, "This is the most romantic thing I've ever seen." And now I'm like, "maybe not." And the flirting with the boss so aggressively so aggressively and in the workplace. And it's, there are some things that are very uncomfortable there. And we can acknowledge those. Absolutely. And we should. But I think we can hold two things at once, that we have progressed as a country, but there's also this deeper thing within this film, that is about healing and about allowing us to grieve. And even though it's about London and British people, there's a deeply American kind of value to opening ourselves up to watching this film, as an American and UK kind of American and British healing possibility.

Kelly  31:06  
So one of the key things in a lot of Christmas movies, and "Love Actually" is no exception, is music. And music is really important in "Love Actually." There's a character whose whole job in the film is to, you know, try to get his his hit to be number one in the UK, there's a character learning to play a musical instrument just to woo someone, you know, could you talk a little bit about Christmas music and music in film?

G. Vaughn Joy  31:36  
Yeah. So that's something I haven't particularly really thought about with this. But it's very interesting. There's also that moment towards the beginning, with the wedding, where all those musicians just stand up out of the crowd and start playing, "All You Need Is Love." That's a great point. And I don't know if Richard Curtis said this, but I'm going to hazard to say he would probably agree a bit, that music has a very healing quality, that it makes you laugh, if it's Bill Nighy doing it and saying, being his outrageous self around it. And it also can bring people together like all of the people on stage at the end, when Sam was trying to win over Joanna by having learned how to play the drums. I think the interesting thing is that this film doesn't stick specifically to like classic Christmas music. There are a few songs in it, and then a made up song, well, a made up version of a real song. But it doesn't rely on that. There's a lot of other music in it. And there are a few one liners that are lyrics from other things like Colin Firth says when he gets to his house in the south of France, he says, "alone again, naturally," which is a Gilbert O'Sullivan song about having been jilted at the altar and having experienced so much loss. So yeah, I would say probably that music, especially in this film is used to enhance that kind of healing quality, that the film hold, the the space that it holds for grieving, and processing emotions. Emma Thompson is listening to Joni Mitchell, after she realizes that the golden necklace wasn't for her. And she's crying. And that really shows I think, I think the film shows the whole kind of range of emotions except for like, anger and violence, because it's a saccharine Christmas film that is not going to go there. But every other kind of like more positive emotion, but also pain and grief and sadness through the music. That's a fascinating question that I had not thought about. Yeah.

Kelly  34:13  
So I had read that that Richard Curtis had originally been working on two different scripts. So the Colin Firth story and the Hugh Grant story each were going to be sort of their own standalone and then at some point he jumbled it all together and added a million more storylines. You know, I wonder if if we could talk through just the sort of overwhelming number of storylines there are in this, the the number of characters you have to keep straight in your head and you know, sort of what what we get but maybe what we lose in do it you know, having that kind of movie that's the I saw one review that called it something like it's more like a sitcom clip show than a movie, which is perhaps a little harsh, but you know? It is trying to do so much with so many different storylines. I think, you know, going back to that quote, you read earlier, like he's trying to show love in all these different forms, and the Hugh Grant thing at the beginning where love is all around, you know, you look for it, that I wonder, just, you know, compared to a movie like, "A Christmas Story," that really just has like one character it's following and one plot that it's sort of moving forward, what, what the differences are there?

G. Vaughn Joy  35:33  
So that's interesting that you just added that at the end, because I was thinking that it's actually not an uncommon thing in Christmas films to have so many characters, because in "A Christmas Story," you get these kind of vignettes, like there, there is a main plot, he wants the toy, or he wants, he wants the BB gun. He's trying to get this BB gun the whole time and through different ploys and whatever. But you also get these kinds of side stories of like the bully, that they're running from constantly, or the, the little cutaways with the teacher or like things like that. They feel like little vignettes, that there are other stories going on at the same time, and you're getting a glimpse into multiple people's lives as they relate to Ralphie. And I think "It's a Wonderful Life" does the same thing. Frank Capra had a real kind of passion for making sure that there were no extras in his film. Anyone in the background had an identity, and they had a purpose in the scene that if you're at the train station, you must be buying a ticket to go somewhere. And you're thinking about what is this onward journey, and you're not really looking at George. That's to a lesser extent, than the main cast. Because the main cast, of "It's a Wonderful Life" is quite large, that you do have George, but then you have his wife, you have Uncle Billy, you have his mother, you have his four children like that there are a lot of people in the film. And you do get the sense that everybody is doing something. Everybody has their own life going on. So other kinds of modern films like, "The Holiday," has four leads, just right up front, with all of their own storylines going on. So what I'm saying is, I think, I think very large casts, is quite a common thing for Christmas films, especially the mainstream ones. Holiday romance films that are formulaic, have very small, very small casts, and there is a reason for that, that we won't get into about the 1950s. But I have a chapter about it coming out next year, if you're curious. But I think especially for this film, with all those things that I've said about it being a kind of healing process and about grief and about addressing the fear, with love after national trauma. I think he really hammers home the point that love is all around, that there's a father loving his son, and there's a sister loving her brother with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant. And there's unspeakable love between the two who don't speak the same language, like all of these different types of love that can be fostered in different ways, don't have to be romantic, romantic don't have to be intense, even like Bill Nighy and his manager. It's not an intense like passionate love. It's just a, I've never realized I loved this person. So there's a whole range of types of love and degrees of love going on in the film. And I think that that is important to get the main point across in the film, that love is all around, that we need to turn to those human moments. And I think it also kind of focuses in on the small moments of love, rather than grand gestures. I don't think there are any particularly grand gestures in this film.

