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A
It's the pop culture professors, and today we begin our analysis of the new Apple TV series, Cape Fear. First of all, we bring you some reactions to the first two episodes of the new series. And then after that, we have a reflection on the two movie adaptations that have preceded this TV series, one from 1962 and one from 1991. I'm Professor Stephen Dyson.
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B
And I'm Professor Jeff Dudas.
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A
And we are two political scientists who have just watched the first two episodes of the new adaptation of Cape Fear. And we're going to share our instant reactions. We're going to break down some of the fun themes and ideas both across the Cape Fear I don't know franchise at this point and are unique to the new Apple TV adaptation. And we're also gonna give some sort of aesthetic and dramatic appreciation of the two episodes of the series that we've seen. JEFF Cape Fear is a story that deals in archetypes when it's retold at a tempo of basically once every generation. And so there are recurrent themes, justice and truth and civilization and barbarism. And there are also themes that are unique to each adaptation. And this new adapt has incorporated, I think, or imparted some contemporary anxieties into the telling of the Cape Fear story.
- [02:36]
B
Yeah, exactly. So as we talked about a bit in our previous video on the movies, the Cape Fear movies, this is a story because it deals in such archetypal themes and archetypal characters. At this point, that does amount to a kind of index of what a community is thinking about at any one time, or in this case, what is generationally on the mind of. On the minds of people. And so here we do get that. Right. The two movies are different. They have different stories in a certain way about the possibilities of law and justice. They have different stories about the possibilities of truth and justice. And those concerns continue to be, it seems like from these first two episodes, the prevailing concerns of the new TV show. But the spin is somewhat different. And you're right, they do incorporate new types of concerns and new types of anxieties. Maybe the ways in which those things register in a slightly different, more contemporary and generationally appropriate way.
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A
Yeah. All right. And we're going to get into those and break them down, but maybe first we should just do a bit of a temperature check. So this is going to be an interesting one. I did something, Jeff, I don't usually do, which is look at a few of the initial critical reactions. Some of the reviews and the reviews are mixed. And mixed can mean everyone gave it three stars and everyone's on the fence or more unusually. But it is the case this time. Mixed can mean totally bifurcated, totally polarized. Like, I've read reviews that are rapturous, five stars, flawless adaptation. And then reviews that. I think there was one this morning in the Daily Beast that said this is the worst TV adaptation that's ever been made.
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B
And that's not hyperbole from that Daily Beast review. That's literally what the guy wrote.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah. I mean, this is a highly polarized text and at least critically. And I can sort of see it because after the two episodes, first two episodes, as we were talking about off screen, I don't really know what I think about this. The easy first conclusion is that the acting is terrific, which shouldn't be surprising given the caliber. I mean, the true A list talent that we're dealing with.
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A
I mean, you would get a movie greenlit by saying Amy Adams and Javier Bardem are the leads. Boom. Like, just tell whatever story you like.
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B
Exactly. And they are terrific.
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A
Right.
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B
But is the show good and do I like it? I don't know.
- [04:58]
A
And I genuinely don't know. It could go either way. And I think one disadvantage we have over the critics is they've seen like eight of the episodes, they're saying, which works kind of pre screen. We've just seen the two, and we're giving an instant reaction. And there are things that I really liked about it, particularly in that context. Of updating the societal concerns and maybe painting a broader and more complex world. You know, the two movies were quite lean and quite propulsive and quite straightforward. And this promises to be a broader set of interrelated concerns and themes. And then there are elements of it where I think, wow, I'm not sure I totally trust the writing here. There are a few bits of, like, very on the nose dialogue where there's a fairly direct narration of a major theme. So let me give you an example. There's a point where Anna's giving a speech about how, you know, about doing good, and it's very sort of on the nose and doing good in relation to her Innocence Project. And then she says, and, you know, this is not just theoretical. Real people are involved. And then in comes Max Cade, you know, and you're like, all right, that's very, very direct in what the show's about, right?
- [06:04]
B
And there are other elements as well, as we talked about off screen, some technical elements. I think part of maybe what critics are picking up on is that I think the tone of the show is not quite clear yet. It might be suspense and it might be horror. There are technical elements like the sort of recurring jump scares and sort of head fakes that we see in these first two episodes that I think are intended to build suspense, but in my opinion, don't do it very effectively. The jump scares we've talked about is undoubtedly an effective technique, but how many times can you do it before it just feels like a cheap cop out? And, I mean, we may unfortunately find out, right, in this series how many times it can be done before you're just, as a viewer, you're just like, that's enough.
- [06:50]
A
Or we might not, right? Or we might not. I genuinely think it could go either way. I can also see a circumstance in which, yes, there was a lot of setting of the scene and a lot of quite on the nose dialogue, as there always is in. In a pilot and in which, you know, having. Having 10 episodes as opposed to two hours in a movie might actually allow for deepening the themes that were put on the table. And a lot of themes were put on the table. And some of the. Some of the kind of technical or aesthetic elements that might come across as a bit gimmicky or a bit hard to understand, like the constant glitching on the cameras and the digital screens and the way that. That's perhaps related to the way that Cady's brain kind of glitches after his head injury and people's sort of Hallucinations, I could see that as being either an aesthetic trope that becomes tiresome. But I also. What I hope, you know, is that I can see it as being a real thematic strength.
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B
It's a commentary.
- [07:43]
A
Yeah. And an impartation of a societal anxiety. Right. Which is this. The digital mediation of reality in the contemporary age and the apprehension that we all have that everyone is giving off, that all our social experiences are not only mediated by digital things, but sort of distorted by digital things. And we can't quite tell what's real and what's on the up and up anymore. And there's a real gap between appearance and reality.
- [08:08]
B
And that may well be a recurring theme that strikes me now is the renovation of the house, which has been going on apparently for quite a long time. And Tom, in particular, I think the daughter says, keeps firing, hiring and firing contractors. So he clearly doesn't have a sense. I think what we're supposed to take away from this, I suspect, is that that character, at least, does not have a sense of what it means to live a grounded life anymore, particularly in the household. Right. And. And is just kind of existing in this state of nether. This kind of. This nether world of unclarity.
- [08:49]
A
Well. In which there are too many choices
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B
and you can't decide.
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A
But also a den of hidden secrets. Right. That's. Cady has sort of clearly invaded the house at one point. Seems like it. Yeah. And is sort of living there like the possum that, you know, in classic animalistic portrayals of Max Cady, which have run through the franchise, clearly, he's constantly being linked to an animal. At one point, he's tiger in the backyard, you know, and there's a literal tiger that.
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B
The possum scratching in the walls.
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A
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I do think of the household, you know, and the instability of the household is a clear theme that's occurring in the series. And I'm very interested that you put it in those terms that I hadn't picked up on that quite as strongly, that Tom is sort of indecisive or ungrounded in his household role. Because one of the great anxieties that the parents are having are about the kids leaving the house. And at one point, it's literalized when they go outside the gates. But the whole thing is, you know, how is the outside world digitally invading the kids in a way that the parents can't observe? And that's what's going on with Zack. Have we prepared these kids properly for living in a dangerous and unstable world. And a repeated jump scare is the alarm system around the house, which you could say is cheap. You know, front door and everyone kind of, you know, jumps up and so forth. But it actually is effectively dramatizing or literalizing this premise that the family homestead is an insecure place that is the source of hidden horrors.
- [10:20]
B
That's the danger, right?
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A
Exactly. And having this now very highly technologized security system, it's giving us a simulacrum of security.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, it's. But it's not real security. And it's a digital simulacrum of a secure environment, but it's totally unreliable. The cameras are glitching, there's false alarms all over the place. But actually some of the false alarms are real alarms.
- [10:42]
B
Right. And when Zach leaves the house, where does he go? He doesn't actually leave the house. He goes to the sort of the unfinished. And that's where the horrors take place. Right? Yes. I think there's something really sharp and I think we'll get to this momentarily. With regard to the Zack storyline and the kinds of contemporary anxieties that it seems to import and reflect, there's something pretty meaningful that Zach's problem is that he can't get out of his room or that he won't leave his room. And that's where all the dangers are. Right. I mean, think about, like, where is he safest? Well, he seems to be safest outside of the house. Where is the. And now I can't remember the daughter's name.
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A
Natalie.
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B
Natalie. Where is she most effective? And where is her agency most effective? It's when she's outside of the house, when she's telling the podcast, you know, invasive podcast guy to fuck off. Right. Or she's very comfortable when they're at the ball, at the gala. So there's a way, I think, that's right, that like if. If the household and the home in particular used to be coded as the place of safety, the place that Katie is self consciously trying to invade in the first two movies here, it's. It's the place of danger to begin with, presumably. Right. And it offers new possibilities for a malevolent actor, whether it be Max Cady and Cape Fear or like, you know, a catfisher or catfishing scheme in real life, it's. It's precisely that one is not safe. Right. The fear that the young people in particular are not safe in the household, that seems to be a kind of creeping anxiety.
- [12:26]
A
Yeah. And one thing that's. That's really playing into this, in the new adaptation is the. The changes in the gender orientations of the. The major protagonists. Of course, in the original, in the movies of Cape Fear, the major protagonist has been the male professional figure, and the wife has been in a subordinate, you know, private role. And the big problem is the male professional figure, you know, has caused his authority and his protective capacities to be collapsed by his professional work, which has brought his problems into the. Into the home. And that's the great horror is the corruption of his private women. Right. The sexualization of his daughter and the, you know, his emasculation in front of his wife. Whereas in this iteration, the. The. The. The major lawyer character. Well, they're both lawyers, but the central protagonist is. Is the wife. Yeah. And she's the person with whom Katie has the. The most beef because she's supposed to defend him. I mean, he says at one point, Tom was just doing his job, and he did it well. You're the one who kind of screwed me over. And it's also matched by a switch in the gender. The identity or the gendered identity of the child who is the most invaded by Katie. Right. In the 1962 movie, and especially in the 1991 movie, Katie fixated upon the daughter, and in the 1991 movie, sort of famously seduced her. And in this instance, it is the son who is the more vulnerable, troubled figure and the one who is invaded and targeted by Kady. At least so far.
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B
So far. At least so far. I think that's right. And it's notable. Katie doesn't show much interest whatsoever in the daughter.
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A
I mean, I wonder if it will over 10 episodes, because she's dressed in a. She's dressed in the way that they dress. Polly Bergen and Juliette Lewis. Right. Which is the, you know, as a. As a. Or she appears that way. Right. She's a person on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, and she's dressed in sort of. I don't want the right term, semi revealing outfits. You know, you.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Did you pick up on that?
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B
I didn't pick up on that, but that would be.
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A
Okay, so. So it wouldn't surprise me if they went in that direction. But no, she's. She seems to be the person who's thriving, the child who's thriving, and the child who's not as vulnerable. And it's the male child who's.
- [14:41]
B
Yeah. And again, she appears to be the capable person outside of the house. Right. She deals with the podcast Idiot, you know, pretty effectively, I think, and. And seems, again, completely comfortable in roles where she's not sort of inside the dangerous space. Right. In a way that we don't see that from Zach.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Right.
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A
But so is this. Is this in a text about the crisis in. In young male. Of young males in America? I mean, that's like a hot topic.