Kelly  39:23  
I mean, Colin Firth's proposal at the end...

G. Vaughn Joy  39:26  
Yeah, that's true. That is true. Yes. 

Kelly  39:29  
But that makes sense in a way. If that's the one he was sort of writing as a standalone movie, like, that's where the grand gesture goes. Yeah, yeah.

G. Vaughn Joy  39:36  
Yeah. And I do think also, you kind of need a grand gesture. And again, that that speaks to the scope of love, that there are lots of different degrees to which you can show, and experience, and acknowledge love. Some drawbacks of that are probably that we don't get very full storylines, and some of them are less convincing. I, like my brother has a real problem with Colin Firth's storyline because he's like, "They, they haven't ever spoken to each other. Like, how are they actually in love after three weeks? This doesn't make sense." And I'm like it fair enough. Every year we watch it together over zoom, and he just hates that particular storyline. But, uh, yeah, I think it was in service of this larger grieving, collective kind of feeling of the film.

Kelly  40:34  
Alright, so what is your favorite Christmas movie and why?

G. Vaughn Joy  40:39  
So "It's a Wonderful Life" is always hands down my favorite, even after having studied it for almost five years, still love it, will never stop. And then like, it's just, it's so good. Like, there's so many things about it that come out at different times that I've seen it a million times, and I'm still getting new stuff out of it, like thinking about how it is this response to national trauma has been a recent development in my thinking about it in the analytical ways that I that I am, and also how it almost in a similar way to "Love Actually," it almost contradicts itself because there's a supernatural element. And a lot of people argue about whether Mr. Bean in "Love Actually" is actually like an angel. They don't really commit to it. And I think that's a real tragedy that they could have made a statement with it, but they don't. They leave it up to very vague interpretation. He's only in two scenes. Why is he only in two? It's frustrating. But if we're saying we need to turn to this kind of human goodness, human kindness, love to make life wonderful, after national trauma, that's undercut by having a supernatural element because then it's not just the love. It's the love plus something that's unobtainable. And that is fascinating. That is a fascinating thing to just think about and work through and struggle with, and oh, it's so good. So "It's a Wonderful Life." And "Klaus." I will always sing the praises of "Klaus." I think "Klaus"is a phenomenal film. I may have even said this on the last podcast that I was on with you. It's just such a good film. Everyone should see it from 2019. It's a retelling, no, sorry, not a retelling. It is a completely original mythology of Santa Claus, written and animated, completely hand drawn by Sergio Pablos and his animation team. He started a production company because this was his passion project. And it took 16 years to hand draw this film. It's so good. Highly recommend everyone should see it.

Kelly  42:49  
All right, please tell listeners all the places they can find you on the internet.

G. Vaughn Joy  42:53  
Yes, so I am on Twitter @GVaughJoy. I'm also on Bluesky @GVaughnJoy, and I'm on substack. I have a newsletter, a weekly newsletter called, "Review Roulette," where I review a different film from the 20th century from a different lens, different analytical lens each week. So that's been really fun. And I have a bunch of podcasts that are all on hiatus while I'm finishing my PhD. So we don't have to mention those. But yeah.

Kelly  43:28  
Excellent, and I can't wait to read your dissertation when it is complete. I'm looking forward to it. Vaughn, thank you so much for joining me again on the podcast. It's a pleasure to speak with you every time and Merry Christmas.

G. Vaughn Joy  43:42  
Merry Christmas. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Teddy  44:04  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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