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B
That seems like, what. What's going on? Right. I mean, the. The catfishing element here is pretty clear. This is obviously what Katie is doing. Right. He's impersonating a young woman and is, you know, that's his way into Zach's kind of vulnerable emotional life. It's also important that, like, Zach has gotten himself socially ostracized because of his behavior around technology. Right. And because of his space of uncertainty and unclarity and instability in slightly different ways. And that is a. I do think that's a different kind of portrayal of male vulnerability than what we get in the two movies in which the male vulnerability there seems to be tied much more clearly, as you say, to professional conduct or to the professional identity around being a lawyer. Right. Right Here It's. It's redolent and reflective, I think, of contemporary anxieties, as you say, about. We consistently hear a lot about the crisis of young men or the crisis of masculinity. And in part, I think this text so far seems to be engaging that conversation.
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A
So Gregory Pax. Sam Borden was a patriarch and a fairly effective one and successful in the text. Nick Noldy was Nick Noldy. Sam Bowden was trying to do the same thing, but he was a much more compromised sort of patriarchal figure. But if you remember, he's actually quite rough with Juliet Lewis. He's very definitive.
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B
Yes.
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A
Whereas Patrick Wilson's Tom Borden is, as you say, sort of hesitant with Zack. And he's not a bad father in that he's violent or overbearing in a way that you actually could accuse Gregory Peck and Nick Noldy's version of the character as being. He is, as you say, supportive. Hey, buddy, let's try. And, you know. And he's doing dadding in a way that you would say is actually quite sort of sensitive and contemporary and all the rest of it, but it's not really working. He's also quite credulous and sort of easily pushed around. Like, he accepts this explanation for what's happened to Zach when his toes cut off from the Doctor, where the doctor says, well, you can just bite your own toe off. And it's like a baby carrot. And I think Amy Adams character is like, what that's nonsense.
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B
There's a kind of willful, there's a
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A
kind of willful ignorance and he sounds plausible to me. The doctor said it. Right? Come on.
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B
And it's, it's this kind of willful ignorance, a refusal to, to confront what sort of Anna sees very clearly. Right. Which is that like, you know, Zach is in big trouble.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Right. And he is almost certainly the victim of, you know, sort of sadistic practice. And you know, Tom doesn't, he can't see that.
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A
Doesn't want to see it.
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B
Doesn't want to see it.
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A
Yeah. And he's, you know, if you, if you were a crisis of masculine masculinity person, particularly who is approaching this from the cultural right, you'd say what we're seeing here are two, two weak men. Right. You're seeing a child who is a male child who is confused by the new realities of kind of gender politics and dating politics and the online world and needs to get off the video games and go do kind of live a king, you know, paleo things in the backyard with stones and weights and so forth. And also a father who is at one point described as like an ex marine and you know, he thinks he can bench press everyone but. But is detached. I'm giving the cultural rights reading of this here. I'm not necessarily saying this is what I think, but, you know, has become detached from his own strength and his own male role and is now in this perpetual weak and useless role. And one thing that's, that has detached him from it is that he's now part of a dual career couple where he's the less august or less professionally accomplished lawyer and certainly the less definitive, it seems to me and hard nosed
- [19:09]
B
adult certainly is portrayed as the less capable person. Right?
- [19:15]
A
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- [19:45]
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Help is coming. Send help. Rated R now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney. You know, and then. So I do think that's. It seems like that's going to be one of this adaptation's great themes.
- [20:21]
A
Yeah.
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B
Another, you know, very obvious distinction or contrast with the two previous portrayals of Max Cady is that the audience is meant to be unclear about whether he has actually committed these crimes. The original crime. Right. The murder of. In this case, it's of his wife and who was pregnant.
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A
Yes.
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B
In the previous cases, it's of. You know, it's explicitly sexualized violence. Right. And in the first two movies, there is no doubt at any point that's raised about his guilt here. The entire conceit about Katie and the thing that sort of is, I think, meant to make him, at least originally, an ambivalent character who has a kind of combination of menace and charisma is that we don't actually know we're meant to be kept in the dark about whether he, in fact, committed the original murders or not.
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A
Well, his story is he didn't do it. Katie never did he claim in the previous things that he didn't do. We always knew he did it. I don't think he even.
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B
He never did it.
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A
But he said you. You. My defense lawyer, Max Borden. Not Max Borden, Sorry, Sam Borden failed to provide an effective defense and I could have got off, even though I definitely did it.
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B
Yes.
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A
Right. Where in this one, his story is I didn't do it, but. But I'm now really good at violence because I learned all that in prison. And actually, that's been a great loss to me. That's. It's, you know, made me into a demonic figure.
- [21:43]
B
And so it's important here. It's just. Just as Katie is portrayed in this more ambivalent 2. Is this a different story about law? We talked a lot in our last video about how the first two movies have slightly different accounts of the possibilities of reaching substantive justice and right outcomes according to the processes and procedures of law, according to a due process of law. In the first movie, it's, as we say, the anxiety about law not being able to produce justice is staged and it's kind of explored. And then ultimately law is redeemed in the end. In the Scorsese movie, it's very cynical, completely cynical, in fact, about the possibilities of law producing substantive justice. And it simply rejects that out of hand here as we Talked about off screen. The kaleidoscope here is slightly turned again. And what we've got is there's a cynicism or at least a skepticism about the possibility of due process of law creating. Basically living up to its ideals, protecting those who are accused. What the due process of law is intended to do is to ensure that the accused gets a fair shake, that the accused has the possibility of being represented by an attorney, that the accused will have their case tried in public in front of a neutral magistrate, that there are certain processes that the state will have to go through in order to take away the life, the liberty, or the property, Property of people, of the accused. And here we get that process. We get due process of law. That is creating a scenario in which you've got substantively unjust outcomes because a bunch of innocent accused people are on death row. Right. That's the sort of very clear. The Innocence Project that Anna Bowdoin is a part of. And this is the space in which this new version of Max Katie appears. So again, there remain these kinds of high skepticism. And this text continues to stage that anxiety about the possibilities of law and justice. But it turns the kaleidoscope in slightly different ways, and it reflects, I think, a much more critical vision, certainly, of the criminal justice process contemporarily than the previous two movies do.
- [24:04]
A
Yeah.
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B
So again, piggybacking, or simply further articulating that theme of generational concerns and anxieties coming to the surface.
- [24:14]
A
Yeah, I think we're gonna get a lot. Or another thing I picked up on that, that I think we're gonna explore a lot is this. This idea of parents and children, which we sort of talked about a little bit. But I do think it's really significant that there's a paralleling in what Cady's crime was or apparent crime was, and then what the circumstances were of the lawyers who later become a couple. You know, so Kadi's accused of murdering his pregnant wife, and his defenses or his apparent exculpatory evidence is, well, it was my mistress who did it. So there's a pregnant wife. There's infidelity. There's, you know, what's really going on here? And then at the point that the trial's going on, Anna, his defense lawyer, is pregnant with Natalie, but Natalie is not Tom's child. Right. Natalie is, you know, Anna's child from a marriage that's. Or an engagement that's falling apart. And then later on, you get Zack, who is the couple's real child, is being sort of foster parented or whatever by Katie. And at one point he says, like, Zack Cady, I'm Zack Cady. Or there's a hallucination he has, I think when he's under Cady's influence.
- [25:23]
B
Doesn't he call him Adam?
- [25:24]
A
Is that right? Well, that would even be more biblical. Yeah. I don't know. But clearly there's that kind of confusion about parentage and the paralleling in their situation.
- [25:36]
B
And we're also gonna get very clearly a set of parallel storytellings back to drop storytellings. We get a little bit of it with Katie's father. Right. But we're clearly also going to get it with Anna's father, who's bipolar. Who's bipolar and who we were introduced to, you know, in a short scene.
- [25:52]
A
Yeah. Not really welcome at the house. No.
- [25:54]
B
And so there is going to be. I mean, this is going to be a story about family dynamics in a way that the previous two movies are also as well. But here it seems like it's going to be generational.
- [26:08]
A
Yeah.
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B
Again, you know, in a way that the previous movies are not.
- [26:11]
A
Yeah. And I think. I think this brings us back to the beginning. Right. Which is in. In one sense, that could be kind of sprawling and padding. That's certainly what some of the less positive reviews have said. Like, there's a lot of padding and it's, you know, it's supposed to be a linear and propulsive story. In another sense, or in another version of the show, the version we hope that we're going to get, that's going to really add layers and layers of interest and complexity and mirroring and kind of merging of different themes and ideas together.
- [26:41]
B
Yeah. And I think that's right. I mean, I think the show. I feel like it could go either way.
- [26:45]
A
Me too.
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B
At this point. Yeah.
- [26:47]
A
I don't know.
- [26:47]
B
Ten episodes might be great. It might be four episodes too much.
- [26:51]
A
Yeah. I don't think it's going to be terrible just because the flaw you establish by the quality of the. The people on screen are going to stop it from being sort of utterly unwatchable.
- [27:00]
B
Right.
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A
So the question is, is it going to be great or is it just going to be kind of mid and a missed opportunity and sort of bloated and.
- [27:06]
B
Yeah, I think that's. I think that's right. And I don't know either. And it'll be interesting to see. I do think one of. One of the other things that we talked about just quickly on Javier Bardem's Max Cady, it feels More like a throwback to the Robert Mitchum version to me than to the De Niro. And maybe that will change, you know, as. As the season goes on. But there's a kind of a, you know, Robert De Niro's Max Keady is not charismatic, I don't think at all. And here it's very important that Bardem's Katie has a real charisma about him, particularly if what seems to be the agency of his great villainy is his kind of power of suggestion, the ability to get people to do things that he wants them to do. The previous iterations of Max Cate. That is not how they operate. That's not how their sadism takes place. It's not through the power of suggestion. It's not that kind of indirect.
- [28:06]
A
Except with Danny in the Ninet.
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B
Except with Dany a little bit, you're right, but it's not that sort of indirect. Plausible deniability.
- [28:16]
A
He's a brutal, elemental farce. That's the whole point of the character.
- [28:20]
B
Yes. So let's see how that develops as well. It's kind of something interesting to take note of.
- [28:25]
A
Right. He's very like Silver from the James Bond movie. His character in, you know, that's the vibe that he's giving.
- [28:33]
B
More Silva than Chiggers from no country for Old Men. From no country for All Men, absolutely.
- [28:38]
A
All right, good. Well, we would. You know, we don't know which way this show is gonna go. We hope it's gonna be great, but we don't know that for a fact. We would love to have a dialogue with you, and please do leave a comment. We respond to all comments that are left. We hope there's been something of value in these. These instant reactions to the first two episodes. And on that bombshell, I'm Professor Stephen Dyson.
- [28:59]
B
And I'm Professor Jeff Dudas.
- [29:00]
A
And we're two political scientists who have just watched the two movie adaptations of Cape fear, one from 1962 and one from 1991. We've done this, of course, because we wanna. The forthcoming Apple TV adaptation. We'd like to talk about the themes in the movie adaptations that exist so far of Cape Fear, those that are the same across the two movies and those that differ in many ways. It's a story that deals in archetypes or in persistent themes and themes that need to be retold for each generation. If you think about the years here, 1962 to 1991, you know, it's basically the same span of time as to the forthcoming TV series. So we're going to break it down. We're going to give our reactions, and we're going to give some analysis in a way that hopefully stands alone as analyses of the movies and perhaps gets people ready for the forthcoming TV series. Jeff, you teach. One of the things you teach in political science is kind of law and society and law and popular culture. And apparently Cape Fear, in both its iterations, is a pretty important text in that field.
- [29:55]
B
Very much so. It's a movie or a text that. Particularly the 1991 Scorsese version that has received a fair amount of scholarly analysis. Because as we'll talk about here, a lot of this text is really about popular anxieties over law, and popular anxieties in particular over the relationships between law and justice. And I think it's one of the major, as you say, archetypal themes that recurs and that makes this text almost operate in the level of folk texts or folk art, which are these kinds of texts and characters that recur generationally, typically, that are important to a community. And they offer the opportunity, because they're dealing with archetypal themes, sometimes with archetypal characters, they offer the opportunity for each new generation to kind of put its own spin or its own attempt to make meaning out of these themes and these characters. And so Cape Fear becomes this kind of really interesting text that is a sort of index about what the community is thinking about at any one time regarding issues of justice, of law, of, you know, as we'll talk about, I think, today, you know, sort of oppositions between the past and the present, oppositions between sort of nature and nurture, oppositions between civilization and barbarism. All of those kinds of concerns are put onto the screen in Cape Fear and done so in ways that are interesting enough and that are meaningful enough and that articulate with the audience enough that these are characters and themes that are worth revisiting, you know, as you say, generationally.
- [31:41]
A
Yeah. And there's. There's a common plot structure. And of course, these two adaptations are from a. I think it's a 1957 novel called the Executioners, which is. I mean, I haven't. I haven't read the novel. I didn't quite get to go that deep. But I wonder if that's a. Do you think that's to do with Judge, Jury and Executioner, that the law in all of these stories has what should be quite. Quite clean dichotomies between different elements of a justice system actually becomes subverted and kind blend into one another.
- [32:10]
B
I Imagine that may well be the case. I. Nor have I read the original novel. Okay. But it would make sense.
- [32:16]
A
Yeah. And each version of the story, where I was going with introducing the novels, each version of the story, the source novel, and the two movie adaptations has common elements. Right? There is. In all elements, and we understand this. This will obviously be present in the forthcoming TV adaptation. In all elements, there is a released convict, Max Cady, who has a relationship to. A negative relationship to a serving attorney, Sam Borden. And I think in the first movie, Borden is a. He is a lawyer, but actually he ends Cady's life by interrupting a crime that Katie is. Katie is a sex criminal, interrupting a crime that Cady is in the process of committing and then testifying against Cady, thus ensuring a conviction. In the second movie, it's that that relationship's a little more complex because Sam is KD's assigned defense lawyer and sort of misfulfills that role or subverts, you know, the way that that role should be done procedurally. Although, of course, this brings us to one of the great dichotomies. Substantively, there is no doubt that KD is a sex criminal in both versions who deserves to go to prison. And what Sam does as his defense lawyer is he doesn't represent him zealously as a defense lawyer. He buries evidence that could have perhaps being a viable defense for Cady. But substantive justice is done by Cady going to prison. Cady then turns up and sort of seeks to avenge himself upon Sam by invading Sam's profession. But even more crucially, Sam's family life, and in particular, invading his home and his. I mean, I was gonna say invading. He does actually literally seek to do this. His wife and daughter and certainly that family unit.
- [33:59]
B
Yes, yes. And, you know, a couple other things, just in terms of plot. In both versions, the original relationship between Katie and Bowden exists apart from the locale of all of our actions. So in the 1962 version, they first run across one another in Baltimore. Right. And then in the intervening years in which Katie's been in prison, the Bowden family has moved down to North Carolina. In the 91 version, they first come across one another in Atlanta and then move down. So there's something about the passage of time and the passage of space that makes the Katie figure even more menacing. Because it's not like he's just sort of stumbling upon or renewing in an accidental or happenstance way, this earlier relationship with Bowdoin. He's actively seeking it out. And Pursuing it.
- [34:51]
A
Yeah. And that's super interesting. And I'm not, you know, I'm not originally American, and you are, as might be obvious from the way we're speaking, but the. The south is actually a character certainly the 1991 movie. It's explicitly referred to as, you know, the south has a long history with pain, fear. Yeah. And with fear and slavery and all sorts of other things. And I did watch both movies, but especially the 91 movie, and see them as staging key elements from American history or a key evolution or maybe a devolution, depending on how you want to talk about it in the American story. You know, a story of the settling of an elemental land, the imposition of a particular form of government and society, which maybe reaches its high point in the 1960s version, but the incomplete nature of the subordination of the existing forces of the American continent beneath that quote unquote civilization that maybe is more stark. I mean, you'll have to tell me, more stark in the south than in the north or. Stitch fix. Stop shopping. Get styled. Not today, Sweatpants. Somebody's wearing jeans that fit. Wow.
- [36:10]
B
No photos, please. I'm just a regular dad who happens to have a stylist.
- [36:13]
A
I really look my best when someone else makes the decisions.
- [36:16]
B
Hey, we can all see you two way mirrors.
- [36:20]
A
Just share your size, style, and budget, and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door. Stitch fix. Get started today@stitchfix.com I want to hug you. I'm gonna hug you.
- [36:30]
B
I'm coming in for a hug. Well, I think what's happening, at least in the Scorsese version, which I agree is considerably more prominent as a theme, is that Scorsese seems to be really leaning into the sort of the Southern Gothic horror tropes in a way that I think are hinted at in the original movie but really brought to the surface and in a variety of ways, as you say. I mean, the first time we're introduced to Max Cady as he's being released from prison, we get a look at his prison cel wall, and featured amongst the other sort of intolerant, racist authoritarians that are up there, like Stalin is Robert E. Lee, Right. The icon of kind of Southern resistance and Southern opposition to an attempt to create a more racially egalitarian polity. And then there's. At one point, we see that Katie has a bumper sticker, which. It's very quick, but the bumper sticker says, american by birth, Southern by choice. And so it's leaning hard into that and you're right. And then we've got the Fourth of July parade, which features these kind of iconic moments in American history. We get a recreation of Washington crossing the Delaware. We get the recreation of the famous Iwo Jima sort of Last Stand. But intermixed in those flags are including sort of, you know, the rebel flag as well. Right.
- [37:59]
A
Rather crucially, I don't know if you are gonna make this point, but rather crucially, this is a point at which Sam crosses from one side of the parade to confront Kady maybe physically for the first time or Sam's losing his temper or taking the initiative for the first time. So he's almost crossing American history. And these are these displays of the American state's use of force. And Sam's on one side of the division that dividing K's on the other. And it's fairly on the nose in symbolic terms, but it works as part of the symbolic system of the movie.
- [38:27]
B
Yeah. And I think that's prominent for sure in the Scorsese vision. And there is this kind of tradition in American storytelling about the South. Right. This kind of gothic horror tradition which does lean into the sort of more mystical elements of Southern life. Right. The. So, I mean, for example, the movies. Both movies are really, really lean hard into, like, the natural elements of the South. Right. Think about the ways that you've got the different kinds of trees that are hanging down over the river. The way in which, you know, particularly in the 1962 movie, like the long scenes in which Katie is sort of hiding in the river bush waiting to kind of get out into the naturalistic elements. So there's a certain way that the movie means to employ the Southern backdrop in a way that the American south has conventionally been deployed as this sort of barometer, on one hand, of extreme beauty, extreme natural beauty against which these horrors of humanity play out. Right.
- [39:35]
A
Yeah. And maybe also certain courtliness or politeness that can actually hide sort of great violence. And Cady, he's very languid. I. Especially in the 1962 movie, he moves slowly and, you know, is kind of languid in that way. And he's extremely courtly.
- [39:52]
B
Yes.
- [39:53]
A
In the way that he relates to a lot of people until a moment snaps and the kind of violence and red tooth underneath comes erupting out.
- [40:01]
B
Yeah, it's a really good point. And one of the key differences between the two portrayals of Katie, the Robert mitchum version in 62 and the De Niro version in 91, is, is they. They are portrayed a little differently. I Mean, you get the sense that the Robert Mitchum version is a little more, as you say, a little more courtly. His background appears to be a little more elevated. Right. And he seems. Seems a little more natural. Right. In that role. Whereas the Nero performance, he's explicitly referred to on multiple occasions as being sort of, you know, very low social class, kind of from the sticks. Right. He refers to his, you know, he grew up in a Pentecost preacher family, Pentecostal family, I should say, in which, you know, they did things like speak in tongues. And one can presume that this is the sort of place in which you wouldn't. As sort of church, it wouldn't be out of place to see the preacher being bitten by. By snakes.
- [40:59]
A
Right.
- [41:00]
B
And doing the sort of the. The whole kind of very animalistic elements of kind of backwoods American culture. Right. Which seems, again, Scorsese leans hard into that in ways that I think the Mitchum performance suggests that Mitchum is a little more comfortable with the more courtly elements, as you say, of Southern manners.
- [41:23]
A
Another thing that's going on is De Niro is this kind of chewing scenery. I mean, he's really sort of enjoying himself. And it's often Pacino in the later period who's given shit for doing that. But this is a Pacino esque De Niro performance. I think it's big.
- [41:37]
B
It definitely is in a way that Mitchum's performance isn't. And we had talked about, obviously off screen in a certain way. I think Mitchum's performance is more unsettling.
- [41:46]
A
Yeah.
- [41:47]
B
And a little more, you know, scary in a certain way than De Niro's.
- [41:52]
A
But De Niro's kind of lowborn performance is a low Bond characterization of KD is also horrifying. It's just in a slightly different register because the horror for the, I don't know, Civilization coded or Northern coded or however you want to read. Nick Noldy's Sam Bowden, the Horro is that. That Katie is invading everything about him. Everything about his, his. His self image and his. And his masculinity. And in this, in this in particular, he's Katie's better at the law than Sam. But Katie has moved from not only being law Bond, but he's moved from being illiterate.
- [42:30]
B
Yes.
- [42:30]
A
And he's taught himself Borden's world in a way that he can. He can best Borden and he's now sort of better read than Borden is. And he's more effective in the, in that world. And that's the, that that's the danger for, or the maybe the true fear of the, of the highborn or the more aristocratic element of society is that you actually can't maintain those boundaries. You can't keep the people below you. Below you.
- [42:57]
B
Yeah.
- [42:57]
A
And, and the invade, you know, he's not, he's not only here to steal his wife and his daughter and, and all the rest of it, but actually his whole claim to being a learned, more civilized member.
- [43:06]
B
Member of society to steal his identity.
- [43:08]
A
Yes.
- [43:08]
B
Right. And this is where talked about in the introduction that one of the real great themes of this text is the relationship between a kind of rule of law and the possibilities of justice. And one of the things that scholars have spent a lot of time thinking through is the nature of the justifications or the claims on behalf of a society that's governed according to a modern rule of law. The emphasis in those societies, the justifications for why law exists, have to do with the operation of procedures and processes that what turns a society modern, what distinguishes it from sort of a pre modern superstition or barbaric based society or kin based society really is the way in which the society is orchestrated and governed according to a series of pre existing rules and regulations that are said to be neutral. They are said to apply in all circumstances, or at least in most circumstances to all or most people. And that, that what the operation of this kind of empire of procedures gets you is on one hand it gets you order. It's a way to solve social conflicts without resort to violence, without resort to vigilantism. But it is on the other hand also a society that precisely because it is operating according to these pre existing neutral procedures, delivers justice. And so it's a kind of a dual promise order on one hand, justice on the other hand. But one of the great anxieties that has always been staged in kind of popular storytelling about law is that the justice that this sort of legal order delivers is really confined to the operation of procedures. And that it is not, as you had mentioned earlier, a kind of substantive justice in which the focus is upon, well, has the correct outcome been reached here? And so what a modern rule of law tends to do is it tends to privilege what we could call procedural justice. So long as the rules have been followed, the outcome can be said to be fair, even if it's incorrect. And both of these texts are really staging this kind of anxiety about a society that, or societies that in fact do operate or attempt to operate through rule of law, but are not capable of producing Substantively, just outcomes in this case, making sure that someone like Max Cady, right, the sadistic. Who's referred to in the first movie as a degenerate or an animal in both movies, is actually prevented from, as you say, invading and causing the chaos and disorder and violence that law is supposed to forestall. And so this is our lawyer is impotent. Right. And another theme that you wanted to sort of dig into, our lawyers in both of these movies, as lawyers for long stages of the movies, are basically incapable or impotent at staving off these civilizational threats, which are made all the worse in the figure of Katie, as you suggest, because Katie has figured out how to use the procedures of law in his own. For his own statistics.
- [46:32]
A
Yeah. I mean, there's two problems in this, in this line of thinking. One is that when Kadi comes at Bowdoin, Borden finds that. Finds out that he is impotent in the use of the law or that the law cannot help him. And there's numerous discussions in both movies where, you know, he'll go to the police and the police will say, well, Katie hasn't done anything really yet that we can arrest him for. And would you wonder, in the first movie, this exchange, like, I can't just arrest a man because he seems threatening to you or what might be in his mind, that would be a dictatorship.
- [47:01]
B
And in fairness, they do try. Right. Particularly in the first movie, there's an entire sort of regime of, like, rousting and legal harassment. Police harassment, yeah.
- [47:10]
A
This is where I wanted to go. So that's one problem. Right. Borden can't. The law is not powerful enough to protect Borden from this obvious threat that everyone can see is destructive and needs to be taken care of. And Borden needs to operate in a different register. The other problem with the law and the way it's delivering justice or working properly is that Bowdoin has, in fact, subverted it.
- [47:30]
B
Yes.
- [47:30]
A
Right. So KD is both. Both over punished and under punished. Or I mean, maybe that's not the right terminology, but. But the law is shown it certainly
- [47:38]
B
he's both legally and extralegally punished.
- [47:40]
A
Yeah, exactly. And that he is screwed over. Right. Like that defense that should. In a, In a. In a neutral procedural system of justice, all of the evidence in KD's case should have been brought forward and you may well have been convicted anyway. But he also, and this is the hard thing to face, he may not have been convicted, and that would have been procedurally proper. But actually, in terms of Natural law or whatever, substantively, improperly. But that is also going on. It's still present as an undertone, I think, in the 1962 version. Because the police chief, when Borden goes to him and says, I've got this problem, the police chief is like, sam, I know you. We're clearly buddies, meaning we're of the same kind of social class. And all the rest of it, we're on our side. I can't do this for you formally, but let's me and you brainstorm on ways that we can use the force of the state outside of the law to make life impossible for Max Cady. And they're totally down with it. And they really go as far as they can to try and help Sam out outside of the law.
- [48:38]
B
They do. And so they're eventually stopped because, as you say, they eventually reach a point at which you simply can't go any further without crossing a sort of invisible but important barrier. Individualantism. But also, it doesn't work. Right. And Katie, because of his sort of legal acumen and the fact that he is. Is a legal actor in a certain way, just the same as the rest of them are the same as Bowdoin is, he basically puts a stop to it with his capacity and his learning in law.
- [49:10]
A
Right? Right. So in the resolution of the 62 movie, the system is broadly restored, right? I mean, as I read the end of the movie, so Sam Best's KD physical, which is important, I think, right. Only have a fist fight at the end, and Sam kind of gets the better of him.
- [49:31]
B
Sam, it's a fist fight. And then he ends up being able to locate the gun, right. And shoot him.
- [49:38]
A
And so Katie's thinking, well, I'm gonna get shot here. And so are the viewers, like, you know, And Sam says, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna move this back into the system. You're gonna go to prison.
- [49:50]
B
You know, along those lines. In the 1962 version, the entire houseboat scene is a police sting. It operates from within and under the color of law, right. So Sam tries the vigilante route, right? He tries to beat him up. That doesn't work. And he gets himself in trouble, right. With the Bar Association. But the ultimate resolution and the ultimate defeat of Katie takes place place as a police sting. Right. And under the color of law. So there's this kind of redemption of the. After having staged a movie's worth of anxiety about law's incapacity to produce substantive justice in the end. Right. The audience is meant to be reassured that proper procedure can in fact still produce substantive justice.
- [50:42]
A
Right. Whereas in the 1991 movie, the resolution is very different. And they do have a physical confrontation. But, you know, Sam is sort of. I don't know, they beat each other to a draw. But Kady's like, very, very weakened by the series of events.
- [50:58]
B
And in the end, he's been set on fire.
- [50:59]
A
Yes, exactly. Exactly. And in the end, KD is kind of subsumed by the underworld. The Kymphea lit kind of draws him down while he's speaking in tongues. He's burned. He's sort of a fairly literal demonic figure at this point. And there is a biblical Certain thing going on in these movies.
- [51:17]
B
Yeah. And there's a guy. The second movie in particular is, I think, very obvious about its opposition of sort of human rule of law based order versus biblical order and the possibilities of truth and justice that are associated with each. And clearly, at least for Katie, truth and justice are. They are one and the same under sort of religious Old Testament biblical principles. And it's exactly that connection between truth and justice that the movie. The 91 movie in particular is very cynical. Can occur within legal procedure.
- [51:53]
A
Yeah, yeah. The other theme that I think we should talk about before we end here is the daughter, the portrayal of her. And I think that the 62 movie is both portrayal of. Rest on the fact that she's underage and that she's an object of sexual desire. For Cady, perhaps like an object. You know, because he is a sex criminal and an incredibly lecherous man. He's an object in that regard, but also because he's a precious object. She's a precious object. Sorry, to her father. The 62 movie's a little more elliptical in the way that it depicts her. She. Which.
- [52:32]
B
Cause it's 1962.
- [52:33]
A
Sure. But you get the. The way she's dressed in the movie and the way she's shot is. You clearly get the impression she's supposed to be in that very uncomfortable, uncomfortable for the viewer. Liminal space between girl and woman. The 1991 movie with Juliette Lewis's remarkable funds addresses this much more head on. And it's clear that Danny in the 1991 movie is a young woman of sort of burgeoning sexuality. And KD intuits this.
- [53:02]
B
Yeah.
- [53:02]
A
And sort of presents himself as a fatherly. I mean, I don't want the right word.
- [53:07]
B
Mentor of some sort.
- [53:09]
A
But explicitly in sexual matters and is sort of successful, at least to some degree. In seducing her.
- [53:15]
B
Yes. And I think that's. It's one of the things that makes. To the extent that I think the 91 movie makes you more uncomfortable as a viewer, it's that.
- [53:25]
A
Yeah.
- [53:26]
B
Right. So if I. I would tend to give the edge to Robert Mitchum as the more harrowing and unsettling version of Katie. I think to the extent that the 91 movie is really unsettling and harrowing, it is precisely in that kind of. It's a seduction that Katie performs with Danny.
- [53:51]
A
Right. And Juliette Lewis is performance is sort of widely remarked as being incredible in occupying that liminal space. One moment she's a girl, and another moment she's a woman. One of the very uncomfortable scenes, and I think deliberately so, was not between Cady and Dany, but was between Odin and Dany in that he's her father and he comes into her bedroom and she's just wearing her underwear. And he remarks in it, like, put some clothes on. You're not a little girl anymore.
- [54:19]
B
Yeah.
- [54:19]
A
And it's just, you know, it's a very uncomfortable moment from a viewing standpoint.
- [54:25]
B
That's very uncomfortable. The other scene that's very uncomfortable is when he confronts her after she has, you know, had this sort of theater interaction with Katie. And, you know, you see Bowden's quick, quick temper and quick sort of easiness towards violence.
- [54:44]
A
Yeah.
- [54:44]
B
Himself.
- [54:45]
A
Yeah.
- [54:45]
B
And so she is. The Dany character is, I think, in a certain way, with maybe the beating heart of the Scorsese version of the movie in a way that I think you're right. She definitely is not that. The analogous character is definitely not in the 62 version.
- [55:02]
A
Right. Although in both cases, there is an attempt to make her not just the helpless daughter. Right. Like in the 62 movie, the wife says to Sam, don't worry about her. She's pioneer stock. Which is sort of redolent with historical overtures. But also, I think they're saying she's tough. She's tough agentic. And she definitely is. In 91, she has most of the good ideas for physically besting kd. Almost all of them actually come from her. She's the kind of smiles.
- [55:28]
B
All right.
- [55:28]
A
A couple of bits of ephemera to finish here with in sort of fantasy casting realms. It turns out that originally Steven Spielberg was going to direct the 91 Scorsese movie, but found it too violent in the end and went off to do Schindler's List. Traded Schindler's List with Scorsese at one point. Harrison Ford was down to play Sam Bowden, but but only wanted to play Max K. Yeah, I, I, I think
- [55:53]
B
Ford would be fine as Bowden. I don't see him as a Katie Right. Type. Interestingly, Spielberg is listed as an executive producer on the new Apple tv.
- [56:03]
A
Yeah, doesn't surprise me.
- [56:05]
B
Who knows what that means. Scorsi is also listed as an executive producer. I don't know if that means like it's a zoom call that they had in advance or what. But I mean I, it's going to be very interesting to see what the, the ad the new adaptation does over. I presume it's over 10 episodes with this story. And the sense that I can get just from the trailers is that rather than, I mean I think Amy Adams is playing the attorney. Right. And so she, so we're getting what appears to be a different dynamic between the Bowdoin analogous character and the Katie character played by Javier Bardem just right off the bat. And it will be interesting to see, I mean there's a lot of family dynamics as well as you have alluded to that get exploited or worked out in this text as well. And so it'll be interesting to see how those things develop here.
- [57:02]
A
Yeah, yeah. The other last bit of ephemera, last bits. Nick Noldy in 1991 is a spitting image of former U.S. defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Really a remarkable.
- [57:11]
B
Yeah, which I, I certainly had not picked up on until you. Well look, you go to war, you go to screen with the actors you have, not the actors you want.
- [57:19]
A
Yes, exactly. He should have just given Katie a lecture on things we know and things we don't know. And Katie would have known unknowns, gotten bored halfway through and said ah, screw it. Counselor. Are you in this one, Mr. Secretary,
- [57:30]
B
as usual, spot on Southern accent.
- [57:31]
A
Thank you very. I can out learn you. And then the last thing I was watching this and this movie and I thought, wow, this is really the plot of Wrath of Khan with KD in the Karn role and even burn him up like they burn up Khan and Borden and Kirk of the white whale, which actually means the uber text in the background of all of this is Moby Dick.
- [57:51]
B
Okay, fair enough.
- [57:54]
A
Free piece of the final film theory there.
- [57:57]
B
Katie is pulled down to the netherworld just like in.
- [58:01]
A
Yeah, I'm telling you, that is the uber archetype here. All right, so we are looking forward to the Apple TV series. We'd love to hear your thoughts on both what you're looking forward to in the series and and if you've seen these movies, what you make of them, totally recommend them as preparation for the new TV series. But on that bombshell,